An error in "The Circle of Fifths!"

[Just LisaParticipant]

I like Gypsy Jazz in small doses. One of my favorite guitar players, Synyster Gates of Avenged Sevenfold, is also a gypsy jazz player. And I have gypsy jazz picks to play my own guitar because they're really thick and grippy. Check him out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3koXtxaVmg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVLt9VXoGgE
One of my all time favorite guitar solos in the whole world is in a song called "Coming Home" Probably not your thing, I'm guessing. But give it a chance... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0s2dg1fFTo (solo starts just after 2:30 and goes almost two minutes.)

And, because of the song being a gift for a friend, it needs to keep the smooth jazz vibe I gave it initially. 112 bpm, Slow Bossa is how I wrote it on the lead sheet. Jim Chapelle, Estar Contigo, another of my all time favorite pieces of music. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7nHqpM0WWE

A study in contradictions? Not really. It's all about the harmony.

So, tell you what... give me the seed of an idea and we can start a new project. A little more rapidly paced. Got a standard you want to reboot? A favorite jazz chord progression? I'm up for the composition. I've been so busy trying to learn to mix that I haven't really done much composing lately. Except for my Side by Side strings. (There's a post in the Feedback forum.) And if I start with the accordion in mind, it'll work better. I don't know much about the accordion, though.

And please, don't bring up 'smoke' -- I've been having very serious issues with one of my kids and can only see red when I'm reminded of it. Not your fault, of course. Please don't feel bad.

: )

Classical guitarist Julian Bream had a dog named Django in a documentary I saw last year. Little guitar trivia.

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

My non-classical musical taste easily extends from "Comfortably Numb" to "Feel So Numb". Just depends on how much brain crushing I need. I would really like to be able to do my own mix of things like "Runaway Train - Michael Lee Firkins" needs more thunder toms to accompany the pyro. My drum fun is more like that on "Mr. Sambo - Richie Sambora". Still listen to my Celtic Frost album from time to time 😉
I really like Avenged Sevenfold.

I'll keep the seed idea present. Rebooting standards is hard for me 😉 I like them the way I heard them first...but I might call Bill Evans tunes "standard" as well as things like the Gil Evans/Miles Davis tracks. "Solea" is always tasty.

The accordion in my ear happens a lot due to my locale - Northern Sonora, South Gadsden Purchase, Tucson AZ. A couple of the bands I try to get live recordings from/for have the occasional accordion/concertina.

No bad feelings here.

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

Being noun challenged I was unable to produce the word "bandoneon" which is the sound I actually hear in my head. That wonderful confluence of gypsy jazz and tango in my head...

[Just LisaParticipant]

I have Bandoneon in my sound libraries, but I didn't know what it was. So, whatever we come up with, it can sound kind of right until we find someone else to play it for real.
A favorite chord progression?
I might even finally be motivated to figure out how to get Studio One and Notion to work together the way they're supposed to. The integrated notation software was one of the biggest selling points for me choosing Studio One last year. But I haven't spent much time with it.

Funny: I love Gilmore's playing, but I don't like Pink Floyd songs, so I don't listen to them except when they come on the radio. I need a new Stratocaster. A few years ago, I would have said a guitar is a guitar, right? But NO! That's hard for the family to understand, and I don't dare buy another guitar until I get the exact right guitar.
Don't tell them, but I really need two guitars. A real classical guitar.
I played the most amazing Kremona classical guitar in a store a few months ago. Two grand. I put nylon strings on a parlour size Alvarez acoustic guitar I have that I like because I like the sound of it for jazz playing. But I'm not set up to record very much right now. I've been doing DI electric because that's the most convenient thing. Must be a European guitar (Germany, Hungaria) for emotional reasons.

