Keith Whalen - Tri-tone Slominsky Stuff

A couple of licks inspired by Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. In this instance most of the licks are 3 note-per-string style which move up in tri-tones.

Ps: Sorry for the bad audio, this one's kind of old and my recording skills were the pits.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Keith
• Whalen
• Tri-tone
• Slonimsky
• note
• per
• string

[DeadRavers]

Slonimsky's book changed my musical life beyond comprehension! I thought I would never find a book could explain jazz in terms that would make sense to someone who spent 20 years playing classical piano (my teachers were purists and shunned the genre). Although the book is applicable to any musical style, it will scare the bejeezus out of you if can't read music or aren't theory savvy. Its all about the 4th, 5ths, and tritones baby!

[KeithWhalen11]

@DeadRavers It isn't genre specific but it lends itself perfectly to the jazz musician. I saw the book as THE comprehensive insight into melodies and the manipulation - and permutation - of notes within a given spectrum: sometimes an octave, sometimes several. It exhausts all the pentatonic possibilities, showcases some of the bitonal and polytonal world and takes a very mathematical approach, which is why we see so many tri-tones (from the octave splitting). The opening statement said it all:

[KeithWhalen11]

@DeadRavers "The fears of John Stuart Mill are unjustified. There are 479,001,600 possible combinations of the 12 tones of the chromatic scale. With rhythmic variety added to the unbound universe of melodic patterns, there is no likelihood that new music will die of internal starvation in the next 1000 years." - Nicolas Slonimsky, 1 January 1947 Boston, Massachusetts

[DeadRavers]

@KeithWhalen11 ...hopefully by the year 2948 some has or will be writing a similar book based on microtonal scales after getting bored with the 12-tone scale for the last millineum. Well, probably not a book. More like a data feed streamed directly into the brain...from the corpse of Harry Partch LOL

[KeithWhalen11]

@DeadRavers Hahaha. Have you ever listened to Wyschnegradsky? He has some interesting quarter tone piano pieces. watch?v=B9WPfkXQa_Y

[pebberbrown]

I like it - but a little odd on the tone for me personally... I am hearing some NEW symmetrical patterns that I havernt heard before - VERY VERY COOL. Too bad he showed them to us because I am just going to STEAL all this shit possibly by Monday.

[misteredwino]

@pebberbrown This stuff is all from Slonimsky's book of scales and melodic patterns, it's not like any of these licks are new.

[FlyingDonkeyKing]

me like this

[misteredwino]

@KeithWhalen11 Wow, that's impressive then. Well, you sound great so keep it up.

[KeithWhalen11]

@misteredwino Well, these licks are originals. They were conceived with Slonimsky's book in mind though. My actually Slonimsky blog posts are verbatim (so to speak) from his Thesaurus.