For your…enjoyment?

I just mixed the piece I wrote for last April’s concert–”Effection” for amplified string quartet and three percussion. It’s an attempt at “Third Stream” music, combing some jazz elements in a modern classical setting. The musicians were cracker jack players, familiar with the jazz and free jazz idiom, and receptive to my ideas and directions.

“Effection” is mostly notated, but most of it has a free rhythmic feel. There’s a lot of improvisation , and I controlled the sound using box and arrow, and spacial rhythmic notation. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s written out and what’s improvised. You’ve really got to rely on your players to pull this style of writing off, but when they do it works.

In a future post I’ll explain these devices and show how I used them in this and others.

Check it out and let me now what you think.

Here’s the score:
Effection

Here’s the audio:

 

From the vault

Cool sides from my collection (currently in Public Storage in Burbank).

Last Night–One Attempt

So I tried it out again. I performed The Clothed Woman live with my trio last night. I played it last winter, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that performance. Last night it was better.

Now I think I can end my obsession with this tune. Please refer to an earlier post, “Revealing Ellington’s The Clothed Woman“ for a transcription. I concentrated on the first part, the “A”–and tried as best I could to show how it is, indeed, a standard blues in F. I think I can polish my performance more, perhaps with a couple more performances smooth it out, play the blues a bit more “outside” for a while, but you can get a rough idea in this recording from last night. So dig it:

This will definitely be on my trio record.

More Revelations…

I’m getting a lot of hits on my post: “Revealing Ellington’s “The Clothed Woman” .  When I get a chance I’m going to have to fix a few typos/wrong notes in the transcription.

I’m pulling this tune out on my trio gig tonight in Studio City, may the force be with me, and my condolences to my rhythm section!

“Serious” Improvisation-Surfing the Third Stream

I’m writing a piece for string quartet and 3 percussionists. In this piece I want to have the players improvise in certain passages. This creates many challenges, not the least of which is how to notate improvisation. I’ve done this before in chamber music with some success using spatial and box notation, and mixing it up so no more than a few players are improvising at a time.

However, I don’t know who some of the players are, and I want to write a piece I can take to other ensembles, that’s approachable and player-friendly. I’m a bit nervous about what the players’ approach might be, probably unnecessarily though, because I’ve found that most modern players are well versed in many styles, having performed in jazz and rock settings, and having more than just classical music on their iPods.

I’m always curious how other composers might use improv in their work, and what success they’ve had in a jazz/classical hybrid, or what Gunther Schuller first termed Third Stream music.

I’m used to chord changes, and specific idiomatic and tonal jazz styles. This piece won’t swing, but some of it will sound like free jazz within a modern classical framework. Also, there’s no rhythm section per se, but I can evoke rhythms that lay down a framework within which to work.

I tried this sort of hybrid piece in music school, and I had players who refused to perform it. The thought of improvisation intimidated a few, but one backed out because he felt it would upset the serious classical teachers. How’s that for paranoia? But that was back in the day…

I’ll post some examples of what I come up with. I’d appreciate any comments or advice.

The Doctor is In

In an arrangement for my ensemble I performed a lot of surgery on Duke’s classic Solitude. I’ll provide an analysis and score and musical samples in my next post, but I wanted to give a little background on the technique of gestural writing and how it can be used to extend jazz composition.

“Re-texturizing” is as good name as any for some of the procedures I use while a piece is undergoing such surgery. Traditional jazz arranging uses some tried and true techniques: reharmonizing chord changes, composing lines around the melody, and developing material. In Solitude I sought to rethink phrase length and ensemble sound, loosen up the textures, and radically change the point of view of the tune and the sound of the band.

In modern music we can rethink “melody”– it’s quite a plastic concept. Orchestrational texture can be used in a melodic way, so that the overall gesture becomes an idea, a nugget, a recognizable sound. Just because you can’t sing along with it doesn’t mean it’s not melodic.

This is nothing composers like Stravinsky and Berio weren’t doing 80 years ago. As far as altering broad ensemble gestures and utilizing cool and expressive ensemble textures to develop an idea, check out the work Legetti, Crumb, or for that matter any “modernist” composer of the last century. Even the minimalists had a different view of melody and how phrases are expressed over time by the ensemble.

Gestural writing in jazz asks a lot of the ensemble and of the listener, and it poses some tricky issues for the composer, not the least of which is properly communicating your ideas to the players. In an idiom where so much depends on “feel”, it’s easy to over-notate your music. How classical do you want to get? Where does improvisation fit in, or does it at all? What’s the role of the rhythm section? Is it supposed to swing, and how much?

