Composer's Corner

[TroyK]

This is a spin off from another thread where we discussed uploading our compositions for feedback or advice. I'll post the first one below, but general thread rules:

* Rights to all songs posted are reserved in full by the composer/poster unless they indicate otherwise in their post.

* Only post your own compositions.

* When you post, let people know if you are looking for specific, general or no feedback.

* It should go without saying to be constructive and respectful in the feedback that you give. This is people's art here that we're talking about.

* When commenting on someone's tune, please put the title in your subject line or make it otherwise really obvious which tune, since there may be more than one open discussion at a time.

[TroyK]

Here's the first posting kick off. I put this tune up in the Music Theory forum because I was looking for a chord to end on. I don't have a scratch recording of it yet, but I'll try to get one. Usually when we play this, I walk 4 or 8 bars out front with the drummer and then play stop time with the melody when we start the head. Press roll sets up the "bridge" and we go back to playing time through it.

It's a 20 bar form, sorry. I didn't want it to be, but the song insisted.

I'm happy with whatever feedback you'd like to give. I'm always interested in thoughts on how I've notated, since I don't play a lot of things that involve sight reading, I'm never entirely sure if I'm notating in a reader friendly way.

This is a song that I wrote some years ago and then put on the shelf. I played it maybe a year later with a band other than the one I wrote it for and have just recently resussitated it for a project I'm involved in now.

I'm happy for you guys to play it and if anyone is so inclined, I even grant public performance rights (with credit), so long as you're not releasing a recording.

Enjoy, I look forward to seeing yours.

[txstatebass]

Seriously, I love the idea of this thread! Nice tune! If I may, there's a little editing trick that I notice a lot of writers don't use. I believe that in notation, the beat needs to be made clear. For example, When you use an eighth note followed by a quarter rest and a half note with an eighth rest at the end you are hiding the mid-point of the bar. Just a suggestion, but it might make it easier to read (therefore more Adam-proof) to re-notate it as eighth note, two eighth rests, eighth note tied to dotted quarter and eighth rest. Seems like more work (and nit-picking I know) but it will make the division of the measure clearer.

Sorry about the ni-picking, but seriously, that's all I have to say about critiquing a good, solid tune, and in the interest of fairness...Attachment 129045

Same as above, play it if you want, I welcome criticism, don't record without sending me $$

[fingers]

Very nice. I played through it last night and really dug it.

Couple thoughts

1)How fast do you do it?

2) The thing that struck me is the melody is pretty minor sounding but the tonality of many of the chords is majorish. This isn't a critique as much as a question... was this your intent? I messed around a bit and changing all the Bb13 to Bb- chords seemed to darken it up a bit. Not sure if that was your intent.

3) The D9 in bar 15 kinda stuck out to me. I couldn't get the voice leading in that descending figure to work for my ear. That F# always stuck out. Again making that D9 a D- chord seemed to smooth it out a bit.

4) What Adam is saying about the notation makes sense. I wouldn't mind it either way but I agree the goal of notation is to be clear.

5) How married are you to the chord extensions. In other words do you expect guys reading it to play all of them. I recently have taken a page from Ben Allison's book and notate the basic tonality (major, minor, aug, dim, or dom) and let the guitar or piano figure it out from there. Just curious how other composers deal with it more than anything.

I'd love to hear a recording of this tune. My less than bad piano skills don't really allow me to much more than hack through it.

Great tune Troy. Adam I'll give your a look in a bit. I'm cramming for a gig tonight and should really get back to it. I'll post something of mine in a few days so that we have time to discuss these. Also my offer to host recordings still stands. Hooray for jazz.

[TroyK]

Originally Posted by fingers

1)How fast do you do it?

Oh, let's call it 97bpm

Originally Posted by fingers

2) The thing that struck me is the melody is pretty minor sounding but the tonality of many of the chords is majorish. This isn't a critique as much as a question... was this your intent? I messed around a bit and changing all the Bb13 to Bb- chords seemed to darken it up a bit. Not sure if that was your intent.

