Harmony
A quintal workout through John Taylor's 'ICE 9'
10/11/11 10:36
Last week was fun - beautiful autumnal weather, some
good gigs....also, pianist John Turville and I had a
little two-piano play, and John brought along a chart
he'd done for 'Ice 9', a John Taylor piece from
'Requiem for a Dreamer'. I really like this tune, as
it has some real 'JT' hallmarks - notably symmetrical
harmonic patterns and a strong intervallic theme.
There's definitely a 'quintal' (fifths) theme going
on here - this sound is the basis for much of the
tune:
It has a lovely open character, but with a little grit in the middle thanks to the semitone in-between the hands. You don't get the semitone when it's over a major chord though:
For the 'sus' chords in the sequence I've taken the quintal voicing from their minor counterparts and then changed the root:
There would be other ways of doing it, but I think this way preserves a consistent sonic character.
What I wanted to do is to try and convert these rooted/two-handed voicings into rootless left-hand voicings that kept some of the 'quintal' character of the sound of the originals. When a tune has such a specific sound voicing-wise, it seems like a good idea to develop that further into the improvisational language used, rather than just take a more general approach.
So, first of all, here is a chorus of the solo section, voiced out in full quintal harmony for two hands:
And here's how I've tried to compress the sound. To my ears, keeping the 9th and the 3rd next to each other is important, as is having the 11th in the voicing and keeping an interval of a fifth in there somewhere. You can do this by leaving the root and 5th off the bottom and rearranging the notes starting with the 9th on the bottom: (on Em11 here)
It's useful to have another 'position' to play in so that you can voice in a consistent range. Here I've rearranged it slightly so that it's based on the 7th:
That gives you two positions to voice in. I've used this method for the major chords too.
By compressing the sus chords into rootless voicings you get identical shapes as before, just based on the 4th or 6th of the chord:
So, here's what a whole chorus could look like (there would be other 'routes')
What to do with it now? Well I'm going to really try and get them under my fingers in 12 keys and see if they start popping up anywhere else...I like their sound as they keep some of the cool, quite detached sound of the full voicings but you have some fingers left to do other things with!
It has a lovely open character, but with a little grit in the middle thanks to the semitone in-between the hands. You don't get the semitone when it's over a major chord though:
For the 'sus' chords in the sequence I've taken the quintal voicing from their minor counterparts and then changed the root:
There would be other ways of doing it, but I think this way preserves a consistent sonic character.
What I wanted to do is to try and convert these rooted/two-handed voicings into rootless left-hand voicings that kept some of the 'quintal' character of the sound of the originals. When a tune has such a specific sound voicing-wise, it seems like a good idea to develop that further into the improvisational language used, rather than just take a more general approach.
So, first of all, here is a chorus of the solo section, voiced out in full quintal harmony for two hands:
And here's how I've tried to compress the sound. To my ears, keeping the 9th and the 3rd next to each other is important, as is having the 11th in the voicing and keeping an interval of a fifth in there somewhere. You can do this by leaving the root and 5th off the bottom and rearranging the notes starting with the 9th on the bottom: (on Em11 here)
It's useful to have another 'position' to play in so that you can voice in a consistent range. Here I've rearranged it slightly so that it's based on the 7th:
That gives you two positions to voice in. I've used this method for the major chords too.
By compressing the sus chords into rootless voicings you get identical shapes as before, just based on the 4th or 6th of the chord:
So, here's what a whole chorus could look like (there would be other 'routes')
What to do with it now? Well I'm going to really try and get them under my fingers in 12 keys and see if they start popping up anywhere else...I like their sound as they keep some of the cool, quite detached sound of the full voicings but you have some fingers left to do other things with!
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