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Welcome back everyone, to where is the music podcast? Today we're going to take a look at Jazz tune that is very dear to my heart and in a sense it it has made a little bit of a history in in the world of jazz. This is by a composer

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Called Wayne Shorter, if you are not familiar with him, Wayne Shorter was a saxophonist composer. He started touring internationally with Miles Davis.

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In the late 50s and since then, he has gained international fame and consideration because of his unique take in creativity and jazz. He passed away recently, actually probably last year.

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For two years ago, I don't quite remember.

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The importance of Wayne Shorter is hard to overstate: his approach to creativity and jazz is definitely a unique one. Particularly I'm thinking about his compositions as we shall.

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See with one example today.

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The way in which one of Shorter's composition becomes a splendid, unique, original, unpredictable architecture is something that only some very few of us who have.

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Who are touched

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By somehow the goddess of inspiration can afford to do. The song that I decided to share with you. As I said is very dear to my heart and among the many that to ensure there has gifted us is called Infant Eyes

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Is it is a ballad and I think the first time we hit it is in a recording in which she played saxophone. Of course with Herbie Hancock with Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

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Three of them, they were also part of the initial Miles Davis Quintet that in the late 50s and early early 60s, became the main one of the most important reference in jazz all over the world. Before I start commenting.

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Play the very first few chords. Very first few bars so you have a sense of what we are going to immerse ourselves in today.

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This is the first musical phrase. If you have never heard this, perhaps your first reaction is wow, it's pretty slow, but it's also pretty dense. Seems that all this colours all these chords.

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Are very dense and rich it's quite intense. I can't really follow where this is going. There is some sort of dream state dimension here.

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Now, the very first three chords have something of interest. I'm going to play them to you and then comment.

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If you notice, there is kind of a descent and descent into resolution.

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We can hear the final chord of this three as the resolution of this opening. The opening though the opening Melody has some sort of we call it a suspended floating fill.

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Suspended also because it doesn't follow the natural trajectory of the harmony that we said had something descending and resolving.

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There is a sense that this melody just floats above these brushes of colour. Each of this corridor really seems to be.

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A just a a a colour that expands on the canvas just naturally in a, not necessarily a very precise way.

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First change of trajectory happens right here.

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You hear how striking is this movement? We would not think that was going to happen. Actually discord.

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He is quite dissonant.

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I'm going to play a couple more and then say a couple more things.

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So these three last chords that I played.

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Once again, they continue this sort of.

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Brushes of colour just thrown on the canvas and however, while the trajectory doesn't seem to be particularly clear, we don't yet know where are we going with this. Some sort of general effect is being achieved. It seems to be.

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Every bar, every cord is a window into a new.

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Picture to a new view. Something to be perhaps surprised, something unpredictable to to be amazed by these are.

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These are all very dense and rich chords. If you play the piano. If you're familiar with chords, I strongly encourage you invite you to.

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Take a look at them. I'm going to play from the top. Just the chords.

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Very often in jazz is difficult to figure out what chords are. The truth is that every chord has a degree of ambiguity, and that ambiguity that no clear, non clearness, not clarity.

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Another is part of the expression is part of the style.

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It seems like every non clear sound that we have is translucent glass through which we can see things, but other things are being hidden.

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The quality that I can appreciate in a composer like when shorter when he writes this chords in this way.

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Is the ability to put together things that don't seem sequential one to the other, but in the old context they offer a broad picture that has a very precise vision. I hope we're going to discover.

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What the vision is, maybe we are, we'll be able to describe it in words.

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Uh.

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In a sense, we already see what he's doing. He's not following typical trajectories, at least in the choice of colours, in the choice of chords.

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And how is he choosing his trajectory? Well, in the exact way wizard does, how does a wizard choose its ingredients for the potion? Well, perhaps there are some ancient magic tricks that we normal people are not allowed to to figure out.

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We're not allowed to know.

