# Jazz/Prog/Rock/Contemporary Discussion (FFO: Reign of Kindo)



## bigswifty (Oct 8, 2013)

Sup dudes,

I've been taking some time off from metal to explore writing in other genres, and have been really interested in starting a band/writing process based around progressive jazz/rock styles like Reign of Kindo. 

I normally write from a guitarist perspective, but I find piano plays a tremendous role in this style of music and simply sounds beautiful, so I have been wanting to learn piano geared toward the goal of writing in this style. That way, I'll have the capability of writing from several angles (I also play some drums/bass). I'm also interested in doing vocals.

My questions for those who would like to help are these:

- What is a good starting point for piano/guitar approaching this style?
- What overall theoretical themes are expressed in this style?
- Piano players/theory gurus: Are there certain uses of key change/chord progressions/tonal passages that resonate throughout the music? Any recurring themes?

Some reference points:


(lol excuse the voice at the start) - First song and last song on the album really grabbed me first listen.





I realize that there are some Jazz elements missing from this band. Point is, the piano plays with Jazzy relationships in the chord voicings and the vocals are most definitely contributing to the distinction.

I hope this thread might turn into a good discussion involving compositions, chord voicings and progressions, and this particular style of music and it's signature traits. Let's hear your input!


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## powerball13 (Dec 5, 2013)

I totally agree with the power of piano. What I found fun and a good exercise was transcribing some of my fingerstyle arrangements over to piano. It may help with some new ideas as well! I can't help much more than that since I am in the same boat as you haha


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## asher (Dec 10, 2013)

While I have nothing to contribute to the discussion, that album is awesome, so I wanted to say thanks!


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## AugmentedFourth (Dec 10, 2013)

Hmm. Well to me the main genre label (obviously, like most music, there are a few that one thinks of) that came to mind was pop. The chord progressions are very poppy and only very cautiously and conservatively step outside of the boundaries of the established diatonic key (at least for the stuff I listened to).

Also I didn't notice a large number of particularly interesting voicings. Occasionally I got surprised, but for the most part not really. And the vocals. You say, "...the vocals are most definitely contributing to the distinction" in the context of calling it 'jazzy' or 'jazz' music. This may be an uneducated opinion since 99% of all the jazz I listen to is completely instrumental, but it sounds very, very poppy.

In pretty much all jazz music, the singer (or whoever may be carrying the prevailing melody) usually plays a melody that may seem to be of the kind reserved for instruments. The rhythms are not necessarily simple, and even when they are, there is a lot of 'color' involved as well as more complex forms of melodic structure than the kind found in verse-verse-chorus-bridge-type rock music. In verse-verse-chorus-bridge-rock (I need a shorter name), large parts of the melody are often formed by repeating a phrase every bar. Sometimes with a one-note variation, but still.

Jazz gets more involved than that.



(Bustin' out the 'Trane because I don't want arguing about if it's jazz or not, I think we can all agree that John Coltrane is.)

Anyways before I get going on a rant about some music junk no one wants to hear:

I did like the fact that that first song was 5/4. At least it freshened some of the parts of the song. But the main riff is just a 5-note A minor pentatonic lick. There was a temporary truck-driver's gearshift-style modulation for like 8 bars at one point that went up to Bb. Overall I wanted to like it but just wasn't very interested. Also, it seems to focus much more on bass and vocals than piano, but that's just my take. Also, do any of their songs have improv?

If you want progressive rock with jazz elements, I suggest looking elsewhere. Try:

Lye by Mistake
Trioscapes
Exivious
Tigran Hamasyan
T.R.A.M.
etc.


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## Skyblue (Dec 12, 2013)

This is leaning much more into the Prog-rock area, but lots of piano (and general music) awesomeness.


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## bigswifty (Dec 17, 2013)

Hey! Didn't realize this thread had been bumped and started!

