Re: Keep it up, Josh!

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

> I've been learning this from our work in Wholesale. I play melody and don't
> focus on chords as much as I should--but when I recently tried playing some
> Yiddish folk songs with guitar from a book which included chords, there I
> was, throwing out half of them. I missed that dissonance.
> 
> I've also been applying this to my work in calligraphy and general
> understanding of arts and literature. Without that tension and resolution,
> it has limited power.
 
Yeah, dissonance becomes addictive doesn't it? Another technique for 
*un-harmonizing* tunes is to take that bare-bones harmonization of the
guitar and take it ne step further and take out all the chords, using
only the bass notes, then fill in the spaces sometimes. For example, if
you have a progression that your modern ears say should go from
Dm-D7-Gm, just take out the chords and play the notes d e f g. Secondary
dominants kill modality. Also, in general, voicing the 3rd of major
chords on top can be precarious. Fiddles can do it in the lower
register. Otherwise it depends on which direction your bow is moving,
how hard you articulate and how fast the tune is moving, but when the
tune is slow and you can hear the construct of the chord, 3rds on top
should have a red light attached to them. But I guess the whole thing
depends really on how your tastes have developed (or regressed, as is
the case with some). No amount of theory can substitute taking time to
listen and feel. You wouldn't believe how much our group spent on
dealing with how to accompany the forshpils and nokhshpils on our new
CD, and the result is so simple on those that you would think that it
was obvious from the start. But when you get into the differences
between what an A *chord* sounds like in the ensemble as A C# E: AA C#;
A A A; A A a; A E E, etc then you can appreciate the time that's
necessary.  

The possiblility of leaving out tones altogether for some
beats in the bass is also a great thing to be aware of. Sometimes our
cellist just leaves out a beat here or there, and the effect is one of
syncopation which drives the rhythm forward when he reenters on the next
beat. We discovered also that simple octaves in the ensemble can
underscore the melody like no other chords can, especially in those
elusive Yiddish melodies where no functional harmony is obvious. And of
course, there's always the possibility of doubling the melody for short
spurts in the bass. I found the most instructive source to be music
which does not rely on harmonic structures (Smyrnaic Rembetiko, most
Greek demotika, Arab, Turkish music) There, accompaniment relies a lot
on simple figuration which gives the music a transparency that chords
just muck up (darn, - missed that f key on my computer again).

Take care... Josh


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