For my After assignment, I have composed an original piece that takes into account my experience and interactions with jazz and music throughout my time in Spain. It has been a long journey with lots of travel and inspiration from all around the country. The hardest part of this assignment was getting started- trying to decide what my inspiration would be, but I finally settled on primarily highlighting flamenco and blues. Blues had a very strong presence in most of the cities I went to with entire venues dedicated to blues like La Coquette in Madrid, for example. Flamenco, of course, also had an enormous presence everywhere in Spain, but especially in the southern region of Andalucía, where it originated.
In my piece, the main theme is made up of sixteen bars, the first eight of which follow the Andalusian cadence, which is a popular chord progression that originated from flamenco. It has also become popular outside of flamenco, featured in hits like Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles (a song that coincidentally was played at Altxerri Jazz&Bar in San Sebastián) and Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys. Flamenco tends to have more of a set structure than jazz typically does, so I wanted to start with the flamenco influence being sort of the backbone for the piece with a strong starting chord progression and allowing jazz to sort of take over in other aspects.
The following eight bars have a chord progression more typical of jazz, following the circle of fifths. It begins with a ii-V-I progression, arguably the most notable chord progression in jazz, where the ii chord is Cm due to the relative major of Gm being Bb, thus C becomes the 2nd degree of the major scale. For a ii-V-I progression, the 2 chord will be minor and the 5 and 1 chords are major, such as in this case with the F and Bb chords. After this, it continues to follow along the circle of fifths until it reaches the 6th, which is G, also known as the first degree of the scale in G minor. This brings the progression back to the beginning of the Andalusian cadence, which also starts on the 1 chord.
Many styles of flamenco have much different approaches to time signature as most other popular music, where the meter (simple, where the feel of a beat is subdivided into 2 notes or compound, subdivided into 3) is consistent throughout the song and repeats the same way in every measure. In most styles of flamenco, simple and compound meter are played around with and can change frequently throughout a composition. As an ode to this, I decided to have my piece in swing, but with a subdivision more typical of blues, the shuffle beat, where swung eighth notes fall into triplet subdivisions of a beat (compound meter). This allows the melody to either follow the swung eighth notes or some triplets as it does in measures 3 and 7, similar to how flamenco switches between 2 and 3 note subdivisions but without having to switch up the groove (which is pretty important in blues and jazz).
Also unlike traditional flamenco but very typical of jazz (and some modern flamenco), I made most of my chords what jazz musicians like to call “crunchy”, or chords that create some sort of dissonance and tension. This dissonance is what makes jazz stand out, and is exemplified in the tritone created with all of the dominant 7 chords or the minor 2nd in the Eb major 7th chord. The added sixth in the Bb6 chord is technically an imperfect consonance, but still adds to the feeling of tension and branches out from typical triads.
I made this piece with the idea of performing it live in mind. I created this piece in MuseScore, a music composition software, so some simplifications were made, like not including any percussion. When performed, I would probably include a drum kit, and for an extra bluesy sound, it would be played with brushes. This would be accompanied by a piano/keyboard and some sort of wind instrument (if I’m performing, it would likely be trumpet). However, so much of live jazz is up to the individual musician, so it could be played infinitely many different ways even with the same performers. The versatility of jazz allows for this piece to easily be sight-read and played by many jazz musicians as long as they can follow a lead sheet.The section in the middle is repeated as needed for improvised solos, with the same chord progression throughout, which is typical of how most songs out of the Real Book are played.
Although I have finished up with this piece enough to publish it on this website, it is nowhere near finished. As a dear friend once stated, “you can leave the groove but the groove never leaves you”. This is especially true with this piece because although I have to logistically finish up with it as the summer is starting up, I plan on coming back to it and making changes as I see fit.