Going off of the vamp in the coda of Naima (see yesterday’s post), I practiced each of the

  • major 7 chords
    • easiest
  • dominant 7 chords
    • second-easiest
  • minor 7 chords
    • a little tougher, but fairly quick reaction time
  • half-diminished 7 chords
    • hardest; slowest reaction time; need to come back to this!
  • I should go through all the other qualities; for example, the major 7 +5 from the most “out” chord in Naima would be interesting..

in 5-note close position voicings, around the circle of fifths — playing an arpeggio of such voicings for every root and chord quality (e.g., for C△, C E G B C, E G B C E, G B C E G, B C E G B). Being that 7th chords have 4 distinct voices, this voicing always doubles the outer voices, with three inner voices.

The “all-white” chords (i.e., F△, C△, Em7, Am7, Dm7, G7, Bø) are particularly tough.

Going up the arpeggios there is a sort of alternating pattern between 2 LH fingers + 3 RH fingers and 3 LH fingers + 2 RH fingers — but the the simplest fingering is not always strictly alternating.

Warmup

Chromatic scale, 4 octaves. One voice each in left and right hands. In M2, m3, P4, TT, P5, m6, M6, m7, M7, octave.. etc. up to two octaves.

I suppose there’s no reason to omit the m2, but the fingering is tough.

Bach

I met Evan and Dan at Haymarket Cafe. Dan said his favorite composer is Bach; that his music is perfect. I said that listening to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier I have the experience where every chord is “perfect” and then there is one that is like 200 years ahead of its time. Dan suggested that Bach had put those in on purpose — Dan’s teacher had told him that apparently Bach had thought that G-d is perfect and that to make perfect music would be an affront (or similar, or worse) to G-d, and so he had intentionally introduced imperfections into his music (so this story goes).

I couldn’t find evidence of this on the internet, but I did find this quote (though never attributed to any particular letter or source):

In Bach, the vital cells of music are united as the world is in God.

—Gustav Mahler