[Harp-L] Fourth Position--Coletrane



Jp Pagan says:

I take issue with the use of the term "repetitious,"


Well, since you bring it up, I don’t consider Afro Blue or Equinox to be repetitious or particularly difficult to improvise over, either, so long as one is comfortable playing in minor keys. Both are basically natural minor blues, but use the aeolean mode instead of the blues scale. You can throw in the flat 5th (B8*) if you feel like it and it sounds ok, but it’s not in the melody and there’s no need to play it unless you want to.


To play aeolean, you just play the minor pentatonic scale but freely use the second and the flat sixth as well—which is the natural minor scale. All these notes are available in Fourth position without having to bend. So, IMHO, it’s really easy to improvise over these tunes so long as one has a feel for minor key playing. What’s a little harder is making sure to play the head precisely, which isn’t all that hard, either, but does require a little concentration. So you have to pay attention to where you are on the harp to get it right when it comes around. On Afro Blue the head starts on draw 6. On Equinox the head starts on blow 5 (or blow 2 is you want to play it in the lower octave).

An authentic blues player originally from the deep South (U.S.) once explained minor key playing to me in the following terms: “The blues go up, but the minor goes down.” It took me a little while to figure it out, but there’s a ton of practical wisdom in what he said.

JP



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