From: mjs@fc.hp.com (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
Subject: Re: Harmolodics ???
Date: 8 Jan 1993 18:55:59 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company
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Vincent E. Kargatis (vek@spacsun.rice.edu) wrote:
: 
: The impression I got from random writings and references to it is that
: harmolodics is melody, harmony, and rhythm all taking equal and equivalent
: roles in the composition/performance. (Oh, like *that* means a lot :)

I don't claim to understand what Ornette is really doing, nor have I read any
of his own writings on the subject, other than one or two sentences in an
article one.  But here is my attempt at describing what it sounds like to me,
both from what little I've read about it, and from listening to it.

In conventional harmony, you have a composition harmonized with a series of
chords that last a particular number of measures each.  When you improvise, you
are improvising on that original chord progression, with each chord coming in
the same order and taking the same amount of time as in the original.

In harmolodics, there may or may not be chords to harmonize the composition;
that seems to be irrelevant.  The improvisation is based on the melodic and
rhythmic ideas of the composition, in no particular order.  For instance, your
first improvised phrase may be an elucidation of bars 9-11 of an 18 bar form,
and your improvised phrase may last five measures instead of three.  There is,
of course, no guarantee that the other members of the group will be structuring
what they play in the same way as you - while you are playing your phrase,
the bass player might be repeating a riff based on something from bar 6 of the
original composition.  This aspect could be what lead Don Cherry to say it is
everyone soloing at the same time, but staying out of each other's way.

Furthermore, your improvisations are not simply "new melodic lines based on the
original harmonies", but rather a much freer sort of variation, including
stream of consciousness.  The rhythmic and melodic ideas of the original are
equally valid as bases.  To the extent that harmony exists, it is horizontal
harmony, not vertical harmony - chords aren't formed by the relationship
between the note you are playing at any given time and the notes everyone else
is playing, but rather, a harmony of some sort might be implied by your melodic
line.  Everyone playing at that time might be implying a different harmony,
when analyzed in traditional terms.  I think this aspect might be what is most
important in categorizing a composition as "harmolodic".  It is especially
noticeable to me in a composition like "The Legend Of Bebop", which probably
predates any formalization of harmolodic theory.  The melody line seems to
imply some sort of blues progression - a very Bird-like one at that, but the
bass line seems relatively unmoved by this implication, and has its own
structural cohesiveness.

This may or may not be an accurate description of harmolodics.  If it isn't,
then it is a description of *something*, and if no one else claims it, I'll
take credit for inventing it myself :-)

--
Marc Sabatella
marc@hpmonk.fc.hp.com
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