Jimi Hendrix and the Pentatonic Experience John Covach (The University of Rochester/Eastman School of Music) [Presented at SMT/AMS, Seattle, fall 2004 and at the University of Bologna, fall 2005] Seattle-born guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) must certainly be counted among the most influential guitarists in the history of popular music. Emerging out of the London psychedelic scene of the late 1960s and enjoying only a few years of success before an untimely death, Hendrix produced a catalog of music that remains central to rock musicians even today. Hendrix’s music grew out the American electric blues tradition of the 1950s, much as the music of Englishman Eric Clapton did. [These roots are chronicled nicely by Dave Headlam and Matthew Brown.] In the late 1960s, Clapton (with Cream) and Hendrix (with the Experience) released a series of records that literally created the image of the guitar hero in rock music, making instrumental virtuosity an integral part of rock music (Ex. 1). [Offer a prequel to Rob Walser’s heavy metal research] As clear as the influence of the blues is in Hendrix’s music, however, the blues is not the only pop style—or even the only black pop style—to have influenced the guitarist. In general, Hendrix’s music from the late 1960s blends together elements of the electric-blues tradition with characteristics that can be traced to the Beatles, southern soul, folk-rock, and even to the more experimental music of the Beach Boys. This paper will examine tracks from Hendrix’s first album, Are You Experienced? (1967), and the singles usually associated with that album, in order to explore how the musical materials themselves attest to Hendrix’s stylistic influences. Particular music-analytical attention will be focused on Hendrix’s use of pentatonic materials, as well as on the ways in which these materials are sometimes more and sometimes less tightly coordinated in the musical texture. While the 1 pentatonic collection in itself may be a simple element, Hendrix’s various usages of this collection create and enrich a broad range of musical structures. In order to establish a context for analysis, let us first briefly consider the pentatonic collection (see Ex. 2). The pentatonic collection is typically thought to have two distinct forms in rock-music practice: the major pentatonic {C D E G A} and the minor pentatonic {A C D E G}. Of course, these two forms are instances of the same set class, [02479], and while other modal manifestations of this set class are possible, they are far less common than the two shown here. The major and minor pentatonic collections can be found throughout Hendrix’s music, playing a role not only in Hendrix’s melodic material for voice and guitar, but also figuring into the domains of harmony, structure, and formal design. [Inserted here is the slightly corrected Ex. 2 from the original handout.] Example 2: major and minor pentatonic collections. major pentatonic {C D E G A} minor pentatonic {A C D E G} [02479] {C D E G A } {C Eb F G Bb} dorian: {C DEb F G A Bb} While it is crucial to understand the minor and major pentatonic collections in an abstract analytical sense, it is just as important in this case to appreciate how these collections lie under the fingers on the guitar fretboard. The minor pentatonic can be played a number of ways, but the two most often used fingerings are the so-called “block pattern,” which keeps all the notes within a single hand position, and a second arrangement, which employs systematic shifts of position, moving up and down the neck to create ascending and descending lines, respectively. Because of the ways in which the notes lie under the hand, certain double stops and string bends are easy to execute, and as a consequence, a body of commonplace melodic figures (or licks) in rock music can be clearly assigned to specific fingerings on the guitar. Also, the minor 2 pentatonic can be embellished with added notes derived from blues practice, namely the ^b5 and ^#7, both of which can arise in either a passing or neighbor function. DEMONSTRATE (Chuck Berry, blues licks) Likewise, the major pentatonic can be played within a block pattern or in a manner that employs position shifting, and chromatic tones can also be added on ^b3 and ^#5. As it turns out, these added tones fall in exactly the same place fingering-wise between minor and major pentatonic. Double stops are also common, and can be used to suggest the black pop of Motown or Stax soul. DEMONSTRATE (My Girl, I Dig A Pony, maj pentatonic dyads) Hendrix does not limit himself to the use of pentatonic materials, either in his guitar playing or in the other dimensions of his music making. Like most rock musicians of the time and since, Hendrix made use of modal materials in his playing, influenced in part by the use of such materials in the contemporary jazz of the 1960s, but also by the general mania for Eastern modes that was central to the East-meets-West penchant of so much psychedelic music of the 1960s— sometimes referred to as “raga