Tuesday, November 17, 2009

"Zhivago" lick, Part 2

In the previous post, I put up a transcription of a signature line from Kurt Rosenwinkel's solo on "Zhivago" from The Next Step. The line is basically planing a particular arpeggio diatonically, but modifying it to match the underlying chord progression.

To get a better grasp on the device, I took it out of the context of the chord progression and planed the arpeggio diatonically through the major scale. This would also work on any mode of the major scale (dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, locrian), since they all have the same chords.
This could work well in a modal tune like "Milestones", which is a long dorian vamp followed by an aeolian bridge.

The arpeggio is 1-5-7-10-13-14 (10-13-14 being 3-6-7, but up an octave). Rosenwinkel plays them alternating between the ascending and descending version. This works out two ways, depending on whether you start ascending or descending.



Since this is an arpeggio, there are many ways to modify it and come up with different results.  Here are two obvious ones: omitting the root of each arpeggio (which gives you a five-note pattern, creating rhythmically interesting results), and omitting both the root and fifth of each arpeggio (which creates a quartal sound with an interesting ambiguity).



All of these can be played with different rhythmic permutations.
The 5-note pattern is creates interesting cross-rhythms when played as 8th notes or triplets.
The 4-note pattern is more interesting as triplets.
Any triplet pattern can be played with accents on the 8th-note triplet or on the quarter note triplet.  Especially on the original 6-note pattern, I like to mix up the two kinds of triplet accents.

6 comments:

  1. Hey man, gona go through this stuff soon. I was gonna transcribe Kurt's solo on Dewey Square, from the Intuit album. Got anything done already with that by any chance?
    Take care,
    BP

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  2. I transcribed it ages ago, but I'm not sure where it is. I did it by hand and never put it into the computer, so I have to look through my filing cabinet.

    I'll look for it when I get a chance. It's a fairly easy one to transcribe as I recall, though there are some chords that might be challenging to hear.

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  3. Hi, there're great stuff in your blog.
    I would like to know if this exercises has to do with alternate or economic picking?.
    Thanks for the material.
    Good Year.

    P.D.: my english isn't good. I hope you could understand me.
    Thanks.

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  4. Thanks for the comment. This lick actually works either way. It lends itself quite well to economy picking. I'm not sure what Kurt used, though.

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  5. Not sure if you're still checking this blog, but I thought that I would add that he uses the same basic arpeggio as the basis of the line starting at 4:10 (F-C-Eb-Ab-D-Eb etc). Also I think it's cool that the first four notes of these arpeggios make up a Drop 2 voicing, which is something that Charlie Christian liked to use in his solos. Great post/blog!

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  6. Thanks for commenting! I haven't updated in a while but I have some new stuff to put up soon.

    ReplyDelete