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Re: [ARSCLIST] Rock and roll drumming
It is confusing for sure. But strangely enough David Amram who is
perhaps a bit more technically sophisticated than Bob Z. seems to
have had a similar revelation.
He was jamming with some jazz musicians as the post-bop period was
under way. He was not a sophisticated pianist and a guy who's name
eludes me suggested that a way to voice more sophisticated chords
without having a great deal of technique was to play a given chord
(G7) and then double the third and the seventh
degree of the chord again in the other hand. Neat trick, but I have
no idea what this has to do with the triplet issue...just a thought.
AA
On Mar 31, 2006, at 6:14 AM, Eric Goldberg wrote:
Eric -
Perhaps you or someone else could help elucidate a mysterious
passage from Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Part 1" where he writes
about a revolutionary system taught to him by Lonnie Johnson, the
great blues and jazz guitarist.
Dylan writes (p. 157) that his guitarmanship was electrified in
the 1980s when he learned how to play "based on an odd- instead of
even-number system" that he learned from jazzman Lonnie Johnson: a
"highly controlled system of playing and relates to the notes of a
scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of
triplets..."
"Popular music is usually based on the number 2 [...] If you're
using an odd numerical system, things that strengthen a
performance begin to happen [...] In a diatonic scale there are
eight notes, in a pentatonic scale there are five. If you're using
the first scale, and you hit 2, 5 and 7 to the phrase and then
repeat it, a melody forms. Or you can use the 2 three times. Or
you can use 4 once and 7 twice [...] The possibilities are endless
[...] I'm not a numerologist. I don't know why the number 3 is
more metaphysically powerful than the number 2, but it is. Passion
and enthusiasm, which sometimes can be enough to sway a crowd,
aren't even necessary. You can manufacture faith out of nothing
and there are an infinite number of patterns and lines that
connect from key to key..."
Is this a baffling to you as it seems to me?
Russ Hamm
I have never thought of Bob Dylan as one of music's great
theorists, and now I know why. His technical description is at
least as confusing as some of his lyrics, which at least had the
advantae of being obscure in a poetic way.
What I was describing in the drumming discussion was rhythmic, not
melodic. q e
Eric