rock.” [See Jonathan Bellman’s article] On the guitar, modes can be played easily within a single position, or played up and down the neck—a technique used to imitate sitar playing, especially when an open string is used as a drone. DEMONSTRATE (dorian in position [Santana], Mixolydian up and down the neck, with and without drone) The musical possibility of employing either pentatonic or modal materials leads to a situation that is noteworthy from an analytical point of view. If the minor pentatonic, major pentatonic, and various modal collections can all be thought of distinctive pitch-class spaces (as suggested in a different pop-analysis context by David Carson Berry), it will be important to note when these spaces seem to shift melodically, as well as when they are juxtaposed vertically. As 3 a way of leading into these kinds of considerations, consider how the shift from minor pentatonic to dorian and back can be quite noticeable. In such cases, it is certainly important to explore how clearly the pentatonic collection separates itself out from the dorian one, since it is always possible that pentatonic materials can be best understood as a subset within the larger modal collection. DEMONSTRATE (minor pentatonic, dorian, minor pentatonic, etc.) * * * Fire Many songs on the first Experience album could be taken as good examples of Hendrix’s use of pentatonic materials; “Hey Joe,” “Foxey Lady,” and “Manic Depression,” for instance, all employ minor pentatonic riffs. DEMONSTRATE (Hey Joe, Foxey Lady, Manic Depression) Another example is “Fire,” which is based on minor pentatonic riff that opens the track. DEMONSTRATE (Fire riffs at beginning of track) A formal diagram of “Fire” is provided as Example 3. This track presents two verses, each of which are followed by the song’s chorus. A two-part bridge then leads to the last verse, chorus, and a coda, resulting in a form I call the “compound AABA,” a formal type that is common within rock music. [my use of the terms “verse,” “chorus,” and “bridge” are consistent with Walt Everett’s definitions, provided in the glossary of his Beatles books; I am using formal classifications drawn from my recent article on this topic.] As suggested by Example 4, the verses are harmonically static, as the ascending three-note pentatonic riff in the guitar and bass is answered by Hendrix’s mostly pentatonic vocal phrases, recalling the traditional riff blues of classic 1950s Chicago electric blues tunes such as “I’m a Man,” though in Hendrix case, there is 4 substantially more frenetic energy. As can be seen in Example 5, the chorus breaks with the minor pentatonic stasis and introduces a bit of harmonic movement into the tune, featuring an exchange between a tonic major chord and a minor dominant. This second chord might also be thought of a polychord combining a C add 9 chord with an A bass, and it is marked with an asterisk in the example. I’ll return to this polychord reading in a moment The bridge section provides us with a chance to consider how pentatonicism can operate in the harmonic realm. The bridge begins with sequence chords moving from D to C to A to C, or I – bVII – V – bVII in D—a kind of motivic development of basic riff. DEMONSTRATE (bridge, “move over Rover”) In a minor pentatonic context, it is the roots of the chords that belong to the collection; the elements filling out each chord can be a perfect fifth, a triad, or an extended sonority and these chords may employ notes outside of the pentatonic collection (and frequently do). So recalling the harmonies in the chorus, it might seem odd that a D-major chord would serve as tonic in the minor pentatonic context of this song, but this happens here without creating a sense of modal conflict. This partly has to do with the level of coordination between the parts, but more about that later. Example 6 provides the first few measures of the solo that follows the first eight bars of the “move-over-Rover” bridge. This section builds on the music from the chorus, though the chords form the chorus are no longer present in the guitar part, replaced instead by a pentatonic solo, and the entire section is now centered in E, up a major second from the D key center of the rest track. After the third verse and its chorus, the solo section returns in the coda, but it is now expanded to alternate between E (where it had appeared earlier in the track) and the key of D, where this music has not yet appeared. This whole-step transposition of material in the coda is reminiscent of the Beatles’ “Penny Lane,” but the source of this shift is perhaps suggested by the 5 chords Hendrix plays in the chorus itself. He moves between voicings of a D major and Cadd9 chord (which I described earlier as a polychord), and this whole-step motion is composed out into the transpositional relationship between D and E, first in the solo and then later more extensively in the coda—material that is also based on the alternation of chords a whole tone apart. Purple Haze “Purple Haze” introduces a few new twists regarding the use of