Latch Music's Ezine #21
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* "The Zine" content is contributed by Dave Latchaw and colleagues who use the Internet to promote their musical projects. You can check out previous issues at "The Zine" Archives.
- Article: "Picturing Harmony" by Dave Latchaw
- Guest Artist: Travis Sullivan - Great expressive interactive jazz.
- Featured Web Site: Bob Baker's TheBuzzFactor.com
- Featured Web Video: Cyro Baptista and "Beat the Donkey"
- CD Pick: Bobby McFerrin "Beyond Words"
Picturing Harmony
by Dave Latchaw
As a piano player, I am lucky to play an instrument that makes it easy to visualize harmony. Everything on the keyboard is there for you, literally in black and white. Some people find using the guitar cool for understanding chords, but for me the guitar layout is more abstract than the keyboard. The construction of the keyboard, left to right, low to high, in consecutive half steps makes picturing chords with their various intervals very visual and accessible. The layout of the keyboard makes it easy to make a mental picture of its structure when you are away from it.
When I'm in education mode, working on improvisation with "non-chordal" players, I notice that harmony always seems to be more of a challenge for them than for the "chordal" players. There's no getting around it, the improvisor has to understand chords and their structure. Having the visual aid of the keyboard is great way to make one's harmonic information much more ingrained. When the improviser has a way to visualize chords it makes for greater understanding of harmony, which leads to more comfortable and interesting improvising. The complete understanding of harmony makes the improviser sound more in control and less jivey.
Having a way to visualize the chords in their various voicing's will help the improviser become more aware of smooth voice leading and common tones, which will in turn help them develop stronger melodies. For example, if you have an F7 chord and you are using the the third (A) as your melodic focal point and the next chord is C7, you can maintain the (A) as your focal point because it has now become the 13th of the C7 chord. Or you could move the (A) of the F7 Chord to the (G) or (Bb) of the C7 chord, to help keep the melodic hook smooth. Another example is, say you were on a Bmaj13 chord and you were using the 13th of the chord (G#) as your melodic focal point and the next chord is Dmaj13. You can maintain (G#) as the focal because it has now became the #11 of the Dmaj13 chord, or you could could move the (G#) of the Bmaj13 chord to the (F#) or (A) of the Dmaj13, to help keep the melodic hook smooth. Being able to find common tones and using voice leading between chords helps create smoother melodies, which leads to stronger melodic hooks. Everyone enjoys being able to do cartwheels up and down their axe, but it is usually the strong melodies that John Q Public will remember when they leave a performance. The musician who only plays endless gymnastic riffs may be thought of as impressive, but their audience usually doesn't leave their performance singing their brilliant whole tone 64th note riffs.
Non-chordal players don't have to become a burning chordal player. Achieving enough skill to play chords with various inversions is usually sufficient for a greater understanding and accessibility of harmony. Of course, doing this in every key does take time, but it's important to be complete and not skip steps. Each chord degree creates a certain level of tension. The root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th, all affect harmony in their own unique way. The improviser can make a personal catalog of how each of chord tone creates a certain quality over each chord. The musician that has a strong understanding of how each chord degree affects the sonic palette is more capable of manipulating musical moods. Being able to control the sonic moods of music gives one a broader range of expressive qualities in their improvising. Having expressive qualities in all aspects of music is important to help the listener connect with the music.
When the musician has cataloged how the root, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th all affect harmony, and understands voice leading and common tones, it's easier to figure out what other players are doing. When the musician understands which harmonic qualities are used by the artists they like, they can start incorporating those tendencies in their own playing. The idea is not to rip off what other players are doing, it is just to be able to keep expanding the well that you can draw from. Being an improviser means being in a constant state of evolution. The more elements (and their variables) the improviser can tap in to, the more he or she can expand their own voice. Harmony is like vocabulary. The more words you know, the more you can say.
The goal with harmony is to understand it so well that it's not even a conscious part of your playing. One wants to reach a level of improvisation that is effortless, similar to breathing, where it just happens. When the improviser is playing from that place the music always seems special. No getting around it. Get a keyboard or any chording device and learn about harmony. You will be glad you did.
Travis Sullivan
**Update - October 2006**
Check out Travis Sullivan's web site at
www.travis-sullivan.com
#1 Where on the Internet can people find more about you and your music?
