Week 19 09-05-14 Ups And Downs

So this week a new piece (chosen by me) - Ups And Downs by Carla Bley. What did you make of it? Hilary commented shortly after the class: "what a weird tune". Discuss (with her … )

I wanted to do another Carla Bley piece and I thought this one was quite interesting melodically, (compositionally), and harmonically. I would describe the melody as very 'pianistic' - the wide intervals can be played easily on the piano (although Andy Sheppard gets round it pretty well on tenor - see the YouTube clip). The development of the A section is a perfect example of using octave displacements to create a new melodic line. I believe Carla Bley's writing is heavily influenced by Thelonius Monk - angular lines and repeating motifs often using large intervals (cf Misterioso).

The harmony in this piece is not as complex as it first looks. The A section uses a two bar pattern of four chords which repeats down a tone and then another tone before resolving to a minor chord in bar 7 (more on bars 7 & 8 below). In concert key the basic chords are  | Am7  Gb7  | F7  D7  |  Notice how the second chord in bar 1 which is a dominant seventh resolves down a semitone - it is a tritone substitution (for C7). Also notice how the second chord in bar 2 resolves down a fifth (or up a fourth) into the next set of chords (i.e. D7 to Gm7 ). The sequence could be thought of like this:

|  Am7  C7  |  F7  D7  | Gm7 etc

The implication of the above is as follows: Am7  stands alone, then C7 and F7 work together, and D7 and Gm7 work together. So there are actually only three bits to think about and not five - hooray!

The chords in bars 7 and 8  (in concert: Ebm7  Ab7 ) also work together and may be thought of as a 'non-resolving II V '. This sound is used in many groove tunes (eg Oye Como Va). In this piece 

the harmony in bars 7 and 8 is relatively static providing a brief respite from the busy harmonic movement in bars 1 to 6. This change of pace is emphasised (and nicely balanced) by the use of a '2 feel' in bars 1-6 and then a '4 feel' in 7-8. Also note that the final chord in bar 8 (in concert: Ab7 ) is actually another tritone substitution, resolving down a semitone to the first chord at A again (in concert: Am7 ). Structurally, this piece is very well put together (in my opinion … ) 

In the session I gave out a sheet showing some possible chord voicings. This is the method I used to build these 5 note structures (there are of course other ways of creating voicings).

> start with the root at the bottom (later on we can leave this out which will give us a 'rootless' voicing)

> above the root insert: either the third and then the seventh, or the seventh and then the third (the chord symbol will tell you whether to use major or minor thirds / sevenths)

> the voicing so far has three notes (from the bottom up, either  root  third  seventh  or  root  seventh  third ) this gives the basic sound of the chord

> now you can add two more notes, one from each of the following selections: selection 1 [ root, flat 9, natural 9, sharp 9 ] ; selection 2 [ sharp 4, natural 5, sharp 5, 6 = 13 ]

> if your basic voicing is  root  third  seventh  then chose a note from selection 1 followed by a note from selection 2, or ...

> if your basic voicing is  root  seventh  third  then use selection 2 followed by selection 1 (this is to avoid the voicing being too spread out) 

> all the voicings in my example sheet were created using this technique

This technique is widely used by pianists, guitarists and arrangers. It always yields good sounding results (but as with all such techniques, the 'rules' may be broken at any time!)

I would encourage all our non-pianists to try building at least some 3 note chords at the keyboard (from the bottom up, either  root  third  seventh  or  root  seventh  third ). Test next week :-)

Next week (apart from the test!) we will re-visit the Henri Texier piece Old Delhi. I will endeavour to send a little more information about this piece before Friday :-)

Cheers Mark

mark@markbassey.com