Spud Murphy Equal Interval System
Sam Winans is an American film and television composer. He studied music theory in college and privately with Merv Kennedy, a jazz musician, and then studied orchestration with Spud Murphy, creator of the Equal Interval System (EIS).His music has appeared on TV shows such as Lizzie McGuire, Harts of the West, Flight 29 Down, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and Kids. In his ninth decade Spud continued to be honored as a composer and music educator who published more than 26 books, including his own extensive course on composing, arranging and orchestration known as the Equal Interval System. Students of this method have included Oscar Peterson, Bennie Green, Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones.
While i have not studied this system, i do have some ideas that i'll throw out there simply because no one else has responded. Anyone who knows this system is free to correct.
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
From what I heard on the link you posted, this approach sounds similar to techniques used by Arnold Schoenberg et al. A useful technique for playing 'outside' is to take a diatonic set of intervals say C,D,E in the key of C, then play the same relationship of intervals starting on say the 3rd, - E,F#,G#.
The second set of notes are outside but they work because their intervalic relationship was established by C,D,E. It also helps to repeat the rhythm. In fact, Schoenberg teaches that the easiest way to relate two musical ideas together is to replicate the rhythm of the first. The intervalic relationship does not need to be literal either. In the above example the second set of notes could have been G#,F#,E. The same interval relationships only reversed in order. You can also work from inside out, C,D,E to E,F#,G#; or start outside and work your way back in say F#, G#,A# to C,D,E.
Again all of this occurring above a C major tonality. This technique works great in sequences. I haven't transcribed the file you linked above but it sounded at one point as though the pianist went through a cycle of alternating ascending and descending ninth intervals.
Once the sequence gets started, the key center seems irrelevant. The technique is effective and affords the soloist a lot of 'freedom', and can take you to places you might not normally go. It's also challenging and fun to apply 'on the fly'. Anyway, i suspect that EIS is rooted in this Schoenberg technique.
I credit Schoenberg only because his text was my introduction to the idea, someone else may have invented it. Interesting stuff. Yeah, I can't find the file, but it just sounds like chromatic sequences. We do diatonic sequences all the time, but the chromatic ones will lead you outside naturally. Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, even Copeland - it is a common technique to get outside. It is one of many.
Really your just taking the relationship of the melody and the harmony out of the picture and focussing on the relationship of the melody to itself. Using the same exact intervals creates a strong coherence in the melody that makes the ear think that it sounds OK even though it is clashing with the harmony.
I think that an approach like this needs a few things. You need to know how to play very inside the harmony. In application, you need to start very inside, step outside with absolute confidence and stong melodic content, and then (and this is very important) you need to have it lead you back to playing inside. As you get better, you can be a little more loose about the procedure, but this will get you going.
But too many people try to play outside before they can play inside. It just ends up sounding like they don't know what their doing, IMHO. Peace, Kevin Last edited by ksjazzguitar; at 01:40 PM.
Spud Murphy Equal Interval System Problems
A mention of the Equal Interval System just popped up on the Goodchord thread. In common, they both seem to offer a systematic way of presenting voice leading into the modern guitarists' improvisational toolset. I'm working with the Goodchord but EIS is new to me, and what little I was able to dig up (without buying) seems really interesting. This was an old thread. Thanks FEP for starting it. Anybody in the intervening years have any experience on it, particularly as it pertains to using voice leading in real time harmony?
I've seen the Goodchord books. It has a lot of pages but I think the theory can be handle down in a few pages. I know that theory because I'm a student of the composition method 'Equal Interval Sysytem' by Lyle Spud Murphy. The voice leading really changed my playing. Good voice leading seems like one of the true frontiers in jazz guitar; it's largely unexplored by most guitarists at the depth that pianists can see and execute.
Linear instrument vs chaotic non linear layout obviously. Modern instrumentalists are availing themselves of tools like EIS and Goodchord. It's pretty exciting. EIS-ers in the group?
Please come forward! I'm a student of EIS.
Your right when you say EIS 'offers a systematic way of presenting voice leading'. Voice leading is a great part of EIS but that is not all. We have to go thru 12 books of organized and very thorough exercises (I'm in book 7). All types of chors and respective voice leading between them, chromatic alterations in between notes, polytonality, and just so many cool things make me want to go till the end. It's expensive, but it made me be a better musician. It doesn't alter who I am (as a player or composer), but it gived me tools I didn't know it existed.
Take a look at my songs: Hope you like it. Reading this thread it looks like whem I'm 'cheating' while improvising a solo (I shouldn't say it). Sometimes when I get lost on the fretboard during a solo, I move a small constant fragment up (or down) the fretboard until I find a new 'harmonic handle' to attach to and continue phrasing. This sometimes led to comments like 'I liked your outside playing in the solo.' (even if it was a try to get out of the swamp:-) ) If this method in some way gives a meaning, or a ratio to my instinctive play, I think it's worth diggin' at least a bit. How does it work? Have I to contact one teacher and start an email lesson?
Any suggestion on who preferably contact among these (are there any in Europe?) A few dollars for one lesson instead of a pizza could be a good arrangement to understand the real matter, and keeps low my cholesterol level. LOL Then I'll decide if I'll continue or not. (my family surely would opt for the pizza!). If this method in some way gives a meaning, or a ratio to my instinctive play, I think it's worth diggin' at least a bit.
