Sarah Jerrom analyzes her work talking about instrumentation, orchestration, lyric writing, and the process of combining 17 instruments with 4 voices.
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Frank Carlberg: Some Harmonic Strategies In (Jazz) Composition
Frank Carlberg discusses techniques he uses to open up harmonic possibilities for new works with a particular focus on triads, tetrachods, and other harmonic devices.
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John Korsrud: Introduction to Hocketing and Kenny Wheeler’s Last Work
Hocket Night in Canada
I’m truly flattered to be asked to contribute to the ISJAC blog. Thank you for inviting me. Even though I grew up in Vancouver BC, playing trumpet in lots of big bands, funk, and salsa bands, my compositional training was in classical new music, and my compositional goal and interest is to bridge the gap between these diverse influences. I’m very conscious of trying to create something unique, while being impactful, exciting, and entertaining. In my quest for finding freshness, I look for unusual harmonic approaches, unusual forms/grooves/genres, and so on.
One way to create melodic freshness is with the seldom-used (but easily applied) technique of hocketing. This method, similar to klangfarbenmelodie, is the simple dividing of a melody between two or more instruments. This can create musical texture, rhythmic interplay, and the illusion of counterpoint. Excellent examples of hocketting can be found in in this brief passage of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto #3 (1921), and in this section of Louis Andriessen’s De Staat (1976). An interesting variation is the micro-canon effect found in David Lang’s Sweet Air (1999) or Louis Andriessen’s Hout (1991). Here the melodies are repeated an eighth note or quarter note later by others. A great effect.
My jazz orchestra composition, Cruel Yet Fair (1995), uses lots of repetition, transposition, quasi-twelve tone composition, and hocketing. This piece works very well live, and drummers love playing it. The groove is based on an Afro 12/8 and a half-time 12/8 feel, similar to Tower of Power’s Good Credit. It is also influenced harmonically and rhythmically by Alberto’s Ginastera’s 2nd String Quartet (1958). Ginastera showed me how a twelve-tone type language could have a forward propulsion that up until then, no other composer was doing. His music had a drive, tension, and excitement I was looking for.
Cruel Yet Fair Example 1: The violin and piano play the melody two octaves apart. Generally, I concentrate on orchestration and instrumental colour first, composing material to fit that. Here, I wanted to hear trombones in the very bottom part of their range; the melody is divided equally amongst them. I chose the melodic pitches so that no trombone would have to have slide changes of more than a minor third, which would otherwise be awkward at this tempo. Hocketting sounds smoother and is easier to play if the motifs overlap slightly, and it also sounds better if someone is playing the full melody, as the piano and violin are doing here. I further hocket the electric bass and electric guitar into two fragments.
Cruel Yet Fair Example 2: The violin plays the twelve-tone-esque melody and I wanted to hear the trumpets in a nice comfortable, yet bright, range. The three trumpets divide the melody equally and we get a bit of a three-over-four effect when they overlap slightly with each other and land on the downbeat–this alignment helps with rhythmic accuracy. The tenor saxophone plays every second note of the melody, as do trombones 2 and 3. I avoid octave doublings when I can for a cleaner sound and I think this is the only octave doubling in the piece. Then the melody is fragmented again, played by the trombone in its most powerful, highest, and brightest range, doubled in unison by soprano and alto saxophone. It’s a nice strong effect.
At Letter H we revisit the introduction and the main theme. At Letter I, we modulate up a half step to inject an extra kick of energy for the soloist, and also to put the soloist in a friendlier key. Letter K is the breakdown and the beginning of the climax, which occurs at the Golden Mean. The final chord is a twelve-tone cluster voiced within one octave.
Iguana (1993)
Click to See Full Score (RECORDING STARTS ON PAGE 5)
My piece Iguana (1993) has a groove that is mostly hip-hop swing, and it uses lots of hocketing. The piece was composed in several small segments, or micro-compositions, with little thought to where they would end up in the larger piece. In the end, it was assembled in quasi-collage form. I often make several photocopies of the score, cut them up with scissors, and then rearrange until it makes sense. I remember spending weeks on this form until I was happy with it. Well-known collage-style pieces included Django Bates’ New York, New York (1998), and John Zorn’s Speedfreaks (1991). Collage style is almost always discouraged in pedagogy, as it is often seen as a cheap trick to get away from having to develop your material, and I suppose there is much truth to that. But I think, done properly, it can be dramatic and entertaining.
