6/9 tunings anyone?

[Michael Kiese]

Mike, right from the first measures of the tune, the changes cycle Ab - C7 - F7 - Bb7 - Eb7 - Ab, same as the changes in Charleston and Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue but composed about 75 years earlier. It’s crazy but Paul Bley always said that jazz was behind classical music by about 75 years, and dang if he wasn’t right again. Lol

Aloha Mike,

Hey, would you look at that. You're right!

The II7/V7/I doesn't pop out at you because the major 3rd or the 7th is sparsely played between the melody and arpeggiations. It happens very quickly, but if you listen deeply that chromatic movement is there.

It's not surprising that a lot of cadences and progressions were first played in the classical era with its great composers.

Perhaps I have to revise the wording of my hunch...the Steel guitar likely contributed to the proliferation of the II7/V7/I Cadence to popular use in Jazz due to its tuning layout. Hawaiian Bands started extensively touring the US mainland en masse in the 1890s, which is right at the same time ragtime was popular, then Hawaiian music took over and had a golden era in America and the world.

It just makes sense to me that the II7/V7 chords are screaming at you as an obvious possibility on any steel guitar tuned to a major chord.

Given Joseph Kekuku's A major tuning, the II major chord is 2 frets above home position. Do a forward slant on the II major chord, and you have a V chord.

Steel guitar and Hawaiian music HAD to have an influence on those chord changes in the songwriting of that era, and therefore influenced the rest of modern American music.

Thanks for offering the Libestraum piece as an example of II7/V7/I from 1850, I really enjoyed analyzing it!

Enjoy!

[Michael Kiese]

They're just hunches, but it makes sense to me.

Hawaiian music is Jazz. Jazz is Hawaiian music. There is also documented written music from musicians that played in the Hawaiian court in the mid 1850's where there's fiddles, banjos, guitars, and upright basses. It was the sound of bluegrass instrumentation almost 80 years before Bill Monroe debuted in 1940.

The historical record is the historical record. There are no historical records earlier than the Hawaiian music influence of chord progressions and instrumentation. It's just that those records were lost and forgotten by history.

Aloha all,

Just wanted to be transparent and point out that I misspoke here. My train of thought was concerning the Hawaiian court musicians in the mid 1800's using bluegrass instrumentation almost 80 years before Bill Monroe.

This is actually documented and recently came to light.

I should have not included the word "chord progressions" in that sentence about historical records, as I stated earlier it was a HUNCH of mine that the II7/V7/I came from the steel guitar.

It was fun analyzing and confirming that Franz Liszt's Liebestraum from 1850 had a II7/V7/I in it. And I'm always open to learning something new.

Now the interesting question is, did Liszt's music or the compositions of earlier classical composers make it to Hawai'i? Or, did the Hawaiians discover the II7/V7/I independently on their own?

The early missionaries came to Hawai'i around 1820, and brought with them Church hymns and early gospel music. Bach chorales had a lot of influence on church music.

Does anybody know of a II7/V7/I example in a specific piece of Baroque music from the 1700's, or perhaps a Bach church chorale?

[Twayn Williams]

Now the interesting question is, did Liszt's music or the compositions of earlier classical composers make it to Hawai'i? Or, did the Hawaiians discover the II7/V7/I independently on their own?

An interesting question indeed! Once you start working in the circle of 5ths, secondary dominants are practically an inevitability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths#History

[Michael Kiese]

Now the interesting question is, did Liszt's music or the compositions of earlier classical composers make it to Hawai'i? Or, did the Hawaiians discover the II7/V7/I independently on their own?

An interesting question indeed! Once you start working in the circle of 5ths, secondary dominants are practically an inevitability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_fifths#History

YES! I agree. Very interesting.

And yes secondary dominants are an inevitability when working the circle of 5ths. Now imagine playing stringed instruments open tuned to a major triad. The secondary dominants are practically SCREAMING at you, "Play me! I'm here!"

The Spanish and Mexican Vaqueros started arriving in Hawai'i in the 1830's. They taught the Hawaiians how to cowboy, and they also brought with them their guitars. That's about the time when Hawaiians started experimenting with Slack Key open tunings.

