What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Richard Barrett]

Sounds interesting. I am quite fond of gongs and steel drums.

What I usually do with (tuned) gongs is have an array of them placed horizontally on blocks of foam so they don't resonate for very long. You then have the possibility of getting several different timbres out of each one by playing them at the edge, at the centre or in between, and (like the steel drum) it makes an instrument that can play rapid sequences of pitches but has a more complex sound than say a vibraphone... The full ensemble for the piece also involves a set of uilleann pipes, which will be a first for me, although luckily the player I'm working with has already worked out a system of fingerings for quartertones so that's some of the preparatory work done and dusted. (I don't expect the result will sound very much like Irish folk music.)

Going back to playing over changes, though, it seems to me (not being a practising jazz guitar player of course) that sometimes the relationships between successive chords are so oblique that any "pull" towards a tonic is more or less neutralised, just as in the evolution of late 19th century harmony leading up to Schoenberg.

[Joseph K]

Going back to playing over changes, though, it seems to me (not being a practising jazz guitar player of course) that sometimes the relationships between successive chords are so oblique that any "pull" towards a tonic is more or less neutralised, just as in the evolution of late 19th century harmony leading up to Schoenberg.

Yes indeed. This is one of the many attractions for me of Allan Holdsworth's music - being unable to discern where - or rather, on what chord - a progression began; of course, one perceives an harmonic progression, though one that seems more circular than, say, the forms in bebop/hard bop of the 40s and 50s, which seem more closed than the modal approach of much music in the 60s, where each chord is an 'island of sound', though as in Coltrane changes they might not last longer than a couple of beats. There's something mystical about these modal circular, open-ended harmonic successions, for me...

Some of the octatonic exercises I've been working on are very reminiscent of Debussy and Ravel, one in particular sounds as though pulled from a piece of one of these composers, only I can't remember which... maybe an excuse to start listening to some Debussy and Ravel...

[Joseph K]

… although, to be sure, there are many cadential harmonic movements in jazz standards - e.g. II-V-I, the way they're used in jazz obscures this tonal pull. For example, I just played through the chords of Stella by Starlight, though using chords derived from the upper extensions of each chord - moving the root up one notch, producing root-less ninth chords. This definitely neutralises the tonal feeling of motion and resolution; moreover, since I (and many others) for example treat half diminished chords as derived from the melodic minor scale a minor third up from the root of the chord e.g. A half-diminished is derived from C melodic minor - moving that A up to B produces a very dark-sounding melodic minor chord, particularly in certain voicings. Good modern post-bop playing will feature a mix of chromaticism and lines that suggest a kind of voice leading that more clearly delineates the harmony. Pat Metheny on 'Solar' is very good at this.

[Pulcinella]

New warm-up exercise at choir last night: up a whole tone scale and then down a chromatic (semitone) scale.
Took a few attempts to end up exactly where we first started!

[BBMmk2]

New warm-up exercise at choir last night: up a whole tone scale and then down a chromatic (semitone) scale.
Took a few attempts to end up exactly where we first started!

Never heard that one before!

[cloughie]

New warm-up exercise at choir last night: up a whole tone scale and then down a chromatic (semitone) scale.
Took a few attempts to end up exactly where we first started!

I can see that would not flow naturally. Sometimes MDs do this sort of thing because they can and know that it will disturb the choristers’ comfort zone!

[MrGongGong]

Shakuhachi / live electronics, making an experimental multichannel version of some spectral processing for a gig next week.

[Pulcinella]

Gabriel Jackson: Cecilia Virgo

Commissioned by the BBC.
First performed by the BBC Singers.

It contains this useful (and dare I say essential in some cases) instruction at the top:
With little or no vibrato throughout.

[BBMmk2]

Very good Gabriel Jackson. I rather like his music.

I’m still going through my current project for big band. Had a good chat with the main man there yesterday. He likes what I’m doing so far. Had to alter the keyboard part slightly though.

[Joseph K]

I practice a major blues in a different key every day, here's one in F: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuj0NrPqQDo

Over the four months I've returned to pick-wielding jazz guitar, I've found acquiring physical right-hand technique not too difficult, since I practice quite intensively, 5-7 hours a day. Of course I increasingly feel that, then, more time and attention can be put towards acquiring improvisational technique. I mean, having listened a couple of times to the above video, I now hear the many ways it could have gone and sounded much better.

