Diatonic playing shows no immaturity or the opposite. For me, it shows musical taste.
Music taste cannot be defined by tonality... music is either good, or not good, regardless of tonality.
Something could be completely diatonic and be terrible... same with gratuitous use of chromaticism, or 'outside' playing. And of course, vice virsa...
+1.
You can't say observing the notes determined by the key has anything to do with good taste, if the diatonic notes are selected consciously as a pool of notes to play from it's reducing your choices and why, what's so hard about being in mind the chromatic notes and their place in the melody?
It seems like painting a picture and chucking out the orange and the purple because you're painting a green lanscape and a blue sky.. those colours may still have their place, because clouds aren't just white, the sky isn't just blue and the ground isn't just green.
Knopfler and Johnson alternate modes and therefore don't fit in the diatonic camp really... sorry we seem to be at odds today ShredMeister _________________ Fabulous powers were revealed to me the day I held my magic Suhr(d) aloft and said "by the power of great scale!"
Joined: 19 Mar 2005 Posts: 73 Location: Narberth, PA
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:23 pm Post subject:
ShredMeister wrote:
Aaaaah, nope, I don´t agree at all. Diatonic playing shows no immaturity or the opposite. For me, it shows musical taste. So many of the greatest tunes ever are diatonic... Would you consider Pachelbel to be harmonically immature for composing his Canon in D, much less brain dead? Music is music. Some like diatonic sounds, some like outside sounds. I personally don´t think Mark Knopfler or Eric Johnson are harmonically immature at all. They simply chose diatonic because they like it better. The issue with diatonic tunes is that a lot of players who are not capable of writing something worthy using diatonic elements, tend to go outside to hide their innability to write a simple, good song. In that same way, many criticize the pentatonic and blues scale for being overly simple and boring, but I think it is very difficult to say much with just those few notes. Many players simply cannot say as much as, say, SRV could with it, thus using all those outside elements and looking cool and knowledgeable, when the truth is that they cannot touch people in the same way that that kid from Texas who plays by ear could.
To me, there´s nobody more mature than that musician who, using the same notes everybody uses, can make something outstanding, fresh and worth listening to. That is the reason why BB is considered by many as a master, because he can do something amazing with 3 notes, and that is so simple, that is difficult.
As for that pattern playing you mention... Well, Scott is the first who admit almost every player plays 50% practiced ideas, 50% improvised stuff. Every one uses patterns, but patterns may vary from player to player.
Fast playing is not athletic. Speed is just another element in music, it expresses certain elements, no more, no less. Would you say Spring by Vivaldi is show off or athletic? It is tasteful music, played fast, because speed helps to convey what the artists means to say. I agree that some misuse speed, but that does not mean speed itself is athletism.
I don't know Pachelbel enough to make any comments, but a lot of tonal classical music (especially Vivaldi) bores me to tears. Give me Stravinsky, Bartok, Varese, Zappa and Bach any day.
You mentioned BB King too, he's another who I just don't get. He's too subtle for me. I am starting to get people with tremendous feel like Scofield and Grant Green. Those are guys who don't play a lot of notes, and who don't play athletically but who have such great rhythm and tone feel that they are easily as good in my book as anyone who can blaze the shit out of the guitar neck. Same goes for George Benson and Wes. The groove these guys have is as deep as the ocean. However, BB, who might have some of that, is someone I just don't like listening too.
And I don't think Scott Henderson meant pattern playing and shredding when he was talking about the 50/50 split between memorized licks and truly improvised ones. I'd be willing to bet he was talking about dudes playing Charlie Parker, Trane, Wayne Shorter, or some other guitar player's licks, not 1234-2345-3456-4567, etc. In fact, if you watch the first of his two excellent instructional videos, he goes out of his way to say one should never play just a scale -- yet shredders play probably 80% (minimum) just straight scale runs.