The Liszt vs Hawaiian II7/V7/I could very well be a case of people discovering the same thing independently of one another, but one person documented/published first, so they get the credit, and that's fine. Kinda like how Sir Isaac Newton and "some other guy" were both independently inventing Calculus at the same time, but Newton was first to publish, so he gets the historical credit, and his name is etched in history, and the "other guy" is just the "other guy" I don't bother to remember his name. haha.

But going back to the II7/V7/I, to me that's the QUINTESSENTIAL sound of Hawaiian music, especially when played with a swing beat.

It would be very interesting to discover the earliest documented II7/V7/I in Hawaiian music. I'm sure some musicologist in Hawai'i knows the answer. I'll shake the tree and see what fruit falls, lol.

[Mike Neer]

John Dowland’s “Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite” uses a II7 V7. Composed 1597. The Baroque era indeed.

I pulled out my Walter Piston Harmony book and he cites Mozart’s Piano Sonata No 5 as an example of SDs. The term “secondary dominant” originated with Piston. Other composers and theoreticians used different terminology. I recall visiting some of my students who attended Berklee and they all mentioned that they were using Harmony as a text book, so I bought it too as well as some Schoenberg books. Terms like “V7 of V” came from Piston—it was the first I’d ever heard of it. This was all back in the 1980s.

[Nic Neufeld]

Y'all have gone much deeper than I could manage but I did hypothesize...would be really easy to convert B11 to a 6/9 tuning. Just detune the b7 (A to Ab on 3rd string from top). To make it a proper 6/9 tuning I guess you could also detune the top string to a 3rd (Eb).

That said, I found myself almost completely incapable of making anything much musical come out of that tuning, the intervals just felt weird (but surely that is my unfamiliarity of it). Ironically I thought of B11 when I saw this thread as I think of B11 as a split tuning with a sixth on one side (A6, top four strings) for melody and a 9th tuning (yes, technically 11th, but not as often used...B,B7,B9,B11 depending how far up the strings you go) on the low side for rich chords. Obviously different from a 6/9 chord.

My favorite (easy) 6/9 sound is when I'm ending a lush key of C song in C6 and strum the strings with the second string (C) barred by itself on fret 2. That's a variation of when I do an open CMaj9 strum by barring string 2/3 by themselves.

[Tim Toberer]

Y'all have gone much deeper than I could manage but I did hypothesize...would be really easy to convert B11 to a 6/9 tuning. Just detune the b7 (A to Ab on 3rd string from top). To make it a proper 6/9 tuning I guess you could also detune the top string to a 3rd (Eb).

I wouldn't have thought of that, thanks. I am probably going to just mess around with a C6 with a D on top since that is already proven useful and would also be easy to add to my pedal steel tuning.

[Michael Kiese]

John Dowland’s “Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite” uses a II7 V7. Composed 1597. The Baroque era indeed.

I pulled out my Walter Piston Harmony book and he cites Mozart’s Piano Sonata No 5 as an example of SDs. The term “secondary dominant” originated with Piston. Other composers and theoreticians used different terminology. I recall visiting some of my students who attended Berklee and they all mentioned that they were using Harmony as a text book, so I bought it too as well as some Schoenberg books. Terms like “V7 of V” came from Piston—it was the first I’d ever heard of it. This was all back in the 1980s.

I've certainly heard musicians say "five of five" a lot throughout my life. That's a very common phrase. This is the first I've heard of someone publishing that term. So that's a cool bit of trivia to know. I wonder if Piston coined the term himself, or if he just published it.

REALLY old time Hawaiian musicians would say G and "second G" or C and "Second C". But that lead to more confusion than anything. We have Charles E. King to thank for that with his early publishings of Hawaiian music from the 1920's. He was first to the trough when the US created Copyright Law. I'm convinced he plagiarized the work of others, and added his own musical nonsense nomenclature to put an original spin on it. King made A LOT of money simply by publishing books of Hawaiian music, and benefitted from the copyright law. It was the wild west in those days. He got away with a lot.

