12 replies to this topic

[TheBigBeat]

Hello Mr. Weiss:

I'm a really big fan, and I love your debut album on Criss Cross 'Presenting Michael Weiss', I was wondering if you could help me out to post the solo changes for Joe Zawinul's 'Riverbed'? I transcribed them, but I know I have a lot of mistakes..Such a swinging and beautiful record! Thanks so much!
-Alex

[Michael Weiss]

Glad you enjoyed the CrissCross date.
Unless other inquiring minds really want to know the changes to Riverbed, I'll send by email.

[AllenLowe]

as long as we're asking chord changes - Bob Neloms once told me that HE was told that only Duke Ellington knew the secret of the second change in A Train, and that according to John Lewis, HE was the only one who knew this, and it was not, of course, a simpe 2/7 chord; can you enlighten us without having to kill us all afterwards?

Edited by AllenLowe, 10 April 2012 - 06:09 AM.

[freelancer]

I suppose this secret chord will only work for piano players. With your ten finger options

[Michael Weiss]

My enlightened response is to listen to every version Ellington recorded, live and studio, and painstakingly isolate every second bar of every A section, in-head and out-head, playing each one over and over while seated at your piano, picking out every note of the sonority that you can hear. After thirty hours or so of this you will either find your answer or the closest thing to it.
Have fun!

[AllenLowe]

well, maybe we can have a seance and get John Lewis on the phone -

[JSngry]

Try an Ebm6/D (which is really a D7(b9 b13 or if you're not theory-anal and/or would never even consider playing an A-natural on that chord, ever,, D+7(b9).

This'll still give you the F#/Gb but with the emphasis on a diminished-ish sound (thanks to the Eb instead of an E-natural rather than the whole-tone thing that a #11 auto-triggers in a lot of players.

And for a shell voicing, the Ebm6 gives you that. Let the bass play the D.

Pretty sure Duke used something like this more than once...

Edited by JSngry, 10 April 2012 - 03:21 PM.

[JSngry]

Or hell, just call it a C half-diminished. But that doesn't give you the "mystery" of the root moving up a step in the bass but a half step above that in the chord.

[Dave James]

well, maybe we can have a seance and get John Lewis on the phone -

If you're going to do a seance, get Duke.

[JSngry]

Hell, you couldn't get a straight answer out of duke when he was alive and there might have been some consequences. Now that he's dead...

[Larry Kart]

as long as we're asking chord changes - Bob Neloms once told me that HE was told that only Duke Ellington knew the secret of the second change in A Train, and that according to John Lewis, HE was the only one who knew this, and it was not, of course, a simpe 2/7 chord; can you enlighten us without having to kill us all afterwards?

Billy Strayhorn, the composer, didn't know the "secret"? All this talk above about Duke using something like this and that seems to suggest that many think that's the case and that Duke is the ultimate creator here. Or am I missing something ? In any case, a look at Walter van de Leur's excellent "Something To Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn" will reveal that even though we know that "A Train" was Strayhorn's, many other well known "Ellington" compositions and arrangements were wholly Strayhorn's work, not only in terms of provenance but stylistically as well, though of course the distinctive sound of the orchestra, which was Duke's doing, gives an Ellingtonian shading to most everything. BTW, I agree with Chuck's view that Ellington was the greater composer; it's just that Strayhorn was his own man, not an Ellington acolyte.

[JSngry]

All the more reason why you'd not get a straight answer out of Duke, especially at a seance.

[AllenLowe]

well, Strayhorn wrote it but I'm willing to bet Duke did the piano voicings on his own - lotsa cluster, as Jim indicated above.