Here are a few ideas to chew on:

• Disassemble and reassemble—use a few ideas and work them to death.
• Start simple. Dangle things from the top line, work from the top down.
• Let ideas resonate—break up or stop the time, breathe.
• Involve the rhythm section in music that isn’t accompaniment. Make them part of the overall texture, or give them leadership positions.
  
• Remember that with the proper feel, and with your players all on the same creative page, highly notated passages can sound like controlled group improvisation.
• Use the whole group to create forward motion, not just the rhythm section. Write out your ritards and accelerandos in time.
• Don’t overwrite (or at least not too much!) Open up ideas; create headspace for the listener; allow things to happen.
• Don’t be afraid to take a chance on something! You can always jettison or revise an idea.

Steal this Score

To follow-up on my post about Gil Evans’ piece Blues for Pablo (Blues for Pablo True to Form),  I confess I’m guilty of petty theft. In a few bars of a new piece, Gaslight, which I performed with my Tentet last week, I used Gil’s idea, his sound from four bars of his piece. Please see my earlier post for a full explanation of how Gil expresses tension and resolution in these measures. Here’s a quick summary: In M. 13 Gil creates a striking dissonance between the brass and ww’s above, and the tuba, bass bone and bass clarinet below. Harmonic tension resolves by M. 16, as the triadic and classical voicing style of M. 13 moves to a more to open modern jazz style. Four short bars become a “mini-cell” containing drama and movement, and while Gil’s treatment is much more intense and dramatic than mine, the sound and concept are the same.

I also poached the shape of Gil’s low melody as it moves up against the Bbmi chord.

My four stolen bars start at 5 after letter B.

I believe it was Stravinsky who said “steal from the best”. I think I got away with it, but I hope I didn’t go too far; judge for yourself.

Excerpt from Gaslight as performed last week by my Tentet, mp3 and score:

Excerpt from Gil Evans’ Blues for Pablo  M 13-16, mp3 and score reduction:

“Blues for Pablo”–True to Form

After the Ellington study group last week, a few of us were hanging out having lunch. For 2.5 hours we were buried in the score of Gil Evans’ Blues for Pablo. I had struggled with one particular passage, so I posed my question: “Help me out…what do you call it when a phrase starts with harmonic and sonic tension, then as the phrase plays out the orchestration changes and the harmony resolves–all within a few bars? Isn’t there a term for that?”

Silence.

Curtis looked at me and smiled wryly. Then he spoke. “It’s called ‘music’.”

I had envisioned an erudite response fitting the educated and theoretical vibe with which I had battered them all morning. Perhaps something like orchestrational and harmonic gestural writing, or tonal consequence, or even temporal textural tautological antiphony…but Curtis was right on.

Blues for Pablo is to me the best piece of music on the great Miles Davis/Gil Evans 1958 record Miles Ahead (also titled Miles +19.) It’s a rich and detailed work with much of what Curtis calls music. Gil’s techniques–transparent orchestration,  use of instruments such as alto flute, french horns, tuba and muted brass, inter-choir unison doublings, cross-doubling, no piano, non-traditional yet balanced voicings–all have become the meat and potatoes of modern jazz large ensemble writing.

But this business of writing a short phrase that has a beginning and an end, that encapsulates the tonal vibe and moves the piece forward, was what struck me the most when I got into examining Blues for Pablo. Consider the following passage, M. 13-17, audio excerpt and score reduction below:

These four short bars, M. 13-17 of “Blues for Pablo,”  propel the piece forward by creating harmonic and textural tension, then resolving.

Gil evokes harmonic tension and resolution through the phrase in two ways:

• Changing intervalic tension through melody and register: The first chord, a straight G minor triad is thrown into turmoil by the low melodic unison beginning on A. This results in a minor 9th between the low A and the Bbmaj (or perhaps Gmi7) triad above. On the fourth beat is a similar dissonance, a low C passing tone against a Dbmin triad, this time a little less striking due to its quick movement up to the root. Then the melody rises up to a G in the middle of the bass clef, creating a momentary rub again with the Ab (the 3rd of the F minor chord) on the downbeat of M. 15 (an appoggiatura, an on the beat dissonance approached with a leap and resolved by a step.) In the next bar the low melody dips down low, but this time lands on the root on the downbeat of M. 16. Consonance. The flutes and two trombones move down in thirds to the Ebmaj7 on the downbeat of 17, again the low melody is on the root–interestingly the bass clarinet splits off and plays the 3rd of the chord forming a rich, consonant 10th in the two lowest voices (see the next paragraph.) On beat 2 we hear the intensely cool blues riff, which although it rubs against the major 7th chord, its coolness is consonant–same with the Db on beat 3 against the D7b9 chord. The overall chord progression starts with the Spanish parallel minor chords, and ends with a minor blues cadence: bIVmaj7-V7(b9)-i.

