The Crave



At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century a powerful musical phenomenon which would become known as "Jazz" began to take shape.  New Orleans had had a strong culture of African American folk music and ragtime, and when the Creole musicians were kicked out of the orchestras on the basis of their "race," they were forced to take their classical instruments and professional chops to the streets.  The subsequent merging of styles and instrumentations was an organic process from which many new types of music emerged ("Jazz" is often used as an umbrella term used).

The piece above is by Jelly Roll Morton, self-proclaimed inventor of Jazz.  Listen as the left hand holds the bass in a single key while the right journeys wherever it wishes.  You could call it a rag.  Interestingly much of the classical, European piano music from the same era not only uses similar harmonies, but the same type of arrangement.

Listen again and hear how there are strategically placed "wrong" notes.  They're not actually wrong (obviously) but they break out of the expected harmonic patterns and make you ear dance a little to catch up.  "The Crave" has some examples of 'blue' thirds: when the major and minor third are played almost simultaneously to give an emotive quality seldom heard outside of Jazz.  Interestingly, classical musicians of the same era were also fond of this sonority in different contexts. Below is a jazzy improvisation by Gabriela Montero on Rachmaninoff's third piano concerto:

Nature Jamz



The Japanese have built an enormous Marimba-like music mechanism which plays Bach in a forest outside of Kyoto.  The making of this music machine (instrument?) involved dozens of musicians, mechanics, builders, and more.  Besides thoroughly enjoying the inventive take on a classic Bach piece, I could not help but ask a number of questions.  Who is the musician?  Is each person involved a member of a hyper-modern orchestra of sorts? If someone's job is simply to set up the wooden run in the forest but he is in no way involved in the coordinating of tones, is he still a musician, or is that role analogous to an instrument manufacturer?  What if the person who came up with the idea never lifted a finger to create the sounds - what's the name of that role? Not composer, not player, but something.

After a few minutes of contemplating these question I went back and watched my favorite Japanese musical comercial:



Yes, that is a real television commercial (for soy sauce).  

Relative Major and the Remix

Recently my brother and I did a remix for local artist Brett (composed of members from The Dance Party). A lot of people have asked me how we came up with the chords we used in the intro.  Here's the original:



The track quickly establishes itself in the key of E major with the bassline wandering back and forth between E and G# and the lead guitar proclaiming a high E straight through the intro.  The mood is dancy and upbeat.  A major key is constructed by starting on the tonic note and ascending in the patter W,W,H,W,W,W,H (where W represents a whole step and H represents a half step).  So starting this pattern on E results is the E-major scale: E,F#,G#,A,B,C#,D#,E.


Seeking to reinvent the emotive content of the song, my brother I and went beyond just changing timbre, tempo, or style; instead, we manipulated the harmonic structure itself so that the exact same vocals heard in the original would take on new meaning against the backdrop of a different tonality (as I will explain).



I have been told that the result seems darker than the original.  That makes sense because we used the "relative minor" key: C#minor.  C#minor has the honored distinction of having its own Wikipedia page dedicated to its relationship with Beethoven.

What is a relative minor key?

A relative minor uses the exact same notes as its relative major partner, but begins a step and a half lower thus forming the pattern W,H,W,W,H,W,W - or - C#,D#,E,F#,G#,A,B,C#.  We used the chord progression: C#m, F#m, AbM, Am, C#m, F#m, AbM, C#m. Since our key uses all of the same notes as that of the original, the same vocal melody works with both versions but to a strikingly different emotive effect.

Your homework is to take a happy pop song you like and convert it into its relative minor key on an instrument!

If you liked the remix check out Rex's other stuff and hit up my soundcloud.

Classical Picks: Rachmaninoff's Bells of Moscow and Samuel Barber's violin concerto.