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And literally bringing this analogy up between chords and ingredients, because ingredients do follows in general some some logic to make a recipe. But if you are making a portion a magic potion, then what kind of ingredients will you need?

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So to me, we ensure that here does show his unique skill into just putting together things that don't have any relationship with each other, but.

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In the overall context, they bring up the magic and just want to play one passage, particularly harmonic passage and and see and show you the complete unpredictability of this trajectory.

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I played already this passage three times, but I'm pretty sure that you were not really expecting neither of these chords.

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I'm going to play it with the whole the whole verse, again melody and chords and notice the floating aspect. The floating quality of the the melody together with the unpredictable choice of colours underneath

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It.

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Now you already perhaps have followed the arc of the melody. There is a clear logic in the melody. We have phrases made of long notes and short notes. It's pretty simple.

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It is pretty logical, particularly the rhythmical aspect. Nevertheless, every melodic turn doesn't seem to be the obvious one. Mostly these notes stay within the harmony of of the flat, which is interesting because.

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Doesn't seem doesn't seem very concerned about deciding whether the harmony is a major or a minor. This is all.

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in major.

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And now minor.

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So there is a centre, we feel it. We are close to it, but once again there is ambiguity coming through even from the melody only.

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One more thing about this verse that I wanted to share is this melody.

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Does retain something peculiarly sweet, tender and smooth? It seems that this melody kind of emerges like.

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Lonely out of very dense and rich brushes of colour.

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If you play the chords only, you will probably have many opportunity to stumble from one to the next. Sometimes they're quite angular and quite difficult to make. Sounds smooth like this.

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It's very tricky sense, I hope. I hope this sounds clear to you as it sounds to me.

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So.

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How does smoothness, sweetness lyricist comes through?

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An interpreter, a jazz interpreter as himself, as well as the musician he is playing with in this record.

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They seem to be doing something.

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Away from what's written on the chart cuz. Look, I'm looking at the same chart that Wayne Shorter produced. It's easily available in real books and you can find it online and probably can put a link to it. But the chart is just a few bars.

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Just a few chord symbols and just a few notes.

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But there there is no music in there, so an interpreter, a just interpreter, needs to immerse themselves in this chords.

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And from them make this sole melody emerge.

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After a while, perhaps if you are not familiar with this rich jazz harmony, you might think that this core kind of sound all the same. But it's in the little.

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Variation in tension and colour, and whichever feeling that you want to attach to these sounds, it's in the variation between 1:00 and the next that lies the possibility for you as an interpreter to to make them sound lyrical as a matter of fact.

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Underscore I see this.

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But that it's too square is too obvious. There is a I'm I'm playing as if there was a a grid underneath me and I will have to. I'm following this grid in a in a sense, quite pedantically, quite.

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Logically. But if you listen to the recording and later we will listen to it and you will hear that this melody once again is floating above it in this way.

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That's better, isn't it? So music is not clearly not what's written on a chart on a lead sheet we have as interpreted as musicians to immerse ourselves in these sounds until things start emerging until.

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Our ear is telling us well, let's move this there. Let's try this over there. Let's change this in here and so forth.

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So I'm going to continue with the chorus, which is quite high diversion. It goes like that.

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The length is similar to. The verse is not longer nor shorter, but.

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You, you hear, perhaps a different window. We are entering a vision much more dense, much more intense emotionally. Every chord here seems to seems to accompany us through a trajectory.

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Where the emotional tension keeps rising. How do we know that if we look at the melody, the melody kinds of lifts up and the intervals between the notes are much bigger, I'll show you what I mean.

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This is the starting node which is pretty high.

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And.

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This is reached higher.

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This is much higher.

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Starts descending.

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And we reach the beginning, the E flat, the tonic of the whole key.

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Now, this trajectory, this lifting raising and then slowly coming down is 1 arc that we can almost see on the score. We certainly we can hit it. The intervals that I mentioned, the large intervals that I was talking earlier were.

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Here.

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This is quite unusual for a lyrical song. It's pretty difficult to turn this into a lyrical, but then there is even a worse passage.

