Night In Tunisia, Double Harmonic Minor
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Re: Jazz Song #1 - A Night In Tunisia
I like to learn songs that have similar harmonic themes, eg rhythm changes, diatonic circle of fifths, minor line cliche, etc.
One song I like to play often is Night In Tunisia, I had a bit of an epiphany. If you look up the conventional theory that its a tritone substitution on a A7 Dm change that gives you a Eb7 Dm half tone tonic motion. I was looking at other songs that kind of reminded me of that when I realized that another song Misirlou also features a prominent half step chord motion F E(Misirlou is also on the radar as a nice trumpet tune, not only did Dick Dale play trumpet on that track, even before Dick Dale played it Harry James had somewhat of a hit with it). Anyway interestingly enough Misirlou is in a Byzantine scale.
If you juxtapose the Dm and Eb7 chords on top of each other, the F is the only note that would need to move to be in a byzantine scale.
C# D Eb F G A BbMaybe it is just a superficial resemblance to the music of Egypt and North Africa since there are only so many ways to resolve a half tone chord motion.
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@smoothoperator
I respect you and your knowledge of music theory, but honestly, I play a song because I like it for a variety of reasons, but I never feel the need to dissect it. For me it would ruin the fun of playing. -
@georgeb said in Night In Tunisia, Double Harmonic Minor:
@smoothoperator
I respect you and your knowledge of music theory, but honestly, I play a song because I like it for a variety of reasons, but I never feel the need to dissect it. For me it would ruin the fun of playing.Its more of an aggregating process than a dissecting process. Looking for other licks to roll into and expand upon Night In Tunisia.
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I understand. That's what jazz players do.
I love ballads and I do embellish them now and then, but only in a minor way. I certainly don't consider myself a jazz player, and am out of touch with today's players, with exception of two or three. I really like Wynton Marsalis.
I am an old timer raised during the big band era and played during the 50s and 60s before laying down the horn. After 1965 I didn't play again until 2016 and these days ( though we can't play concerts ) I am playing with a respectable community band.
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Though I have no expertise, nor do I really have any interest in the style of music, I think that the OP is discussing the tune the only real way of talking about it. It is very technical music. I just listened to Dizzy playing it. I listened intently to the backing of the rhythm section as well as the soloists. I heard occasional melodic movement with the soloists but generally just a variation of the harmonies. The backing musicians sounded like just a mass of notes without coherence.
I play jazz all the time, but it is trad jazz. I just don't have an ear for more modern stuff.
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If you are used to a strict three note chords, jazz is a little to get used. I have one of these jazz chord books, I tried stacking 7s,2s,9s,11s etc. They sound good alternating major third minor third, however I notice they also don't stand out very much the more notes that are added. That is the thing with Jazz sometimes it isn't very distinct, sort of like background music. I think that is one thing I like about A Night In Tunisia, is that it has a distinctive sound that stands out, despite the Jazz harmonies.
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It appears to be the neapolitan scale which is related to the double harmonic minor.