It's been a while since I first drafted this and I'm struggling to remember on that point, what my intent was, but I'm going to say "yeah". I've always been kind of intrigued by that phenom of sad songs in major keys (What's New) and happy songs in minor keys (bridge of Angel Eyes) and how that works. The emotion behind this song was a transitional period from tough year to a new year that started with some new collaborations and better bookings than I had been getting, plus spring training (baseball). So, it's sort of an optimistic song about crawling out of a rough patch, but looking forward. I'll play it with the minor chords and see how that feels, I went pretty directly to these chords without trying much else.

Originally Posted by fingers

3) The D9 in bar 15 kinda stuck out to me. I couldn't get the voice leading in that descending figure to work for my ear. That F# always stuck out. Again making that D9 a D- chord seemed to smooth it out a bit.

That is one of my stock turnarounds, as I post more, you'll see it again W-9, down a half step to X9, down a 1/2 step to Y-9, down a 1/2 step to Z9. Don't remember when I started that, but it recurs. To your point, though the G is a 4th of D9, which is a little odd and D- would make more compositional sense. I'll play with it, good catch.

Originally Posted by fingers

4) What Adam is saying about the notation makes sense. I wouldn't mind it either way but I agree the goal of notation is to be clear.

Done! I'm not attached to the way I notated it. I was probably playing with the structure and it just ended up as it did. Would rather it was clear and easier to read. Thanks to both of you for that.

Originally Posted by fingers

5) How married are you to the chord extensions. In other words do you expect guys reading it to play all of them. I recently have taken a page from Ben Allison's book and notate the basic tonality (major, minor, aug, dim, or dom) and let the guitar or piano figure it out from there. Just curious how other composers deal with it more than anything.

So, in general, I don't like to dictate voicings to people or even limit them to the extensions I intended. I usually approach a jazz composition/lead sheet as a sketch and I want people to bring their own stuff to it. If it's a group I'm in, I'll reserve the right to say "that does/doesn't sound like I intended", but I'm pretty hands off. Which ones are you referring to in this chart. The -6/9 is pretty delibertate. My little decending maj/min 9ths, were pretty intentional. The final chord, which is what started this thread, I don't care that much, I'd rather everyone play with it together until we find some dramatic, resolution to the song.

Originally Posted by fingers

I'd love to hear a recording of this tune...Also my offer to host recordings still stands.

I'll get one on Friday. I've got a social session and I'll just bring it in and get them to run it for the Zoom recorder. I think we should take you up on hosting.

Originally Posted by fingers

Hooray for jazz.

Indeed!

And thanks guys for indulging me on this. My piano tuner is here now and she just informed me that she's subbing in a band that is playing another of my tunes, which I didn't know, but is a nice surprise.

Adam, I'll check yours out and look forward to seeing everyone else's. I'll wait my turn to post another.

[Sam Sherry]

Thanks for starting this up, Troy. I have GOT to get back to writing!

Here's one of mine that I don't mind, called Two Songs 'cause it certainly has enough chords for "two songs."

I wanted to explore writing something that moved as slowly as "Li'l Darling."

Intro's in and never played again. The tune is through-form.

[fingers]

Now that my youngest started preschool I've started writing again. I had about a 3 year dry spell. Arranged some stuff but no muse for writing.

Nice Sam. I'm between students at my teaching studio so I hacked through Two Songs. Some nice stuff. I like the way you harmonized the Close Encounters theme sounding thing at the beginning of the form. Love the Eb/F to F#7 bar. I'll play through it a think harder when I get home from my gig tonight.

[jlilley]

Troy,
I thought I mentioned that we were playing Una Colada (with your permission, of course). It is a nice tune and fits into our set well, thanks for sharing the chart with me.
John

[TroyK]

Originally Posted by jlilley

Troy,
I thought I mentioned that we were playing Una Colada (with your permission, of course). It is a nice tune and fits into our set well, thanks for sharing the chart with me.
John

Hey, I'm happy you guys are playing it, I gave you the chart and my blessing, I just hadn't thought about it since then and it was a nice surprise from Ginny.