AugmentedFourth, I realize that Coltrane is without a doubt Jazz, and in comparison the Reign of Kindo is no where close. I only used the distinction because I feel that is what they are going for to differentiate themselves from the majority of pop music, and because they are vastly more talented than most others in the pop genre. 

Now, you made some points of the minor pentatonic scale, which I could decipher already - when it is a guitar lick I don't have any trouble playing/recreating. I was looking more toward the relationships of chords used in the piano.. or the overall key progressions in the songs. Maybe "Flowers by the Moon" or other songs might be better examples. But to answer your question, they don't improv as far as I know. 

And I do listen to Exivious, TRAM and a couple others you mentioned - all great bands! Maybe in this case I was after a poppier sound anyway, as I do play prog stuff and that's where the influence of those other bands would come into play.

Thanks for the input so far!


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Dec 18, 2013)

On the Anakdota song: the piano riff bears strong resemblance to ELP's Tarkus.



dbrozz said:


> I only used the distinction because I feel that is what they are going for to differentiate themselves from the majority of pop music, and because they are vastly more talented than most others in the pop genre.



Wynton Marsalis is digging himself a grave right now so he can spin in it.

Really, you're looking at standard pop music with a horn section. The harmony is fairly diatonic, with the occasional chromatic chord here and there. Mind you, they're not doing IV V I all the time, but it's not much more complicated than that. Get comfortable with the diatonic cycle of fifths: IV vii° iii vi ii V I. Do it with seventh chords, if that makes you happy, but understand that jazz this is not.





Click the pictures and you can download an accompanying audio file, but try playing these at a keyboard if you have one.

This is the bare bones harmonic progression. Three notes to a chord: the root, the third, and the seventh. With sequences of seventh chords in the cycle of fifths, thirds becomes sevenths and sevenths become thirds. By that, I mean that the notes C-G (3-7) on A&#9837;&#8710; will become C-F (7-3) on Dø7. Going from Dø7 to Gm7, it's the same sort of thing: C-F (7-3) becomes B&#9837;-F (3-7). One note is static while the moves down, and they alternate in this fashion ad infinitum. Notice that the space between the soprano and alto voices, from chord to chord, goes fourth, fifth, fourth, fifth, fourth, fifth... This is the key to smooth voice leading with seventh chords.

--------------------

Ninths and thirteenths are always welcome.





Pay special attention to voice leading when using extensions. You can always throw an extension wherever with no reason, but I find it sounds better when the voices have a direction. Extensions generally want to descend. Going from A&#9837;&#8710;9 to Dø7, B&#9837; (9) descends to A&#9837; (5). Then, going on the Gm7(&#9837;9), I'm holding that A&#9837; from the previous chord to give me the ninth of Gm7. That ninth descends to the fifth of Cm7, and so on. 9 becomes 5, 5 becomes 9. You can also hold the ninth as a common tone to get the thirteenth of the next chord, as I do in measure 3: on Fm9, G is held over when the chord changes to B&#9837;13, becoming the thirteenth. For this progression, that is the only spot I would do that. Personal preference.

The third chord, Gm7(&#9837;9), is kind of wrong if you ask some people. The reason they'll give you is "don't use a &#9837;9 on a minor chord". I think it sounds better than the major ninth here, because of voice leading (it is a common tone from the previous chord) and also because of how it is voiced: notice that there is a major second between the soprano and alto. If you make that A&#9837; into plain old A, then you get a minor second between A and B&#9837;, which is a harsh sound when one of those notes is the soprano voice. In an inner voice, yeah, that A-B&#9837; clash is okay. Up top? Nope. There is also the matter of this progression being a diatonic sequence, so the diatonic A&#9837; is preferred to the chromatic A. A would sound out of place if it were only there for one chord, especially in such a harmonically weak position.

