Chronicles - Bob Dylan [62]
I didn’t invent this style. It had been shown to me in the early ’60s by Lonnie Johnson. Lonnie was the great jazz and blues artist from the ’30s who was still performing in the ’60s. Robert Johnson had learned a lot from him. Lonnie took me aside one night and showed me a style of playing based on an odd-instead of even-number system. He had me play chords and he demonstrated how to do it. This was just something he knew about, not necessarily something he used because he did so many different kinds of songs. He said, “This might help you,” and I had the idea that he was showing me something secretive, though it didn’t make sense to me at that time because I needed to strum the guitar in order to get my ideas across. It’s a highly controlled system of playing and relates to the notes of a scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and the chord changes. I never used this style, didn’t see that there’d be any purpose to it. But now all of a sudden it came back to me, and I realized that this way of playing would revitalize my world. The method works on higher or lower degrees depending on different patterns and the syncopation of a piece. Very few would be converted to it because it had nothing to do with technique and musicians work their whole lives to be technically superior players. You probably wouldn’t pay any attention to this method if you weren’t a singer. It was easy for me to pick this up. I understood the rules and critical elements because Lonnie had showed them to me so crystal clear. It would be up to me now to expel everything that wasn’t natural to it. I would have to master that style and sing to it.
The system works in a cyclical way. Because you’re thinking in odd numbers instead of even numbers, you’re playing with a different value system. Popular music is usually based on the number 2 and then filled in with fabrics, colors, effects and technical wizardry to make a point. But the total effect is usually depressing and oppressive and a dead end which at the most can only last in a nostalgic way. If you’re using an odd numerical system, things that strengthen a performance automatically begin to happen and make it memorable for the ages. You don’t have to plan or think ahead. In a diatonic scale there are eight notes, in a pentatonic scale there are five. If you’re using the first scale, and you hit 2, 5 and 7 to the phrase and then repeat it, a melody forms. Or you can use 2 three times. Or you can use 4 once and 7 twice. It’s infinite what you can do, and each time would create a different melody. The possibilities are endless. A song executes itself on several fronts and you can ignore musical customs. All you need is a drummer and a bass player, and all shortcomings become irrelevant as long as you stick to the system. With any type of imagination you can hit notes at intervals and between backbeats, creating counterpoint lines and then you sing off of it. There’s no mystery to it and it’s not a technical trick. The scheme is for real. For me, this style would be most advantageous, like a delicate design that would arrange the structure of whatever piece I was performing. The listener would recognize and feel the dynamics immediately. Things could explode or retreat back at any time and there would be no way to predict the consciousness of any song. And because this works on its own mathematical formula, it can’t miss. I’m not a numerologist. I don’t know why the number 3 is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2, but it is. Passion and enthusiasm, which sometimes can be enough to sway a crowd, aren’t even necessary. You can manufacture faith out of nothing and there are an infinite number of patterns and lines that connect from key to key — all deceptively simple. You gain power with the least amount of effort, trust that the listeners make their own connections, and it’s very seldom that they don’t. Miscalculations can also cause no serious harm. As long as you recognize it, you can turn the dynamic