Chord quiz

[Paul Harrison]

Another question for you chart gurus with sharp ears.

 

I'm getting the basic chords in the head of this 5/4 arrangement of Scarborough Fair something like this (0:39-1:02 and 3:22-3:45):

 

Fm7 | % | % | Ab | C7sus4 | Dm7sus4 |

Ab | Eb | % | Db | Fm7 | % | % |

 

What finer details are you guys hearing?

 

(BTW, that's Herbie Hancock on Rhodes and Ron Carter on bass, somewhat tricky to follow!)

 

[video:youtube]

[Reezekeys]

Here's what I'm getting (listening to 3:22 ->).

 

The bars of Fmin7 would more accurately be notated as three beats of Fmin7 and two beats of C11 (yes I know Herbie hits the Eb "neighbor" note in his figure which technically speaking makes that C a minor chord for that quaver!). Starting with your bar 6 (Dm7sus4) I hear things a little differently:

 

[Paul Harrison]

Nice, thanks!

 

I think I'm hearing the chord on the last beat of bar 7 as Bbm7:

 

Fm7 Cm9 | % | % |

Abmaj7 | C7sus4 /G | Am7 D7 |

Dbmaj7 Cm7 Bbm7 | Ebmaj7 Abmaj7 | Ebmaj7 Am7b5 |

Dbmaj7 Cm7 | Fm7 Cm9 | % | % |

[ElmerJFudd]

Hey, Paul. How are you hearing that riff voicing and rhythm?

 

I hear an F dorian thing going on with | Fm9 Bb/C | with upper neighbor back and forth in the pattern. Or actually the whole bar is just Fm9 with typical Root and 5th bass line and chord neighbors.

Something like this...

[Reezekeys]

:I think I'm hearing the chord on the last beat of bar 7 as Bbm7:

The rhodes is a little back in the mix and hard to hear. I did struggle a little wondering if that was minor, but listening hard in Capo I'm pretty sure I hear this as the figure Herbie is playing. Of course I could be wrong (it's happened before).

 

[Reezekeys]

And this is what I hear Herbie doing for the basic Fmin vamp. You have the C as a minor, I'm calling it a C11 but it doesn't really matter what you call it right? We're both correct. I don't think you need to separately spell out when it goes to C minor for that single quaver, but that's a matter of opinion of course. If you wanted to give a chart to a keyboard player and have it be accurate to the arrangement, you'd have to write out the figure anyway - and then the chord symbol wouldn't be necessary.

 

[Paul Harrison]

Yes, the core of the riff is the pattern with the syncopated and alternating thirds, which I've jotted down like this as a guide, but which Herbie varies throughout. (I imagine Don Sebesky didn't need to spell out much detail for Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter to make something tasty happen!)

[Reezekeys]

Exactly. Nobody arranging for Herbie & Ron Carter would think they have to write that kind of figure out bar by bar! Your chart looks fine. This is a nice track too, thanks for turning me on to it!

[El Lobo]

ah ... Paul Desmond ... no better tone on alto ... thanks

[ElmerJFudd]

Yes, the core of the riff is the pattern with the syncopated and alternating thirds, which I've jotted down like this as a guide, but which Herbie varies throughout. (I imagine Don Sebesky didn't need to spell out much detail for Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter to make something tasty happen!)

 

Right. Writing Fm and a quick listen to the style is enough. So everyone is hearing an Fm in that opening bar, and the little melodic chordal pattern in thirds with C C C D Eb D being the highest notes in the voicing. What's happening under the lower 3rd is more vague and at times changes. The presence of the 9... I think I hear it at least sometimes, but unimportant - I'd play it anyway because I like it.

[Paul Harrison]

Here's what I ended up with.

2076.pdf

[AROIOS]

Another question for you chart gurus with sharp ears.

...

What finer details are you guys hearing?

...

Reeks of "Cantaloupe Island", never understood how that boring ass tune got so famous. And it seems Herbie and Ron were using the same ole formula on this arrangement.

 

Even on Simon/Garfunkel's original, the only interesting thing happening harmonically was the first 10 seconds. And this cover version manages to throw that out of the window.

 

Another boring ass tune that's often covered is "Fields of Gold", there are easily a few dozen Sting tunes more interesting than that, what gives?

