his is quite an involved melody and a long form - credited to Ballamy, Bates and Bruford, I wonder who wrote which bits!
Here's the personnel listing for Earthworks (taken from wikipedia):
- Bill Bruford - acoustic and electronic drums, percussion, whirled instruments
- Django Bates - keyboards, tenor horn, trumpet
- Iain Ballamy - soprano, alto and tenor saxophones
- Mick Hutton - acoustic bass
- Dave Stewart - co-producer (with Bruford), and credited with "samples, keyboard bass, very occasional additional keyboards".
For
those of you who may be interested to work further on this tune
remember my comments about simplifying some passages. When I prepare for
these sessions I generally try to transcribe as much detail as possible
but to show you what I mean I am going to attach a much simpler version
(without the harmony line).
The
solo section on my handout is actually only part of a much longer
sequence (I thought it was enough to get the general idea). The 16 bars I
used were perhaps deceptively simple. With a little more time I would
have liked to explore the idea (which Terry voiced most passionately) of
'opening up' the feel and the harmony.
The first chord of this solo sequence was notated (in concert) as C min - I would suggest that in this context it should be used as a starting point for embellishment (adding other notes, e.g. Bb or A and D, or maybe B natural) and alteration (i.e. using other chords, e.g. C7#9 or B7 or Cdim perhaps). Conversely, the next chord (in bar 3) notated as G7b13b9
is very specific - I would probably leave this as it is (at least to
begin with). On the recording there is very little keyboard at the start
of the sax solo. It comes in later with a kind of 'montuno' (Peter did a
little of this at one point - excellent, more please!)
Another way of 'opening up' the harmony might be to use some 4ths voicings (e.g. for Cm using the notes F Bb Eb or G C F etc - try going 'outside' using the notes F# B E etc).
In
our improvising session today I should have picked up on Nick's
suggestion and given our chordal players the opportunity to do some
comping separately (rather than all three together) - please remind me
to organise this next time!
The
groove on the recording begins very sparsely with a half time feel
(backbeat on 3) and it sounds very electronic to me (electronic drums?)
Presumably the various fills are done live by Bruford, over the
electronics - what do you think Charlie?
Finally
Ash asked about negotiating the 'pushed' chords (always on beat 2 in
bars 4, 8 and 16). I guess one approach would be to ignore them, perhaps
playing phrases either side so the 'pushed' chord sounds like an
interjection (or response). It is also possible to play on these chords
but ideally you need to play a well chosen chord tone right on the
second beat to make this work - this requires practice :-)
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