Blog - occasional, random thoughts on music - February 2015
From "The Naked Dance" to Sister Kate
28.2.2015
The world of popular music, including blues, jazz, ragtime and other genres, is filled with chord sequences which crop up over and over again. Exemplars of this are blues sequences - 8-bar, 12-bar, 16-bar, etc. - which form the bedrock of most songs. Popular music of the 1950s seemed to exist for a large part, on the I-VIm-V-VI sequence such as C-Am-F-G. And so on.
The sequence that I've been fiddling around with for fun recently goes back many years. The first instance of it that I came across was in Alan Lomax's biography of Jelly Roll Morton ("Mister Jelly Roll: the fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and inventor of jazz", 1950) - a book I still have. The back of the book contained various bits of music as played by Morton, including one called "The Naked Dance". On the Library of Congress recordings of Morton made by Lomax, he describes how this tune was played fast in the sporting houses (brothels) of New Orleans while naked black girls danced for the punters. I wasn't very good at reading music at the time I read the book - mid-1960s - but I grabbed my guitar and, but by bit, grappled with the notes and the intricacies of the time signature. Eventually a tune emerged with a chord sequence which was simple but effective. It was only many years later, after stints in jug and jazz bands, that I realised that the sequence was the basis of many popular tunes such as "Dallas Rag", "Saturday Night Rub" and "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate". So - transposed into G - the sequence looks like this:
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G / / /
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G / / /
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G7 / / /
C / Cm / G / E7 / A7 / D7 / G / E7 /
A7 / D7 / G / / /
The tune goes straight down into the Dominant 7 (D7) of the scale then back to the tonic (G) three times. The 3rd return to G slides to the G7, up to the Sub-Dominant (C) and it's minor (Cm), then runs back from G through the cycle of 5ths to the tonic G - finishing with a repeat of the run through the cycle of 5ths as a sort of tag.
Simple, but effective and good fun to play and sing to. You can hear echoes of it in many jazz, ragtime and blues compositions.
28.2.2015
The world of popular music, including blues, jazz, ragtime and other genres, is filled with chord sequences which crop up over and over again. Exemplars of this are blues sequences - 8-bar, 12-bar, 16-bar, etc. - which form the bedrock of most songs. Popular music of the 1950s seemed to exist for a large part, on the I-VIm-V-VI sequence such as C-Am-F-G. And so on.
The sequence that I've been fiddling around with for fun recently goes back many years. The first instance of it that I came across was in Alan Lomax's biography of Jelly Roll Morton ("Mister Jelly Roll: the fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and inventor of jazz", 1950) - a book I still have. The back of the book contained various bits of music as played by Morton, including one called "The Naked Dance". On the Library of Congress recordings of Morton made by Lomax, he describes how this tune was played fast in the sporting houses (brothels) of New Orleans while naked black girls danced for the punters. I wasn't very good at reading music at the time I read the book - mid-1960s - but I grabbed my guitar and, but by bit, grappled with the notes and the intricacies of the time signature. Eventually a tune emerged with a chord sequence which was simple but effective. It was only many years later, after stints in jug and jazz bands, that I realised that the sequence was the basis of many popular tunes such as "Dallas Rag", "Saturday Night Rub" and "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate". So - transposed into G - the sequence looks like this:
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G / / /
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G / / /
D7 / / / D7 / / / G / / / G7 / / /
C / Cm / G / E7 / A7 / D7 / G / E7 /
A7 / D7 / G / / /
The tune goes straight down into the Dominant 7 (D7) of the scale then back to the tonic (G) three times. The 3rd return to G slides to the G7, up to the Sub-Dominant (C) and it's minor (Cm), then runs back from G through the cycle of 5ths to the tonic G - finishing with a repeat of the run through the cycle of 5ths as a sort of tag.
Simple, but effective and good fun to play and sing to. You can hear echoes of it in many jazz, ragtime and blues compositions.
Collecting guitars
27/2/2015
I don't collect guitars. I know several people who do - one or two of them obsessive/compulsive characters with collections running into double figures - but I'm not one of them. Which isn't to say that I don't have a collection of guitars, because I do. You might well ask what the difference is between a person with a collection of guitars, and one who collects guitars.
The true collector of anything is fascinated by the variety of the species and the aim, in general, is to have at least one of everything or several of one thing - and very often both. And it may be that the various items in the collection are, for whatever reason, functional only as objects of desire. By contrast, my own collection is completely functional. Every guitar in it has a particular purpose, and every guitar is played regularly - the choice of instrument depending on the gig in question. The Chisholm mid-jumbo is used as a powerhouse acoustic at sessions. The Martin XC1T is my main recording guitar for backing tracks. The Chisholm hollow body electric is used in band and other amplified gigs where some volume is needed, or where a variety of musical sounds are being played (rock/nroll ... folk).
It's a great, functional, used collection which is not the property of a collector!
27/2/2015
I don't collect guitars. I know several people who do - one or two of them obsessive/compulsive characters with collections running into double figures - but I'm not one of them. Which isn't to say that I don't have a collection of guitars, because I do. You might well ask what the difference is between a person with a collection of guitars, and one who collects guitars.
The true collector of anything is fascinated by the variety of the species and the aim, in general, is to have at least one of everything or several of one thing - and very often both. And it may be that the various items in the collection are, for whatever reason, functional only as objects of desire. By contrast, my own collection is completely functional. Every guitar in it has a particular purpose, and every guitar is played regularly - the choice of instrument depending on the gig in question. The Chisholm mid-jumbo is used as a powerhouse acoustic at sessions. The Martin XC1T is my main recording guitar for backing tracks. The Chisholm hollow body electric is used in band and other amplified gigs where some volume is needed, or where a variety of musical sounds are being played (rock/nroll ... folk).
It's a great, functional, used collection which is not the property of a collector!