Chandranath: Practice

Friday, May 16, 2008

Practice - McCoy Style

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Many of you know that I greatly admire the playing of McCoy Tyner. His use of modal playing, pentatonic scales and heavy use of fourth chordal voicings give him his distinct playing style which is unmistakably "the real McCoy" when he plays. Many people try to emulate his style of playing because it is so energetic and to be honest, it's fun to play! I find it useful to explore the playing styles of the great players and learn from them and hope that some of "that sound" gets thrown onto the palette of my musical knowledge to allow me to integrate it into my own sound. Sometimes though, as in this video, I just love to channel that McCoy vibe all the way through and see where it takes me.

The great freedom that comes with playing in this style for me is simply that there are "landing" points throughout the form of the tune. These landing points allow the freedom to wander harmonically building tension until resolving into the zone. In this particular exercise, the main landing point comes every 8 measures landing on the D Minor. A secondary landing zone is the start of the chromatic II-V's (Db-7 to Gb7). McCoy likes to make the II chord a sus chord by putting the V in the bass.

Many different variations of the basic pentatonic scale are used for soloing. One is to add the 6th of the scale. In D this would be DFGABD. Playing these along the changes and then going outside the changes with them is one of the vehicles McCoy uses to get "that sound". Teaser: at the end see if you can pick me out in the photo ; )

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