Mundell Lowe Hot Licks Video

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:05][music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] for me.

[00:01:26][music] [music] He [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:01:48][music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:02:42][music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:02:49][music] Heat. Heat.

[00:03:05][music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat.

[00:03:47][music] [music] Heat.

[00:04:08]Heat. Heat.

[00:04:10][music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:04:40][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hi, I'm Andel Low and I'd like to welcome you to our little hotly next video session. Uh I was thinking coming out here from California that I should tell you a little bit about my background.

[00:05:36]As sorted as it may seem, uh I was born and raised in the south for the most part on a farm uh like Tal Farlo and a few other pickers.

[00:05:48]And uh I went to uh first my first encounter was with the country music with we used to call cowboy bands and then I found myself going to New Orleans quite a lot. I got interested in jazz and uh came along World War II and it was uh headed for Guad Canal. So being out there a few years I got to play a little bit not much. But when I came back, um, a friend of mine, John Hammond, had suggested I join the Ray McKinley band, which, uh, turned out to be a wonderful experience. Had Eddie Solder writing the arrangements. And, uh, McKenley, of course, was the band leader that took over when Glenn Miller disappeared and uh, led that Air Force band until the war was over.

[00:06:41]And from there I went I worked with Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsy when they got back together. And then I worked in Cafe Society for quite a while and then went to NBC, stayed there for I guess 11 years and got hired by Columbia Pictures to be a composer and out to the West Coast I went.

[00:07:06]uh I try to do a lot of clinics and a lot of teaching with young student when I have the time and as I travel around the country and do these things I've become aware of the fact that a lot of students are interested in writing their own music composing their own music and I would like to talk about that at this time uh I among other things am 12 tone composer which means that I've had to create a what's called a tone row. That's 12 consecutive notes. No particular intervals, but uh whichever uh you feel best, but you must complete the 12 tones, which is every half tone in in a in a scale in an octave.

[00:07:57]So I picked uh again on the plane coming out here uh from my row I picked tone number two which turns out to be a C and tone number six which turns out to be an A flat.

[00:08:14]Tone number eight which turns out to be a D sharp or E flat and tone number 11 which turns out to be a D natural.

[00:08:24]And from those four notes uh which sound roughly I like this [music] when you play them like that. Uh I wrote a piece of music which I think uh would be uh interesting for you to hear using just those three intervals as the motif and then we expand the motif. And as a matter of fact, I haven't finished uh the com composition alto together. We will do that uh when the band comes up.

[00:09:00]Uh but in the meantime, the the main motif turns out to be this.

[00:09:05][music] And from that, as I said, I expanded it, wrote a whole piece. And uh Ben, if you would come up, let's play this right now.

[00:09:17]This is my friend Salvador.

[00:09:19]Little applause from the back row there.

[00:09:21][laughter] And Phil and and Danny back there. Uh let's just play this right now. Okay.

[00:09:30]Three beats and you decide whether you like it or not. One, two, 3. [music] [music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> We have a melody that I've written out.

[00:10:44]Uh, I'll give you some harmony and if you will jot this in on your page right now. Um, F minor for two beats.

[00:10:55]B flat 9 for two beats.

[00:10:58]E flat 6 for two beats.

[00:11:01]C7th for two beats.

[00:11:04]The third bar, F minor 7 for two beats.

[00:11:09]B flat 9 for two beats. The next bar, E flat major 7th for two beats.

[00:11:16]E flat 6 for two beats.

[00:11:22]A minor for two beats, D7 for two beats, G major 7th for two beats.

[00:11:33]Then on the third beat, a B minor chord, an E7th chord.

[00:11:38]Next bar, A minor for two beats, D7 for a beat, A flat 7 for a beat, and then one beat a piece. G7, F major 7, E minor, A7 with a raised fifth.

[00:12:02]Okay, let me check it out with you again from from letter C. Two beats of F minor, two beats of B flat 9, two beats of E flat, two beats of C7.

[00:12:16]Next bar, two beats of F minor, B flat, E flat 6, E flat, major 7, E flat 6.

[00:12:22]Next bar, A minor 7, D7.

[00:12:27]Next bar, G7, major 7. Third beat, B minor, fourth beat, E7.

[00:12:35]Uh the next bar A minor 7. Next beat D 7 to A flat 7. And the last bar before letter D is G7, F major 7, E minor, and A7 with a raised fifth. Can we play that? You got it.

[00:12:55]Okay. Here's the bridge we just composed. Three. Four.

[00:13:02][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Okay, thanks guys. Thank you. Well, there you have a complete piece that was uh composed mainly from that first motif that I spoke about with the four notes and then expanded into a phrase, expanded into a section and then expanded into a complete uh piece of music. I hope you like it.

[00:14:31]I would like to encourage u music students, guitarist uh to get all the musical education that you can acquire before you get out into the real world uh playing the guitar for a living or writing music or a combination of all of these. Uh you must remember one thing about playing my kind of jazz anyway. It's ear music.

[00:15:01]Uh, if you can't hear it, don't play it because if you can't hear it, the listener can't hear it.

[00:15:09]So, train yourself to think musically all the time. Think lines, even sing them silently to yourself when you're playing jazz or when you're composing.

[00:15:20]Uh, there's a lot to be said about u harmonic forms that you can uh get a lot from. For instance, ear music uh for the most part falls into forms like uh let's say 251.

[00:15:39]That would be uh uh in the key of C, a D minor chord. G C.

[00:15:51]Now it's all 251 except we're going to modulate. We're going to keep modulating and all of these progressions become 251 251 [music] 25 [music] 1 2 5 1 So you can go all over this the spectrum of uh harmony just doing that.

