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Old 09-01-2019, 09:39 PM   #363
superblonde.org
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Join Date: Jul 2019
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Mustang Sally is a perfect example because it is a crowd favorite and the players hate to play it. (We're all sick of playing it.)

My contention would be, that if the music system were great and players all knew it easily, that when someone in the audience requests Mustang Sally (which they always do in a dive bar blues/R&B jam), then the band would be able to invent a new song with the same musical elements as Mustang Sally but as a new, fresh song to play. But bands never do that- they resort to actually playing the same-old Mustang Sally. The Beatles wrote Birthday on the spot because they didn't want to play the real Happy Birthday, they wanted to invent something new & fun.

Jazz musicians, the "highly trained, ivory tower, Intelligensia Players(tm)" are slightly different, upon the audience request, they would call up a chart of the song on their phone (if they didn't already have it memorized), read thru the chords progression for 10 seconds, transpose it into a suitable key for the vocalist of the moment, and then play a reharmonized version of Mustang Sally which sounds absolutely horrible -- and no one would dance to it.

There is obviously a huge middle-ground missing, the part where the typical gigging musician (non-ivory tower jazz trained snob player) can reinvent standard songs, and bad music theory is a big part of why that is missing.

CCR is another solid example. How many jam bands play the same CCR mashup of Sweet Home Alabama + Green River + Suzie Q (splitting verses of the songs amongst the grooves of each). It's cool and they do it because it is a very easy transition into & out of song parts (same form, same key, similar progression). It makes it sound more fresh & exciting. Some few bands will do a Purple Haze+Star Spangled Banner Hendrix mashup. But what would be reaaaalllly cool, is if music theory were palatable enough and versitile enough to all players so that many more songs can be made into pastiche this way. Entire setlists made into a single long flowing song which seemlessly blend into each other. (And don't say, "Axis of Awesome", that's just trivial joking). Real performance like this adds novelty, it's fun, it keeps the dance floor hopping without pauses in-between songs, it sounds more professional, it's more musical, it's more artistic. Yet tons of daily players simply do not know how to move harmonies to do this interpolation between classic songs.. primarily because music theory is horrible at making these translations obvious.
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