Iguana Example 1 (m. 61 to 68 [about 0:56]): I try to find grooves and harmonic approaches that are off the beaten path. Here I’m using a hip-hop swing/shuffle and kick/snare pattern. The kick pattern is doubled in the bass, trombones 3 and 4, and bari sax. The snare pattern is found in the violin and trumpets. The saxophones are playing a chromatic pattern in 5/8, voiced in semitone clusters. The bass part is a Bb pedal, but the violin and trumpets are in B major. The trombones are hocketting a slightly overlapping 4/4 pattern. Though this section is quite atonal, it works because it is rhythmically interesting and repetitive enough. I find atonality or dissonance ceases to sound dissonant if it’s presented in rhythmically interesting ways, like it can be in hip-hop, rap, percussion ensembles, etc. Oops, I just noticed a mistake in the score. The drum snare shot in m. 81 should be on beat 4.
Iguana Example 2 (m. 224 – 229 [about 5:01]): Here we have two simultaneous hocketings. One is in the trumpets and upper saxophones, each with their own hocketting patterns. The other, outlining the bass part, is in the trombones and lower saxophones, each group with their own pattern. You can hear the division of parts much clearer live than in this recording — though I did try to pan things as much as possible. Iguana’s climax—also unintentionally at the Golden Mean—is one long ascending hocket starting at m. 256.
One of my recent pieces is Force Majeure (2000) for small ensemble, created in collaboration with filmmaker Jenn Strom and photographer Laurence Rooney. We try to create stability and instability by using several meters, visually and musically, creating anxiety, then resolution. I have long been interested in adding visual and theatrical elements into composition. Not only is this part of the evolution of making powerful art, but it is also a way for us musicians and composers to get our music on platforms such as Youtube and other platforms.
The 2013 Kenny Wheeler Commission
In 2013 Hard Rubber Orchestra commissioned and recorded Kenny Wheeler’s last large work. I have included links below to audio and to a copy of the score for the suite’s opening movement.
I contacted Kenny Wheeler in late 2012 about a small commission. I had heard that though Mr. Wheeler was unable to play trumpet for physical reasons, he “was still keen to compose.” I asked Mr. Wheeler for a ten-minute piece, but a few months later, to my surprise, Kenny mailed us original, hand-written scores for five movements. The work premiered October 19, 2013. Mr. Wheeler would pass away about a year later and we would lose a musical giant, His influence on jazz composers around the world cannot be overstated.
We recorded the Suite for Hard Rubber Orchestra, featuring Norma Winstone, in 2016 for Justin Time Records, and it may also be found on Soundcloud.
I have included the score to Movement I:
Click for the Full Score
Darcy James Argue also provided some wonderful liner notes for the album.
Every new album of Kenny Wheeler big band music is a blessing. For a composer of such significance, recordings of his large-scale works have been frustratingly few and far between. Now that he has left us, such documents have become even more precious, particularly this one: the Suite for Hard Rubber Orchestra is Wheeler’s final music for large ensemble.
The idea of commissioning Kenny Wheeler to write for the Hard Rubber Orchestra came from Vancouver-based trombonist Hugh Fraser, a longtime Wheeler confederate. During his final years, the physical exertions of brass playing made it difficult for Kenny to perform, but he was still eager to express himself compositionally — a late-career echo of the circumstances behind his initial big band outing, Windmill Tilter, written while he was forced to take time away from the horn to recover from an impacted wisdom tooth.
And so it came to pass that HRO director John Korsrud approached Wheeler in January of 2013 with the idea of applying for commissioning support from the Canada Council for the Arts. But apparently Kenny had music in him that needed writing, and no intention of waiting for the Canada Council to give him the green light. Just three months later, Hard Rubber Orchestra HQ got a rather unexpected phone call from Kenny letting them know the music was complete and a parcel of handwritten score pages was enroute! (Fortunately, the grant was in fact approved.) The HRO premiered the music that fall, on October 19, 2013 in a performance at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University.