[00:16:20]And uh and I encourage you, as I've said before and will keep saying, write your own music. Uh it's very gratifying and it's it's also nice that when you write a piece that you really like, somewhere along the line, someone may record it and you're driving along in a car or you're walking down the street and you hear your piece being played on a a record or a television show. I've been through that and it's a thrill, believe me. So, as I said, let me please underline that. Encourage you to write and to play. Practice all you can, study all you can before you hang up your shingle. I am a guitarist because it's important.

[00:17:08]An important part of your education should be learning to accompany whether it's a singer or whether it's an instrumentalist. But the art of accompanying is a great asset in terms of making money. And that's what it's all about really. Having a little fun, making some money. If you're accompanying a singer, please try to at least know some of the key words that he or she will be singing because it'll help you in your your construction uh behind a singer. If you're playing for an instrumentalist, saxophone, trumpet, whatever, uh it's it's the same thing, but you can forget the words, of course. But listen very carefully to what they're doing.

[00:17:58]Compliment them. Do not uh what's the word? Uh compete. Don't compete. They are the soloist. You are the accomplist. When it turns around, uh you're uh soloing. Then it's up to them to accompany you. But I thought we might uh my friend Salvador is here. I thought we might uh do a little piece and I'll try to show you what I think accompanying uh should be like. And this is uh a piece that we're just making up.

[00:18:33]Okay, I'll play you a bar, two bar cell.

[00:18:40][music] [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Hey, [music] [music] hey, hey.

[00:19:56]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Hallelujah.

[00:20:28]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:21:21][music] [music] >> [music] >> I hope that was a good example for you.

[00:21:52]At least uh it was a sincere attempt and uh hope you enjoyed it.

[00:22:02]Over the years, I've had some uh inquiries about uh the fact that I use a D on the bottom.

[00:22:10][music] That came about uh years ago from reading some Siggoia transcriptions with the D-tuning and uh I started playing around with it and and kind of fell in love with the sound of it. So, I've used it now for almost 40 years and it has great advantages. It's wonderful for accompanying people. For instance, if you want an F chord, uh, an F chord would be to put the the root on the bottom and the fifth on the next string. And then you can do anything you want to from there on. Everything sounds wonderful. Whatever you add on top of that is a [music] great sound.

[00:22:59]>> [music] >> And it it uh it really helps. It also gives you a nice uh chance to uh to play a baseline that gets um also some other inversions uh would be uh [music] this is an E flat chord.

[00:23:26]E flat, F6, E flat 6, D six.

[00:23:33]Um, I'll play you just a little piece and and try to show you the the uh how the the D-tuning helps me. Anyway, [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> There was a theme from a motion picture that I did years ago called Billy Jack.

[00:25:14]the they used to say in motion pictures the love theme and uh the uh I hired uh Loranda Almeida was kind enough to come in and and play a course of that for me and then we brought in the orchestra with the strings and the woodwinds and the horns and and hopefully it made you cry a little bit and uh uh but uh getting back to the D-tuning it can be advantageous if you explore all the possibilities of it uh you have to think. See, ordinarily an F chord would be voiced this way.

[00:25:50]My F chord is voiced upwards.

[00:25:58]So, you have to think up a tone until you get that D tuning into your head.

[00:26:04]And it's difficult. I spent a long time u trying to master it and a lot of time I goofed on the air live or making a recording and there's lots of apologies until I finally got it under my fingers and uh it became part of my hearing my music musical hearing. So anyway, that's my little episode with the D-tuning.

[00:26:29][music] uh I think would be advantageous to talk about uh let's call it reharmonizing a given melody using uh perhaps a little more sophisticated chords or chord substitutes things like that. Let's take uh a very basic uh harmonic example and we'll expand it. Let's say the first one goes like this. [music] That's G, E minor, [music] A minor, D, which every guitar student probably knows. Now, what would be uh let's see how how could we expand that?

[00:27:15]We'll do this.

[00:27:18]We'll add a little uh substitute in the middle there, which is really a B chord.

[00:27:23][music] Going to the E minor, a little E [music] minor, E7th, going to the A minor, to the D, to the G. So we have this, [music] which gives it a little more, let's say, modern sound than the basic chords. Uh, a good exercise for that kind of thing I've found is a a kind of a chromatic crawling up the neck as it were like this.

[00:28:02][music] [music] So, you go from C all the way up to C.

[00:28:17]And let's name them as we go up. This is C major 7th, [music] C# sharp diminish, E, I'm sorry, [music] D minor, D sharp diminished, E, uh, C with an E bass, [music] F major 7, D7 with F sharp in the bass, G7, [music] G sharp diminished, A minor, B flat, major 7, B with a [music] sharp nine, and we're back to C.

[00:28:51]But it's the chromatic and it'll get your ear uh used to using substitutes and and the chromatic voice leading let's call it. So I've I found that very advantageous even with uh writing a piece of music uh using roughly that it might be something like this.

[00:29:15]>> [music] [music] >> But it's it's a nice exercise to to to uh get a feeling of progressing progressing harmony up the fingerboard and uh from for an octave.

[00:29:40][music] And uh it it sounds good to the ear. That's the main thing. As I said before, what we're playing is ear music.

[00:29:51]And anything that sounds pleasant would be a big help.

[00:30:04][music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:30:14][music] Heat. Heat.

[00:30:22][music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:30:38]Heat. Heat.

[00:30:43][music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:31:25]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:31:31][music] Heat. Heat. N.

[00:31:39][music] >> [music]