I belong to an artist's collective website called NCMeast.com, which has information about many of my upcoming performances, as well as a brief bio. It also has a online ordering system for my CD "As We Speak". You can read reviews of my music at both allaboutjazz.com (September 2001 issue) and at allmusicguide.com. Kimi Reith also wrote a nice article about my MP3.com site this past August for modernjazz.com. I'm also working with a great web designer here in NYC to get my own website up and running, which should be online some time this spring.
#2 What musical influences have inspired your direction as an artist, and why?
The Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Seriously though, I find it very difficult to narrow my influences down to a small number of artists. I've gone through so many phases of development... and I truly believe that everything that I've ever listened to deeply and sincerely is part of what I do musically. With that said, I would have to say that my first musical influence was the music of artists such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. A high school friend of mine had John Coltrane's "Interstellar Space." He'd come over my house and when my parents would go out we'd turn off all the lights and put that record on and listen to it. It was kind of backwards I guess, since many students of jazz usually get into more traditional artists first before they develop an appetite for the freer music, but I didn't know any better at the time. I was attracted to the energy of that music, and wanted to play with that same sort of fire and abandonment.
After that it was a matter of checking out earlier jazz masters. The usual: Lester Young, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker to name but a very few. And when I moved to New York City I found out quickly how essential it was to have a traditional vocabulary in my playing whether I was playing bop or free. If you don't have that in your in playing here, you won't be taken that seriously.
In the past couple of years I've gotten much more interested in pop music, and really dig artists such as Bjork, Jeff Buckley, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan. Recently I've found that my compositions and improvisations are becoming simpler, more direct and lyrical, which are qualities that I admire the most in those artists I just mentioned. That's the short answer!
#3 How has your early piano training influenced your sax playing and compositions?
My knowledge of the piano is an important element in my understanding of harmony. I sometimes take it for granted, actually, and I don't know how an instrumentalist can effectively understand chords and voice leading without at least some fundamental piano technique. The way the piano helps me the most when I'm improvising is that it gives me a visual model for a chord structure. For example, I can mentally see an upper structure in relation to a root in terms of a white/black key relationship, which helps me in voice leading to the next chord. This isn't really something that I worked out or anything, or something I think is really deep, but merely a bi-product of spending a lot of time at the piano.
Composing is a different business altogether. I write pretty much exclusively at the piano, and if I do happen to write a melody away from the piano, I always end up working out the harmony on it. As a result, my tunes don't always necessarily lie the best on the saxophone, and are more pianistic in nature. But I like that because it presents more of a challenge when playing, and I find myself writing songs with key centers that are sometimes less familiar to me on the saxophone.
#4 How did your group "Travis Sullivan's Project One" form?
Typical New York City story. Bassist Catherine Popper and I were classmates at Manhattan School of Music. We played together in a variety of musical situations and became close friends. She invited me to sit in at a gig she was playing one night with guitarist Rez Abbasi. I remember we played "I Hear a Rhapsody" and when I played with Rez it was like we had been playing together for years. The musical connection was amazing and we both felt it. After that, we started playing gigs together. Rez is my partner in crime as far as I'm concerned, he adds so much to my music, I frequently keep his sound in mind when I'm writing tunes.
I met the drummer, Ari Honig, through Catherine once again, and hired him for a couple of gigs that I was playing with Rez and Catherine. The band instantly had a sort of free flowing communication and an excellent chemistry, and I knew this would be an amazing band to take into the studio. I decided to call the band "Travis Sullivan's Project One" because it was my first project in New York as a leader. There won't be a "Project Two" though... the name doesn't sound as good.
#5 What do you want the listener to get from your disc "As We Speak"?
I just recently listened to "As We Speak", because I realized I hadn't listened to it in quite a while, and enough time has passed so that I feel like I can give it a much more objective listen than I could a couple of years ago. What I got from listening to "As We Speak" was a feeling of being there in the studio with four creative musicians pouring their heart into this music, and being occasionally swept away with the spontaneity of some of the improvisations...essentially I was put back into that space that I was in when I was recording the album. I hope that other listeners get this same feeling when they listen to my CD - that feeling of being complete and having absolute freedom.
