The McClain Music Camp “So What and Taqsīm for Arghūl” FM 95.8
April 9, 2016
02:00 - 02:35 PM EST
Saturday
Danny McClain John Smith Mary White James Redfern Jonathan Nah
Gabriel Morris Henry Warwick Mark Kaye Special Guest: Miles Davis
Written By Ju Hyun Park
Routine Intro Music:
2:00
Introduction:
2:00 - 2:03
Song: So What:
2:03 - 2:06
So What Discussion:
2:06 - 2:13
Commercial Break:
2:13 - 2:17
Taqsīm Discussion
2:17 - 2:35
2:00
Music: Show theme music
2:00
Host: Hello everybody, welcome back to another rainy day! This is your host Ryan McClain and this is “The McClain Music Camp”!
2:00
Music: Show theme music continued…
2:01
Host: Welcome back everybody! We’ve covered a bunch of pop lately, and so we thought that it was about time to get on with some new fresh content! Which is why we’ve invited a special guest today…
2:01
SFX drum roll
2:01
Host: Everybody please welcome today’s special guest, Miles Davis!
Davis: Hello!
Host: Hello indeed! Welcome to our humble quarters Davis. I would like to say, just before we start, that it’s a huge honour for us to invite such a well known individual.
Davis: I’m glad to be here.
Host: (Laughs) No, no, thank you. Now, ladies and gentlemen today’s song of the day is a particular one that helps one deal with depressing, rainy days like today. This, is So What.
2:03
Music: So What, First Head and live solo from Miles Davis. (3:27)
2:06
Host: (Clapping) Wow. That was brilliant
2:06
SFX Applause
2:07
Davis: Thank you, thank you. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve last played.
Host: It probably has been at least a decade since you have Davis.
Davis: (laughs) That sure feels like a long time.
Host: Now I wanted to look at this piece in depth, if you really don’t mind.
Davis: Of course Ryan, of course
Host: So, what is modal jazz? William Thomson has described that “Miles Davis is frequently mentioned as a pioneer in the incorporation of modes in his music” (20). How did that work?
Davis: Well, modes are scales in any certain key, different depending on which note it starts and ends with. Modal jazz assigns each player to the notes of that particular scale or scales. I’m known as one of the jazz composers to start using modes in jazz, during the 1950s.
Host: Ah I see. So you helped introduce modal jazz.
Davis: Yes. So What and the album it was included in, Kind of Blue, was known mainly because it was a strong example. So What focusses on the use of the dorian mode, which starts on the second note of a key and ends with it. For example, D dorian, which is what So What starts with, assigns the players to the notes in the C key from the note D to D.
2:08
Music: [Play Track 1]
2:08
Host: Ah, I understand.
Davis: Just take a look at the Head, or the main melody of the piece. You can see on the transcription you have there [Appendix A] which shows the main melody is that the phrasing revolves around the notes within the dorian mode, phrases starting and mostly ending with the note D.
Host: Is it just the D dorian mode?
Davis: No, we had to have some variety within the piece to make it a 32 bar head. We added pitch development through raising the entire scale up a semitone, and played the Eb dorian.
Host: So how does this apply to the solos?
Davis: Solo improvisations are basically players dancing within the notes of the modes. For example, just from the first four bars of my solo just now, you can see that all phrases end with D.
2:09
Music: [Play Track 2]
2:09
Davis: All soloists just have to know which note correspond to the mode, and incorporate them in their solo.
Host: Then is that what thematic development in improvisation looks like.
Davis: Sure. It’s a big aspect of phrasing in jazz solos, where one melody is repeated and expanded upon. I’ve got here the transcription of my solo [Appendix B], and you can see here how the second phrase (mm.47 ~ 48) of my solo is repeated in my next few bars, yet slightly changed (mm.49 ~ 62).
Host: Repeat phrases but add or leave out notes from the previous phrase.
Davis: Precisely.
Host: So you’ve only been talking about the pitch of the piece so far, and I’m pretty sure there’s more to the song. I want to talk about duration, and if anyone in the audience doesn’t know what that means, duration is a element of music like pitch, that talks about the use of rhythm. I understand that So What has a few rhythmic rules within the piece.
Davis: Yes we have a few rules that are kept within the piece. First of all we have the generic jazz aspect that can’t be left out, which is the swing rhythm. It’s taking two straight eighth notes and changing it two the first and third note of triplets. Then we have the use of triplets and syncopation, where a slight rest exists to push the impulse of phrase back.
2:10
Music: [Play Track 3]
2:11
Host: What’s a walking bass?
Davis: The walking bass is a pattern the bass plays during the solo or another instrument. This pattern is a series of notes the bass plays on every down beat of all measures. These notes are all part of the chord that the song is currently progressing through, and it creates a steady pulse that the soloists can navigate through.
Host: So what about the head when the bass isn’t playing the walking bass?
Davis: Well, if you could see the transcription that I have here [Appendix C] you can see that the rest of the band excluding the bass and drums play a chordal motif (first found in m.14). This motif has two big affects in this piece; it helps keep a rhythmic progression to the piece through it’s syncopation, and it acts as a pulse where the melody just plays in between.
