Chili Flakes

A fusion of elements from funk and jazz rock.  Have always been a big fan of jazz fusion and wanted to try something new.  Tell me what you guys think.

Chili Flakes 3.mp3

Chili Flaks.pdf

Generally pretty nice. It's very modern which is really cool but sometimes, in my opinion it goes a bit overboard. Two main things stood out to me:
1. Having the guitar go into triplets within one beat also sounds clashy with the sax. I'm not sure why.
2. The sax does some really far out things... I think there's nothing wrong with keeping it nearer to the ground a little bit more to support the piece.
Also, measure 48's guitar rhythm I really didn't like.

But overall, again, it's really cool! I don't want to say more "focus" would help, because that's not the issue... more like more "poise". Give the audience more to work with.

Cheers!

I agree with Monarcheon.. You have a good idea, but it gets too busy and 'too out' too fast.. You might consider the latter section starting the piece..  That way you acclimate the listener to what's coming..  The players are more 'in touch' with each other..  It's OK to build up to the 'madness' part, but you want to 'ramp up and ramp down with it. 

The brains job it to make sense of the data that comes into your ears..  If the brain can't find a pattern, it starts to work harder and harder, then at some point, gets' overwhelmed when it can't discern some kind of order.. it starts to loose interest..  If the song is too static, and predictable, it is not a challenge, and the brain gets bored..

You have some really GREAT parts here.  And I mean really great.. there are some very inspired parts.

A music teacher of mine used Garageband, as one of his most I'mportant tools..  He would copy his song into it.. and then cut the song up into sections, moving/copying/pasting/sliding them around.  Sometimes changing the order of parts, repeating them, gives a continuity, even though the players, are really off in their own world.  Even with exactly what you got, some cutting/pasting/moving around, but help.. 

I do the same with Logic Pro..  I do the song laying down a full complement of parts.. and start cutting/pasting/moving. until I hit upon something.

Also the bass, and piano can 'imply notes sand chords by dropping a few here and there..  You'll still get the effect of a lot of movement, but not the clutter.. Then as song progresses, you can let the individual parts go to full complexity...

The dropping down to just that bass riff (which is pretty damn good) is very helpful..  Music is like speech.. You can't continuously talk.. you need to pause, to catch your breath, or let something you said 'sink in'..  The silence between notes are just as valuable (sometimes more) than the notes themselves.  Imply things.. you make a musical statement, give the listen a chance to digest some of it before you feed him more.  

This engages the listener.  He can make up little parts in his head., or do the melody, or a counter part.. This helps make the song 'part his' in his mind.. He is going to like it a lot more, when he can contribute his own ideas to it, even if no one ever hears it..  That's why you have 'choruses'.. Cause by the  time you get to the 2nd chorus, the listener has a good idea of what is going to happen.. So when you go to that sparser, really great piano movement and horn, and then drop, and the bass starts up with that riff again.. you got em hooked. 

Jazz of course breaks a lot of rules..  Jazz is a specialty.. It takes a certain type of person, to appreciate it..  Indeed I couldn't stand jazz for many years.. Finally I found jazz artists who had thrown pop into their work.. and I came around..  I sometimes love the 'controlled chaos' of jazz.  When I'm frustrated and anxious, I take solace in jazz pieces which are just barely contain 'chaos'..  

There is a lot of good stuff you got there... nice... 

Never really thought about the idea of sliding parts of a piece around, I'll definitely look into experimenting with that as well as trying to organize it some more to build up the 'madness'.  

Man...that sax line is WAY out there. 

Since I know better, I'll assume you're not incorporating any advanced M-BASE poly-tonalist harmolodic concepts here ;)

You almost had a groove, (it's a weird, oddly phrased groove - which isn't necessarily a bad thing)  but it doesn't settle. There's no pocket.

It was mentioned that the sax is too busy. Definitely, with the quirky rhythmic approach you've got here, a sparser melody would help. It could be that the melody is just a bit too abstract from the groove that it's not working.  A simpler bass/groove could help too - you can have a weird, angular melody if the underlying groove can support it.

What do you listen to? Stylistically what were you aiming at here?

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You might want to dig into some Steve Coleman / M-BASE type stuff - it's very complex music, harmonically and temporally, but somehow it still grooves...

http://m-base.com/scores/cross-fade/  &&  http://www.m-base.org/black_science_mp3_files/cross_fade.mp3

Don't worry about the concepts behind it yet - just listen and hear what's happening, musically. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8acY0QpVY