Decoding Monder
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog

Week 1: Some Other Blues - (with Remi Buldoc, 1995)

4/21/2017

4 Comments

 
This is one of my favorite late-night Youtube discoveries, a 1995 cassette recording of Remi Buldoc 's (currently chair of jazz studies at McGill) group playing the Coltrane tune Some Other Blues. Monder is at his fiery best here, and the band (Doug Weiss, Owen Howard) doesn't hurt either. His solo exhibits all the things I admire in his playing, beautiful architecture, strange, harmonically ambiguous lines, and hard driving rhythmic intensity. Check it out: (Monder's solo starts at 2:36)

Analysis

Picture
Monder starts this solo with a simply voiced F6 chord, a very neutral sound. The top note, D, becomes the focus, generating the motif that occurs for the first time in bar 5. He then adds a pickup into the second statement of the melody, now in a C whole tone scale.
Picture
This motif is repeated with the intervals augmented, still remaining in C whole tone. 
Picture
He then modulates the motif back into F mixolydian, adding a few extra notes before each climb and messing with the rhythm. The major 7th leap down from Ab to A natural in bar 18 has an particularly harsh sound.
Picture
He jumps back down to B natural, which we first hear as the root of a #4 diminished chord or just as the F blues scale, but is instead assimilated as the fifth of a F#/Gb major scale. The motif of ascending and quickly descending remains intact. In bar 24, he jumps back down to B natural again, but instead makes it the seventh of a C melodic minor scale, or F lydian dominant. In bar 26, you can see Monder's harmonic gears spinning, pausing on the C before using D# (formerly Eb) as a common tone connecting C melodic minor to a B triad. 
Picture
Most players would immediately shy away from the B triad, using it as a small cadence back into F, but instead Monder digs in his heels and plays an entire 8 BARS in B major. I find this section of his solo hilarious; the lilting sound of that motive and its aggressively tonal sound is so offputting because its a tritone off from the key.
Picture
Monder begins playing more horizontally at the top of the next chorus, with a Dbmaj7 arpeggio, an aeolian sound.
Picture
The first line of this segment is the most clearly Monder plays the changes in this solo. He very clearly outlines the Bb sound in bar 41, then subs in a Bb- before playing Am-7, and Ab-7 as a tritone sub for D7. He begins to slide outside again in bar 46, playing a Gbmaj7 (phrygian) arpeggio and remaining in Gb/F# until the end of bar 48, where he introduces another hilariously tonal motive.  
Picture
He experiments with this motif, both in Gb and F, before transitioning into a chromatic line that resolves, strangely, to E. The phrase afterwords is puzzling, to say the least. If the C# in bar 55 was moved down to C natural, it would be a simple diminished arpeggio based of the 3 of the D7b9, an idea that everyone has heard thousands of times, but that isn't what Monder plays. The C# still functions fine as a half step enclosure of D, but the idea becomes something much more alien because of it. 
Picture
Monder pauses, then plays an ascending C whole tone scale starting on the third, adding some passing tones at the end, then sliding into a pattern of two add4 triads a half step apart.
Picture
The last four notes of the previous segment (C Db C Bb) resolve naturally to A, and Monder plays a pretty clear D7b9 in bar 68. He outlines the G-7 with a 4th + 2nd intervallic pattern, a concept he discusses in one of his instructional videos. Bar 71 builds tension beautifully at the bottom of the chorus. 
Picture
That open A string on the downbeat is so heavy, as are the notes he adds on top of it.
Picture
Picture
More harmonically ambiguous lines build tension until the top of the next chorus, where Monder lands on an A natural, and then plays a series of ascending and descending 11 chords with an F common tone on top. 
Picture
The chords in the end of the last segment voice lead well into the pattern that starts here, whole step descending chords that I first identified as -7b9's, but what could also be maj7add4 or 7(13)'s. 
Picture
Monder finishes that descending chord motif, and plays a few more lines in the next chorus before the alto sneaks in and starts the fours. 


Lessons

  1. Be able to detach yourself from the standard 2-5-1 turnaround on the blues. Just because you can play it doesn't mean you should.
  2. When you find a sound that works, dig your heels in.
  3. Be able to express multiple sounds with one continuous line.
  4. Connecting dissonant sounds to consonant sounds through common tones makes the dissonance work.
  5. Don't be afraid to play guitaristicaly.
  6. Learn to play the changes without playing bebop. 
4 Comments
http://www.ukbesteessays.com/ link
10/23/2018 06:28:07 am

I have totally enjoyed the song! I must say that this is the type of music that I am always looking for. It gives me the warm and peaceful feeling that I always want to gain every time I listen to something. I am so grateful because I have seen this site and was able to discover a song that will surely make my day complete for a while. Please do not stop posting or sharing songs such as this because I want to know more and more. Thank you so much.

Reply
order custom essay link
7/11/2019 11:33:41 pm

It's indeed an honor to actually know about this even though I am still having a hard time understanding all of them. I have been checking your site for the last few weeks and this is the first time that I had the guts to write a comment about the thoughts that I have about it. I have to be honest and tell you how much amazed I am when I found out that you share articles like this. I have a friend who will actually love this for sure. I might as well share this to him tonight since we are going to meet for some catch ups.

Reply
History Assignment Writing link
10/31/2019 03:02:29 am

Treat assignment help offers custom assignment online where you can get excellent writing services from our Professional writers for your assignments. Treat Assignment Help is top-notch solution for custom <a href="https://www.treatassignmenthelp.co.uk/service/english-assignment-help">english-assignment-help</a> online in UK. Hire best coursework writers online and send your assignment requirements, our writing experts will give you affordable pricing quotation. for more info please email at: help@treatassignmenthelp.co.uk ! Call us at Toll Free Number Or Whatsapp at: +44 7520644027 ..!!

Reply
Buy Dissertation Online UK link
12/11/2020 08:43:20 pm

I am interested to hear new songs that is why I am here and fully enjoying to read this post which is very interesting for the readers and new visitors

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Tim Watson is a guitarist and composer based out of Boston, where he attends the Frost School of Music on the prestigious Stamps scholarship. 

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog