When it comes to learning music, it always helps to look beyond your own instrument for perspective. There may be certain phrasing, scales, or even limitations that are characteristic of particular instruments (example: bagpipes) that sound interesting when applied to a different instrument. Also, a great musician is worth studying regardless of what they play. Our first case in point: Miles Davis, the hippest man on the planet. Miles was not a virtuoso horn player, especially when compared to contemporaries like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Miles, however, was a master of note choice, phrasing, and space; he only played as many notes as he needed to, and he always made sure that he left enough silence for you to appreciate them. Whatever he played, Miles always sounded like himself, though "sounded like himself" was apt to change on an a yearly basis as he constantly explored new sounds. When it comes to Miles Davis, the ideal introduction is 1959's Kind of Blue, one of the greatest jazz albums ever made. Start with the groundbreaking opening track, "So What", with a model two-chorus solo by Miles and piano accompaniment by the great Bill Evans. Lesson for today: if you're playing keyboard in an ensemble, you don't always have to play. If you listen to "Carry On Wayward Son" you'll notice that the organ doesn't play through the whole song. In fact it probably plays on only half of the recording. Why? Generally, having an distinctive instrument like the organ playing all the time transforms it into sonic wallpaper. The less you hear of it, the more of an impact it makes when it's featured. For further studies on how to play less, listen to Benmont Tench with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
As promised: let's break down the solo from "Carry on Wayward Son." There are a lot of notes in there and they go by really quickly (all in about 8 seconds), but if we take the time to listen (and slow things down), the solo breaks up into 3 well-defined sections. Up to this point, the recording has primarily been in the key of A minor, with the main riffs using the notes of the A minor pentatonic scale. However, the solos in the bridge briefly switch over to E Minor. 1. 3:03-3:07 - Open 4ths derived from the E minor pentatonic scale (E-G-A-B-D-E). Walsh alternates back and forth between B-E (implying an E5 chord) and D-G (G5). Walsh also plays glissandos before and after each lick, and plays percussive clusters (basically mashing the keys) on the lower end of the keyboard to produce an effect similar to a muted guitar. 2. 3:07-3:10 - The "fancy" part. Walsh is playing sextuplets here, or 6 (!) notes per beat, but it's not as complex as it sounds. For most of it he's just running straight up and down the E Blues scale (E minor pentatonic with a 6th note, Bb, thrown in), starting in the middle, going down to the D above middle C, and then running the scale up and back down an octave and a half. The only variation happens on the way down, when Walsh throws in an F# to suggest the E Minor diatonic scale in place of the Blues scale. 3. 3:10-3:11 - Arpeggio up and down on an E minor Sus4 (E-A-B-E) chord. This gives a cyclic or "endless" feeling, as heard in pieces like David Lanz's "Dark Horse" and Randy Newman's theme from "The Natural." Underneath, the bass line (probably doubled in the left hand on organ) walks up from E for 4 beats, just in time to hit the A on beat 1 of the next measure and take us back into A minor for a return to the bridge riff. How does this apply to you? If you're playing over a hard rock style song like "Carry On" and you want/need to take a solo, you now have some options. You can play funky, syncopated 4ths for some rhythmic excitement. You can play runs on the blues scale, or you can cycle on a sus4 arpeggio to build tension and/or transition to a different idea. TL;DR 1. Syncopated 4ths. 2. Blues Scale Runs. 3. Sus4 Arpeggio. One of the best ways to expand your vocabulary as a musician and improviser is to transcribe and play parts and solos off of your favorite recordings. However, that won't necessarily translate to your own work or teach you *why* the solo works so well. That's where the next step comes in: breaking the music down into "pieces" and figuring out the specific techniques and devices being used so you can apply them later.
Tomorrow, I'll demonstrate this process using a short but classic solo: Steve Walsh's organ solo from "Carry On Wayward Son." Spotlight on a superstar accompanist: Richard Tee. You probably know his sound from his long-running association with Paul Simon, especially his Rhodes piano on "Still Crazy After All These Years." He was also a sought-after session musician who played on records such as Grover Washington Jr. and Bill Withers's "Just the Two of Us." Three things to learn from Richard Tee: 1. His "orchestral" accompaniment style, using low octaves in the left hand and full chords covering both melody and harmony in the right hand. He honed this style while backing singers as a solo pianist early in his career. 2. His inventiveness as an accompanist, playing parts that weren't distracting while never settling for garden variety patterns or arpeggios. 3. His dreamy tone on the Rhodes piano, the two tracks above being great examples. (Billy Joel claims that Tee had the nicest sounding Rhodes that he had ever played.) This will be a recurring theme here: there is more to making music than how fast you can play. Speed is not the be all, end all of making music. You need to know what to play (notes, chords, phrases), when to play (timing, groove, space), how to play it (voicings, articulation, dynamics, tone), and why it works in that situation. Someone like Booker T. Jones might not be too flashy, but he has a beautiful, distinct sound and plays solos that fit the tune perfectly. "Representing Memphis" is a mini-Master Class in Soul organ playing, but I especially recommend Booker's tasty solo at 1:50. |