Steve Coleman, Roswell Rudd
Alot has been goin on here recently. Last night i saw berklee's Ornette Coleman ensemble with Roswell Rudd. Rudd has recently been to West Africa studying the culure and music and overall sounds. He said the town he was in was very acoustically homogeneous and he brought back the overall sounds. From the little i've heard of him before, i dismissed him as being to blatt-y, which at times he is, but last night he played some trully masterful music. It's the closest an instrumentalist has come speaking in words that i've heard in a while.
Then today i saw a clinic over at New England Conservatory of Steve Coleman, who, after recieving visions of ancient egyptian symbols when he listened to trane and bird went to egypt and has apparently been studying some extremely advanced theoretical concepts since. His main point was basically illustrating how duality exists in music. He showed how we hear music as going up(typified by the authentic cadence(G7-CMaj7)) and that there is a whole other side of harmony going down. He referred to these things as Terrestrial Gravity and Concentric Gravity, and started using the term of 'negative keys.' It was all very fast and very unique, but what i saw it as(without giving much of the extremely in depth logic to explain it) is this.
C Maj
(neg) G
-G in terrestrial terms is F-6(D-7(b5))
the resolution of this is now F-6 to CMaj reversing the typical direction in which we hear on the level of the root.
there is alot more, including the logic of the concentric gravity voice leading and big diagrams of frequency ratios and yadayadayada. It was such a different world, but it made a deep kind of sense. This was the first time i've been actually engaged by a theoretical discussion since i got here. people are typically such theory idiots that normal college level theory is really suited to an 8th grade level mind and that's where it stops. it's pathetic. But this stuff really requires some thought, just like the other stuff did when i was a kid. I'm excited. I'll try to get a hold on it better and explain it a little more.
Then today i saw a clinic over at New England Conservatory of Steve Coleman, who, after recieving visions of ancient egyptian symbols when he listened to trane and bird went to egypt and has apparently been studying some extremely advanced theoretical concepts since. His main point was basically illustrating how duality exists in music. He showed how we hear music as going up(typified by the authentic cadence(G7-CMaj7)) and that there is a whole other side of harmony going down. He referred to these things as Terrestrial Gravity and Concentric Gravity, and started using the term of 'negative keys.' It was all very fast and very unique, but what i saw it as(without giving much of the extremely in depth logic to explain it) is this.
C Maj
(neg) G
-G in terrestrial terms is F-6(D-7(b5))
the resolution of this is now F-6 to CMaj reversing the typical direction in which we hear on the level of the root.
there is alot more, including the logic of the concentric gravity voice leading and big diagrams of frequency ratios and yadayadayada. It was such a different world, but it made a deep kind of sense. This was the first time i've been actually engaged by a theoretical discussion since i got here. people are typically such theory idiots that normal college level theory is really suited to an 8th grade level mind and that's where it stops. it's pathetic. But this stuff really requires some thought, just like the other stuff did when i was a kid. I'm excited. I'll try to get a hold on it better and explain it a little more.
posted by Chris Mosley at 4:28 PM
2 Comments:
"I'll try to get a hold on it better and explain it a little more."
I look forward to that. Anyone who can explain Coleman's music in relatively easy terms should be commended.
This is very interesting, I saw Steve Coleman this summer in Rome, he's great.
night passage
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