Monday 22 October 2012

modal monday





i do so love a drop of the old modal... waltz with me now darlings

duke pearson - the fakir

x

buy duke pearson's prairie dog at sounds of the universe

9 comments:

davyh said...

I was just sitting here thinking how I needed something to cut through the relentless gloom and this is it baby, this is it.

(You have a weird false start on this btw, though that is not without its own Peelesque 'wrong speed' charm) x

davyh said...

PS: I am gonna haveta get this here recurd

ally. said...

it's a proper sporit lifter isn't. all the way. and curse my shoddy record recording skills...
x

spud said...

I wondered whether that was supposed to be some sound-system style rewind!

Forgotten how good this tune was. Haven't got any Duke Pearson. Got other people doing his tunes - Bobby Hutcherson, Grant Green &c - but nothing by him. Clearly an oversight.

Yr Heartout said...

Modal. Now there's a word. I always nod wisely when people refer to modal jazz (makes me think of Patrick Forge saying that), but I never really have the foggiest what it actually means. Not that it matters.

spud said...

@Yr Heartout - You know what a scale is? Do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do? Imagine taking a note or two out of that like, I don't know, me and la. Now you've got a mode. And jazz that uses modes is modal.

A lot of jazz is about playing across changing chords and, often, players will be showing off how nippily they can take the corners on the key changes.

Modal jazz tunes,on the other hand, tend to pick a mode and stick with it so it's a different challenge: how much can you get out this little set of notes and how long can you keep it interesting for?

Major scales sound happy, minor scales sound sad, modes sound...different. Sort of moody and hypnotic if you like that sort of thing. And I do.

Yr Heartout said...

Aha. Thank you spud. Very nicely explained. And, yup, "sort of moody and hypnotic" is very much the bag I'm in.

davyh said...

A lot of traditional 'non-western' music is also 'modal'. So there was a political (and spiritual) dimension to all this too, for some musicians.

Hugs to Prof spud and thanks, I'm here all week.

spud said...

*waves to davy*
see you at 99p Soul