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72 DOWNBEAT JULY 2011
soLo
GUITAR SCHOOL Woodshed | BY JiMi DurSo
John
Abercrombie’s
Modal Guitar
Solo on
‘Timeless’
Recorded in 1974 for the ECM label,
guitarist John Abercrombie’s
debut album as a leader featured him
in an organ trio setting with keyboardist
Jan Hammer and drummer
Jack DeJohnette. The title track,
“Timeless,” consists of patterns of
stacked fifths within a structure that is
14 beats long, divided into two measures
of four and one measure of six.
For the most part, Abercrombie
takes a modal approach to his solo,
with a minimum of chromatic notes.
Mainly centering around E aeolian
(the mode of the melody), we do find
a couple of instances of E dorian towards
the end of his solo (measures 27,
33 and 48). All of these occur on the
Gadd9 chord, where the presence of a
C# creates a bright lydian sound.
But there is also a lot of E minor pentatonic
happening, which at times gives his solo a more
“rock ’n’ roll” attitude, especially with the bends
in measures 42–44. The first instance of a purely
pentatonic idea starts at the pickup to measure
11 and continues through the end of the
phrase at measure 15. There also occurs an idea
Abercrombie will reuse in this solo, that of note
groupings inconsistent with the underlying subdivision,
creating a polyrhythm. Starting with
the pickups to measure 11, Abercrombie plays
an ascending and descending E minor pentatonic
scale in 16th notes, but it takes 14 notes before
the pattern repeats. Since 16th notes are grouped
in fours, the pattern repeats every three-anda-half
beats. Abercrombie plays this idea three
full times, and the last time, the one that actually
starts on the downbeat at measure 14, he decides
to take it in a different direction on the descent,
playing 32nd-note pentatonic ideas with
more slurring.
In a simpler form, this occurs in measures 30
and 31. We have a four-note lick with the final
note held for three 16ths, totaling two-and-a-half
beats. Abercrombie starts this lick on the second
beat of what should have been a 6/4 measure, but
the entire trio drops an eighth note, as if they all
heard the line resolve to what has become the
first beat of measure 31. However, Abercrombie
continues his idea with some variation three
more times before resolving to the downbeat of
measure 32.
The same type of idea happens almost half-
John Abercrombie
way through measure 21, where in beat 3
Abercrombie plays a five-note idea in 32nds (D,
B, G, F#, G). He plays this a total of seven complete
times, over the barline into measure 22,
where he then drops the last G note and changes
the rhythm to resolve out of the polyrhythm.
It’s interesting to note that in each of these cases
Abercrombie doesn’t resolve his polyrhythmic
ideas to a strong beat, as a Hindustani tehi would,
but instead chooses to morph back into the backing
rhythm.
This last example also incorporates another
scalar concept we find throughout his improvisation:
minor pentatonic with the second added.
Though not fully a dorian or aeolian sound,
it is still more than a pentatonic flavor. In fact,
starting at measure 2, we hear only this sound
through measure 11, where the strict pentatonic
starts (with the exception of the G# that occurs
in measure 8, but this was smeared through so
as to be barely noticeable, and it’s not even clear
if it was intended). When Abercrombie leaves
the pentatonic sound at measure 15, it is to return
to this pentatonic-plus-second texture; he
comes back to straight pentatonic at measure
18. Abercrombie’s entire solo consists mainly
of these two sounds, with Cs and C#s occurring
rarely (bars 23, 24, 26, 27, 33, 46 and 48). That’s
less that 15 percent of his solo where he actually
defines the mode. DB
JIMI DURSO IS A GUITARIST AND BASSIST IN THE NEW YORK
AREA. HE CAN BE REACHED AT JIMIDURSO.COM.
Jørgen Bo