Somewhere around your neighborhood, I had the most amazing chicken in mole sauce that I've ever eaten at a little grubby diner kind of place. It's one of those dishes that only ever goes on a menu if it's something the cook does well, I think. So, when I see it, I order it, and it's not very often. We'd been to the air museum. My father in law worked on the Air Force One that's there when he was in the Air Force. (How's that for random?) That's if my memory of Tuscon is at all accurate.

I'm spacing right now -- have you said you play drums or program drums? Do you have a beat or a tempo in mind. That could be a good place to start. Could be another Bossa Nova -- one of my faves. Swing: don't know much about it, but that never stopped me before.

So, a dimly lit, Beatnik nightclub in Europe somewhere... Bandoneon, guitar, drums, bass (upright, right?). A fifth instrument would be good, but I'm not hearing sax or trumpet.

Itching to play around with some harmony and take a break from eqs and compressors, I think!
: )

[Just LisaParticipant]

Okay finally listening to Solea... that beat that comes in like 3 minutes in? ba BA ba (breath two three) ba-da ba-da-da
No, more like this: One TWO Three (four one two) And Three And Four And
Close, right?
Never heard that before..
No, wait there's more to it than that. Brain too tired to parse it right now.
It's cool. Or hot. Tuscon Hot?
Sonoran Desert. Haven't had those word rolling around in my head for a long time. Thanks.
Cholla, Ocotillo, Saguaro, Prickly Pear and ... Barrel Cactus. The five main cactus types in the Sonoran Desert.
But you probably knew that.
But it's a pretty uneventful chord progression, more of a vamp. Better for playing anything you want without thinking about it too much.
I like it.
: )

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

Tucson Hot - brain melting hot (108 at the moment)

We actually eat at least one of those cacti. I have 3 in my yard. Plus some agave for the hummingbirds.

Yes, it is an uneventful chord progression, playing almost anything but it still wraps around. If I want to think about things I just remind myself of the "German Sixth" - http://www.teoria.com/en/reference/a/augmented-6th.php - which can very tastefully get us from somewhere to almost anywhere...you know, that jazzy "tritone substitution" thing. http://www.teoria.com/en/tutorials/functions/aug6/05-tritone.php

Can't help it. Low brass player, Strauss, Wagner...so if Bill Evans (and his "Twelve Tone Tune") wrote a bunch of tritone "etudes" he could easily call them "Triceratops"...

enough - turn the A/C to stun.

[Just LisaParticipant]

Yes, but here in MI, humidity. Blech! Especially when it isn't warm enough to trigger the AC. Really not my fave.

Okay, so you'll appreciate this:

In 2013, my husband and my guitar teacher both said to me on the same day, "the scales lead to the chords" and I said, "No they don't"
This was right before I left for three weeks at the lake. I came home a changed person.
On Wednesday, I found a book, Harmony and Voice Leading, shelved mistakenly in the 'vocal' section of the used bookstore I frequent. (There's also a Music Theory section.)
Significant because I laughed when I found it there. It's the book I've been wanting to find (size and information and price). It's a college level textbook. And I understand everything in the first two chapters.
As you know, any discussion of music theory requires a basic understanding of some pretty esoteric vocabulary and a lot of concepts than seem more than basic on their own.
And this is what I'm taking to the lake (only two weeks this year) for the "real" reading. It's so cool.
And "Alexander Hamilton."
And Mick Ronson's biography.

Very coincidentally, the 'German Sixth' and its French and Italian cousins, is one of the things I was wanting this textbook for! It's top on my hit list of things to get to the heart of this year. I will be able to think about it with a project in mind now and that will help.
(Love me some tritones.)

And now, I really need to start packing. I may or may not be in touch for two weeks.
: )

Eating? Probably prickly pear.

Tango. I think that's the beat I was hearing in Miles the other day. With a variation in the second bar?

• This reply was modified 5 years ago by Just Lisa.

