Re: Microtones through pitch inflexions vs ornamentations. Jazz & Indian Music

Harp:
for completeness I mention that the
harmonica player frequently uses bent
notes, using airflow, mouth cavity shape and embrouchure.
ANY blues harmonica player will use
tone shadings frequently.
See Sonny Boy Williamson I or II or any
Muddy Waters post-WWII album (where the harp
is usually the main soloing instrument).

Giacinto Scelsi in classical music is famous
for microtonal pieces.

Jazz flutist Herbie Mann used bent notes.

Gary Wesley

Alan Young wrote:
> 
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Arvindh
> Krishnaswamy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > I am trying to find out more about microtones and pitch inflexions
> > that jazz is famous for.
> 
> You might start with blues, rather than jazz.
> Traditional (especially "Delta") blues uses a scale which probably
> originated in East Africa, with a variable or neutral 3rd (and 4th).
> You can hear this clearly in the field recordings made in the early
> 1900s, less clearly in the early studio recordings.
> Jazz adopted this scale, for use by vocals and *some* reed instruments,
> when rendering blues-based tunes.
> 
> > (1) By incorporating more frets or keys per octave in a guitar or
> > piano for example. This would allow a person to play "in-between"
> > "constant-pitch" notes.
> 
> Obviously, this is not done on these instruments. Rarely, some reed
> players will use a fingering that produces a "bent" note this way.
> 
> > (2) By bending a guitar string and reaching specifically for a given
> > intermediate pitch for example.
> 
> I won't speak to guitar practice, as there are many reqular posters
> here with more expertise on that subject.  (If guitar is of particular
> interest to you, you might cross-post followups to
> rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz).  But certainly, in the earlier
> (1920's-30's) blues-based practice, you can hear this done by
> vocalists.
> 
> > (3) By producing inflexions by bending a guitar string or sliding over
> > the frets quickly, where the ***time-varying inflexion itself** is the
> > "new" note, and where the exact end points of the inflexions don't
> > matter at all in some cases. The average value of the pitch contour
> > and the timing would matter more.
> 
> Again without addressing guitar playing, you certainly hear this in
> Billie Holiday and the many subsequent vocalists influenced by her
> approach, and in many horn players such as Johnny Hodges.
> 
> > Are the pitch inflexions used purely embellishments or ornamentations
> > or are they REQUIRED in the rendition of certain phrases?
> 
> Well, on the piano the variable blues 3rd in rendered by the 7#9
> *chord*, where both major and minor 3rds are sounded simulataneously.
> And certain phrases do require this effect. But that's the only example
> I can think of.
> 
> > ps: I am a graduate student at CCRMA, Stanford, investigating
> > current-day  South Indian Classical Music using digital signal processing
> > techniques.  I am also a violin player, South Indian style, for the last 20 years.
> 
> I'm delighted to hear more exploration of the common ground between
> jazz and Indian music. I'm sure you're aware that this started with
> John Coltrane and his friendship with Ravi Shankar. Other exponents of
> this kind of fusion include:
>    Charles Lloyd
>    Jan Garbarek
>    John McClaughlin
>    Michael Wolf
> 
> ...and I'd love to hear more.
> 
> --
>     Alan
> http://www.hummingbear.net/~aayoung/Jazz/jazz.html
> 
> "Pray every day to every god."
>       -- Kurt Elling, "Resolution"

-- 
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                                       --Friedrich Nietzsche
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