Masaya Yamaguchi

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Masaya Yamaguchi (born July 18, 1970) is a guitarist and educator residing in Manhattan, New York City.

Contents

Career

Yamaguchi grew up in Tokyo, Japan and decided to study in the U.S. at the age of 26. He became the first Japanese person to complete the master's program in Jazz Performance at City College of New York (M.A. 1999). He has written for Down Beat magazine and Annual Review of Jazz Studies, which is peer reviewed and published by the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. [1] [2] [3]

According to his profile in Marquis Who's Who in America, Yamaguchi has been a musician and educator who established his conceptual system to explore the imaginative formation of musical scales in The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales. [4] His representative work, The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales was reviewed by John Kuzmich (senior columnist of Jazz Education Journal, International Association for Jazz Education) as "It's worth mentioning that this book comprehensively covers all theoretical possibilities in constructing scales...Take this Thesaurus Scales seriously, you will not be disappointed in the options available for jazz improvisation." [5] "The Subsets of Limited Transposition" (which takes Olivier Messiaen's Modes of limited transposition and updates it) and "Appendix: Scales for Jazz Improvisation" in The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales are very helpful to organize musician's mind and ear. "The Subsets of Limited Transposition" was introduced in The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales, [6] "Symmetrical Scales for Jazz Improvisation" [7] and his academic article, "A Creative Approach to Multi-Tonic Changes: Beyond Coltrane's Harmonic Formula (Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, 2002)." [8] The concept of "The Subsets of Limited Transposition" has been updated by the "Lexicon of Geometric Patterns for Jazz Improvisation" as "Systematized The Subsets of Limited Transposition Families." Chapter VI of "Lexicon of Geometric Patterns for Jazz Improvisation" is also given to "Messiaen's Modes for Jazz Improvisation" [9]

Masaya Yamaguchi is also known as a scholar and researcher of the music of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. David Damsey is a co-author of John Coltrane Plays Coltrane Changes [10] and a professor of music and coordinator of jazz studies at William Paterson University.

Selected works

Works in Japanese

Selected articles

Related Research Articles

Major scale Diatonic scale made of seven notes

The major scale is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double its frequency so that it is called a higher octave of the same note.

In music theory, a scale is any set of musical notes ordered by fundamental frequency or pitch. A scale ordered by increasing pitch is an ascending scale, and a scale ordered by decreasing pitch is a descending scale.

In music, a whole-tone scale is a scale in which each note is separated from its neighbors by the interval of a whole tone. In twelve-tone equal temperament, there are only two complementary whole-tone scales, both six-note or hexatonic scales. A single whole-tone scale can also be thought of as a "six-tone equal temperament".

An octatonic scale is any eight-note musical scale. However, the term most often refers to the symmetric scale composed of alternating whole and half steps, as shown at right. In classical theory, this scale is commonly called the octatonic scale, although there are a total of 42 enharmonically non-equivalent, transpositionally non-equivalent eight-note sets.

A jazz scale is any musical scale used in jazz. Many "jazz scales" are common scales drawn from Western European classical music, including the diatonic, whole-tone, octatonic, and the modes of the ascending melodic minor. All of these scales were commonly used by late nineteenth and early twentieth-century composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, often in ways that directly anticipate jazz practice. Some jazz scales, such as the bebop scales, add additional chromatic passing tones to the familiar diatonic scales.

In music, a synthetic scale is a scale that derives from a traditional diatonic major scale by altering of one degree by a semitone in either direction. Composer Ferruccio Busoni originally explored these scales in his A New Esthetic of Music and their number and variety were later clarified by J. Murray Barbour, who also proposed applying the procedure to scales of more or less than seven degrees, including pentatonic scales.

Coltrane changes are a harmonic progression variation using substitute chords over common jazz chord progressions. These substitution patterns were first demonstrated by jazz musician John Coltrane on the albums Bags & Trane and Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago. Coltrane continued his explorations on the 1959 album Giant Steps and expanded on the substitution cycle in his compositions "Giant Steps" and "Countdown", the latter of which is a reharmonized version of Eddie Vinson's "Tune Up". The Coltrane changes are a standard advanced harmonic substitution used in jazz improvisation.

Modes of limited transposition are musical modes or scales that fulfill specific criteria relating to their symmetry and the repetition of their interval groups. These scales may be transposed to all twelve notes of the chromatic scale, but at least two of these transpositions must result in the same pitch classes, thus their transpositions are "limited". They were compiled by the French composer Olivier Messiaen, and published in his book La technique de mon langage musical.

Chromatic circle Clock diagram for displaying relationships among pitch classes

The chromatic circle is a clock diagram for displaying relationships among the 12 equal-tempered pitch classes making up the familiar chromatic scale on a circle.

In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole tone scale, C D E F G A C; the augmented scale, C D E G A B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F A B C; and the blues scale, C E F G G B C. A hexatonic scale can also be formed by stacking perfect fifths. This results in a diatonic scale with one note removed.

