[Harp-L] re: Les feuilles mortes -- playing correctly

[martin oldsberg <martinoldsberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

For a good long while I thought I played "The shadow of your smile" correctly (no quotes), but no, I did not. I cheated, unknowingly. (Played in 4th it requires a whole note on a hole 1 OB, if I memory serves, which most of the time is out of my jusrisdiction.)
    No crime. But sometimes (diatonic) harp players -- fo reasons to well known -- avoid certain notes: not for embellishment (cf. Miles D) but "just because they can´t". 
    No crime therein either, but I´d say -- and I may come of like a busybody here -- that it´s not a bad thing to learn how to play "What´s new" more or less as it´s written, before entering on improvisations. 
   
    A diatonic player I heard who did "Stardust" without the third note, 1st time in the refrain ("Sometimes Iii ...), came of bit crippled just because of this tiny admission. It probably influenced me that I knew the reason (tricky OD hole 7), but nevertheless, the tune demands that staircase (b-c-c#-d). These kinds of omissions also reinforces, among those with musical interests, the wide-spread impression that the (diatonic) harmonica is not a real instrument. (Therefore anyone who can make a convincingly un-Dylan like sound of it is immediately hailed as a "virtuoso". And, I may have said this before, pardon, I once read a critic who considered Bryan Ferry a "harmonica virtuoso" ... This virtuoso thing is the tail side of not recognizing the instrument qua other "conventional" instruments.)
    
    Learn the tune and then improvise, would be a good general rule to the aspiring player. Not written in stone, of course, the point is to make something that sounds, interesting, beautiful or whatever is yr aesthetic.
   
   But I gotta disagree with Iceman here, in an amiable way, I hope: there is a non-subjective dimension to music (most spelled out in what we call classical: improvisations on, say, "The moonlight sonata" could force you right off the stage in certain contexts) that is in no conflict with interpretation/ improvisation. 
   I´m aware that here is a distinction between pedagogics and performance. But not to put to much of a spin on it, would a, say, two note performance of "Autumn leaves" really be a performance of "Autumn leaves". (In A min, shift between E and F, that could get you through the chords, I think.) There is some sort of continuum here where it drifts away from "Autumn leaves" to something akin to "Based on ´Autumn leaves´. Even in jazz most players feel the need to state the melody at least once, pretty much as it´s written.
   
    In "Autumn leaves", omitting the raised 4th has no considerable effect on the melody, as Winslow´s examples convincingly demonstrated and I thank him for that. However, my petty remark at the outset was prompted by another Yves Montand version spinning in my head where he does sing it the other way, I´m pretty sure, but as I said then (I hope): no big deal.
   
     And yes, Miles plays "Autumn leaves" just great. If required he also could have played a Lawrence Welk version of it, maybe in his sleep. (He would not have done it awake.)
    
    It´s a very beautiful song, one of the all time best, where perhaps Johnny Mercer´s translation doesn´t really catch the elegant sentimentality of Prevert´s original lyric ... but that´s for another list.
   
  Martin
   
  >Gotta agree totally with Iceman on this one...the way Miles plays the
>melody is sublime, and he does make subtle alterations...beautiful
 >stuff
>and of course Cannonball rips it up like he always does.
>WVa Bob
> In a message dated 11/22/2007 10:04:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> robertpcoble@xxxxxxxx writes:
>
> Why not  get the original sheet music for "The Dead Leaves" and learn
 to
> play it  "correctly"?
>
>
> "Correctly"? hmmm, very subjective.
>
> Check out "Autumn Leaves" on the CD Somethin' Else - Cannonball
 Adderley's
> date, although is has the stamp and vibe of Miles Davis all over this
> recording.  Listen to how Miles deals with the melody....
>
> The Iceman
>


       
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