Wheeler’s manuscript contained a work in five movements but in no particular order, leaving the sequencing up to the ensemble. On this recording, they are interspersed with improvisations featuring Brad Turner, whose searching, intervallic approach to the trumpet is deeply informed by Kenny’s profound contributions to the instrument. Brad’s duets with bassist André Lachance, pianist Chris Gestrin, and guitarist Ron Samworth represent the unpremeditated side of Kenny’s art, recalling the freely improvised passages he often included as palette-cleansers between orchestrated works in live performance.
The Suite itself is a focused distillation of the ingredients found in all of Wheeler’s music: yearning melodies, serpentine counterpoint, lovingly-framed symmetry, deceptive harmonic resolutions, flowingly mixed meters, dark full sonorities burnished to a lustrous bronze… and of course, the sound of the human voice. Wheeler’s longtime friend and collaborator, Norma Winstone, brings her timelessly ethereal sound to Kenny’s swan song, and you can hear in her voice the accumulated sense-memory of decades of shared moments.
While this music is quintessentially Kenny, it is also full of delightful surprises: among them, the uncharacteristically rustic simplicity of Movement I’s blowing changes, the fiendishly acrobatic voice-and-guitar countermelody underneath Mike Herriott’s bravura flugelhorn solo in Movement II, the breezy, Jobim-like insouciance of Movement III’s melodic permutations, the baroque filigrees in Movement IV that launch Campbell Ryga’s alto solo, and the deeply affecting moment when the austerity of Movement V’s parallel perfect intervals gives way to warm, welcoming thirds.
Kenny Wheeler left us in the fall of 2014, but he left us with a gem, lovingly performed and recorded by an ensemble of deeply devoted musicians.
— Darcy James Argue
Thank you very much to the ISJAC blog for inviting me. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions or comments. I hope this short blog was of interest to you.
About the Author:
John Korsrud is a composer and trumpeter living in Vancouver, Canada.
He is the leader and principal composer of the 18-piece Hard Rubber Orchestra, a jazz/ new music ensemble he formed in 1990. HRO has toured across Canada several times, to Europe, and released five CDs, most recently Iguana (2022), and Kenny Wheeler’s Suite for Hard Rubber Orchestra (2018). The orchestra has produced several multi-media shows, a television special and even a two new music ice shows including one for the 2010 Olympic Games. Hard Rubber Orchestra has commissioned over fifty Canadian composers from both jazz and classical backgrounds. Notable commissions include Kenny Wheeler, Darcy James Argue, Christine Jensen, Brad Turner, John Hollenbeck, Marianne Trudel, Giorgio Magnanensi, Keith Hamel, Linda Bouchard, Paul Dolden, Fred Stride, Hugh Fraser, and Rene Lussier.
John has been commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra, where he performed his “Come to the Dark Side” for Orchestra and Trumpet at Carnegie Hall. Other commissions include the Vancouver Symphony, CBC Radio Orchestra, Albany Symphony New Music Festival, and several Canadian and Dutch ensembles.
He is the recipient of the 2001 Canada Council Joseph S. Stauffer Prize, 2003 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the 2012 City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for Music, and the 2015 Canada Council Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award. John was a frequent participant in programs at The Banff Centre between 1984 and 1994, and he studied composition with Louis Andriessen at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Amterdam from 1995 to 1997.
As a trumpet player, John has played with international improvisors George Lewis, Barry Guy, Han Bennink and Anthony Braxton, and performed at jazz festivals in Berlin, Havana, Amsterdam, Lisbon and Chicago.
David Caffey: The Jazz Soli: The Arranger’s Solo
“The jazz soli is the arranger’s solo!” I can’t remember who it was that I first heard say that, but I believe it is absolutely true. I’ve always been intrigued by jazz solis, saxophone solis especially, but also brass solis and trombone solis.