[txstatebass]

Hey guy's I finally got around to uploading tunes to the website. You can hear a version of my submission on bookerbass.com in the tunes section under the title "Nocturne Parisian"
I'd love some feedback on the website too. Enjoy!

[TroyK]

Nice Adam! I love that Nocturne emotion, I think Nocturne Parisianne is better name for it. I enjoyed that lack of movement, if that makes sense. The way you changed the color without moving the chord away from it's tonal center.

I don't really have any critisism for you. I think it's great. Like mine, it's a non-standard form length. Sometimes they just write themselves that way. If it were me, which it's not, I might present this as 6/8 vs 3/4. The phrases seem to break more evenly that way and then the A sections would be 8 bars vs 16. The song of course would sound the same and I've already admitted to being suspect at notation, so take that for what it's worth.

But, as I was playing along with it, I was more comfortable counting in 6 for some reason.

Nice tune!

Sam, I'll take a break later and give yours a whirl.

[txstatebass]

Thanks Troy! I was thinking of extending the last four bars as well, give the tune some breathing room. I'll check that 6/8 out. Might tighten up the form a bit. Thanks!

[fingers]

Nice Adam. I really dig the melody. I have been experimenting with 'circular' forms. 'Circular' meaning without a strong cadence to denote the end of the form and the beginning of the next. I don't know if that was your intention here but I think you have done a really compelling and unique treatment of that idea here. Personally I think adding a little vamp on the end might break that up.

Two thoughts about the performance. I hope you don't mind. I think that getting a composition on paper is less than half the battle. Bringing the idea to fruition is paramount.

1) Tunes like this don't really have a strong inherent shape built into the tune. That's the cool and also very challenging thing about them. Think of My Funny Valentine. The B is such a stark departure from the A that there is almost a built in contour. Blue In Green on the other hand (which I think of as the mother of all circular form tunes) is such a Mobius Strip of chords that the band has to provide the contour.

2) To me 3 has the potential to be the squarest and the hippest of all time signatures. To me the key to really keeping 3 moving is to be able to hear the quarter and the dotted quarter at the same time and switch effortlessly between them. Elvin and Jimmy Garrison were the masters of this. Every once and a while the way especially the drummer is playing 3 seems a little confining.

Great job though.

IMHO, YMMV, RSVP, XYZPDQ

[fingers]

I posted a tune of mine called Clean and Clear here. There is a chart and two recordings. I posted two because the players are all different and it is pretty cool how different people interpret the same tune. I have my favorite of the two but I'd also be interested in what you guys think.

You guys are welcome to play it but please contact ASCAP if you want to record it. It was published but Outside-In Music ASCAP. Copyright 2006.

[TroyK]

Check us all out with our refusal to write things in conventional form lenghts! 14 bar minor blues, nice!

Very cool song Marc, what I call a "last set" or a "late night" song, it emotes that after hours, Sam Spade nocturne thing that I love so much in jazz.

A point of curiousity for me, both in terms of composition and notation is bar 5, you designated the chord a D#dim, but you're notating the note as an Eflat. the E natural seems kind of important to me in that phrase, but it's actually not in the chord or it's corresponding scale. If you chose a D#/Eb7b9, you'd pick up the E natural, but then the F would be the visitor, so I guess it's a tradeoff. It works and I'm not suggesting it would be better, but I wonder if you went back and forth on that. I would have, because I waste a lot of time getting bogged down in things like that. And, out of curiousity, is there a reason you called the chord and D# and the note an Eb?

Nice tune, I'm loving this thread. Nice performances. I'm not sure that I have a favorite of the two. The 1st one has a little more air in it, which I think the song seems to want, but I like the bigger horn in the 2nd track, so it's the wonder of jazz performance, always a little different.

Nice tone coming off of the "fingers" too.