pentatonic materials. Example 7 provides a formal diagram for the track. Unlike “Fire,” “Purple Haze” does not employ a chorus, restricting itself to a series of three nine-measure verses, interrupted by a sixteen-bar instrumental bridge after the second verse. Example 8 provides the opening measures of the track. The aggressive alternating-octave Bb’s on the lower strings of the guitar that begin “Purple Haze,” sounding against alternating-octave E’s in the bass, together form a tritone, and this betrays little of the mostly E-minor pentatonic music that will follow. It is possible to argue that the Bb’s can be understood as arising from the chromatic passing tone often found between ^4 and ^5 in the blues, but the effect here is static and definitely not passing; the Bb neither resolves into ^4 nor passes up to ^5. The sound of this tritone is probably more closely related to the E augmented-ninth chord that follows the strongly pentatonic opening guitar solo, and this chord is shown with the asterisks in Example 9. In that Eaug9 chord, the g# and d maintain the tritone interval under transposition, intensified by the sounding of the g natural above. Whatever analytical explanation one favors for the E-Bb opening, it is tough to deny that the song’s first few gestures in the pitch domain do not entirely reinforce a pentatonic reading. The chord progression of the song’s verses, however, brings the pentatonic component directly to the fore. The movement from the Eaug9 through a G major- to an A-major sonority form a I-III-IV, a 6 harmonic succession often found in minor pentatonicism. Hendrix’s vocal melody above this pentatonic chord succession is mostly pentatonic as well, and so in terms of the use of pentatonic materials, the verses of “Purple Haze” are very similar to the sections of “Fire” just discussed. “Purple Haze,” however, also betrays a debt to psychedelia that is not a feature of “Fire”; Hendrix’s central guitar solo during the instrumental bridge picks up on the stylistic tendencies of raga rock. An early and famous instance of Eastern modal influences can be found in George Harrison’s use of the sitar in “Norwegian Wood” (1965), though Hendrix’s solo here probably owes more to Paul McCartney’s guitar solo in “Taxman” (1966). Interestingly, Hendrix breaks with pentatonicism during his “Purple Haze” solo and opts for the Dorian mode, playing mostly stepwise on the first and second strings, up and down the guitar neck, rather than across (and McCartney does the same thing in “Taxman”). The beginning measures of this solo can be seen in Example 10. The introduction of the Dorian mode here constitutes a change of pitch space, as the pentatonicism of the verse is abandoned in favor of the—in this case, at least—exoticflavored seven-element Dorian modality. The bass line reinforces this shift from pentatonic to modal materials, playing an ostinato consisting of e, f#, and d to support the Dorian solo. The lead-in to this solo employs motivic development of the b-d-g ascending motive first heard in the introduction (and bracketed back in Ex. 8), while the bass ostinato is developed out of the first motive in the guitar that follows the famous lyric, “s’cuse me while I kiss the sky.” Note that the “s’cuse me” motive’s f#-e-d descent might be thought of as an inversion of the song’s basic I-III-IV harmonic root movement during the verses. Even if that last connection seems a bit of a stretch, contour inversion is nonetheless a central feature of Hendrix’s guitar lines throughout the piece whenever the opening signature lick is involved. DEMONSTRATE: lead-in to solo, solo, bass e-f#-d, “s’cuse me” riff, contour inversion 7 The Wind Cries Mary In “Fire” and “Purple Haze,” the relationship between the parts is relatively loosely coordinated from the perspective of common-practice counterpoint. While the bass and guitar will often lock in during accompanimental passages, the vocal that occurs over this accompaniment is mostly only coordinated harmonically in terms of key—that is, the important vocal pitches do not necessarily acknowledge the changing harmony or important pitches in the accompaniment. During guitar solos, Hendrix’s lead guitar is likewise only loosely coordinated with the bass and, if it is present, rhythm guitar. I refer to this rather loose coordination between parts as “textural stratification.” [Ken Stephenson has also remarked on this characteristic in some rock music.] It is important to note that while I am pointing out a loose coordination between the parts, I am not claiming that they are not coordinated in other domains such as such as meter or phrase rhythm. And it is not as if they are totally uncoordinated in terms of pitch, since parts still remain centered on the same tonic. When textural stratification is present, the structural level at which the vocal, guitar, and bass parts come together is deep enough in the middleground to resist reading these tunes in a traditional tonal sense—there is a kind of structural gap between the stratified foreground and the