A soli is the spot in a jazz arrangement where you as the arranger have the opportunity to write something that represents what you would play at that moment if you were the soloist. Of course, since you are writing it down, you can work with it until it says exactly what you want it to say, which is very different than improvising the solo. The composer whose soli writing I found to be most compelling early on in my studies was Thad Jones. Who can forget the saxophone solis on Groove Merchant, Don’t Git Sassy, and Fingers? And Little Pixie, in which even the opening melody sounds like a soli? Little Pixie is really soli writing from the beginning to the piano solo. It is two different “soloists” (brass and saxophones) playing and then trading 16s, 8s, 4s, and 2s. This is really exciting music that builds at an amazing pace!
In recent years I have written a number of jazz arrangements and compositions that include solis by saxophone sections, brass sections, trombones, and mixed instruments. I’m happy to share some of the ways I go about writing a soli and a few of the techniques I use.
The most important aspect of a jazz soli is the melody. It seems obvious, but I’m sometimes surprised how often I hear solis that don’t have interesting melodies. It’s important! When I began writing a saxophone soli for an arrangement of Freddie Hubbard’s Birdlike, I knew that I needed to come up with a melody that was “Freddie-like.” I studied Freddie’s solo on his recording of the tune and discovered that it was a perfect example of the “Bebop Scale approach” to improvisation. I decided to write a melody that sounded like what Freddie Hubbard might have played, without using any quotes from his solo. The written soli follows and there is a link to the recording of the arrangement.
The first eight measures of the melodic line include very clear usage of a downward moving F bebop scale that begins with an enclosure of the root, which is a typical element of bebop language. The downward, mostly stepwise, bebop scale of measures 1 and 2 are followed by an embellished arpeggio of F9 beginning with the 7th moving to the 9th, 3rd, 5th, 7th, and 9th. It’s a classic looking (and sounding) bebop phrase consisting of “down by step” and “up by arpeggio.” It’s interesting how the line in m. 176 on beat 3 moves chromatically down to the 7th on the Bb9th at m. 177. That Ab is drawn out in a bluesy fashion, appropriate for a blues tune and it is something that a bebop player might do. At the end of m. 179 there is an enclosure surrounding the F# (3rd of D7) followed by a chromatic enclosure of the A (9th of Gmi9) and a diatonic enclosure of the G. Use of the diminished whole-tone scale for the line in m. 182 is also idiomatic. These are melodic elements that Freddie Hubbard uses in his playing, so it fits very well in an arrangement of his tune.
Example 1) Birdlike by Freddie Hubbard, arranged by David Caffey; mm 173–225
Click to See the Full Example
(The soli begins at 3:51 of the recording.)
I often use guitar melodically with the saxophones on a sax soli. I have done this fairly consistently over the last seven or eight years. The guitar adds a sonic quality that somehow focuses the saxophone section sound in a way that I really like. This allows me to write the saxophones in 5-part voicings without doubling the melody an octave lower. The guitar plays the melody an octave lower than the lead soprano sax. In this arrangement there is a trumpet used on the melody in unison with the soprano saxophone. Using the trumpet seemed appropriate since it is a soli on a Hubbard tune in which I’m trying to be consistent with his solo style. This combination provides a beautiful color and allows for voicings with more density than the more typical voicings used in sax solis. The denser chord voicings do not obscure the melody because there are three players on different instruments playing the melody. The melody comes through clearly.
One of the first questions that comes up when writing a soli is “how do I begin.” In Shades of Blue I decided to use the melodic figure that appears in the highest point of the melody (m.20) of the A sections as the source for the opening statement of the soli (m. 120). The rhythm shows up again in m. 127 and there is an extended version of the first motive in m. 131. If you have a good idea that works, use it more than once (but perhaps not more than three times).
Example 2) Shades Of Blue by David Caffey; mm 120 – 148
Click to See the Full Example
(The soli begins at 3:47 of the recording.)
The opening measures of the soli demonstrate ways to use very thick 5-part voicings that work well. The voicings in m. 120 use the four pitches of the B diminished 7th with one added pitch drawn from the B diminished scaled. The fifth pitch chosen in each of the voicings is in the 2nd tenor part and is a half-step below the pitch in the first tenor part. This creates a distinctive dissonance that colors a diminished sound, making it interesting rather than bland. This can be used on altered dominant seventh chord voicings, as well. I learned this technique from studying Thad Jones’ scores. In his scores, you can find brass voicings with eight different pitches, all derived from a single diminished scale.