• Altering the doubling and the ensemble voicing style. Within the span of four measures Gil moves methodically from a brilliant and dissonant “classical” sound to a more transparent, rich and calm “jazz” sound. Cross-doubling, unisons and octave doubling are used in different ways. The pickup in M. 13 and the first beat of M. 14 are triads doubled at the octave, the downbeat of M. 15 is a close-voiced Fmin9 chord again doubled at the octave; the Dbmin on beat 3 is similarly octave doubled. The tension starts to break with the pickup to M. 16, contrary motion in the outer voices enhances the melodic ensemble movement. When the thirds split off and move down in M. 16 the texture breaks, the French horn cross-doubled with a trombone hold the D through the first two beats of M. 17, and the bass clarinet jumps up and doubles the third trombone on the G as the top of the tenth in the bass register. In the context of the rich Ebmaj7 and D7b9 chords in the cross-doubled notes enhance the “power tone” 3rds moving down–and the blues riff is strong yet transparent as a result of unison doubling. Cross-doubling the flutes with the trumpets and the 2nd French horn with the 1st trombone in M. 13-16 supports the melody and creates a transparent ensemble texture. The “classical” voicing style in these measures, i.e., 5ths and roots doubled, makes the ensemble ring with reinforced perfect intervals, and the parallel motion is distinctly “non-jazzy.” Then Gil shifts gears and lets the air out of it, and beginning in M. 16 and through M. 17, the cross-doubled blues riff, the spread spacing with no doubled roots and no 5ths, fits right in and brings us back to the jazz realm.

I like.

PS–I just picked up this incredible book: Gil Evans & Miles Davis: Historic Collaborations by Steve Lajoie. Check it out, it’s only 430 pages.

Revealing Ellington’s “The Clothed Woman”

The original Columbia recording of Duke Ellington’s piano feature The Clothed Woman is from December 30th, 1947, and is available on “The Chronological Duke Ellington and his Orchestra 1947-1948.” Ellington had performed the piece a few nights earlier at Carnegie Hall. I first heard the studio version on a cassette compilation years ago.

I’ve since heard Dick Hyman and Marion McPartland play The Clothed Woman live, and I’m sure many others have attempted to recreate this magical work.

Some have described this 60+ year-old piece as enigmatic, atonal, angular, ahead of its time, revolutionary, dissonant…an ABA form where an atonal and dissonant “A”  intro and outro surround a “B” stride/swing improvisation.  This is how I heard it the first 30 or so times I listened. It’s really hard to get a grasp on what he’s doing in the “A” part–it sounds like a barrage of modernist cluster chords and disjointed atonal figures. Most of the tune is solo piano; there’s a brief band groove interlude that sets up the B section. Then it’s back to the angular and dissonant A section.

But as it turns out, the A section is not atonal.  It’s just a blues–a shrouded, broken-up 12-bar blues in F.

Dissonance is not necessarily atonal. In fact, the seemingly modernist structures and harmonies Duke lays out for us here in this piece are all well within the bounds of the modern jazz harmonic language. Nevertheless, its structure and tonality is elusive, and the piece certainly exceeds most listeners’ ability to follow form and chord changes. It sure exceeded my own. Yet, as “out” as it sounded to me in the 90′s when I first heard it, I can only imagine how it struck the ears of a 1940′s jazz audience.

The first clue is the overall tonality of the A section–it’s clearly in the key of F. The second clue is the strong move to the IV chord–straight ahead blues language (m.5 on my transcription). Once I “got” this I was hooked. I transcribe the A section, and played it a few times before it made sense. Then, all at once, every note, even the most “dissonant and atonal,” fell into place. Duke is playing around with an F blues, using wide left hand voicings, punctuated by right hand grace note runs, chords and cluster-y structures that embellish the basic I-IV-V tonality and blues form.

Following the A section there’s quick band interlude with rhythm section and couple of horn figures, then comes the B section, which is definitely not blues. I’ve heard a live recording of Ellington perform this swinging 4/4 semi-stride solo piano section by itself as a tribute to Willie “The Lion” Smith. Then comes the last A section–a repeat of the first with a few minor changes, and a strong bluesy tag and walk-up cadence.