Host: Any other tools of duration?
Davis: Yes there’s a use of contrast between few long notes and many short notes. The solo that I play for example extends over 64 measures, double in length of the head. The second half of the solo, however, is distinctively different from the first half in the sense that there are more long held notes, rather than empty rests. Here [Appendix D] the first six measures of the second half show three long notes already in the first phrase.
Host: Now explain to me the structure of the piece, since it goes under a separate branch of elements of music.
Davis: The structure of the entire piece is the way almost every jazz piece is played, where the main “head” or main melody is played a few times, and each soloist has their turn of improvisation and then the piece closes off with the main head and Coda.
Host: (laughs) and it seems like that will end of our first section. Thank you Miles Davis for being here…
Davis: Thank you for having me.
Host: And we’ll be back right after the commercial break for part B. Stay tuned!
2:13
Music: Radio theme music
SFX Commercial
2:17
Music: Radio theme music
2:18
Music: Taqsīm for Arghūl (2 minutes and 17 seconds)
2:20
Host: This section will look at a strange world music piece and attempt to explain and describe it comparing it to a similar piece of music that might be slightly more familiar to the audience.
Host: The piece just now was a Taqsīm for the Argūl, Taqsīm meaning a melodic improvisation of a solo instrument, and Arghūl the instrument used in this particular improvisation. Some things to understand about the piece before we dive into it is that the arghūl is a double-pipe woodwind instrument with two tubes. The shorter pipe of the two is the melody pipe, while the longer one acts as a drone, a single held note that’s sustained during the entire time.
Host: Now …. essentially, the biggest similarity between this Egyptian work and So What from before the commercial break is that they are both improvisations. As Davis today explained, they both take a theme or melody and expand upon it freely. There maybe differences, but we need to understand that they both are centred around the idea of improvisation and melodic development. In the Taqsīm you can here the idea of the repetition of two notes in succession, or the motion in which the melody has a short fast rise
and then falls slowly over the course of many notes is constantly repeated throughout the improvisation, often expanded upon.
Host: Now you may have noticed it by now, but the Taqsīm doesn’t really follow a specific meter, nor has a consistent pulse. This is very different from the 4/4 meter of So What, which has the syncopated chordal motifs and the walking bass to keep a strict tempo/pulse. The Taqsīm seems to rely entirely on the performer himself, which some may argue that it’s more closer to the idea of improvisation than a normal jazz improvisation, since each duration of phrases and rhythm matter entirely to the performer.
Host: The Taqsīm has many differences with So What in rhythm, but along with a few similarities. The Taqsīm doesn’t really play straight rhythms after all, but the first and second notes of triplets.
2:28
Music: [Play Track 4]
2:29
Host: That was 15 seconds into the piece, and it comes back at 00:22, and 00:28. This is very similar yet different to the swing rhythm of jazz, in the sense that they both play two notes out of the three notes in the triplet, yet one plays the first and second, while the other plays the first and third.
Host: Since we’ve talked about modal jazz and modes while Davis was here talking about So What, I think it’s only fair to talk about the drone and how it affects the piece. Now looking at the transcription here [Appendix E], I see that the melody revolves heavily around F# and B, which can be explained since the drone is a B, and F# is merely a perfect 5th of B. The improvisation revolves around the tonic and perfect 5th of the drone, similar to how the improvisations of So What had to start and finish with the ends of the mode, D and Eb.
Host: The sense that the other instruments join in to play the main tune after the taqsīm is also like a jazz head after the solos, which is interesting to see that two cultures have decided to close their improvisations with a unified and set melody.
Host: Previously Davis talked about their way of changing the mode in So What by just bumping it a semitone up, and quite similarly to that in the Taqsīm we can notice the change in key down to a D that still suites the drone as it’s only a perfect 5th.
Host: To cut it short, the Taqsīm can be understood as an Egyptian version of a jazz improvisation. It may differ in the sense that it’s less based on a strict rhythm and is more dependent to the performer, it is no doubt that the two are similar by having rules of pitch for the improvisation to weave between, and the use of triplets and absence of notes in the triplets to create unique rhythms, or the contrast between long notes and short notes. Both incorporate their own way of reminding their improvisor, one through a walking bass and other through a drone, but essentially I would like to think that the two are fundamentally similar as an attempt of a culture experimenting on music through knowledge and instinct, and through an improvisation.
2:34
Host: Thank you all for tuning in, having a great afternoon.
2:35
Music: Radio theme music
Appendix Appendix A
Transcribed by me, from Miles Davis. “So What.” Kind of Blue. Columbia, 1959, CD. Appendix B
Transcribed by me Appendix C
Thomson, William. “On Miles and the Modes”. College Music Symposium 38 (1998): 17–32. Web... Appendix D
Transcribed by me Appendix E
Stock, Jonathan. World Sound Matters. Mainz: London, 1996. Print.
Works Cited:
Miles Davis. “So What.” Kind of Blue. Columbia, 1959, CD. Stock, Jonathan. World Sound Matters. Mainz: London, 1996. Print.
Thomson, William. “On Miles and the Modes”. College Music Symposium 38 (1998): 17–32. Web.