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Ab's postings mei 2007

The pulse is inside you

07 mei 2007

"How would you characterize the kind of music you play now?"
"There once was a word used - swing. Swing went in one direction, it was linear, and everything had to be played with an obvious pulse and that's very restrictive. But I used the term 'rotary perception.' If you get a mental picture of the beat existing within a circle you're more free to improvise. People used to think the notes had to fall on the center of the beats in the bar at intervals like a metronome, with three or four men in the rhythm section accenting the same pulse. That's like parade music or dance music. But imagine a circle surrounding each beat - each guy can play his notes anywhere in that circle and it gives him a feeling he has more space. The notes fall anywhere inside the circle but the original feeling for the beat isn't changed. If one in the group loses confidence, somebody hits the beat again. The pulse is inside you. When you're playing with musicians who think this way you can do anything. Anybody can stop and let the others go on. It's called strolling. In the old days when we got arrogant players in the stand we'd do that - just stop playing and a bad musician would be thrown."

"What about the Mingus extended forms?"
"I've been using extended forms and prolonged chords for years and I wasn't the first with that either. I got ideas from Spanish and Arab music. And much more can be done with pedal points - you know, notes sustained underneath changing harmonies but above these notes the keys can be varied so you get all kinds of effects."

Uit Beneath the underdog - His world as composed by Mingus.

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