A-B-A form, where A is a blues and B is a contrasting interlude piece, was not a new Ellington device. Duke had done this long form before, sandwiching a real tune in between bookends of the blues. He recorded Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue in 1937 with a short piano interlude bridging the two sides of the 78. Yet when he performed it publicly in 1945, he experimented by replacing the middle interlude with Rocks In My Bed, Carnegie Blues and I Got It Bad, and renamed the entire suite Blues Cluster. I think we have a similar situation with The Clothed Woman: ABA form: blues/tune/blues.

He hadn’t done anything as “modern” as the A section of The Clothed Woman before, as a soloist or as a writer–such angular momentum, extended harmony, crunchy grace note figures, a rubato, slow groove with an implied swing, all with wide leaps across every register of the piano. Who else was doing this? Thelonious Monk? But Monk was just getting going as a solo artist in 1947, in fact he recorded his first record that year. But threads of modern jazz piano reach back to the mid 1930′s–Ellington was there. He and Monk share a similar harmonic outlook: playing extensions on the dominant chord, triads over bass pedals, lots of substitute dominants and chromatic embellishments. Monk was younger but on the scene in NY–who knows who influenced whom…And Strayhorn? He’s a wild card with classical training and a great command of harmony and dissonance. Did he have a hand in this? I’d like to hear what a real historian has to say on this issue.

The Clothed Woman begins with a high chord hit, then a swooping downward arpeggio ending on a Gb, which resolves down a step to F (Ex.1.). The structure is diminished scale tones in repeating intervals–with the Gb in the bass and it sounds like  Gb7(#9)–an altered chromatic “tritone” substitute for the V chord in the key of F–a perfect intro (Ex.1.) It’s a spooky chord no matter what you name it, and the harp-like arpeggio adds to the exotic quality of the intro. Play it with the pedal down, if you can with just your right hand. If you can’t, grab four notes with the RH, the next 4 with the LH, cross over the RH, etc…but that’s hard to pull off and make it smooth.

Ex 1. Duke’s descending run on “The Clothed Woman” which outlines Gb7(#9)–here with enharmonic spellings to show the structure of the voicing: minor 3rd and perfect 4th separated by a half step.

A basic harmonic device in the piece is the substitute dominant, or tritone sub. Chromatic voice movement and strong, melodic resolution are what this makes this progression work (Ex. 2.)

Ex. 2 The movement of Gb7(#9) to F major is good example of the chromatic chord and melody movement in this piece. Gb is a substitute dominant, or V7 chord–put a C in the bass and it’s C13(b9). This is certainly not atonal.

Many of the RH grace note licks have motivic similarities, and they fit the hand well. In Ex. 3 three of the grace note figures share common notes: an Ab triad. The Ab-A “blue note” motion reinforces the blues feeling, and provides chromatic embellishment.

Ex. 3  The texture the Ellington establishes, grace note to chord, is angular, austere and evocative. In this example he sets up movement to the IV chord with I-V-I- bII7/IV then the IV chord. He also uses the C alt scale, a more exotic sound. Or is it a diminished scale? Who cares!

One way to approach the style of The Clothed Woman is to think of the grace notes having a dual function: melodic upper extensions and stratified harmony. The hands are separated, and so are the strata of the harmonies (Ex. 4.)

Ex. 4  In M 5-6 RH grace notes move to chord structures on the strong beats. On the third beat of M5 the chord is Bb7(b9b5)–but also it’s also an E triad over a Bb triad.  On the fourth beat the triplet is both an E13(#5b9), or Bbmi9 (or Dbmaj7) over an E triad–polytonal, melodic, dissonant, separated and stratified.

What seems atonal and dissonant is actually functional harmony, like this passage from M 8-10 (Ex 5).

Ex. 5 Passing chord Abdim moves down to G7(b5) then to C9, which begins the II-V of the blues progression. Then back to what might be called a Gmi7 in inversion, then to E7, which moves up to F to complete the cadence. Grace notes embellish from above, but also from the side chromatically. This passage requires the RH over the LH.

Below is a youtube link to the original studio recording of The Clothed Woman, and my transcription of the piano part, as best I could hear it. I’ve added a 1st ending and a repeat for soloing, and I show how to extend bar 2  to make the soloing section into a true 12 bar blues.

I want to record this piece, at least the A section, on my upcoming trio record. Wish me luck!

Duke Ellington: The Clothed Woman (original recording)

The Clothed Woman (transcription–score)

Don’t Let Them See You Coming

Orchestration is a controlled filling of sound space. The process of fleshing out a piece can involve difficult composing questions, like “who do I give the melody to?” and “who’s playing the accompaniment now?” It’s difficult, and it’s hard to keep your cool.