 

(To anyone who might be immediately triggered by the words above emotionally, it goes without saying that they are just personal opinions.)

[ElmerJFudd]

Another question for you chart gurus with sharp ears.

...

What finer details are you guys hearing?

...

Reeks of "Cantaloupe Island", never understood how that boring ass tune got so famous. And it seems Herbie and Ron were using the same ole formula on this arrangement.

 

Even on Simon/Garfunkel's original, the only interesting thing happening harmonically was the first 10 seconds. And this cover version manages to throw that out of the window.

 

Another boring ass tune that's often covered is "Fields of Gold", there are easily a few dozen Sting tunes more interesting than that, what gives?

 

(To anyone who might be immediately triggered by the words above emotionally, it goes without saying that they are just personal opinions.)

 

If the question is not rhetorical⦠I would imagine that for many listeners (who are more often not instrumentalists) a pleasant melody, effective lyric, soothing timbre and mood go a long way. There is comfort in familiarity for many listeners. Believe it or not, Fields of Gold peaked at #23 and spent 20 weeks on billboard for all its seemingly unadventurous attributes. Connecting with an audience is an important part of music making, I guess the key is knowing who you would like your audience to be. 'Musos', mass appeal. The ones that hit both often get labeled 'genius'.

[jazzpiano88]

.

[Reezekeys]

Paul, thanks for sharing that chart! It's great to hear the monster players using their talents to make an understated arrangement like this happen. I think it fits Paul Desmond's tone and style of playing perfectly - and Herbie still manages to get into some advanced harmonic territory in his solo; he didn't play it safe like a lot of others might. Very cool.

[AROIOS]

Another question for you chart gurus with sharp ears.

...

What finer details are you guys hearing?

...

Reeks of "Cantaloupe Island", never understood how that boring ass tune got so famous. And it seems Herbie and Ron were using the same ole formula on this arrangement.

 

Even on Simon/Garfunkel's original, the only interesting thing happening harmonically was the first 10 seconds. And this cover version manages to throw that out of the window.

 

Another boring ass tune that's often covered is "Fields of Gold", there are easily a few dozen Sting tunes more interesting than that, what gives?

 

(To anyone who might be immediately triggered by the words above emotionally, it goes without saying that they are just personal opinions.)

 

If the question is not rhetorical⦠I would imagine that for many listeners (who are more often not instrumentalists) a pleasant melody, effective lyric, soothing timbre and mood go a long way. There is comfort in familiarity for many listeners. Believe it or not, Fields of Gold peaked at #23 and spent 20 weeks on billboard for all its seemingly unadventurous attributes. Connecting with an audience is an important part of music making, I guess the key is knowing who you would like your audience to be. 'Musos', mass appeal. The ones that hit both often get labeled 'genius'.

 

Thanks for taking the time to respond to my short vent, Elmer.

 

It was a rhetorical question, but I understand and agree with what you said. I can appreciate the lyrical and melodic aesthetics of both tunes. It's just that I'm an arranger and rank harmony way above melody and lyrics, to a point where the latter two are mostly incidental. So it's easy to see how besides its first 10 seconds, "Scarborough Fair" offers little to my ears, beyond say, what "House of The Rising Sun" (which isn't that harmonically interesting to begin with) has already done.

 

Following your description of music "geniuses", Tom Jobim, Ivan Lins, Debussy, and Stevie Wonder immediately come to mind. And despite my "bashing" of the 2 particular songs above, Paul Simon and Sting are vastly talented and fit your label pretty well.

[MathOfInsects]

It's just that I'm an arranger and rank harmony way above melody and lyrics, to a point where the latter two are mostly incidental.

I have a hard time conceiving of how something that renders a song's melody and lyrics "mostly incidental" could be considered an arrangement of that song. Can you post an example?

[AROIOS]

It's just that I'm an arranger and rank harmony way above melody and lyrics, to a point where the latter two are mostly incidental.

I have a hard time conceiving of how something that renders a song's melody and lyrics "mostly incidental" could be considered an arrangement of that song. Can you post an example?

Take "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" for example.

 

As much as I love Jerome Kern's song-writing in general, Ray Sinatra's original arrangement and Gertrude Niesen's singing style simply doesn't do it for me. Nor do the vast majority of the other covers (e.g. the Platters' version) out there.