And "fast playing is not athletic" is a pretty foolish quote, IMO. If you want to disagree with me, that's cool, but to say there isn't a lot of pure athleticism in many musical genres is to deny reality. People have piano competitions and judge players on clean execution of notes, on this very forum there are people who count how many notes per beat someone plays, elsewhere people rave about SRV playing the way he did on .013s, people still talk about Albert King bending a major 3rd with his forefinger on the high E string, etc. etc. A lot of it is sheer muscle and dexterity. Just like Tiger Woods or ....er.... some other athlete (I proudly don't know shit about sports). Some of it sounds great, some of it is academic and cerebral and easily replaced by machines.
And I never said it was wrong to like it. If you like shred as your nic implies, that's cool. If someone likes cerebral machine music, that's cool too. We're talking about taste here, so it's very subjective.
Anyway, that's enough out of me. I have a piano lesson to go to. _________________ Less ebay, more Mel Bay
I was obviously misunderstood, probably my fault, my english is not that good.
When I said diatonic music shows musical taste, I didn´t mean that. Now that I re-read this phrase, I see why you guys understood a different thing. I meant that diatonic music showed that the artist who composed it probably likes that type of music. In other words, I agree with you that tonality has nothing to do with quality, it´s just a subjective taste thing, the artis may like it or not. For example, I am sure JS could play more outside if he wanted to, but he chooses to play diatonically for the most part because that is what he likes. Fine by me, I like it too.
As for what Scott meant, he clearly states that 50% is practiced stuff. He basically goes to say that nobody (almost) plays on the spot, making up stuff as they go. Practiced stuff is inserted there, and I think it´s logical thinking the tons of hours a pro musician puts into practicing.
Please, don´t confuse a pattern with a scalar pattern. A patter is exactly that, a set of notes that can be repeated, and in this case, a set of notes that a player practices and can play without having to think about it. I know Scott didn´t mean the Shred kinda scalar pattern, he meant any pattern, anything you practice and can play without having to think about it, meaning something you don´t create on the spot. Therefore, all guitarists play patterns. They may be more or less evident, but they are there. I can even tell patterns when listening to Allan Holdsworth, but I admit he´s probably the guy that uses less of them.
I still disagree with fast playing being athletic. Of course it can be interpreted that way, and they may create a competition around it, but then it is not about the music, it is about the coordination. Yes, there are competitions about who can play more strokes on the snare in a minute. That has nothing to do with music, eventhough the competition involves playing a musical instrument. I meant playing fast MUSIC. That has nothing to do with athletism, it´s just another way of playing music and it conveys feelings that slow music does not. Simple as that. A fast bebop tune would miss all its feeling if it was played slow. It would miss the point. Same thing with a Thrash tune. Therefore, speed is just another element in music with which you can convey certain things, that you simply cannot convey without it. Now, learning to play fast music and being able to do it involves many hours of practice, because it is pretty demanding for the coordination between both hands, etc. But that is just the way it is.
I would say that censoring fast music is just as stupid as censoring slow music, it is limiting something that by its nature has no limits. It would be like saying "Nobody should use the red color on a painting"... It´s like, WTF? _________________ "Living comes much easier once we accept we´re dying"
Joined: 10 Sep 2004 Posts: 2783 Location: Chino, CA
Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:02 am Post subject:
Going off tangent, one way that I view this inside/outside thing is my perception of the various periods of classical music: Baroque period (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, etc.), the Classical period (Mozart, Haydn, early-Beethoven, etc.), the Romantic period (late-Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Tchaicovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, etc.), to "Modern" (Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Gershwin, Bernstein, etc.). It's a simplified way of looking at things, but things go from very diatonic to outright atonal from Bach to, say, Schoenberg. Many consider Bach the greatest composer of all time, so what does that say about diatonic form of composition as opposed to more "advanced" form of harmonies, chromaticism, and atonality? Nothing much, I suppose. Whether it's strictly diatonic or atonal to the max, the music still has to be great and have an impact.
