Initially, when Anthony Jackson; Steve Jordan; Manolo
Badrena and I began to get together to rehearse, improvise, jam, etc. at
Steve Jordan's downtown Manhattan loft, I had planned on keeping things very
simple, which meant one guitar!!! That was to have been my then one Gibson
ES-335. As the new music began to develop, to take shape, I didn't actually
realize, until we had recorded a take of this tune, that I was going to need my
Fender Stratocaster. While listening to that playback, I could
see that the tune had developed into an unintentional 'Jimi Hendrix
Tribute,' which would include the usage of the tremolo bar, and its mood, its
attitude, would be very, very dreamy; almost as if Hendrix were playing some
kind of a contemporary ballad. One of the great things about this particular
Strat of mine is that, then, it had a Bill Lawrence pick-up in the neck
position which gave the tone of that guitar an additional amount of warmth and
body. In those days, and I don't know that things have changed that much for the
better, most the studios were in very old buildings with very old electrical
wiring and any guitar with single-coil pick-ups was going to have noise and hum
problems with Fender guitars being the worst offenders. Some years later, I
changed all the pick-ups to EMGs and sadly, now I don't even know where my
Lawrence pick-up is!!!
Like many of the tunes of that period, this
one was born of just sitting around my apartment and improvising by myself. In
this case, the first thing that came to me was the line you now see at
[I] which sets the mood and the tone of the piece. Harmonically speaking,
it is the simple movement back and forth between Emaj7 and Amaj7, Imaj to IVmaj
nothing more, nothing less. For as long as I can remember, Anthony and I have
had arguments about this tune, and he has gone as far as to say, "I just don't
understand what this is!" I am usually only able to respond by telling him that
whatever it is that he has been playing, that's the right thing! What's so
wonderful about Anthony, even if he didn't like nor 'understand' this piece, he
played musically and beautifully. The principal guitar line sounds wonderful
with just long and simple whole note roots underneath with the motion of the
guitar line and Steve's drums and Manolo's percussion. When Anthony finally
joins me and doubles the line, we're ready to move forward.
As we
arrive at the section I've labeled [I2], chords are introduced for the
first time. The maj7(9) voicings are exactly the same for both the Emaj7 and
Amaj7 chords. And, true to my philosophy, the roots are left to the bass and
Anthony. In playing these very lush voicings, as the harmony rings out, here I
introduce a gentle touch of tremolo bar. Never too much just enough to cause a
dip in the pitch which for me makes it a most romantic device.
The
melody, which finally appears at letter [A], is a rather simple and
repetitive phrase. It is memorable, but allows great freedom in its
interpretation. The guitar fingerings for the melody alternate between a
position for D# minor pentatonic(D#, F# G#, A#, C#), though an A# is never
played, and this alternates with the C# minor pentatonic(C#, E, F#, G#, B)
serving both the Emaj7 and Amaj7 sonorities. Both these fingerings give rise to
clear Hendrix-derived double-stops, but those are mostly played in the C# minor
pentatonic fingering which is located at the 9th-fret. Though this 'style' is
perhaps most associated with Jimi Hendrix, I tend to associate it with
singer/guitarist/songwriter Curtis Mayfield, formerly of the Impressions,
whose playing had a tremendous influence on me.
Although the piece
seems to be able to sustain itself with these three initial sections, I quickly
realized that it needed at least one more section to give this Imaj-IVmaj motion
a release. And so, quickly at one rehearsal, I made-up the small 8-bar section
which is now labeled as [B]. Again, each voicing, as it rings out, is
accompanied by a gentle tap of the tremolo bar. On the recorded version you will
the entrance of an extra set of voicings performed with the Strat(w/ the tremolo
bar) and a volume pedal as an overdub.