 

[video:youtube]

 

Now hand it to David Benoit for a rearrangement. And he transforms the entire thing tastefully.

 

[video:youtube]

 

Sure, Patti Austin's delivery is 10X better than Gertrude IMO. But even if we mute the vocal track, the whole thing is still enjoyable for me. The track below is just a cheaply produced karaoke. And Even then, I'd choose it over Ray's arrangement every time.

 

[video:youtube]

 

That's why I don't assign the same weight to melodies as I do arrangements and mixing. There are definitely brilliant melodies that stand on their own ("Moon River" for example). It's just that the vast majority of them are pigs that need a lot of lipsticking by the arrangers and mixing engineers.

 

And Lyrics? that's more in the realm of literature/poetry than music as far as I'm concerned. Most of time I pay little to no attention to them.

[AROIOS]

It's just that I'm an arranger and rank harmony way above melody and lyrics, to a point where the latter two are mostly incidental.

I have a hard time conceiving of how something that renders a song's melody and lyrics "mostly incidental" could be considered an arrangement of that song. Can you post an example?

 

Here's another example, "What A Fool Believes".

 

Even with such a brilliant melody line, Arif Mardin(who's a great arranger/producer btw) turned it into little more than a fastfood derivative of The Emotions "Best of My Love". (That's not a knock on either songs. It's just that Arif's arrangement could be applied to a million melodies and it failed to accentuate the beauty of Kenny and Michael's brain child IMO.)

 

[video:youtube]

 

Yet, in the right hands, your get this rearrangement/reharmonization that breathed new life into the song:

 

[video:youtube]

 

If a great melody like "What A Fool Believes" can morph in such drastically different directions, you can probably understand why I consider most of the melodies out there "incidental".

[ElmerJFudd]

We all of course agree - from our standpoint of being keenly aware of the building blocks of music - what a great arrangement can do for a song. But I swear to you, there are millions of listeners the world over who hear nothing but the vocal and if they do not connect to the singer and the lyric, the listening ends at that point. One might imagine it"s possible that they are aware of the arrangement - but I suspect only in how it lifts or colors the melodic line and it would be difficult for them to express what made version A better than version B - if it was the same vocal recording re-harmonized.

 

Of course there"s more to arranging than picking new chords. Jumping rhythmic styles, tempo, timbre selection, voicing, etc. Two arrangements can be miles apart. And then maybe folks would say thy prefer version B because they like the beat.

 

There are of course discerning listeners and deep fans of the art of music making. They"re just a smaller % of the population.

[AROIOS]

We all of course agree - from our standpoint of being keenly aware of the building blocks of music - what a great arrangement can do for a song. But I swear to you, there are millions of listeners the world over who hear nothing but the vocal and if they do not connect to the singer and the lyric, the listening ends at that point. One might imagine it"s possible that they are aware of the arrangement - but I suspect only in how it lifts or colors the melodic line and it would be difficult for them to express what made version A better than version B - if it was the same vocal recording re-harmonized.

 

Of course there"s more to arranging than picking new chords. Jumping rhythmic styles, tempo, timbre selection, voicing, etc. Two arrangements can be miles apart. And then maybe folks would say thy prefer version B because they like the beat.

 

There are of course discerning listeners and deep fans of the art of music making. They"re just a smaller % of the population.

Yup, we share the same observation on the average consumer's listening behavior/preferences. Unlike musicians (at least the good ones), whose brains resonate with interesting harmony/rhythm naturally, most casual listeners' taste in music is affected by "Nurture" more than "Nature".

 

In other words, feed them hogwash, their taste will resemble pigs', as I've observed on most GenZs and a lot of GenYs. (let's see how long it takes before the Political Correctness Nazis jump on this with their Relativist rebuttal); feed them Kobe steak, their taste might take on a level (even if just a disguise) of sophistication, as I've observed with the Boomers and GenXs.

[MathOfInsects]

Sorry, to clarify: I wasn't asking you to explain what an arrangement is.

 

You were saying that because you are an arranger, you view melodies as "mostly incidental." I was hoping you would post an example of work you do that renders a a song's melody (or lyrics) "incidental," where the result could still be considered an arrangement of that particular song.