If the guitar players that we love to discuss can be categorized into these classical categories, where would some of them fit? Where do I see Guthrie fitting in? I love classical music of all types but I'd say the early-to-mid Romantic period is my personal favorite and if I had to place Guthrie's style into a period of classical music, that's where I'd place him - in between Beethoven and Wagner: still quite diatonic but with inklings of atonality (i.e., "outsidedness") bubbling under Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'. To me, Yngwie's more Vivaldi than Bach. I'm strictly speaking tonality now - not comparing guitar players to composers as that'd be a silly thing to do. Most rock shredders, to me, fit in the Baroque and Classical periods in terms of simple harmonies and being strictly diatonic. Jazz players ranging from someone like Metheny and Jim Hall to Martino and Benson are somewhere in the late-Romantic to early-20th Century.
It's like looking at a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the most diatonic and inside and 10 being the most atonal and outside. Guthrie is, to me, around 5~6 depending on what type of material he's playing. Sometimes it may be 3 or 4, sometimes 6 but rarely at 7. I'd rate Holdsworth at around 9. Scott Henderson at around 8. McLaughlin at around 8~9. Derek Bailey and some other avant players ranging from 7 to 10, etc. These are just my own perceptions and could be outright meaningless to some of you. I'm just putting things in this context for comparison purposes. Bach and Vivaldi may be 1 or 2, but a lot of their music is vastly superior to less talented composers writing things in realms of 8 or 9. It works the other way as well. Stravinsky is certainly superior to Meyerbeer (a minor composer of early-19th century) and a bunch of other forgotten composers of the Baroque and Classical periods.
So, I guess what I'm getting at is that inside/outside is a matter of preference and one is not superior over the other. Can we say Sun Ra was a greater musician than John Lennon or vice versa? Of course, not. Can we compare Handel to Holst? Haydn to Ravel? Yngwie to Scofield? SRV to Charlie Hunter? Petrucci to Russell Malone? David Gilmour to Joe Pass? I mean, these are all very silly comparisons. It's a matter of taste and how creative and interesting one can make the music within a certain harmonic context. Sometimes I'm all for listening to some Zappa and Eric Dolphy. And sometimes I'm all for Pachebel and even Abba and the Bee Gees. But most of the time, I'll settle for Beethoven, some Wagner, good does of Metheny or mid-60's Miles and, of course, Guthrie. _________________ Ed Yoon
Certified Guthrie Fan-atic
BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
.strandberg* Guitars USA
Ed Yoon Consulting & Management
Guitar Center Inc.
Going off tangent, one way that I view this inside/outside thing is my perception of the various periods of classical music: Baroque period (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, etc.), the Classical period (Mozart, Haydn, early-Beethoven, etc.), the Romantic period (late-Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Tchaicovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, etc.), to "Modern" (Debussy, Bartok, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Stockhausen, Gershwin, Bernstein, etc.). It's a simplified way of looking at things, but things go from very diatonic to outright atonal from Bach to, say, Schoenberg. Many consider Bach the greatest composer of all time, so what does that say about diatonic form of composition as opposed to more "advanced" form of harmonies, chromaticism, and atonality? Nothing much, I suppose. Whether it's strictly diatonic or atonal to the max, the music still has to be great and have an impact.
If the guitar players that we love to discuss can be categorized into these classical categories, where would some of them fit? Where do I see Guthrie fitting in? I love classical music of all types but I'd say the early-to-mid Romantic period is my personal favorite and if I had to place Guthrie's style into a period of classical music, that's where I'd place him - in between Beethoven and Wagner: still quite diatonic but with inklings of atonality (i.e., "outsidedness") bubbling under Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde'. To me, Yngwie's more Vivaldi than Bach. I'm strictly speaking tonality now - not comparing guitar players to composers as that'd be a silly thing to do. Most rock shredders, to me, fit in the Baroque and Classical periods in terms of simple harmonies and being strictly diatonic. Jazz players ranging from someone like Metheny and Jim Hall to Martino and Benson are somewhere in the late-Romantic to early-20th Century.