You should know that you will need will, time and money. I'm in my second year doing the course, money depends on the teacher but is around 100dollars lesson. It is like a University degree.
You go slowly, a little thing new every lesson How does it work? Have I to contact one teacher and start an email lesson? Contact a teacher regarding lessons on EIS, I think they will kind of interview you and they will choose a teacher that is available and suited for you. For me the course is very good, hope it helps you too. I am a graduate of the course. Although one may find some material for improvisation it is primarily a course about linear composition and it's definitely not guitar-centric.
It is significantly different from Goodrick's material (although there is some surface similarities) in that one is not locked into traditional tonality/key centers (which is the 'un-equal' system) right at the outset. In simplest terms, one has the freedom to use every possible combination of horizontal and vertical intervals over every possible root motion. It is the only system of harmony whose entire basis is derived from the overtone series. It confirms all previous theories while being completely original. The books are very rarely available on Ebay, etc., and that situation will not change for the forseeable future. Even if you had the texts, much of it would be difficult to unpack without a teacher that knows the material.
There's something about Spud Murphy that has struck a chord with three generations of Hollywood music composers. Part of it, of course, is Murphy's willingness to share his unusual technique of music composition that takes place in your head over a desk instead of through your fingers at a piano. But a lot of it is Murphy's quick wit, his photographic memory and his ability to move as easily with those playing symphonic music as with those doing cartoon movie tunes. So no wonder 100 of his students and friends will gather Sunday to celebrate Murphy's 92nd birthday and swap stories of how his radical concept of writing music continually saves their necks as they crank out tunes for the entertainment industry around town. The birthday salute at noon at the Twin Dragon Restaurant on West Pico Boulevard is an annual affair that in the past has attracted the likes of Buddy Collette, Jimmy Haskell, Ray Conniff and Neal Hefti. Murphy is almost a cult hero to about 250 musicians and composers who have studied under him since 1948, when he first devised a 12-tone composition technique he calls the 'equal-interval system.'
Alumni include jazz artists Oscar Peterson and Gerald Wiggins, Pink Floyd saxophonist Scott Page and film composer Tom Chase. 'He's very wise, always funny and like nobody I've ever met,' said Dave Blumberg, a composer and arranger from Brentwood who worked 14 years for Motown Records before turning to television and motion picture work such as 'Around Midnight.' 'He's like my best friend. I talk to him almost every day. He's helped so many of us break through our own barriers and achieve our own greatness without having to imitate somebody else.'
That's high praise for someone who was never formally trained in music composition himself. Utah-born Lyle Murphy-his nickname 'Spud' is a takeoff on the lyle potato-started out as a jazz trumpeter in the 1920s. But he quickly became known more for his writing and arranging than for his performing. In the 1930s, he wrote more than 100 arrangements for Benny Goodman's orchestra and 75 arrangements for Glen Gray's Casa Loma Orchestra. In the 1940s, he worked at Columbia Pictures on 50 movies, arranging music for the dance routines of Fred Astaire and for films starring Rita Hayworth and Marilyn Monroe.
Because he was unschooled in music composition, Murphy didn't realize he approached music differently until a friend asked him why he listened for the intervals between musical notes on records. After World War II, others were paying attention to his composing style. A fledging composer persuaded Murphy to teach him through veterans' GI Bill benefits. Murphy wrote his own text as he went along. It's now 1,200 pages long. With one $100 lesson a week, it takes about 4 1/2 years to graduate from Murphy's course. Those who use Murphy's system say music written his way is easy to orchestrate because it is composed horizontally-the way the ear hears it-instead of vertically.
'A person who writes at the piano like most composers and arrangers is sometimes more likely to write piano music. But if you write at the desk you write for the orchestra. You hear the oboe, the bassoon, the trumpet,' said Dell Hake, a La Canada-Flintridge resident who has composed television commercial music for Ford, IBM, Nike and McDonald's. Hake and others say music-writing using Murphy's system is quick-something that is important in Hollywood. 'In this town, in order to make a living, speed is of the essence,' agreed keyboardist-turned composer Tom Griep, a Murphy student who lives in the mid-Wilshire district.
'You learn under him to write faster, more adventurously.' Composer Craig Sharmat of Woodland Hills said he has landed jobs and kept them because of Murphy. 'I had a one-day turnaround for 'America's Most Wanted' and I was trying to make it sound orchestral. I followed what Spud teaches and not only delivered on time but got the job and have been doing it three years,' said Sharmat-who is still studying under Murphy. Murphy's approach is especially effective in fast-paced cartoon work, said Tim Torrance, a Sherman Oaks resident whose music work includes TV's '101 Dalmatians.'
Murphy himself is perhaps best known for his arrangement of 'Three Blind Mice' that was used on the old 'Three Stooges' shows, he said. Others use Murphy's concept to write and arrange jazz, chamber music and even cave music.
'I just came back from Indonesia where I used Spud's technique to create music from people tapping on stalactites,' said composer and record-label owner Chuck Jonkey of Glendale. Several of Murphy's graduates have begun teaching his composing techniques, using Murphy's texts. And Pasadena City College has introduced it as part of its music curriculum. That's a nice note to end your 91st year on.