level of middleground at which coordination occurs, and some might hear this gap as harmonic stasis, indicating a lack of directed contrapuntal motion. But not all of Hendrix’s music is like this. “Hey Joe” provides a good example of a tune in which the melody and harmony are coordinated in the traditional manner, though this song is, of course, not a Hendrix composition. [Michael Hicks tracks the origins of this song in his book on 60s rock.] In addition, Hendrix’s guitar solo on this track introduces stratification, cutting against the otherwise coordinated character of the song’s structure. “May This Be Love” is perhaps a better example of conventional harmonic-melodic coordination, and tracks like this can be analyzed 8 much as one might do for a classical song. “The Wind Cries Mary” is also an instance of a relatively coordinated structure, though as we’ll see, there are exceptions in this piece. “Mary” also employs a fair amount of major pentatonic material, so it provides an opportunity to see how that element works in Hendrix’s music as well. Like “Purple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary” is in simple verse form with an instrumental bridge and tis can be seen in Example 11. The verses are based on the harmonic succession shown in the second half of Example 12. In the first half of Example 12 you can see a possible middleground model upon which the actual progression that occurs in the verses of this song could be based. The movement from V to I in the bass supports a ^5 - ^4 - ^3 movement in the descant. In the actual song, the Bb is transferred into the lower voice, and the result is a IV chord occurring between V and I. DEMONSTRATE model and actual progression Though he goes into much more detail in his analysis of Hendrix’s “Little Wing,” Matthew Brown also proposes that Hendrix kept middelground structures in mind in that tune, and even in the live solos, certain of the song’s middleground structural features can be found consistently articulated from performance to performance. This idea is also familiar to us from jazz soloing over standards, as well as theme and variation sets in classical music. The problem when this occurs in “The Wind Cries Mary” or other such tunes, is that the theme or melody is not known beforehand, and so the middle ground structure has to be posited, based on the evidence that the entire piece seems to provide. Looking at Example 13, you can decide if you think my model captures the essence of the structure, but in any case, a different model would essentially solve the problem in the same way, leaving the idea that some common coordinated structure undergirds the four verses in this song intact, even though none of the verses are identical. 9 PLAY verse 1 of “Mary” The instrumental bridge of “The Wind Cries Mary” introduces a new harmonic succession, as shown in Example 14. Still in F, this new set of chords recasts the V – IV – I movement of the verses into I – bVII – IV, then ultimately picking up the II to IV progression of the verses, before extending the minor third root movement to arrive at bVI before settling back into tonic. Despite the fact that a coordinated structure supports the verses, Hendrix’s solo pulls away from the structure of the progression, remaining doggedly in F major pentatonic and not following the harmonic changes. When the accompaniment moves to the II chord, Hendrix does begin following the chords, and this produces a somewhat disjointed succession of riffs. PLAY guitar solo of “Mary” Conclusion Each of the tracks I have examined today presents an approach to pentatonicism in Hendrix’s early music with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. “Fire” is fairly straightforward in its use of minor pentatonic materials, which are present in both the melodic and harmonic domains. “Purple Haze” is similar to “Fire” in this regard, but it also shows how modal elements can be blended into a predominantly pentatonic context, and suggests that the idea of pitch space might help us theorize about such shifts. “The Wind Cries Mary” shows how major pentatonic materials can come into play, though here only in the melodic domain, and unlike minor pentatonicism, not in the harmonic dimension of the music. One of the keys to Hendrix’s use of pentatonic materials is not only that he blends other elements in, but also that he employs both more and less coordinated textures (and sometimes within the same track, as we saw with “The Wind Cries Mary”). 10 I realize that my presentation today only barely begins to examine some of the questions I have raised. I have only examined pieces from the first batch of recordings by Hendrix. How do these practices continue or not in Hendrix’s subsequent music? Can the use of the practices discussed here help us explain a stylistic shift or development in Hendrix’s music? And more broadly, how does pentatonicism figure into the music of other rock musicians? I will have to leave those questions for another day. [Original handout containing examples begins on next page.] 11