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In terms of difficulty.

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This is larger than an octave. It's very difficult to play and it's very difficult to sing and it's very difficult to make into a lyrical thing.

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So it seems that the tension is also heightened by this choice of very kind of extreme lyrical intervals. If you were to sing it, you know what I mean? You have to play, sing very low and then.

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Right away go very high. There is tension in there and when Shorter is playing with this dimension as well.

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If you look at Harmony, we find something that relates a little bit better than previously with the arc that I have described. Let's look at the chords.

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OK. In this first five you can sense there is tension raising and raising. How this is accomplished. Well, now the chords are at least in the in the very beginning this he chooses to split the.

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Holding two parts 1, the lifts slowly.

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And of course, we hear the lift and this supports the a melody that is gathering, gathering momentum, while the the base part the 2nd.

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Half of this harmony, the beginning, seems to not want to go up.

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I play all together.

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You can hear if it's impossible to not play these four chords without crescendo again.

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This chord is beautiful, and it's certainly.

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Highlights the arrival point, the climax, and is a beautiful major positive. Open is a whole, the whole window being open now to beautiful, majestic picture in front of us and from here this low descent.

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So the harmony as well seems to portray an ark as well as the melody does play the whole thing, so you can hear this arc both in the melody and the harmony.

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Isn't that gorgeous?

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I'm going to play from the beginning and then I complete with the final verse. The verse is mostly a repetition of the one that we have described.

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I hope you like it as much as I do.

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So.

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Now let's go back to the title of this song, infant eyes.

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What better analogy?

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Than this.

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Every.

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Court every bar is like.

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An astonished look from an infant.

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For whom? Everything is new and unpredictable.

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Everything is a discovery.

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If we think of bringing a maybe a baby, a two or three years old child around the nature or around just outside and you watch them looking at the world you will find.

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Curiosity award and aptitude of discovery. A constant attitude discovery, which is probably one of the sweetest things that we can see in in a child, even if we are not personally related to them.

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So I find this.

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Analogy, particularly poignant because every chord is such a look is an an astonished reaction to what we hear. Wayne Shorter seems to tell us. Look here. Open your eyes.

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Open your ears, cause every harmony here is a new window of disco.

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In a sense, we can we can think of it as the technique of a composer, such as when short, at least in this case, might have been. All right, let's just put together patches of colours.

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Chords that do not really follow one another, but let's do them.

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So that my listener will be astonished at every step at every at every change, but that's not exactly what happens, because we see now how logical and how, how, how many subtle.

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Degrees of tension he is able to make us touch through the listening, so it seems to me that the skill here, the talent, I will say the genius is.

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Disability intuitive ability to choose colours in a perhaps in an expression is manner. Brushes of colour, not necessarily refined, but exactly in there not being refined is the poetry.

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This in this case the poetry relates to the inner desire that we most of us have. I will say to be astonished by what we see to be in awe every time we look at some.

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There is a childlike playfulness in this the not following the rules might seem to be a source of playfulness, a sort of a source of enjoyment. But while when shorter doesn't follow the rules of consequent classical logical harmony.

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He is following the rules of human discovery, human joy. So then an interpreter of this.

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Before starting to improvise, I would say would have to dive into this harmonic changes until, as I was saying earlier, until a creative idea comes out because it's very difficult to to put together this.

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Sequence of colours in a logical manner to find logic in it. But isn't it the goal of art to show us how beauty is also in the non logical in the non rational?

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So I'm going to play this tune. I'm going to avoid the main melody now and see what improvisation, what creative ideas come out.

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I honestly, I think I could do that for.

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Two hours straight, I really enjoy this myself.

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Let's listen now to the original recording of infant eyes by Wayne Shorter and his quintet. With this, I leave you until the next time. Thank you for being with me today.

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And I will see you on our next episode of where is the music now? Wayne Shorter, “Speak no evil”, the song is Infant Eyes.