"Giant Steps" is a jazz composition by American saxophonist John Coltrane. It was first recorded in 1959 and released on the 1960 album Giant Steps. The composition features a cyclic chord pattern that has come to be known as Coltrane changes. The composition has become a jazz standard, covered by many artists. Due to its speed and rapid transition through the three keys of B major, G major and E♭ major, it has been described as being "the most feared song" and "one of the most challenging chord progressions to improvise over" in the jazz repertoire.

Harmonic major scale

In music theory, the harmonic major scale is a musical scale found in some music from the common practice era and now used occasionally, most often in jazz. In George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept it is the fifth mode (V) of the Lydian Diminished scale. It corresponds to the Raga Sarasangi in Indian Carnatic music.

Jazz harmony Harmonic music theory as it applies to Jazz

Jazz harmony is the theory and practice of how chords are used in jazz music. Jazz bears certain similarities to other practices in the tradition of Western harmony, such as many chord progressions, and the incorporation of the major and minor scales as a basis for chordal construction. In jazz, chords are often arranged vertically in major or minor thirds, although stacked fourths are also quite common. Also, jazz music tends to favor certain harmonic progressions and includes the addition of tensions, intervals such as 9ths, 11ths, and 13ths to chords. Additionally, scales unique to style are used as the basis of many harmonic elements found in jazz. Jazz harmony is notable for the use of seventh chords as the basic harmonic unit more often than triads, as in classical music. In the words of Robert Rawlins and Nor Eddine Bahha, "7th chords provide the building blocks of jazz harmony."

Jazz piano Techniques pianists use when playing jazz

Jazz piano is a collective term for the techniques pianists use when playing jazz. The piano has been an integral part of the jazz idiom since its inception, in both solo and ensemble settings. Its role is multifaceted due largely to the instrument's combined melodic and harmonic capabilities. For this reason it is an important tool of jazz musicians and composers for teaching and learning jazz theory and set arrangement, regardless of their main instrument. By extension the phrase 'jazz piano' can refer to similar techniques on any keyboard instrument.

Ethno jazz, also known as world jazz, is a subgenre of jazz and world music, developed internationally in the 1950s and '60s and broadly characterized by a combination of traditional jazz and non-Western musical elements. Though occasionally equaled to or considered the successor of world music, an independent meaning of ethno jazz emerged around 1990 through the commercial success of ethnic music via globalization, which especially observed a Western focus on Asian musical interpretations. The origin of ethno jazz has widely been credited to saxophonist John Coltrane.

Melodic pattern

In music and jazz improvisation, a melodic pattern is a cell or germ serving as the basis for repetitive pattern. It is a figure that can be used with any scale. It is used primarily for solos because, when practiced enough, it can be extremely useful when improvising. "Sequence" refers to the repetition of a part at a higher or lower pitch, and melodic sequence is differentiated from harmonic sequence. One example of melodic motive and sequence are the pitches of the first line, "Send her victorious," repeated, a step lower, in the second line, "Happy and glorious," from "God Save the Queen".

In music, a symmetric scale is a music scale which equally divides the octave. The concept and term appears to have been introduced by Joseph Schillinger and further developed by Nicolas Slonimsky as part of his famous Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns. In twelve-tone equal temperament, the octave can only be equally divided into two, three, four, six, or twelve parts, which consequently may be filled in by adding the same exact interval or sequence of intervals to each resulting note.

The chord-scale system is a method of matching, from a list of possible chords, a list of possible scales. The system has been widely used since the 1970s and is "generally accepted in the jazz world today".

A chordioid, also called chord fragment or fragmentary voicing or partial voicing, is a group of musical notes which does not qualify as a chord under a given chord theory, but still useful to name and reify for other reasons.

References

  1. Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, About the Contributor, p.249. Rutgers University/Scarecrow Press. 2004.
  2. John Coltrane Plays "Coltrane Changes", About the Authors, p.8. Hal Leonard Corporation. 2003.
  3. "Encyclopedia of Jazz Musician". Archived from the original on 19 September 2011. Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  4. Marquis Who's Who in America, p. 5130. Marquis Who's Who 59th Edition. 2005.
  5. "Jazz Education Journal (July-August 2002), p. 61".{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  6. The Complete Thesaurus of Musical Scales, p. 5. Masaya Music, Revised Edition. 2006.
  7. Symmetrical Scales for jazz Improvisation, pp.1-3. Masaya Music, Revised Edition. 2006.
  8. 1 2 Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, pp.147-167. Rutgers University/Scarecrow Press. 2004.
  9. Lexicon of Geometric Patterns for Jazz Improvisation, p.113, pp.146-156. Masaya Music, Revised Edition. 2012.
  10. 1 2 "Hal Leonard Corporation" . Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  11. "Hal Leonard Corporation" . Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  12. "Doremi Music Web Site" . Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  13. "Doremi Music Web Site" . Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  14. "Doremi Music Web Site" . Retrieved 17 November 2012.
  15. "The American Harp Journal, Winter, p.59". 2011.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. "Down Beat 67, No.9, p.70". 2000.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)