Modal-Improv

OK —- getting ready to head out to the incomparable National Trails Dulcimer Festival near Springfield, Ohio (I think it is their 8th festival!), and I’m longing for yet more super-simple CIRCULAR modal chord progressions.

You know, searching for these is a bit like stalking a wild creature. Or it might be something like just wiping the mind clean and letting something come to you out of the blue. At any rate, I will keep on keepin’ on with this because I’ve discovered at least 3 or 4 absolutely KILLER progressions already. I guess I’m greedy, huh?

I guess I’ve got about 19 modal chord progressions to jam around now, and recent months have seen the replacement of some of the weaker ones (usually progressions too tied to one of my tunes — these sometimes just do NOT stand alone) with some much more universal progressions.

I’ve always loved the extremely circular, mesmerizing ones where I just seem to lock into another dimension and lose track of time. Often, these are the simpler sequences of chords, like rs1:

A|D|Em|D:||

But a new one, rs13 is more complex but I still like it:

Bm|G|A|Bm|Em|F#sus|GMaj7|A9:||

…..the last four bars have a nice build, and sustaining a high “pedal” B on top of the whole last 4 bars sounds pretty cool.

I really have to get around to finishing the web page that lays out all these progressions! Too many dulcimers to build right now, really.

LataGata,

Jerry

I seem to be headed in a much more disciplined, logical, and scientific direction. It is about time!!!

I mean that it is about time I started writing some actual music notation. The kind of charts I’m making now are very simple quarter-note level guide-tones: I’m still improvising like crazy, but the structural-level guide tones allow a very organized composition to evolve out of the improvisations. Before, I would do hours and hours of variations on one of my simple reference structures (chord progressions), and maybe record a few of the best (no — the best always occur when the record button is NOT activated!) ideas. You might call this stuff “Noodle City” and I like to think I’m getting out of Noodle City with the structural level guide-tones, but I’m really just moving out into a suburb I suppose, but if I can keep this up I will have a whole new level of coherency to my music. It will be more like composition and less like a jam.

I’m writing all of the structural guide-tones in pencil on staff paper now, but I may transfer some of the variations to the computer, so I can share some of these with you. It is really fun…..I don’t think I have ever enjoyed composition as much in the past.

I hope you are enjoying this new year.

All the Best,

Jerry

I’ve been doing a bunch of work in my home studio with electric dulcimers lately, and I wanted to share some of my favorites with you.

The first tune is a trio of dulcimers around the rs1 Mixolydian progression: it makes an interesting comparison to the version I recorded on November 27th of last year, so I’ll put a link to that right below. These improvisations evolve over time, and melodic gestures, designs, and motifs keep coming back again and again, seeming to say “here I am once again.”

rs1_041507_trio.mp3

rs1_112706trio.mp3

Here is a trio version of the hardy dorian mode version of cabbage (rs4) with a filter-sequence solo part as the foundation or ground. The melodic parts are panned hard right and left, and feature very guitar-like sustained tones:

rs4_dorian_041607_trio.mp3

Shortly after I recorded that, I started wondering how I could get more of the dulcimer-specific magic going in these experiments. Except for the solo fingerstyle interaction with the Adrenalinn II - which seems to me to be strangely dulcimer-like in ways that are hard to explain - the melodic parts just don’t sound or feel like the dulcimer.

So then I thought about adding some intense rhythmic energy, directly inspired by my mentor, the late, great Richard Farina. To me, this is rock n’ roll type energy, and it adds some refreshing vitality and forward momentum. This is just a duet: the original fingerstyle filter-sequence with a pure strumming (or thrashing) part using one of the auto-pan phaser type effects in the Arenalinn, combined with one of the chorus or flange effects in GarageBand:

rs4_dorian_041607_rhy-duet.mp3

After I got a few more of these rhythm tracks down, I decided to go back to one of my favorite mixolydian progressions, the rs1 cycle. I used the same sort of solo fingerstyle filter-sequence groove as a ground, but this time I tried two strumming parts: one rooted in the lower frets, and one up in the 7th and 8th fret area. This track has a real build in intensity, which is something I need to work on a little more diligently:

rs1_041607_rhy-trio.mp3

Enjoy!

Jerry

Howdy Folks:

Since I got my first laptop a few days ago, I’ve been blissfully exploring the joys of wireless uploads and downloads at various cafes and such. (UPDATE: there’s not so much bliss any more, as the bandwidth issues at some of these cafes goes from very fast to an absolute CRAWL! —- meaning slower than my pokey dial-up at home!!).

So here are some more tracks from late December and early January:

rs5_120506duet.mp3

rs4_dorian_121106trio.mp3

rs4_dorian_121106funk_trio.mp3

rs4_sbe2_011107duet.mp3

rs4_sbe2_011107aeolian_trio.mp3

Just for basics, rs5 is based upon Cloud Ships, a beautiful Tyrolean folk song. These days, as in the example, I never once state the original melody, though the shape of some of the backing countermelody phrases clearly have some of the original in mind.

