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Post by jean on Aug 12, 2018 16:42:06 GMT 1
Most musicians...don't even bother learning the absurdly inadequate 16th Century notation system - there are plenty of other better systems around, after all. This is something else you've frequently alluded to, but never given any examples of. Please listen to this very elaborate piece of fifteenth-century polyphony: I am sure you'll agree that it would be very difficult to learn such a piece by heart, without a score to help you. Here is the score, in standard notation. But assuming there are better and easier notation systems, I would be very interested to see the piece expressed in one if them. Could you do that? And while you're listening and following the score, could you note where the greatest variations in pitch occur, especially any that are over a semitone from the written pitch? |
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Post by jean on Aug 12, 2018 16:53:32 GMT 1
I found the Wikipedia article on Chinese notation very interesting. The octave is divided into 7 rather than 12 steps (which at least makes the word "octave" meaningful). The steps are given numbers and the duration of each note is implied by pulse marks - rather like drum notation - alongside the tone column. Octaves above and below the "stave" are indicated by additional marks on the tone characters. It strikes me that this is a much easier format to learn - a bit like guitar tablature - but equally limiting. In the words of Segovia, the guitar is very easy to play, and extremely difficult to play well. Likewise I can see that turning a 7-interval score into a masterpiece requires great interpretation and anticipation, which may explain why many jazz players get interested in Eastern music once they have mastered the blues scales. |
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Post by jean on Aug 12, 2018 16:55:13 GMT 1
I found the Wikipedia article on Chinese notation very interesting. The octave is divided into 7 rather than 12 steps (which at least makes the word "octave" meaningful). It's meaningful anyway if you remember it's applied to the seven steps + the recurring unison of the diatonic scale. The term doesn't seem to have been used before the sixteenth century. Can you expound further? I mean, great interpretation and anticipation on whose part? |
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Post by alancalverd on Aug 12, 2018 18:51:25 GMT 1
On the part of the player!
Given a skeletal top line and a chord sequence, the art of jazz is to make a joyful (or mournful) noise along with a bunch of other guys working from the same minimal score, with just enough reference to the once-written melody that the audience can recognise the underlying tune, but with sufficient original embellishment and variation that it is different from the last time he heard it.
Hence the jazzers' love of Bach, who found logical but wholly suprising ways to arrive at the end of each phrase, quite unlike his classical successors who seem for the most part to write unsurprising sequences from the beginning of a phrase. You need to know your fellow players well enough to end up with some degree of assonance at the end of the phrase - and even to arrive at the end together ("bring it home").
Anticipation is important. I play bass, and I've often found when working with a sympathetic drummer that we spontaneously shift between rhythms behind a lead solo. It sounds awful if, say, one of us is playing the offbeats when the other is playing "threes" or "ones" but it hardly ever happens - there's something about the way the soloist finishes a verse that demands how the next verse should be accompanied.
I was also intrigued to learn that the notes of the Chinese 7-tone scale don't quite conform to the eventempered piano notes. 1,2,3 can be rendered as C,D,E, but 4 is "between F and F#" and 7 is "between Bb and B". All adding to the "sound of surprise" (that Hentoff said was the essence of jazz) and also characterises bagpipe and Hammond organ scales.
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