[Michael Kiese]

My favorite (easy) 6/9 sound is when I'm ending a lush key of C song in C6 and strum the strings with the second string (C) barred by itself on fret 2. That's a variation of when I do an open CMaj9 strum by barring string 2/3 by themselves.

Aloha Nic,

I do something similar. When ending in C, I'll bar strings 5 through 1 on the 2nd fret, but leave the C open.

That gives you a D6/C sound. Which really is a C lydian sound: C, F#, A, B, D, F#

You have all the pretty color notes of a major sound, the 6, maj 7, 9, and the #11.

I like your idea of barring strings 2 and 3 over the 2nd fret for a Cmaj7/9 sound. I'm gonna try that too.

Steel guitar really gives you so many opportunities to superimpose triads over bass notes, and playing with upper extensions.

Enjoy!

[Michael Kiese]

Y'all have gone much deeper than I could manage but I did hypothesize...would be really easy to convert B11 to a 6/9 tuning. Just detune the b7 (A to Ab on 3rd string from top). To make it a proper 6/9 tuning I guess you could also detune the top string to a 3rd (Eb).

I wouldn't have thought of that, thanks. I am probably going to just mess around with a C6 with a D on top since that is already proven useful and would also be easy to add to my pedal steel tuning.

Aloha Tim,

I sincerely apologize for my tangental influence on your thread, lol.

But I did enjoy the discussion.

I think the consensus is to put the 9 on the top string, and to keep it out of the middle strings, because it offers more problems than it solves.

Glad to hear that you're going in that direction, and please keep us updated on your progress!

[Tim Toberer]

Aloha Tim,

I sincerely apologize for my tangental influence on your thread, lol.

But I did enjoy the discussion.

I think the consensus is to put the 9 on the top string, and to keep it out of the middle strings, because it offers more problems than it solves.

Glad to hear that you're going in that direction, and please keep us updated on your progress!

No worries! I appreciate all the comments and I was just sort of watching to see where it went. Some folks get upset about this sort of thing which I find odd. I think it is kind of like road rage when people think they own the road in front of them.

I don't know enough about the tangential subject to say much, but I will say that when different cultures come together either by force or choice, many things happen. Some of them happen to be beautiful. The Hawaiian influence in Jazz, Bluegrass, Blues Gospel etc is really interesting, because they had such an early and greatly outsized influence. For me finding specific examples is difficult because it is kind of like cloud watching. You can see something when you are looking for it. People can convince themselves of all sorts of things even though it is impossible to know for sure. It is fun to think about however!

[Michael Kiese]

but I will say that when different cultures come together either by force or choice, many things happen. Some of them happen to be beautiful.

Wow, that is a very poignant and well said insight. It says a lot without saying a lot.

You can see something when you are looking for it. People can convince themselves of all sorts of things even though it is impossible to know for sure. It is fun to think about however!

Boy, you sure nailed that one.

It all just comes down to, "who has the earliest historical record", and then we have to ask if there was any connection between separate parties to see whether cross pollination occurred, or if they developed the same thing independently. It's an interesting journey of history.

If we keep intellectually honest, then we can find out the truth, and that's where the golden insight is.

I only recently became aware of the accomplishments of Hawaiian music within the last 2 years or so, and it's been an enlightening journey.

A well done documentary by PBS Hawaii, uploaded 6 months ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nZNeQYoQgs

Jonathan Troutman's book: Kika Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music
https://a.co/d/8yOMpR4

Jonathan Troutman is the curator of music and music instruments at the Smithsonian, and he makes an appearance in the PBS Hawaii documentary.

[Rick Aiello]

Troutman was at a Joliet HSGA convention interviewing folks … for that book

[David DeLoach]

I think I'd heard that Al Gore invented the secondary dominate.

[Michael Kiese]

I think I'd heard that Al Gore invented the secondary dominate.

That may very well be, but apparently John Dowland gets the credit in 1597 for his composition “Come Again, Sweet Love Doth Now Invite”. haha.