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Thanks to Dave

 

Dave Woods,
I'm now getting around more in your site. It's beginning to look very promising to me as a teaching/learning tool. I read today about the origins of the key structure based on naturally occurring harmonics. This was new to me, and very nice to know.
I'm looking forward to using the basic key positions as jump off points for arps and scales and melodic ideas. I like the way you imbed everything within these key positions. I've heard you many times alluding to this, but now it's getting "up close and personal".
Thank you for all your work and for sharing it with us.
Terry in Portland, OR
Dave Woods
 

The Overtone series, Root Definitive Intervals, and how these forces led to
the evolution of the Key Structure, are the result of nature. Mankind, did
not create this. It's NOT an intellectually formulated "concept".

Like air, Fire, earth, and water, it just is. All of the stuff we have
today that's been denigrated to the level of mere verbal "formulas" and
yakity yaked about on that "surface" level evolved from it. In my
teaching, I've always tried to work from the true source of music.



I was lucky to have two things; an excellent ear, and Grant Fletcher my
composition teacher at Arizona State. As his students, we promised him we
would pass the realizations he gave us along to others. Throughout my life,
I've kept that promise, and I've enjoyed every minute of it.



Thanks Terry, a response like this makes me feel like my efforts have been
worth while.



Dave



From: jazz_guitar@... [mailto:jazz_guitar@...] On
Behalf Of Terry Petty
Sent: Sunday, October 10, 2010 18:55
To: jazz_guitar@...
Subject: [jazz_guitar] Thanks to Dave






Dave Woods,
I'm now getting around more in your site. It's beginning to look very
promising to me as a teaching/learning tool. I read today about the origins
of the key structure based on naturally occurring harmonics. This was new to
me, and very nice to know.
I'm looking forward to using the basic key positions as jump off points for
arps and scales and melodic ideas. I like the way you imbed everything
within these key positions. I've heard you many times alluding to this, but
now it's getting "up close and personal".
Thank you for all your work and for sharing it with us.
Terry in Portland, OR
aric rubin
 

On Oct 11, 2010, at 12:30 AM, Dave Woods wrote:

The Overtone series, Root Definitive Intervals, and how these forces led to
the evolution of the Key Structure, are the result of nature. Mankind, did
not create this. It's NOT an intellectually formulated "concept".
A couple of observations, if I might. While the overtone series is in fact a function of nature, one needs to ask which overtone series. There are many and they are all ratio driven. The notion that overtones are "result of nature" is an interesting assertion, but they had help from man. Functional harmony (key structures) came about, as much as anything, from the fact that Europeans built echo chambers (called "cathedrals") in which performances could be held. If you sing plain song (unisons) in an echo chamber the first partial (overtone), the octave is heard strongly. Eventually that partial was added to the singing, the fifth became more strongly heard. Over the centuries (and by the time of, say Dowlands) a unified theory of harmony began to take shape.

If it was simply a function of nature, all cultures would've developed Key Structure as the driving force in their music. They did not. African music is driven strongly by tension/release patterns in time; rhythm and poly-rhythm. Indian music is driven strongly by timbral and melodic variance.

What is fair to say is that the natural tendency for the human ear is to want to move from stable to unstable to stable etc. The methods by which this is done are widely variant (glides and pitch shifts in GaGaku), time shifts and timbral variance in Gamelan, Harmony and melody in the west.

The wise improvisor learns from all available resources...
 

Hi Aric,
A couple of observations, if I might. While the overtone series is in
fact a function of nature, one needs to ask which overtone series.
There are many and they are all ratio driven. The notion that
overtones are "result of nature" is an interesting assertion, but
they had help from man....&c
Very nice post. I know that Dave was generalizing a little but his point still comes across.

If it was simply a function of nature, all cultures would've
developed Key Structure as the driving force in their music.
Pretty much every culture did utilize some form of pentatonic scale, although the "innacurate" 7th partial was interpreted pretty much in some as a mi.7th, and in others as a ma.6th. I know this not "law", so please don'y pick nits & lice over it, but it is a valid generality.

Also, some of man's greatest art, including that of music (and very much Jazz), shines its brightest exactly when it is contradicting that which occurs naturally. But Dave's point still comes through, methinks, as the greatest art IMO which does so, does so carefully and deliberately.

On that note I once saw some split screen footage of two dancers dancing to the same piece of music. On the left side a dancer who had danced the piece porward was being played in reverse; on the right the dancer had learned to dance the piece being played backward, and her footage was being played forward. So the girl on the left was right, but she was wrong; the girl on the right was wrong, but she was right (gravity being what it is, naturally speaking).

Anyway, to bring it home, even use of the whole-tone scale contradicts the overtone series, but it's symmetry makes complete intellectual sense, and in that way is beautiful.

best,
Bobby
aric rubin
 

On Oct 11, 2010, at 3:14 PM, Bob Hansmann wrote:

Pretty much every culture did utilize some form of pentatonic scale,
although the "innacurate" 7th partial was interpreted pretty much in
some as a mi.7th, and in others as a ma.6th. I know this not "law", so
please don'y pick nits & lice over it, but it is a valid generality.
you won't get nits from me. At least not many. I'd point you at Slonimsky, who has 10 pages of Pentatonics, with 5 scales per page.

Also, you might check out the classical music of Sunda (one of the Indonesian islands). They use a 3 note scale.

Moreover, the Pentatonic gives a simple factorial of 120 ways of describing "tonic" and still fewer stacked note combinations to create chordal (functional) movement.

The pentatonics of africa aren't used as harmonic drivers at all. In Indian classical music, they show up but with an enormous range of pitch shading, often so much so that you'd have to call them something besides pentatonic.

I agree that the Pentatonic is the fundamental basis of melodic building. Never the basic for true functional harmony. For function, you really need one unique interval....
 

Bobby, one of the best things I have read here lately.
Jim

--- In jazz_guitar@..., Bob Hansmann <bobbybmusic@...> wrote:

Hi Aric,
A couple of observations, if I might. While the overtone series is in
fact a function of nature, one needs to ask which overtone series.
There are many and they are all ratio driven. The notion that
overtones are "result of nature" is an interesting assertion, but
they had help from man....&c
Very nice post. I know that Dave was generalizing a little but his point
still comes across.

If it was simply a function of nature, all cultures would've
developed Key Structure as the driving force in their music.
Pretty much every culture did utilize some form of pentatonic scale,
although the "innacurate" 7th partial was interpreted pretty much in
some as a mi.7th, and in others as a ma.6th. I know this not "law", so
please don'y pick nits & lice over it, but it is a valid generality.

Also, some of man's greatest art, including that of music (and very much
Jazz), shines its brightest exactly when it is contradicting that which
occurs naturally. But Dave's point still comes through, methinks, as the
greatest art IMO which does so, does so carefully and deliberately.

On that note I once saw some split screen footage of two dancers dancing
to the same piece of music. On the left side a dancer who had danced the
piece porward was being played in reverse; on the right the dancer had
learned to dance the piece being played backward, and her footage was
being played forward. So the girl on the left was right, but she was
wrong; the girl on the right was wrong, but she was right (gravity being
what it is, naturally speaking).

Anyway, to bring it home, even use of the whole-tone scale contradicts
the overtone series, but it's symmetry makes complete intellectual
sense, and in that way is beautiful.

best,
Bobby
 

Thanks, Jim,
Bobby, one of the best things I have read here lately.
That was really nice of you.

best,
Bobby

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