Bebop/Archive/U.S.W.

[Brett g Porter]

At 02:50 PM 20-11-96 PST, MASCARO wrote:
<<deletia...>>
>Out of curiosity, what does a single sentence in this exchange mean?  It's
language 
>like this (techno-efficient and all, as I am sure it is) that keeps
Luddites like me 
>contentedly wallowing, piglike, obscurely, in our ignorance as the future
passes us 
>by.  

Ha! Now one of you litcrit .edu types knows how _I_ feel when you go off on
your decon tirades! I bought _The Semiotic Challenge_, figuring, "I'm a
fairly smart guy. Shouldn't be anything I can't handle & I really should
find out what all this stuff is..." Apparently, I was unprepared for
anything more than _The Pepsi Challenge_, I guess.


Sometime earlier, David Casseres wrote:
>Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the 9th, 11th and 
>13th chords were part of the standard vocabulary of swing.  They're 
>certainly all over the place in the swing-flavored jazz guitar 
>arrangements I learned at one time.  My impression is that the harmonic 
>innovation in bebop started with the introduction of flatted-5th chords.  
>The flatted 5th is radical because the 5th is the keystone of both 
>European and (most) African scales, so a flatted 5th sounds really alien 
>-- except that the inventors of bebop made it work.  By now Parker's 
>music doesn't sound weird at all, though it sure still sounds masterful.

The real thing isn't so much the b5 *chords*, as it was the stress placed
on the b5 scale degree (melodically) over a chord with a natural 5th
(harmonically). As bop developed, chromaticism increased until you got
either Coleman or Coltrane. This seems a natural development of blues
tonality, where the so-called "blue note" is often cited as a b3 (against a
natural 3rd), (but if you listen to a blues singer & pay attention REAL
close, you'll find that it's only a quarter-tone flat --right in the crack
[here, lemme get out my trombone & explain]).

BgP

// Today's oblique strategy (Courtesy Brian Eno & Peter Schmidt):
// Ask people to work against their better judgement
//
// BgPorter at acm.org