Music Monday The concept for From the Plantation to the Penitentiary was taken from African music. I wrote a long, chant-like melody with lots of held notes, but underneath it, there’s a lot of rhythmic motion in the horns and the rhythm section. The groove is a combination of a backbeat mixed with a naningo. For the most part, I voiced the horns in fourths for a pentatonic sound. You’ll notice in measure 15 the horns are playing a C Natural and an F Natural, the Major 3rd and 7th of a C# Major. However, at the same time, the vocal melody is purely from the minor mode. I do this a lot throughout the song—I imply different harmonies in the horn lines to keep it interesting. In measure 20, I use a Flat 9 against the Minor chord in the vocal melody. That’s why I call it a C# Open chord. The tonal center is C#, but the quality of the chord is constantly changing in relation to the horn parts and melody. At Letter E, after the trumpet solo, comes the first interlude. The sound of the song up until then has been strongly Minor, but in the interlude starts on the Major 3rd of C#. The roots of the chords are all part of an F Diminished chord, but the qualities of those chords are all Major. The F7 at the end of that phrase brings us to a new tonal center, C. Notice the IV-I resolution just like in a blues. The next time the interlude is played, Letter I, it ends on an F Major chord, which brings us to our third tonal center, D. Here I introduce an entirely new section and groove. I’ll later use this section as the basis for the soprano sax solo. In that sax solo, he’s basically playing on three different qualities of the D chord—Minor, Major and Dominant. Knowing that I’m eventually heading back to C#, I change the key of the third interlude to E, and just as in the second interlude, I use a Flat III-I resolution. The rhythm section should take special note of the underlying backbeat rhythm. In each section, it changes slightly. The horn parts are often written to reflect and to reinforce this. Enjoy, Wynton
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 18:16:36 +0000
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