The Blue Note Thread

Went away for a few days and came back to no forum. Found this one through a thread over at SHF. Curious to see what will happen with VMP.

Anywho...my local finally got the Gil Evans and Wilson Tone Poets in this week so I snagged those. I've got the 80th HH's Taking Off cued up to spin this weekend. Like others here I got the shipping notice yesterday but I don't expect to see the records arrive until after Memorial Day weekend due to them using USPS Media Mail.

Glad you guys started a new forum!
 
pijo said:
Hey I'm wondering, do we need a seperate anthology thread? I mean we had one until it all went to sh#t and we couldn't be trusted with a new one. I honestly don't mind but I wonder how those who aren't involved, especially if you wanted to be but missed out, feel about us discussing the ins and outs of what is essentially a VMP sub, with inevitable waves of excitement, anxiety, gripes etc.

I'm just thinking aloud, I love this corner of the forum and I wouldn't want for any of the faithful contributors to feel a bit swamped by us anthology crew
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we could have one or we could just talk about them in the genre related thread they come from?
 
pijo said:
Hey I'm wondering, do we need a seperate anthology thread? I mean we had one until it all went to sh#t and we couldn't be trusted with a new one. I honestly don't mind but I wonder how those who aren't involved, especially if you wanted to be but missed out, feel about us discussing the ins and outs of what is essentially a VMP sub, with inevitable waves of excitement, anxiety, gripes etc.

I'm just thinking aloud, I love this corner of the forum and I wouldn't want for any of the faithful contributors to feel a bit swamped by us anthology crew
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I don't care either way - the anthology is kind of its own subscription service, so it could belong to that section of the forum if the consensus is to make a new thread.
 
seeirwin said:
Here's something I wrote up about modal jazz, which may help.

The phrase “modal jazz” is more explanatory, but also more intimidating than the the names of some of the other sub-genres in jazz (e.g. cool jazz, bebop, hard bop, etc.). It sounds very technical (it is), and that might make it feel hard to understand (it is not). Like the word “irony,” many of us have a vague sense of what “modal jazz” means, but might not be able to give a succinct definition. Fortunately, it’s not too large of a task, and James Brown can help us get there!

Here’s James Brown in a live performance of Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine:
It’s worth watching the whole thing, especially if you know the studio version of the song. Musically, the song is built around what musicians call a “vamp:” the band is repeating a short snippet of music while James Brown does his thing. In the case of Sex Machine, the vamp is only one chord on the guitar. Listening to this live version (and then to the studio version, if necessary:
), it seems like a safe bet that the exact number of beats before James Brown asks whether he can “take it to the bridge,” the length of the bridge, or any other part of the song differs between the two versions. In other words, the band is not running through a sequence of chords a set number of times before changing to a new section. Instead, James Brown is freely improvising (with vocal assistance from Bobby Byrd) and is not restricted by being forced to get back on any sort of script because the band is going to the bridge with or without him. While a neat feature of the song, the freedom most closely relates to modal jazz is not the undefined length of the verses. Rather, it’s the fact that the whole verse (before Brown “take it to the bridge”) only uses one chord. Because the vamp only uses one chord, there is an implied family of notes that are going to be consonant with what the rhythm section is doing. Since the chord never changes, the family of notes never changes. Brown is free to explore this family of notes in the melodies he sings. He can get in the groove and really lock into how he wants to express himself with that family of notes, using them in whatever combination and whatever rhythm he feels will best help him convey to the listener his desire to stay on the scene. Like a sex machine. This freedom exists in contrast to some other James Brown classics (e.g. I Got You) in which Brown has to change the melodies he sings in order to fit what’s happening with the chords underneath him.

Modal jazz isn’t inherently more complicated than the idea behind James Brown and his one-chord vamp. In music, the word “mode” refers to a specific collection of notes. There are lots of modes with fancy names, but none of that knowledge is necessary to listen to the music and get a sense of what’s going on. Instead of being built around sequences of chords moving from one to another until the form is complete, and then starting again, modal jazz is built around the idea that all of the musicians will restrict themselves to the agreed upon collection of notes (i.e. the mode) that is being used at that musical moment. Ready to give listening to modal jazz a try? Here’s “Milestones” (originally just called “Miles,” until everyone remembered that he already had a song with the same name), which was Miles Davis’s first modal jazz recording: . Unlike Sex Machine (and Flamenco Sketches off of Kind of Blue), Milestones shifts from one mode to a second mode after a fixed amount of time, and then switches back to the first mode. The form is 16 measures of note collection #1, 16 measures of note collection #2, and then 8 measures of note collection #1. After that, the form repeats. Rather than try to count the song, it’s probably easiest to listen for when Paul Chambers switches his bass playing from a very steady 1-2-3-4 rhythm to more of a hiccup-sounding rhythm. That occurs whenever note collection #2 is happening. As you listen, you may notice that the chords played by Red Garland on the piano (also the same figure played by the horns at the start of the song) sound an awful lot like synthesizer chords in the Michael Jackson tune Billy Jean. Those chords and their movement are incidental and not a critical part of the structure of the song. That’s another big difference between chord-based songs and modal songs: if Garland played those chords in reverse order, it would have worked just fine (don’t try that with a chord-based song!).

If you’re still not sure whether you’re feeling it, here’s a more focused tutorial on how modal jazz works using the song So What from Kind of Blue. It’s made for the non-musician, so don’t be alarmed by the piano!



Once you’ve got Milestones and So What in your ear, you can check out this instructional on Flamenco Sketches, which is a modal jazz song with a really neat twist:
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Mind blown! I need to get home and listen to Kind of Blue again 😀

Thanks for the insight, this is going to completely change my appreciation of jazz. Great post, really appreciate it.

On slightly different note, amazing performance by James and Bobby. How could all those people in the audience sit still through that?
 
TCell said:
I received my Anthology shipping notice today. Looks like it's shipping internationally with DHL. I'll be interested in how quickly it gets up here.
I was so excited for the Blue Note Anthology, and I still am excited for the music, but some of the shine is definitely lost with the forum fiasco and that the jackets aren't gatefold with Francis Wolff photos.
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It's a bummer they're not gatefolds. I would have expected they were for the premium price they were going at. Are they at least tip-on like the original releases?
 
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