Tune of the Day

"Keep Your Distance", both versions. With Buddy & Julie Miller’s version you get their wonderful 2-part harmony duet throughout the song. With Richard Thompson’s original, his distinctive vocals and guitar playing (on his solo, he makes his Strat sound like a steel guitar), and the fantastic bass playing of one of the all-time greats, Jerry Scheff (Elvis, T Bone Burnett, LOTS of studio work).

On this song, Jerry uses the technique of inversion, one of my favorite things in music, "pedaling" (staying on one note) as the other players move through the song’s chord changes. That is possible only when the note being played is contained within the other chords that come around. Rather than remaining the Tonic of the chord (the root note), the note becomes one of the other notes in the following chord(s), a say 3rd or 5th above the Tonic.

Musicians who play in such a fashion as to sound "impressive" (chops, technique) don’t think in this kind of "musical" way. It’s not technically difficult to play inversions, it just sounds really cool. And even if the listener doesn’t realize what the bassist is doing, playing inversions creates a musical tension that, when finally released (the bassist must play a different note when a chord not containing the note he is pedaling on comes along), is very "satisfying" (the ol’ tension-and-release). Just another example of how the best musicians approach the creating of music.

By the way, J.S. Bach’s music is chock full of inversions. He is, infact, the Master at it’s use.