Herbie Hancock's comping style
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are you after analysis etc? rather than have technical explanations which might mean nothing unless accompanied by a track time where it occurs it would be better to listen to the records themselves to work out the juicy bits for yourself. i got loads from spending a couple of hours with the pause button and wayne's "witchunt" and "speak no evil". those tracks are killers. also listen to him with the 2nd 'great miles quintet' on albums like e.s.p, miles smiles, plugged nickel, my funny valentine.
honestly, you will pick up so much more by closely studying these albums than you would if you read a load of text describing it.
do you know your melodic minor harmony?
you might dig in on something like "the eye of the hurricane" -- i've transcribed much of the comping on this one a while ago, since it's both tasty *and* it's a simple blues in f (minor). anything would work, really, though.
i think what people understand by the term is the use of modes which can be *conceptualized* by thinking about them in relation to a melodic minor scale. i don't think it's a harmonic system in itself, except in this sense. so you add a few new modes to your bag of modes, if that's your bag and you enjoy this approach. see marc sabatella's jazz improvisation primer (easy to find via google) for a well-written, inoffensive, nuts-and-bolts view.
what i was having trouble with specifically was when he comps in the upper register of the keyboard, sort of "popping" the chords, ecspecially on shorter's spots. with effort, i could discern the tones in the middle c area; however, up top it's a whole nother story.
but thanks for the suggestions, i just bought maiden voyage, speak no evil, and adam's apple a couple days ago and haven't really dove into the inner workings of the albums yet, settling for casual listening first.
i guess all i need to know is already in front of me though!
when i have a chance, i'm going to come back and answer your question. there's some more things i can tell you about herbie's comping because i've looked at it extensively. i guess there's some melodic minor harmony, but not really. most of herbie hancock's harmony is based on diminished scale harmonies, clusters, and polychords.
the upper register stuff is often octaves and fifths, with added grace notes on the fifth for effect. like for c minor
left hand, starting on the a below middle c:
a bb d eb f
r hand, two octaves above middle c
c (f#) g c
the f# is a grace note crushed into the g.
it's actually a lot simpler than you originally think. i looked at this stuff for a long time because i decided that harmonically, herbie was my boy. come to think of it melodically too. i'll try to hit you back later with more but i hope this helped.
there is an excellent series of lessons from herbie printed from japanese keyboard magazine, i think. roughly 100 pages or so. there are several people on pianofiles.com who could get you a copy -- it's fairly interesting reading, even if you don't know any japanese.
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