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A little ballad


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Inspired in Evans and his harmonies (incomplete or rootless chords, chords by fourths, clusters...). 

 

Edited by Luis Hernández
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I kind of tend to disagree with some of the chord names you chose to write in the score.  I know Evans frequently uses these kinds of voicings but usually he's relying on the bass player to play the root - otherwise without that root an altogether different sonority is heard by the listener - for example the very first chord you have to me sounds like an Ab major7 #11.  Also - the end of measure 5 you have C#, F#, B, and D which you label as a B minor chord but it's heard for such a short time that I just hear it as a passing stack of 4ths starting on C# with a b9.  In measure 8 left hand, I just hear that as a set of chromatically descending thirds.

But all of the above is just gripes about how you name the chords not the chords themselves.  I enjoyed the jazzy/improvised/experimental feel you managed to capture here which is difficult to do with having to actually write out all the notes exactly etc.  The chords are actually well chosen in this.  And the little fragments of melody make sense.  And the dynamics are realistic for the kind of phrasing you're going for.  Nice job!

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Well the name of the chords here are a bit conceptual. If they are names like rey are is to follow a logic in harmony. On the other hand what matters is how it sounds, or better solution  is no to write the names  of those chords. Sometimes I think we say a chord sounds like this or that because we see some notes written, but we have to listen to the whole progression  to out them in context.

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I mean, in a literal sense, if you wrote out the music specifically the way you want it, chord symbols are functionally pretty useless. While I do agree that functions need context to work properly, chords in and of themselves don't necessarily need that condition. 
Anyway, your music is nice. The motive of expanding a semitone works really well with your internal mini-progressions.

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4 hours ago, PaperComposer said:

On repeated listenings I do hear that first chord as an F minor chord probably because of meas. 9 and 34 where you make that harmony more clear.  In the beginning I now hear the tonic to be F minor but I guess because of the preponderance of those structurally strong D7 (b9) chords by the end I hear the tonic as G.

 

Yes in the cadences is where C7 - Fm is seen. Although at the very end, the Fm is altered by G in the bass. Why? I don't know. I like it.

The times D7 or D7b9 appears is as part of chromatic fall Eb.... D7b9... Cm (in this case is also a tritonal substitute of G7).

 

In general, I don't take much care about functions except in some points that establish the tonality (cadences). What happens inside or between, can be many things. That's how Ilike harmony.

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  • 2 months later...

@PaperComposer  Thanks. Very interesting. This set of voicings has been extracted from Evan's works by the youtuber. There is a combination of many things. I took some features from Evans, just like quartal chords (which in this video there are many many) and rootless/cluster chords in which some times the third is lacking.

i don't consider myself to have the skills to be a good jazz composer, I think that would take a life..., but I can use all the tools from jazz I learn... That's how I like to see composition: eclectic.

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