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

Scales leading to chords - I will agree, as long as one thinks a bit about the structure while flittering up and down the scales. Morning exercise (right after brushing teeth) was all the major and minor scales, two octaves. Just to set the music in the head for the day.
These days I have my "scale of the day" cards (right along with my Oblique Strategies cards) and I get a major and a minor, I, IV, I, V, V7, I and the like. My "I am behind" work is figuring out the chord progressions in Prelude 1 from the WTC. I hear it, would like to be able to do it like a Nashville number chart.

"Solea" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soleá - fascinating flamenco

And to get us all together again

http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/john-coltranes-drawing-of-the-mathematical-soul-of-music/

"Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album" is out there for streaming. Some "new" John Coltrane. Makes my weekend...

[Just LisaParticipant]

I thought of you when I heard about the release! Even my mom heard about it which was weird -- she's not a jazz fan. Adam Neely, Youtuber, had a video on Friday.
Checking in even though I'm out of town.
Saw a Bald Eagle this am! Auspicious, I think. Doesn't happen too often.
Flamenco. That's not a dance I know much about. And I do like dance music. (Ballet, Tschaikowsky, if I'm not thinking about music, I'm thinking about dance.)
"Scales leading to chords" wasn't about playing scales. It's about how chords are part of a scale. I really truly did not know how the individual notes of a scale were assembled to create chords! Using the organization of the fretboard, I was able to work out a lot of the details on my own once I started thinking about it in earnest.
Yesterday, in my theory book, I read the chapter about intervals. The idea of there being a difference between an augmented 4th and a diminished 5th is fascinating. IE the augmented fourth is more properly a tritone because of its being three whole steps, while the dim 5th is half step, two whole steps, and another half step -- so it isn't technically a tritone, but in common practice we still call it that for simplicity's sake. Never would have been so geeked to know that before.
Wanted to do the homework/exercises, but there aren't answers in the book to check to see if I get it right. Details about how augmented and diminished intervals are dependent on key signatures. And all the sharps and flats. I was always terrible at reading standard notation. It's better, but not great. I think that slogging through the exercises will be very beneficial, nevertheless. (And what did you do on your vacation this year, Lisa?) (FUNNY.)
Interesting about the number chart and Bach ... I was telling my mother about equal temperament today. My children were groaning in agony like they do whenever the subject of music theory comes up. I don't keyboard, I may have mentioned, but I ran across a string quartet version of the WTC, the idea of that fascinates me.
I might check in again if it rains. Otherwise,
Happy Fourth.
: )

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

The "Coltrane Fractal" -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J98jwtm5U4E

[Just LisaParticipant]

And it didn't rain until we were packing up to come home!
And then there were the new multitracks with all those drum mics!
Fellow plaper Kenny Mac does live sound, too.

Have you worked on "Long Way Home"? I notice there's only one PLAP mix on your Soundcloud.

Discussion way OT now: drums. Live drums are different from recorded drums, obviously. But for mixing them, have you found that your experience has helped?
: )

PS: Love Adam Neely.
PPS: Got to chapter five: Procedures of Four-part Writing. Tried skipping ahead to chapter 29 ... Augmented Sixths will have to wait awhile longer. I could just use them, but I want to understand them, too.

[face (chris) JantonParticipant]

The only PLAPA mix I have posted is "Blame it on the Whisky". I am chasing the Steve Maggiora songs and working with those, but not ready to post mixes. Only been here 6 weeks - getting my bearings 😉

Live drums? give me a plexiglass cage, some AC and good headphones 😉 Maybe a nice Decca tree.

I am coming to grips with my hyper-preference for performances over productions. MY goal is production to enhance performance. That's why I like the digital mixers so much - lots more possibilities for production.

re: augmented sixths, maybe just hang with Picardy thirds for a while, then move up to Italian sixths 😉 maybe some delightful Dorian or fantastic Phrygian

I did some serious time with Jeppesen "The Style of Palestrina and 'The Dissonance'" - 15th and 16th Century polyphony is such a treasure trove.

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