[Tony Halstead]

I'm practising two of the most difficult piano parts ( 'accompaniments' - not really) I've ever had to play: Brahms 1st violin sonata and Debussy violin sonata, plus a couple of songs by Clara Schumann and Debussy's 'Chanson de Bilitis'.
The concert here in S-E Kent is the day after tomorrow... arrrggh...! However, lots of sustaining pedal can disguise a multitude of sins ( I hope!)

[BBMmk2]

I'm practising two of the most difficult piano parts ( 'accompaniments' - not really) I've ever had to play: Brahms 1st violin sonata and Debussy violin sonata, plus a couple of songs by Clara Schumann and Debussy's 'Chanson de Bilitis'.
The concert here in S-E Kent is the day after tomorrow... arrrggh...! However, lots of sustaining pedal can disguise a multitude of sins ( I hope!)

Good luck!

I’m about halfway through my current project. Hopefully be a first in a series.

[Richard Barrett]

I'm practising two of the most difficult piano parts ( 'accompaniments' - not really) I've ever had to play

Good luck with that, Tony. If I were anywhere nearby I'd like to hear all of it. (Kind of a strange programme though...?)

I'm gradually assembling a rather large piece to be given its complete premiere next year, although quite a lot of it has already been finished and played (the two pieces for solo instruments and electronics in my May Day concert for example, and the trio I mentioned here a little while ago). In the past I've often used my more improvisational scores as sources of material for more elaborated ones, but this time the improvisational pieces I've been asked to write over the coming months have been incorporated into the plan in advance. I just finished one of those yesterday. It's to be played by experimental music luminaries Rhodri Davies, Angharad Davies and Tim Parkinson in Cardiff at the end of next month. They had asked me if I had a suitable score for this concert and I suggested it would be nicer all round if I contributed a new one, partly so I can test out a particular idea for further development later on. (Really I'm only writing one enormous piece anyway...) Everyone has the same mp3 file on their phone, and they start playback simultaneously over earphones. The audience doesn't hear the mp3, which consists of seven minutes of a continuous glissando which changes direction now and then. The score then asks the players at different times to treat what they hear in different ways which boil down to following it, ornamenting it, contradicting it or ignoring it. So the glissando acts like a constant more or less shadowy presence which lends a particular kind of structure to how the players use their individual and collective imagination. Or in any case that's what should happen.

[Bryn]

. . . Debussy's 'Chanson de Bilitis'. . . .

Since you mention playing the piano, I take it you refer to the Trois chansons, rather than the Musique de scène. Member swain has got himself in fix on TtN over these two musically quite separate works treating with Pierre Louÿs's poems. There's a handy CD which gathers together Debussy's various works on the theme of Bilitis.

[Joseph K]

Good luck with that, Tony. If I were anywhere nearby I'd like to hear all of it. (Kind of a strange programme though...?)

I'm gradually assembling a rather large piece to be given its complete premiere next year, although quite a lot of it has already been finished and played (the two pieces for solo instruments and electronics in my May Day concert for example, and the trio I mentioned here a little while ago). In the past I've often used my more improvisational scores as sources of material for more elaborated ones, but this time the improvisational pieces I've been asked to write over the coming months have been incorporated into the plan in advance. I just finished one of those yesterday. It's to be played by experimental music luminaries Rhodri Davies, Angharad Davies and Tim Parkinson in Cardiff at the end of next month. They had asked me if I had a suitable score for this concert and I suggested it would be nicer all round if I contributed a new one, partly so I can test out a particular idea for further development later on. (Really I'm only writing one enormous piece anyway...) Everyone has the same mp3 file on their phone, and they start playback simultaneously over earphones. The audience doesn't hear the mp3, which consists of seven minutes of a continuous glissando which changes direction now and then. The score then asks the players at different times to treat what they hear in different ways which boil down to following it, ornamenting it, contradicting it or ignoring it. So the glissando acts like a constant more or less shadowy presence which lends a particular kind of structure to how the players use their individual and collective imagination. Or in any case that's what should happen.

Sounds very interesting.