The five-part voicings in m. 120 are cluster voicings. These work because there is a third between the top two voices. Cluster voicings are also used in mm. 121 and 122. The voicing for the F7(#9) in m. 121 uses, from bottom to top, the 7th, #9th, 3rd, #11th, and 13th. The first voicing of the following chord in m. 122 consists of the 3rd, b5th, #5th, 7th, and #9th. And it moves on in a similar fashion. This makes for a meaty saxophone section sound. You can open up the voicings with Drop 2, etc, and get the same kind of sound. The two voicings beginning on beat three of m. 125 are good examples of this.
I try to create balance by separating passages that are technically difficult with passages that are relatively easy. The music needs to breathe, and so do the players! In the Shades Of Blue soli, you will see that there are three spots that have sixteenth note lines. Before and in between those technically challenging spots, there are measures of melody with relatively easy and straightforward rhythms.
I sometimes use a single scale to harmonize a melodic line in a soli like this. In m. 140, for example, the melodic line in the soprano sax is a diminished scale for an octave followed by three chromatic notes moving downward to the concert C on beat two of m. 141. Beginning with the C, there is another diminished scale moving upward. Using the process I described above to voice a diminished chord for five voices, I found a voicing to begin on and then ran all of the voices in exact parallel motion with the soprano. It was quick and easy, and it sounds good! This technique can work well using diminished-whole tone, whole tone, blues, pentatonic, and bebop scales. I recommend not over-using it, though.
The saxophone soli in Blue 16 is another example that uses the guitar with the saxophones an octave below the soprano sax. The baritone sax is often an octave below the soprano sax, as well, in contrast to the approach used on the previous two solis.
Example 3) Blue 16 by David Caffey; mm. 132 -179
Click to See the Full Example
(The soli begins at 5:21 of the recording.)
An example of the technique of using a single scale to harmonize a melodic line can be found in measure 174 of Blue 16. In this case a pentatonic scale is being used. The soprano sax line was written first. The first voicing for the saxophones was created after testing the line that it could be followed throughout before running out of the range. Then each part has the pentatonic scale line from their starting pitch. Another example of this technique can be found in m. 156.
Measure 175 includes another version of the diminished scale being used to create the voicings throughout the line. In this case, when the line moves upward, the chord tones are approached from a half-step below. When the line moves downward, the chord tones are approach from a half-step above. In this context I think of the scale as being a “melodic diminished scale.” When moving upward the connecting notes of the scale are ½ step below the chord tones; when moving downward the connecting pitches are ½ step above the chord tones. The concept is similar to a melodic minor scale in which scale degree 6 and 7 are raised going up and lowered going down. Another good example of usage of this can be found in mm. 158-159.
Finally, just remember that it’s all about the melody…
About the Author:
David Caffey has appeared as a clinician, adjudicator, and guest conductor at music festivals, conferences, universities and schools throughout the United States, in Canada, and in Europe. He was inducted into the California Jazz Education Hall of Fame in 2011. His compositions and arrangements have been performed in concerts and festivals in Europe, Asia, Australia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, Canada and throughout the United States. He has won awards for musical composition from the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) and the National Association of Jazz Educators (NAJE). He served as President of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) from 2004 to 2006 and is a Founding Member of the Jazz Education Network (JEN). He also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers (ISJAC). Most of his published compositions and arrangements are available from UNC Jazz Press. His most recent CD, ALL IN ONE by the David Caffey Jazz Orchestra, was released in October 2018 by Artist Alliance Records and is available at Amazon, CD Baby, and iTunes. The band’s first release, ENTER AUTUMN, was released in October 2015.
Mr. Caffey recently retired from a career in Higher Education and is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Northern Colorado, where he served as Director of the School of Music from 2005 to 2013. His work as a college professor and arts administrator spans 44 years and includes previous appointments in Jazz Studies at California State University – Los Angeles, Sam Houston State University, and the University of Denver. He relocated to Southern California in August 2018 and is working full-time as a composer, arranger and music producer.