Joe Satriani on pitch axis, why he uses it in his music. (Music theory)

vocalists whatever they're doing it all relates to that if we don't like it we don't like that relationship and we don't like the song we find it interesting it's because of the relationship of those notes to this one bass note so a little over 100 years ago uh they came up with this concept of instead of always changing keys and always resolving and using chords to go to the five before you go to the one and tension and resolution uh composers started to think well why not just have one note is the key and just keep changing the key around the one note you could have 12 different keys but the audience is still just hearing boom boom boom over and over again ravel's Bolero anybody know that yeah that's it and the perfect example it's just one note and I was like there's all this beautiful music that goes around it um and I was taught this concept in high school from my high school music teacher I was fascinated by it it's exactly what I wanted to hear and I thought this is so much more interesting than simply copying what the Jazz and Blues players have been doing for decades which is always using these chords you can't go but either one and then you go to two and then you go to five and then you change Keys you got to go to two and a five before you go to the one and I thought well this is the stupidest thing ever because everyone's doing it where's the originality in that so with this idea of the pitch axis I could do songs like not over the song you play it on the radio every although I have to say it was in this town in 1988 at four in the morning that I walked into a 7-Eleven and they were playing the enigmatic which is very much similar similar in that vein and I thought wow I guess some kids do play this music at the right time four in the morning 7-Eleven um but uh your question is kind of interesting uh for for another sort of a side reason which is I haven't really heard a concept coming from composers that's really different as groundbreaking is that or a Sonata Allegra form was or just basically what kind being able to play in all keys those were huge leaves for western music and that's kind of like what we're doing right now what I have noticed however which is more important is modern society has decided that you don't really have to be in time and you don't really have to be in tune as a matter of fact you can be completely discordant to the Baseline and still it can be interesting and people like to hear what it sounds like and I really didn't come about through uh you know it didn't come out in Symphony halls and certainly not the jazz clubs where everybody teams up and there's this discipline for being in key and everything that came from hip-hop and the way that they decided to change the world was to be later than late so you know the idea of being in the pocket is something you have to be of that generation to totally get it you know or younger and tuning as well they don't really care about that kind of stuff they're listening to the sound of whether it's a new Loop or an old Loop or a sample and they're just seeing how it performs in the song this is really different I mean you think about if you're a blues player or chicken thicker or you're a jazz player you you basically copy what is the accepted uh sounds and approaches of the most revered players so if I ever had to play Blues for you now and I started with an Albert King like everyone would nod their head go yet he knows Albert King we all know Albert King so we're all in the same Club all of a sudden you know I mean it's not very original to do that at all all I did was copy some guy who was brilliant you know what I mean so it's it's a different kind of a thing I think in popular music eventually everybody comes together in the center and forms their own club until somebody comes along and disrupts it and so that we're just seeing that kind of play out so but that is by far the most interesting thing because if you look back in recorded history nobody ever purposely played so late or so out of tune unless it was for comedy you know what I mean and certainly before the Advent of recording we have no written records of people purposely playing Out Of Tune and out of time or or playing someone else's piece for two bars and it's in a new piece of music when no one else was playing but that's what modern recording is like hit songs are like that now and they get billions of streams you know as if there were writers here in the audience we have to face reality that's our audience if you want to sell or get streams played by people who are 10 to 20 years old that's what they love that's what they're listening to you for well let's put it this way that's what they accept as we use it so we as musicians we have to let that in and say okay that's okay I used to try to stay in tune and stay in time but now it's different but it's just not being bad there's an art form you know yes

Channel: Jay Agassi

Views: 8,103

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Id: L_kkAeOJat0

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022