The Balance - Dave Holland Quintet

This tune is from the album Extended Play - Live At Birdland. Here is a great live rendition from the Jazz Baltica festival on Youtube.and here. Chris Potter on sop and Robin Eubanks on bone, Steve Nelson, vib & mar and Billy Kilson, ds. Soloists really give it the big one over that 10 feel. Amazing. This is the lineup when they came to the Brighton Festival a few years ago. I know some of you were there.

 From Mark...

The tune we are due to look at is The Balance by Dave Holland (from the album Points Of View  ECM 1998). 

I have prepared an additional sheet called The Balance - bits. It has a couple of backing lines used in the arrangement. (See below).

I think this is a beautiful piece of music and a really interesting arrangement. However, it is also very hard (in my opinion!) I chose it - sorry!

I originally transcribed this piece (about 10 years ago) in a slow 5/4 - much of the melody is written in semiquavers. More recently I found a transcription on the net (credited to Ville V. 2010 ) which notates the piece in 10/4 (or 6/4 + 4/4). I thought this looked more friendly, it also avoids the semiquavers. However, I still find the best the way to 'feel' the rhythm is in a slow 5. I'll bring along a semiquaver version for comparison on Friday.

I know a number of you may feel that perhaps we have done enough work on odd time signatures recently. I somewhat regret this choice now (it was supposed to finish off the final block of 2013!) All four of the tunes in our next block are in 4/4!!!

Anyway, I have a couple of ways to approach this tune which we can try on Friday. One of them involves improvising over the chords ... but in 4/4 :-)

10 Jan 2014, The 4th of this Block

Ash and I met with Mark last week to discuss dates, tunes and arrangements for next year. These dates are confirmed:

Block 2 -  remaining date - 10 January

 

Block 3

17 Jan, 24 Jan, (delete 31 Jan), 7 Feb, insert 14 Feb

 

Block 4

insert 28 Feb, 7 Mar, 14 Mar, (delete 21 March) 28 March

 

Dates for Blocks 5 & 6 are provisional for now so will let you know when they have been confirmed.

 The level of support for the workshop indicates that it is a popular format. So far we have requested Mark to repeat some tunes. If anyone has other tunes we have done that they would like repeated then let us know. We discussed the emphasis that the sessions have had on timing. Mark said that he felt that this is an often ignored element of music and is as important as what notes to play. Ash suggested looking at arranging on the hoof on the bandstand. That way we could look at backing riffs which would have an impact on our phrasing when soloing.

We intend to keep the contemporary spirit. It would seem that a number of people have been happy to discover new music and to broaden their listening. If anyone has got suggestions for tunes then let us know. Otherwise we will continue to foist our tastes on you. We will be doing more tunes in 4/4 though!

Some ideas for themes for blocks are British , Middle Eastern, European and Scandinavian composers. We have already done tunes by Avishai Cohen and Henri Texier but there is a lot of really good stuff out there. We also want to look at some pop/rock tunes that have been covered by jazz artists. After all that is how most standards started life.

Pools

this composition by Don Grolnick has a number of unusual features, hopefully of interest to us as improvisers and composer/arrangers.

• form of the head:  A  A  B  (actually Steps Ahead play  A  A  A  B )

• two different solo sections: Solo Section 1  and Solo Section 2

• melody in the bass (during  A)

• lots of space in the melody (held together by the sustained notes/chords)

• rhythm: based on even quavers (funk groove) plus some crotchet triplets

• rhythm: use of rhythmic stops in second half of Solo Section 1

• harmony: unexpected use of dominant chords with ‘natural 13’ (rather than ‘b13’) resolving to minor – eg C13b9b5  Fm11 rather than C7b13b9  Fm11

• harmony: use of diminished scale (half-whole), also called 8 note dominant, on many of the dominant seventh chords

The melody is challenging harmonically and rhythmically (it would sound great arranged for our line-up). The solo sections are simpler by comparison – this gives the piece a sense of overall balance.

I would have liked to have spent more time on the solo sections in our session – there’s lots to explore here. If you are interested to do some more improvising on this piece then you’ll find various backing tracks in the Dropbox (including a sneakily-edited ‘live’ version which features our very own rhythm section of Alice, Stuart, Nick, Terry and Charlie – great groove playing!)

Next week it’s over to you. There’s loads of lovely material coming in – keep at it, the more the merrier 

Ideally we need copies of your piece (even if it is ‘work in progress’) written out for C treble instruments (piano, guitar, voice) Bb instruments (up a tone) and Eb instruments (up a sixth). Bass clef copies would be nice for the trombones and bass as well.

If you can send me stuff in advance that would be useful (but not essential).

Spring Term – block 2, week 2 (19.04.13*)

Spring Term – block 2, week 1 (15.03.13*)

Going Home  – is it 6 of one or 4 of the other? This African / Township inspired piece by Louise Elliott offers another chance to explore 3 over 2 (aka 6 over 4). I think the ‘two’ pulse (or ‘four’) is usually the underlying feel and the ‘three’ pulse (or ‘six’) is secondary. However, both pulses are important – they need each other to create this wonderful cross rhythm.

The question of writing down these rhythms is a tricky one. Should you favour the ‘two’ pulse (aka ‘four’) as I have done, or the ‘three’ pulse (aka ‘six’)? The crucial factor is the ‘feel’ (or underlying groove) – in other words: which pulse would you dance (or tap your foot) to?

Even having chosen the ‘two’ or the ‘three’ pulse there are still a number of notation possibilities. If you have a look at the handout entitled 6 Against 4  you will see three options for notating Going Home (all based on the ‘two’ pulse).

Harmonically this tune is entirely diatonic to G mixolydian (parent scale would be C major). The bebop scale on G sounds good here (G A B C D E F F# G ). Another possibility would be to play   G7  F7  F7  G7  although the bass line would need to have one note changed.

I hope you enjoyed this piece.

Next week a tune by Don Grolnick called Pools. This piece has some quite complex and rich sounding harmonies. Why not check out the half-whole diminished scale (starting with a semitone, sometimes called 8-note dominant). We’ll need it for the  13,b9,#11 chords in SOLO SECTION 2

C INSTRUMENTS

D13,b9,#11 D  Eb  F  F#  G#  A  B  C  D

C13,b9,#11 C  Db  Eb  E  F#  G  A  Bb  C

Bb INSTRUMENTS

E13,b9,#11 E  F  G  G#  A#  B  C#  D  E

D13,b9,#11 D  Eb  F  F#  G#  A  B  C  D

Eb INSTRUMENTS

B13,b9,#11 B  C  D  D#  E#  F#  G#  A  B

C#13,b9,#11 C#  D  E  E#  G  G#  A#  B  C#

     = Db13,b9,#11 Db  D  E  F  G  Ab  Bb  Cb  Db

Today's session recordings will be available in the DropBox shortly :-)

Hope to see you all next week.

 

Cheers Mark

www.markbassey.com