[fingers]

Thanks for the listen and the comments Troy. At the time I wrote that tune I was really into a Liebman record (The Elements: Water) and had soprano in my head. The first group to really play it though, Jazz Conspiracy, did it with tenor and that recording was on an album that had some critical acclaim called Up To Get Down. We got pretty busy for a bit and it became a bit of a favorite so it was a regular part of our set and I came to really dig it on tenor. That was in 2006. In 2008 I recorded it with some of my favorite players in Chicago and had the sax player play it on soprano and I remembered why I wrote it with soprano in mind.

As far as the bar in question... I'll have to revisit my logic on that one. I think I called it D# since I think of it as an alteration of the IV chord. I think the Eb has something to do with the direction of the melody or how it transposed for sax. I remember agonizing and just bit the bullet and brought it to a rehearsal and they played it right so I stopped fretting.

Thanks for the listen. Great thread.

[TroyK]

Originally Posted by fingers

I remember agonizing and just bit the bullet and brought it to a rehearsal and they played it right so I stopped fretting.

Yeah, i dig it. My goal frequently with charting tunes is just to communicate to the guys I play with what the tune is, then let them bring their thing to it. I find myself agonizing over musical semantics like this, but if they can play what I hear, then it doesn't matter.

Back to my tune "Opening Day" for a second. I took it to my once a month social session last night and realized a couple of things. 1) Got almost exactly the same feedback on the notation as from you guys. Need to fix that, though they knew what I meant and were able to play it. 2) That song is not baked yet. It didn't really flow very well and I stopped liking some of the changes and arrangment as I had decided it. 3) I don't know if it's this way for you guys, but I write for some other instrument, you said soprano for your tune. I'm usually thinking about piano or trumpet or alto sax or tenor/trumpet quintet or something when I'm writing. So my process is writing a melody for them, writing some chords and some hits and things and I usually forget to consider what the bass should be doing. I'm so out of the mindset of a bassist when I am writing, that it surprises me almost every time I take a new tune in for a first run through. Oddly, I can't play other people's new compositions fairly intuitively, but I choke on mine and always have to come home and relearn my own tune as a bassist. Stange occurances.

I love this thread too. I'm going to bury you guys in my ditties.

Sam, I'm going to run your tune today. I'm not ignoring it, I just haven't spend any time in my studio that wasn't already sucked up with project.

[fingers]

Back to the notating harmonies thing for a minute.

Clean and Clear is one of the first tunes where I tried to leave the harmonies pretty basic and encourage the players involved to try stuff. It is pretty cool how the different guys took that idea and ran with it too.

Troy, that's what I was wondering about your tune. Many of your notated chords are extended past the 7th but the extensions are not in the melody. I like the colors of the chords. I was thinking about how strict you are with those colors.

Some band leaders/composers want things as written for the whole tune, some the head then depart, and some (like me of late) where I want a personal stamp from the get go.

Thoughts? Talk amongst yourselves.


*this is what I'd like to do with this thread too is pick up on some concepts and discuss as they come up.

[txstatebass]

Finger, I totally understand. Sometimes it's hard to not be a control freak when writing, but it's really a game of know your audience. I won't insult the intelligence of some of the cats I play with by writing every little extension, and when writing for younger musicians those extensions aren't going to get played anyway. When it comes to jazz charts, I let the pianist/guitarist know what kind of structure I want and let then figure out the rest.

Troy, again I understand. I try my hardest to write from a non-bass perspective, and end up having to learn my own tunes. On the bright side, it keeps it fresh for me!

[TroyK]

It's a good thought. I'll have to consider. I will say on Opening Day, I happened to write/discover/settle into the changes and then write the melody over them, which is not my normal process. That may explain it a bit.

There are certain chords/extensions that I'm fairly attached to, that Eb-9, D9, Db-9, C9 turnaround for example, but in general, I subscribe to the idea of not telling someone who is a much better pianist than me how to voice their chord. The same way that I hate when a sax player hands me an "arrangement" with a bass line that they wrote that is either a bit pedestrian (I-III-V-VII, ii-v, V-v...) or crazy, all over the place with grace notes and things they think would be hip. I prefer that they give me a road map and a description and let me play and should consider what my charts suggest about extending the same courtesy.

So; min, major, dim, alt, 7#9, etc. I'll think about that.