Everything else here is rs4, which is none other that CABBAGE or Passamezzo Moderno. The mode is indicated in the title, unless there is no mode designation, meaning that it is Ionian.

The dorian cabbage jams are the ones that keep me really inspired somehow. I’m just at the very beginning of being able to get more than one melodic part on a single dulcimer, and some of these multitrack versions have a touch of this polyphony going for them. Actually, my goal has always been to move everything to a solo dulcimer, so the multitrack jams are just a fun way to generate some ideas, rather than being an end in themselves.

So……if you are just getting into this improv stuff, and don’t have a ready-made way to multitrack your dulcimer parts* you might want to try the solo route and see how it goes for you. To start, you may do a few times through the reference structure with the simplest chord arpeggios: a true back-up part, really. Then, you might try keeping a very, very simple melody going on the high strings — just let it flow and see what happens — it doesn’t have to be brilliant composition, you just want some sort of slow melodic movement in the upper part while the arpeggios do their natural function of tying the whole texture together.

From here, what I usually do is try to divide my dulcimer up into a bass-player register, a middle chord tone register, and a high lead part melodic register. It might sound too challenging or scary at first to keep more than one thing happening on the same solo dulcimer, but by getting a dialog or question-and -answer going between the parts, you’d be surprised at how much fun this can be. Try to be as PLAYFUL and curious as you can and see what happens.

Enjoy listening, and let me know what you think on the list.

All the Best,

Jerry

*it is easy for me to take the whole multitrack thing for granted, because ever since about 1986 or so, when I could finally afford my first cassette-based 4-track recorder, I’ve been multitracking my dulcimer and guitar parts on a daily basis. I encourage you to try some of this multitrack style of building arrangements for yourself, because it is a great way to develop your timing and feel for a groove, as well as a great way to improve your overall musicianship. However, if you have no way of recording yourself in multitrack fashion, you can still learn a lot by concentrating on your solo playing: experiment with “jogging” or “toggling” between your back-up arpeggios and bass lines and leads. You don’t need to have everything going on at the same time!

Howdy Folks:

It has taken me quite a while, but I have finally started to upload some mp3 files of my recent improvisations. The first one is a trio of fingerpicked electric dulcimer parts around my Reference Structure 1 (rs1), which is a great circular Mixolydian Progression:

A / / / | / / / / | D / / / | / / / / | Em7 / / / | / / / / | D / / / | / / / / ||

There are some subcycles of chords based off of each of the main chords as well:

A-Em7-A for the A

D-A7-D for the D

Now…here is the mp3:

rs1_112706trio

This one is almost 4MB, so it might be better if you had a broadband connection.

Update — Here is another one of my recent modal improv exercises. This one is Reference Structure 2 (rs2) and it comes from a mid-nineties synth jam that I’ve always had a lot of fun with.

Originally, I called it the Dm-C Sequence, because I played it on the white keys of the synth keyboard. As a more modern rs2, it has been transposed up a whole step to Em, so now a more complete name might be the Em-D-A Sequence, because it really feels like there are three separate modal key centers that I use:

E dorian — D Ionian — A Mixolydian

Em  /  / | /  /  / | A7  /  / | /  /  / |

G  /  / | /  /  / | D  /  / | /  /  / |

A  /  / | /  /  / | G  /  / | /  /  / |

Em  /  / | /  /  / | /  /  / | Bm  /  / |

Here is the mp3 file:

rs2_113006waltz_trio

All the Best,

Jerry

Howdy Folks:

Modal-Improv is the successor to DulciTheory, and there are a few important differences in the two lists:

1. DulciTheory was a newsletter-type email list. Modal-Improv is a discussion list hosted at Google Groups:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/modal-improv

Learn to improvise and compose using purely diatonic modal chord progressions. Keyboard, Guitar, Mandolin, Ukulele, Mountain Dulcimer, Hammered Dulcimer, and Folk Harp, are all instruments that will work great. Once you get your backing tracks recorded, singing over them is a blast.

2. As you can see in the description above, the list is open to guitar players, mandolin players, keyboard players — really any chordal instrument — so it won’t be restricted to mountain dulcimer players. Many of the backing tracks will be recorded with mountain dulcimer, but there will also be some guitar and other instruments from time to time.

3. I started out DulciTheory with a discussion of Secondary Dominants (first issue in fact!) and how to find them on the mountain dulcimer. Modal-Improv will be restricted to a Diatonic Pitch Set, so we won’t be dealing with the blues, which is often highly chromatic, or any sorts of progressions which invoke other key centers.

4. The foundation of Modal-Improv will be mp3 files I will upload to this blog. These will serve as example exercises so you can get some insights into how to make your own unique backing tracks. Of course, you are free to improvise over the tracks I post, but you probably will get more inspired when you figure out what simple chord progressions or Reference Structures really turn you on. I’ll try to talk about choosing chord progressions on the list.

Stay Tuned!

Jerry