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From: dijk~orldaccess.nl
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 96 23:47:15 GMT
Subject: RE: Wim & Jazz Harmonica. POINT 1.

My reply to Wynslow's POINT 1.

POINT 1

>All players of every instrument play what lies well on the
>instrument, and smart composers, if they are writing to the
>instrument, do the same.

So, Olivier Messiaen is not a smart composer? Some of his compositions only use
notes from symmetrical scales. This has nothing to do with easy to play lines.
But its great music.
Bach composed the art of fugue but did write it on four systems, not mentioning
the instruments at all!
Stravinsky composed The Rite Of Spring. Its opening is famous because of the
extreme low register for the bassoon which is very difficult to play but sounds
great!
Many times, Composers have enhanced the possibilities of the instruments.

>Even Charlie Parker's ideas consist of combinations that lie easily
>under the
fingers of his alto sax.
>One of the great things about Charlie Parker is the fact that he
>composed
themes that sound the same as his improvisations without
>losing the character
of being a theme.

So, his tunes are easy to get under your fingers when you are an alto sax
player? I will check this out with some fine saxophone players I studied with
and I know they did need a couple of years to be able to play the Parker solos.

>Ditto Coltrane and the tenor.

No, he introduced the solos with extensive use of digital patterns. One of the
most famous recordings and the introduction of this system by Coltrane is the
tune GIANT STEPS, a land mark in jazz history. This solo is not based on
saxophone dependend patterns. This solo is based on theoratical digital
patterns. And what about his recordings of the song My Favourite Things?


>You could say that the vocabulary of bebop, at least on the level of
>licks
and solo melodic content, consists largely of what could be
>played on both
alto sax and trumpet - Bird & Diz.

I dont agree. Dizzy his playing is very different from what Parker does. But
both are bebop players!

>In an ideal world, all music would lie well on all instruments.
>In the real world, what does not lie well on the instrument does
>not get played - or is attempted with poor success. I have seen
>jazz harmonica players trying to play fast bebop lines in which
>nearly 50% of the notes physically would not sound - they were
>fighting the physical nature of the instrument to play lines that
>did not lie well, and they paid the penalty.

I had to change my technique and study hard on this subject. I can play There
Will Never Be... at 284 in the bebop style on a chromatic harmonica using the
Jamey Aebersold Volume 15 Play-A-Long track. Is this fast enough? No, it is
possible to play much faster and more musical. I think that we harmonica
players have to study and learn as much and as disciplined as the players of
common jazz instruments. We will get excactly the same results. If you are
interested, I will send you some recordings.

>You simply can't ignore this problem and pretend it doesn't
>exist. Every tuning system will make some things easier and
>others harder. And it's perfectly valid to try and find the
>things that sound well on whatever tuning system you're using.

Yes, but one should be aware of the balance in his note choice. Playing wrong
notes because of a fast tempo in combination with playing harmonica oriented
lines is not the way to play jazz.

>What lies well on an instrument can often be traced to the
>physical processes - and difficulties - of getting the human body
>and the instrument to make the sounds. And the tuning is an
>integral part of this.

Yes, you are right.

>I have a CD (Messina Madness) by a Joe Messina, a Motown session
>guitarist who took up chromatic and also wrote a book of
>interval-based jazz exercises. While his approach is interesting
>and doesn't seem to take much of anything from Toots or from the
>tuning of the instrument, it also doesn't grab me musically - he
>isn't inhabiting the instrument, just processing musical ideas
>through it.

I am afraid you wont like my playing either.

>Of course Jimmy Knepper claims that for him the
>trombone is just a vessel for his ideas and nothing more, yet
>lsiten to his playing on old Mingus sides for some real gutbucket
>trombone that doesn;t sound like it would play well on any other
>instrument.
>I think this is what Barry Bean is getting at when he turns your
>discuss of Toots/Pepper to idiomatic licks instead of the tone
>question context in which you brought up Pepper's name. In this
>context - instrument-speicific idiomatic playing - I think his
>points are valid.

My opinion is that a jazz player should find a balance between the idiom and
instrument specific playing and I dont think the balance is 40%-60%. Many well
known jazz harmonica players who made Cds arent in balance and their note
choice, lines and phrasing is far less interesting (INCLUDING MYSELF) than many
of the players in the 4th year of a musical high school studying jazz.

Next time, POINT 2.

Wim Dijkgraaf
The Netherlands