#6 When you toured in Scandinavia, what differences did you find between the European audiences and the American audiences?
There are good and bad European audiences just like there are good and bad American ones. But in general I noticed that European audiences were far more receptive and into going out and listening to jazz music. That information is nothing new, really, jazz musicians have been observing that for years. It was very interesting to see it first hand though. Large groups of people in a club actually all listening...and for the most part having some level of comprehension about what you're doing. The aspect of American audiences that I missed in the European audiences is a certain feeling of boisterousness, it's very hard to explain what it is exactly. It's a matter of energy, I think. American audiences give me a feeling of "Show me what you got" which can be very stimulating in terms of me wanting to play my best, and many times you'll get that energy back that you put into the performance. European audiences seem to be in general less demonstrative of when they're enjoying something...they're much harder to read than many American audiences.
#7 What are your thoughts about music and the Internet?
Sometimes the Internet is a little bit daunting to me because it's so vast, and there's so much music out there to listen to. I think that it will still take a few years before we can really see how the Internet has affected the music industry, but it already seems that it is becoming a refuge for many independent artists. I like the idea of having the Internet available as yet another way of sharing music with the world, and being "out there" in cyberspace.
#8 What future projects and activities should people be looking for?
I'm involved with a lot of different creative music projects right now as both a leader and sideman. I've been playing in bassist Danny Zanker's quartet for about a year now, and we're definitely ripe to go into the studio to record, it's a great band with some real solid compositions. I've also recently started a band with Anna Johnson, a very talented pianist/singer-songwriter, and we've been cowriting songs together and performing them over the past few months. I also have a web site in the making, which will hopefully be up and running this spring at www.travissullivan.com.
By the end of this year I'm planning to go back into the studio and record a new CD. I recorded "As We Speak" three years ago and since then I've written a lot of music that I enjoy playing and would like to share with others. It will most likely be a larger ensemble than the quartet featured on "As We Speak". In 2001 I started writing some music for both sextet and septet, so I definitely want the next CD to include some of those compositions.
Bob Baker's TheBuzzFactor.com
Are you trying to get your music heard? Maybe even trying to make a little money at it? The music itself is the easy part of creating your own record label. Letting more than family and friends know you have music for sale is the tough part. The artists that will educate themselves about how the web works and be patient for results, have the most potential for success on the web. Bob Baker's TheBuzzFactor.com has a variety of useful information that can really help musicians develop their web business. He offers free articles and a free ezine, as well as books for purchase and lots of other advice and tidbits. A must for your Internet music adventures!
Cyro Baptista and "Beat the Donkey"
Cyro Baptista is the founder of the percussion and dance group "Beat The Donkey". "Beat The Donkey" has members from America, Israel, Europe and Brazil. New York is where all the members make their home. Baptista describes the multi-ethnic performance group "Beat The Donkey" as a moving portrait of life in New York City. Click here to watch videos of "Beat The Donkey", very good fun to check out.
Bobby McFerrin
"Beyond Words"
There are thousands of great musicians in the world, but only a few have taken their art to a level beyond great. Bobby McFerrin is one of those who is truly a musician's musician. He is consistently able to create music that seems to be completely connected to a place bigger than himself. His range of ability and influences allows for the creation of music that defies being pigeon-holed into any one genre. "Beyond Words" is a great example of McFerrin's ability to create sonic adventures by taking a wide range of influences and turning them into a cohesive, expressive collection of music that the whole world can relate to.
Musicians for "Beyond Words"
Bobby Mc Ferrin - Voice and Keyboards
Taylor McFerrin - Vocal Percussion
Chick Corea - Piano
Omar Hakim - Drums
Richard Bona - Bass and Guitar
Cyro Baptista - Percussion
Keith Underwood - Flutes
Gil Goldstein - Fender Rhodes, Dx7, Accordion
Tracks for "Beyond Words"
- Invocation
- Kalimba Suite
- A Silken Road
- Fertile Field
- Dervishes
- Ziggurat
- Sisters
- Circlings
- Chanson
- Windows
- Marlowe
- Mass
- Pat & Joe
- Taylor Made
- A Piece, A Chord
- Monks/The Shepard
Click here to learn more about "Beyond Words"
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