It's like looking at a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the most diatonic and inside and 10 being the most atonal and outside. Guthrie is, to me, around 5~6 depending on what type of material he's playing. Sometimes it may be 3 or 4, sometimes 6 but rarely at 7. I'd rate Holdsworth at around 9. Scott Henderson at around 8. McLaughlin at around 8~9. Derek Bailey and some other avant players ranging from 7 to 10, etc. These are just my own perceptions and could be outright meaningless to some of you. I'm just putting things in this context for comparison purposes. Bach and Vivaldi may be 1 or 2, but a lot of their music is vastly superior to less talented composers writing things in realms of 8 or 9. It works the other way as well. Stravinsky is certainly superior to Meyerbeer (a minor composer of early-19th century) and a bunch of other forgotten composers of the Baroque and Classical periods.
So, I guess what I'm getting at is that inside/outside is a matter of preference and one is not superior over the other. Can we say Sun Ra was a greater musician than John Lennon or vice versa? Of course, not. Can we compare Handel to Holst? Haydn to Ravel? Yngwie to Scofield? SRV to Charlie Hunter? Petrucci to Russell Malone? David Gilmour to Joe Pass? I mean, these are all very silly comparisons. It's a matter of taste and how creative and interesting one can make the music within a certain harmonic context. Sometimes I'm all for listening to some Zappa and Eric Dolphy. And sometimes I'm all for Pachebel and even Abba and the Bee Gees. But most of the time, I'll settle for Beethoven, some Wagner, good does of Metheny or mid-60's Miles and, of course, Guthrie.
Once again, you nailed it Ed. Basically I was trying to say the same thing. Sometimes diatonic music can be superb or horrible. The same goes with atonal stuff. I think western music is strongly diatonic and that is part of our "natural" ear. That is why outside sound can sometimes make the listener go like "that is not right, that note was wrong" (Of course I am talking about someone with no theory knowledge). In sort, I think diatonic music is the one we know and hear the best. It is the one most music teachers use as a starting point, thus sometimes we tend to see it as simple, even rudimentary as oposed to the more sophisticated atonal scales. A lot of people, like some posts on this forum, tend to believe diatonic stuff is simpler, less mature. I don´t agree. It is simply different, and to me, a musician whose diatonic music touches me is just as good as one whose atonal music touches me.
It just so happens that diatonic music tends to touch me a lot more. That is obviously my personal taste, tho. If I had to say where I am on that scale Ed Created, I would say anywhere from 2 to 5 is fine. More atonal simply sounds a bit too weird for my taste and there are certain feelings I simply don´t get with that kinda music. _________________ "Living comes much easier once we accept we´re dying"
A temperment for more a expansive harmonic music could take time. In order to develop an ear for it, one should listen to more music that uses those tonalities. For instance, students studying classical composition listen and analyze the works of many past composers. For learning to write with more modern language, they'd listen to Schoenburg, Webern, Messiaen, Varese, etc. Or western musicians studying Indian or Arabic music would have to learn to hear the microtones or inflections(gamakas in the Carnatic style) in order to understand that music.
A lot of people, like some posts on this forum, tend to believe diatonic stuff is simpler, less mature. I don´t agree. It is simply different, and to me, a musician whose diatonic music touches me is just as good as one whose atonal music touches me.