The solo section,
[C], again utilizes the motion, back-and-forth, between Emaj7 and Amaj7,
but here, with only Anthony's bass for accompaniment, the freedom I experience
is tremendous. One's harmonic imagination can really go as far as you would
allow it. Some simple ideas I know that I employed would be to, in the 2nd bar
of the phrase, make the Emaj7 become a E7(alt.) as it pulls toward the Amaj7
chord. One could also insert the notion that there could be a B7(alt.) chord in
bar 4 of the phrase to occasionally bring us back to Emaj7. If you were to do
this, you could also employ any and all of the traditional substitutions,
including the b5(ii-V) substitute of Cm7-F7 as well as other ideas. You will
also hear that I employed the Lydian sound, with the occasional A#, which added
to the spacey quality and the sense of romance.
As a cue out of
the solo, I simply expand the harmony and intensity by playing chordal passages
which takes us, on cue, to [I3] and then [B2] appears as a
release. From here, we D.S. back to a restatement, though even looser, of
our melody at [A]. which is played as one full 16-bar section before we
take the coda. When we arrive [I4], the coda, it sounds
most familiar, very much like [I2], because we are still employing the
motion from Emaj7 to Amaj7. However, a harmonic surprise awaits us as bar 7
arrives. Here we would have expected to hear another Amaj7 chord, but we are
greeted by the simple change to Am7(9). It's the first time a minor chord has
appeared anywhere in the tune. This is actually one of my favorite devices, it's
simple but most effective, and establishes a new harmonic motion: Emaj7 to
Am7.
We then move ahead with harmonic progression continuing.
Letter [D] is offered as a long, long build, or crescendo which is
reached by creating more and more harmonic activity, coupled with more and more
motion from Anthony, Steve, and Manolo. When I feel the we are reaching a peak
moment, I give the cue for us to move ahead and play [I3]. Of course, on
the recorded version, this never happens because we hadn't prepared the piece to
this level yet. It is precisely at this moment where the arrangement you now see
becomes a hybrid of what we improvised at the session and how we used that
'accident' as regular part of the tune. Please allow me to
explain.
Letter [E], on the recorded version, was actually
a spontaneous improvisation that took place on a take which we did not end-up
using. A portion of Anthony's 'solo'
from the alternate take was later spliced onto the performance we had chosen. A
decision which Anthony has never been particularly happy about, but Steve Jordan
and I loved it so much that we wanted everyone else to hear it too. Otherwise,
the tune would have simply faded out at [D] for its ending. For those of
you who own the "EYEWITNESS" recording, if you listen carefully to this
section which closes the piece, you can hear that Steve Jordan actually stops
playing, because he felt the take was over. He got up and walked away from his
drums, while Manolo and I continued to accompany Anthony, who probably assumed
that what we were playing would never be used nor heard by anyone. Then, sensing
the moment, Steve Jordan began to walk back to his drums, but just as he got
there and began to join us, Anthony thrashed at the strings on his bass, and the
moment was gone! Fortunately, engineer Doug Epstein never stopped rolling
the tape and the moment was captured. In live performance, the bass solo at
[E] is preceded by [I3].
[E] is also a section whose
goal is to build and crescendo until a cue is given by one of us and it then
that we play the brief [Tag] at [I5]. In the last bar, bar 8,
there is a brief ritard with a pause on the last note, the F# before the tune
ends on an Fmaj7(6/9) voicing. Again, this is the ending to an arrangement which
only arrived by preparing the piece for live performances. Sadly, none of the
tunes which appear on the "EYEWITNESS" recording had endings, that's just
how loose things were at that time.
Though I've stated this
before, one of the most difficult things after all the stages of composing an
instrumental piece of music are completed is to give it a title. In the end, I
think that it really is best to try to come up with a title that is not
frivolous, silly, or stupid, because you have to live with that forever. Of
course, a title can have humor to it. The title for this tune, "Dr.
Slump," in 20/20 hindsight, does not fit the mood of this piece and I regret
this title. I've always been a fan of graphic design and during the years
between '77-'85 when I was able to visit Japan often, I began to
collect these little comic books which were titled, "Dr. Slump." I believe at
that time that it had also become a popular children's cartoon show on TV. Of
course, not knowing the language I had no idea what these books were about and
knew nothing of the characters. It just seemed so strange to me that any
character's name could actually be 'slump' because of the negative associations
we, as North Americans, have with this word. For me, I immediately think of a
batter in baseball going into a hitting 'slump.' So, that's where the title came
from.
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