<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">In a message dated 1/21/2003 4:50:08 AM Eastern Standard Time, dixielandjazz-request@ml.islandnet.com writes:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">My comment: if it clashes with what the soloist is doing, particularly<BR>
when the soloist was following the melody line, then it's WRONG. Not<BR>
modern, just wrong!<BR>
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Jim<BR>
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Dan Spink replies:<BR>
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Jim, I not only hotly agree with you, I think the problem goes deeper musically. There is a strange harmonic brain disease among some "modern jazz" pianists and guitarists that causes them to favor only far out dissonant clashing chords. Why use only a seventh when there is a sharped eleventh just sitting there? The deeper problem is the problem of atonal (or 12 tone) music; wherein you must hit all 12 tones at least once before repeating any one. The intellectual goal is to remove the tonal center (key) orientation. The first one you hear is interesting. Every one after the first sounds very much like the first, and that's the problem. When you keep going to far out harmonic overtones and avoiding the ol' circle of fifths patterns, you loose musical differentiation. It all sounds like vanilla wallpaper (if there is such a thing) and that's even worse than elevator music.<BR>
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Dan (piano fingers) Spink </FONT></HTML>