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Arranging!

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2K views 14 replies 6 participants last post by  Kim 
#1 · (Edited)
Does anyone else here love arranging as much as I do? My jazz combo is performing in just over a week. (Nothing special, just an in-class performance.) As part of our set, we're doing Footprints followed by A Train. The great thing about these tunes is Footprints is in C minor (mostly) and in 3/4, while A Train is in C major (mostly) and 4/4. So I came up with a cool surprise ending to Footprints that morphs into the beginning of A Train.

Footprints ends with the horns blowing the 11th (F) of a Cmin11 chord, so I used voice leading in a triple threat to successively end on Db7, Dmin7, and finally on C (with the horns blowing G instead of F). As we're all fading out on a strong C major chord, the piano comes in with the "train" riff (descending chunk of the D whole tone scale to evoke D7b5). It's beautifully dissonant and leads naturally into A Train.

For the ending of A Train we're playing the standard Duke Ellington ending -- an ascending C major scale with some chromatic bits -- but with the second bar replaced by the C minor bass motif from Footprints. So the tune sounds like it comes full circle. We've already played it once like this and it sounds brilliant. I can't wait for the performance!

Edit: Yes, I know this is a metal guitar site. Still, we're all musicians and music lovers, right?
 
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#2 ·
First of all: I love jazz and try my best to get stuff sounding jazzy, but I have absolutely no theoretical knowledge(I got the part with the key and all though). I can't even read music anymore.
So most of what you wrote made no sense to me :D

But I love music and I do consider myself a musician even though i have no clue.

Arranging is really fun, I love it.
 
#9 ·
I love arranging, but I never got into much jazz. I started out learning baroque which is difficult to get away from after you get used to it. The closest school of thought I ever really got into was modernist (if you can call it that). I love the dissonance of the earlier parts of the 20th century (Bartok, Shostakovich, etc.) but can't get past the polychords of jazz. Yes I realize those two are practically protojazz, but you know what I mean.

Perhaps I'm missing something but jazz always lacks humanity to my ears. Not nearly as much as flamboyant prog stuff, though.

Anyway back to the main subject, I'm more of the type to use the simple to accent itself. For example to make a song turn darker, start in lets say C harmonic minor and hang on Gmaj for slightly longer than you should, slow the drums a bit and key change to D# harmonic minor. Since D#min contains the tritone of C, it gives the ear an illusion of being diminished. The beauty of that is that Ddim can serve as a quasi deceptive cadence and the root can easily be moved back to C. Really open and fun to play with that sort of stuff.
 
#11 ·
I love arranging, but I never got into much jazz. I started out learning baroque which is difficult to get away from after you get used to it. The closest school of thought I ever really got into was modernist (if you can call it that). I love the dissonance of the earlier parts of the 20th century (Bartok, Shostakovich, etc.) but can't get past the polychords of jazz. Yes I realize those two are practically protojazz, but you know what I mean.

Perhaps I'm missing something but jazz always lacks humanity to my ears. Not nearly as much as flamboyant prog stuff, though.

Anyway back to the main subject, I'm more of the type to use the simple to accent itself. For example to make a song turn darker, start in lets say C harmonic minor and hang on Gmaj for slightly longer than you should, slow the drums a bit and key change to D# harmonic minor. Since D#min contains the tritone of C, it gives the ear an illusion of being diminished. The beauty of that is that Ddim can serve as a quasi deceptive cadence and the root can easily be moved back to C. Really open and fun to play with that sort of stuff.
Man that is an interesting thought. I was taught theory by a jazz guy so that sounds really abstract to my brain but im sure its awesome in person :lol: I wish i had kept going with theory because its new ideas like that i miss having all the time :(
 
#12 ·
To clarify, that third paragraph had absolutely nothing to do with baroque and it is a bit abstract, but these sort of methods do a lot more for my ears. Jazz is just so... Jazzy and seems completely reliant on polychords and odd modes for the purpose of being complex rather than beautiful. To all jazz musicians I say this: "Locrian is gorgeous! Quit fucking it up!"
 
#13 ·
Jazz is just so... Jazzy and seems completely reliant on polychords and odd modes for the purpose of being complex rather than beautiful. To all jazz musicians I say this: "Locrian is gorgeous! Quit fucking it up!"
I guess it depends on what you're listening to. Go listen to Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. No polychords. No fancy modes. Just beautiful melodies.
 
#14 ·
I'm a big fan, too. The thing I miss the most about being in a band is finding ways to fit interlocking bits and pieces together into something bigger than the sum of its parts.
 
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