We've looked at basic definitions and set out a numbering system for pitch classes that does what we want. Now it's time to see how powerful these ideas can be from an analytical perspective, and to develop some more ideas and techniques along the way.

As you probably already know, the great Don Van Vliet passed away on Friday. If you don't know his music you can and should start searching YouTube or Spotify or whatever you preferred source of such things is and check it out.

I first heard about a technique called "side-slipping" in David Liebman's inspirational book A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody. My recent interest in the coscale relationship led me back to it, since both involve, at least initially, working with "scales" that have no root notes.

A lot of people know about the first wave of American free jazz: Pharaoh Sanders, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor and the rest, along with the late work of John Coltrane. We'll have future posts devoted to those guys, but this one is about the ones who came immediately after them. Many were associated with Chicago rather than New York, and they brought an awareness of contemporary classical sounds to bear on the improvisational ethic of their forebears.

As I mentioned before, I've been playing with Usine lately and doing some free VST effect processing on the guitar. This has enabled me to indulge my love of ring modulators, so I recorded a demo of two free ones you can try out.

I've had about a month of enforced lack of practice; this happens to all of us from time to time. As I often do I devised a little etude to get my hands warmed up and in synch again. I'll be practicing this for the next couple of weeks, and probably using it as a warmup after that, so I thought you might like to try it yourself.

This post is about one way to develop ideas for licks out of simple material almost by a kind of "free association": you play something, find a bit you like, play around with it and so on.

Today I discovered Usine, a free bit of software for Windows that enables you to wire VST effects together. This is so much fun that I had to share it with you and give you a quick guide to getting it up and running. If you're a music techie already you can probably breeze through the first bit.

There was a time in the sixties when being into folk music was cool. Then there was a long, long time when it wasn't. Now, it seems, folk is back with the guitar front and centre. This post focusses on American artists; the British scene is seeing a similar resurgence but in a rather different way.

This post -- the second in our series on pitch class set theory -- looks at three different ways to number pitch classes. These numbering systems are alarmingly similar, so they can get confusing, but an understanding of them is essential for what follows, so hold onto your hat.