I don’t reckon people here think that playing diatonic is more simple than playing atonal . And many times is opposite: to find a great composition using major scales, for example, is so difficult and complicated as one of the most atonal tunes you can compose. The problem of playing diatonal is that you must to adjust to the modern western sound, as “iplayguitar” said. We may think all the resources are finished and we are running out of ideas for diatonic playing. So the game is to create something new or/and original inside of the diatonic patterns, which only great players like Joe Satriani seem to be able to reach. For me, JS is as genius as AH. So you are telling me that it is hard for you to listen or to like something atonal, that’s all right. To create diatonal and play diatonal is not easy because your guitar influences have a good/bad roll in the game. It is good because many other players are giving you ideas and patterns that you can use for your compositions and playing, but you lose in originality and you could fall into the “mediocre” and “average”. Even if it sounds great to you, another one might come to you and say: “that’s great, you sound exactly like JS” or that tune is very similar to that one of this guitarist, etc. So if you are going to play inside of the diatonic, your subs conscience may betray and you always will tend to play in a repetitive context because is the esiest and fastest way. But if you can play an original melody and compose a solid and original riff you will become a great composer and a great player. The game consists of playing original in the diatonic context.
On the other hand, if people like to play atonal, well, it is like to go into an enormous jungle that might be impossible to know all the paths and walks (to understand). For western ears like most of us, we require sometimes more than one listening to start to appreciate what the musician want us to understand. That happens to me the first time I heard AH. My cousin introduced me his music, gave me a tape and told me: “This guy is absolutely fantastic, listen to it” After I listened his music I said to myself: “That’s absolutely nonsense!” Now, he is one of my top 2. And I am not saying that to look more sophisticated or intelligent because I like his music (anyway, a lot of people in this forum like him)., I am just saying my personal taste is in between 1 and 10 (Ed’s Scale), but I always trying to listen something different, that’s way my very very personal taste goes to the highest numbers, between 5-10. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like Satriani, Morse and all these people, I love it.
I don’t know if age has a big roll in all this, because my music preferences have been changing all the time. 15 years ago probably it was between 1-6, and now it is between 5-10. And now in these days I love Pat Metheny, classical music, etc.. I am scare that my preferences carry on changing with time… But not only that, I like music with no guitar too. I just bought the CD of Kelly Clarkson “Breakaway”. I think this work is superb and the music is top of the tops, of course, this talking inside of the diatonic world.
_________________ Javi
Joined: 19 Mar 2005 Posts: 73 Location: Narberth, PA
Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2006 1:02 am Post subject:
It's funny, I've been reading a Jerry Coker book on how to practice jazz and in it he describes that someone (Dave Baker?) observed John Coltrane practice during one of his 11 hour practice sessions and remarked that Trane, who by this time was already a colossal player, intensely practiced in C major the whole time. Apparently the point was that Trane didn't need to practice in C, nor did he need to practice the major scale, but rather Trane was the kind of guy who wanted to completely exhaust all possibilities for getting sounds out of something as "simple" as C major and that even pretty far into his career he intensely practiced something many of us have written off as being almost too mundane. I read it yesterday and thought of this thread. _________________ Less ebay, more Mel Bay
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
. And many times is opposite: to find a great composition using major scales, for example, is so difficult and complicated as one of the most atonal tunes you can compose. The problem of playing diatonal is that you must to adjust to the modern western sound, as “iplayguitar” said. We may think all the resources are finished and we are running out of ideas for diatonic playing. So the game is to create something new or/and original inside of the diatonic patterns, which only great players like Joe Satriani seem to be able to reach. For me, JS is as genius as AH. So you are telling me that it is hard for you to listen or to like something atonal, that’s all right. To create diatonal and play diatonal is not easy because your guitar influences have a good/bad roll in the game. It is good because many other players are giving you ideas and patterns that you can use for your compositions and playing, but you lose in originality and you could fall into the “mediocre” and “average”. Even if it sounds great to you, another one might come to you and say: “that’s great, you sound exactly like JS” or that tune is very similar to that one of this guitarist, etc. So if you are going to play inside of the diatonic, your subs conscience may betray and you always will tend to play in a repetitive context because is the esiest and fastest way. But if you can play an original melody and compose a solid and original riff you will become a great composer and a great player. The game consists of playing original in the diatonic context.