Then there’s the nagging, self-doubting “am I giving everyone enough to do? I’m seeing lots of blank space on the score.” We pile on notes that fill every register: chords become big and ringing…more power, more sound…all these instruments..use it or lose it. It happens everyday, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just listen to most Hollywood scores and hear the plain, yet powerful and bold richness that is the bread and butter soundtrack of our lives. As everyone says out here on the left coast, “it’s all good.”

“Transparent orchestration” is a way to combat arrangement bloating, a way to clear up your ideas and make them speak clearly. Jazz writers in the late 30′s began to borrow some well-established techniques from classical music like cross doubling, spread voicing, gestural orchestration and instrument layering and combining.  Later in the 50′s modern recording techniques like closer mic’ing helped this process by allowing composers to exploit evocative textures, sounds and combinations of instruments that wouldn’t speak well on the dance floor or stage.

Transparent orchestration is an effect more than a technique; in a large ensemble, transparency comes at the moment the listener can suddenly see through the texture, the moment when the ordinary opaque grinding of the orchestration melts away and the sound becomes clear and resonant.

Gil Evans was a master of transparent orchestration. Duke Ellington (and many others) experimented by splitting up the choirs of the band, moving away from the strict antiphonal jazz style that had evolved since the 20′s. Gil Evans used this as a point of departure.

Here are a few of Gil’s trademark effects: exposed, dissonant mid and upper range intervals, clusters, the root high in the voicing, the melody below the accompaniment. He often left the piano out,  and incorporated tuba and french horn as well as brass mutes and woodwinds into the jazz orchestra. He mixed up his instruments and recombined them, and created unique sounds that rang through the fray. Gil had control over everything he wrote–even his thickest textures weren’t turgid and overbearing.

One basic technique that evolved is cross doubling, which eventually became standard practice in jazz arranging. Writers like Thad used it to distribute dissonance and create an intense, buzzing voicing, others used it to create transparency and spread.

Use cross doubling to pare down and clear up your voicings. It’s simple: a few instruments from one section double the notes of another section within a chord. Here’s an example of a cross doubled chord voicing for a low and dark, yet rich and clear Bbmaj76/9 chord:

Trombones low to high: 4th-low Bb, 3rd-D in the staff, 2nd-G above it, 1st-middle C. Saxes: Tenor 2 doubling the 3rd bone on D, tenor 1 on A (next to the G in the 2nd bone), 2nd alto doubling the 1st bone on middle C, 1st alto on the F above that.

That’s 8 instruments playing 6 notes, cross doubling 2 of the notes. The bones alone have a chord that sounds complete on its own, as do the saxes, but they lock together. The cool rub between the 2nd bone and the 1st tenor resonates, but the doubled notes ring out. It would sound totally different if you stacked the saxes on top of the bones, or had them all playing different notes. This voicing is rich but not heavy.

A technique related to cross doubling is unison doubling, such as a single trombone and tenor sax playing a mid register counterline. Just two instruments in unison will sound prominent yet transparent. There’s a super-stereo effect that happens in these doublings that broadens the sound; the instrumental timbres coalesce and ring over and around the ensemble. If you try it, don’t chicken out and cover it up by overwriting around and below it. Leave a little space and it will happen.

There are lots of opportunities for transparent unison writing in jazz. Brass and reed instruments have rich overtones, and most combinations sound great: alto and bone; high bari with bone (actually, anything with bone;) midrange trumpet with alto; flute with brass, muted or open. Then there’s acoustic bass–double any instrument with pizz bass and it sounds great. Even within the section, doubling harmon mute and cup muted trumpets creates a cool sonority that takes off.

How do you start to make your writing transparent? Simplify. Define your melody and counterlines. Move midrange air with unisons. Don’t bury your dissonant intervals inside a huge voicing and don’t worry so much about supporting things that happen in the higher registers. Use cross doubling to pare down your voicings. Stop writing the low instruments first, or “filling up” the page with chordal accompaniment. You needn’t use everyone in the sections together, find smaller combinations of solo instruments. You can split brass into different combinations of mutes. For the woodwinds try the bari high in a voicing above the trombones, write the clarinet down under the trumpets. Use counterpoint and moving unison cross-doubled lines to define harmony, save the big chord stacks for when you want drama, and stop writing footballs that cloud everything up.

Next time I’m going to take apart Gil Evans’ amazing work “Blues for Pablo” from the album “Miles Ahead.” He wrote so clearly you can see right through it. Sounds like a party! Stay tuned.