Litany Against Fear and Nothing Personal

Ropetackle Workshops 2014-15

Week 5  28-11-14

For our second block of workshops we have another two very different compositions: Litany Against Fear and Nothing Personal. Once again these pieces are from the ‘Ropetackle Archives’ (we looked at them last year - music and mp3s in Dropbox). Don’t worry if you are new to these tunes (or have forgotten them!) your fresh perspective will be great :-)

On Litany Against Fear and I tried a step-by-step strategic approach to improvising on the solo sequence (actually solo sequence 1).

1) I changed the key from concert Eb minor (Gb major) to concert D minor (F major). Next week we’ll go back to Eb minor.

2) We improvised freely (out of time) on the first 6 notes of concert F major  F G A Bb C D  (NB check out first 8 bars of Christian Scott’s solo*).

3) We improvised (in time) over the first three chords (still in concert Dm) in ‘friendly’ 4/4 :-)    |  Dm7  |  Bb∆  |  F∆  |  F∆  |   (all in the concert scale  D E F G A Bb C D )

4) We added the ‘cadence’ chord in bar 4  (still in 4/4)  |  Dm7  |  Bb∆  |  F∆  |  A7/C#  |   (NB notice how Christian Scott mostly chooses not to play in this bar!)

5) We put the sequence back into the original time frame - alternating bars of 4/4 and 3/4  (arguably in 7/4)  Look at the rhythms used in Christian Scott’s 16 bar solo*.

In the Dropbox Litany Against Fear folder, along with the lead sheets and original mp3, I have added the following items:

- backing track for solo sequence1 (concert Eb minor)

- backing track for solo sequence1 (concert D minor)

- a transcription* of Christian Scott on solo sequence1 (concert Eb minor)

- as above but in concert D minor

In all future sessions I would like to stick to the original key (concert Eb minor) but some of you may find it helpful to do some preliminary practice (!) in concert D minor …

To finish this first session I asked our rhythm section to play All Blues  - first in the normal 6/4 and then in 4/4. 

|  G7  |  G7  |  G7  |  G7  |  C7  |  C7  |  G7  |  G7  |  D7  |  Eb7 D7  |  G7  |  G7  |

Then we changed all the G7s to Gm7s and put the Eb7 in bar 9.

|  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  C7  |  C7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Eb7  |  D7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |

Finally I asked Charlie to play double time (so in effect each chord lasts twice as long)

|  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  C7  |  C7  |  C7  |  C7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Eb7  |  Eb7  |  D7  |  D7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |  Gm7  |

This is the chord sequence for Nothing Personal.  In my lead sheet I used Gm rather than Gm7 which keeps the chord more open and of course allows for the possibility of exploring the melodic minor (in concert:  G melodic minor   G A Bb C D E F# G )