--------------------

You could also look into quartal harmony, if you're looking for voicings with a bit more modernity. All of the 6/9 chords and thirteenth chords in this one use quartal voicings:





The idea isn't so much that a quartal chord is some special harmony, as much as it is a special way to voice a chord. For example, let's take a G13: G B D F A E

Omitting the eleventh, because that's how we roll. Anyway, so this is a pretty awful voicing of a thirteenth chord. Thirds all the way up is lazy and sounds dense. What we can do instead is rearrange it a little: G F B E A D

Now, we have the root and seventh on the bottom, and a nice bunch of fourths on top. This has the added bonus of doing something with D, the fifth of the chord. Normally, fifths don't get much love, as they are a bland chord tone. However, when they are part of a specific structure or voicing, they work out great. In this case, the fifth is part of the quartal voicing. Compare those voicings:







The first one is meh. The second one is much more interesting.

Quartal voicings are also a nice way to tie in alterations. Check this one:






Once again, we have some essential chord members hanging out at the bottom: the root (G) and the third (B). What I did was put an altered extension at the top (E&#9837;, the flat thirteen) and fourthed it on down. This works out, because I grab another alteration on the way (the #9, B&#9837;/A#) and also the seventh of the chord (F). I wouldn't want to go down one more, because C is the eleventh, and we don't want elevenths when there is a major third in the chord (especially since it would be rubbing against that third, in this case). You could, however, go up another fourth from the top to get another alteration, the flat nine (A&#9837, but realize in pop and jazz arranging, one generally starts at the top voice and harmonizes down, rather than starting from a lower voice and harmonizing up. In other words, you put a bunch of stuff under the melody rather than on top of it.

* Note * - When using quartal voicings, all of the fourths must be perfect fourths. Augmented fourths will not sound quartal. The Fm6/9 in measure 3 is an exception, partly because of the context and partly because of their unique sonority. Since there are other quartal voicings in the progression, we accept the nearly quartal sound of the m6/9. It also helps that the augmented fourth is the bottom fourth, and not exposed at the top of the chord. And, once again, diatonicism is our friend.

Also, the third chord is a secondary dominant. iii is a very weak chord in tonality. It works alright for some of this stuff, but the mediant is generally not the best chord if you're looking for a powerful progression. By changing iii (Gm) to V7/vi (G7), it instantly breathes life into the progression. The difference is one note, but it really helps things move along. I was also finding that sticking with quartal voicings all the way through was getting monotonous. Change up your voicing strategy if you find that something isn't working. 

--------------------





(Forgot a courtesy accidental. That's E&#9837; on the downbeat of measure 3.)

This last one is like Bird changes. I'm taking the same progression that we started with and making every other chord a secondary dominant. What this does is make the progression sound like a bunch of ii V I's in different keys, with the I (or i, rather) being the ii of the next key. Notice that I had to change the root of the first chord to A (from A&#9837 in order to fit the sequence.

Because this is a real sequence (chromatic; the intervals in measure 1 are the same intervals as in measures 2 and 3), it can go on forever*. Diatonic sequences have a definite finishing point, because their intervals are not equal: eventually, one of those tones is going to be heard as the tonic. Our chromatic sequence here has a new tonic every measure, so you have to decide where you're getting off if you do this kind of thing. You do that with phrasing. In this case, the last measure has the real tonic, so there is a big stop on that chord, as well as a suspension to change the melodic sequence.

* Literally, this sequence can continue in the direction that it is going, looping back around to its beginning and getting lower and lower, without any hope of ever stopping unless somebody steps in and puts an end to it. I am become Ligeti, destroyer of being taken seriously in music school.


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## Hybrid138 (Dec 18, 2013)

Great band. Thanks for introducing me to them


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## bigswifty (Dec 18, 2013)

SchecterWhore, thanks for the contribution.
It'll take some time for me to decipher the semi-foreign language you speak in it, but nonetheless that is what I was hoping for! 
Also, I shall not refer to Kindo as having jazz elements any longer.. the tribe has spoken and I was out of line to stretch it that far 

Hybrid, thanks for listening! They're a great band and deserve all the recognition they can get


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Dec 19, 2013)

Ain't no thang. Let me know if you want me to clarify anything.


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