In music, a vamp is a repeating musical figure, section[1], or accompaniment used in jazz, gospel, soul, and musical theater.[2] Vamps are also found in rock, funk, reggae, R&B, pop, country, and post-sixties jazz.[1] Vamps are usually harmonically spare[1]: A vamp may consist of a single chord or a sequence of chords played in a repeated rhythm. Vamps are generally symmetrical, self-contained, and open to variation.[1] The equivalent in classical music is an ostinato. The equivalent in hip hop is the loop.[1]
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Types
Jazz, fusion, and latin jazz
In jazz, fusion, and related genres, such as latin jazz, a background vamp provides a performer with a harmonic framework upon which to improvise. A vamp at the beginning of a jazz tune may act as a springboard to the main tune; a vamp at the end of a song is often called a "tag".
Well-known examples
Vamping is used to establish the Afro-Cuban feel of the Bebop standard "A Night in Tunisia". "Take Five" begins with a repeated, syncopated figure in 5/4 time which pianist Dave Brubeck plays throughout the song. Vamps are also used in 1970s-era jazz-funk and jazz-rock songs such as "Maiden Voyage" and "Cantaloupe Island".
The music from Miles Davis's modal period (c.1958-63) was based on improvising songs with a small number of chords. The jazz standard "So What" uses a vamp in the two-note "Sooooo what?" figure, regularly played by the piano and the trumpet throughout. Jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld calls this music "Vamp Music." This period of Davis' music has also been called "Impressionist jazz," because it uses some of the same musical features and devices as the so-called "Impressionist" style of classical music of Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.
Examples include the outros to George Benson's "Body Talk" and "Plum", and the solo changes to "Breezin'".[1] The following songs are dominated by vamps: Herbie Hancock's "Watermelon Man", John Coltrane, Kenny Burrell, and Grant Green's versions of "My Favorite Things", Wes Montgomery's "Bumpin' on Sunset", and Larry Carlton's "Room 335".[1]
Gospel, soul, and funk
In gospel and soul music, the band will often vamp on a simple ostinato groove at the end of a song, usually over a single chord. In soul music, the end of recorded songs often contains a display of vocal "pyrotechnics", such as rapid scales, arpeggios, and improvised passages. For recordings, the sound engineers will gradually fade out the vamp section at the end of a song, to make the transition to the next track on the album. Salsoul singers such as Loleatta Holloway have become notable for their vocal improvisations at the end of songs, and they are sampled and used in other songs. Andrae Crouch extended the use of vamps in gospel, introducing chain vamps (one vamp after the other, each successive vamp drawn from the first).[3]
1970s-era funk music often takes a short one or two bar musical figure based on a single chord that would be considered an introduction vamp in jazz or soul music, and then uses this vamp as the basis of the entire song (Funky Drummer by James Brown, for example). Jazz, blues, and rock are almost always based on chord progressions (a sequence of changing chords), and they use the changing harmony to build tension and sustain listener interest. Unlike these music genres, funk is based on the rhythmic groove of the percussion, rhythm section instruments, and a deep electric bass line, usually all over a single chord. "In funk, harmony is often second to the 'lock,' the linking of contrapuntal parts that are played on guitar, bass, and drums in the repeating vamp."[1]
Examples include Stevie Wonder's vamp-based "Superstition"[1] and Little Johnny Taylor's "Part Time Love", which features an extended improvisation over a two-chord vamp.[3]
Musical theater
In musical theater, a vamp, or intro, is the few bars, one to eight, of music without lyrics which begin a printed copy of a song[4] and which the orchestra or other accompaniment repeats during dialogue or stage business, to provide musical accompaniment for onstage transitions which are of indeterminate length. The score will provide a one or two bar vamp figure, and indicate "vamp till cue" by the conductor. The vamp gives the onstage singers time to prepare for the song or the next verse, without requiring the music to pause. Once the vamp section is completed, the music will continue on to the next section.
The vamp may be written by the composer of the song, a copyist employed by the publisher, or the arranger for the vocalist.[4] The vamp serves three main purposes: providing the key in which the song will be sung, establishing the tempo, and scene design, or providing emotional context for the song about to be sung.[5] The vamp may be as short as a bell tone, sting (a harmonized bell tone with stress on the starting note), or measures long.[5]
The rideout is the transitional music that begins on the downbeat of the last word of the song and is usually two to four bars long, though it may be as short as a sting or as long as a Roxy Rideout.[6]
History and etymology
The slang term vamp[1] comes from the Middle English word "vampe" (sock), from Old French "avanpie", equivalent to Modern French avant-pied, literally "before-foot".[7]
The term vamp has another meaning in music, which is "to improvise simple accompaniment or variation of a tune." Outside of music, the noun vamp means "something patched up or refurbished" or "something rehashed, as a book based on old material." Similarly, outside of music, the verb "vamp" means "to put together, fabricate or improvise": "With no hard news available about the summit meeting, the reporters vamped up questions based only on rumor."[7] These other meanings are related to the musical meaning, in that a musical vamp is a "fabricated" or "improvised" "rehash" of standard, stock musical phrases.
See also
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Look up vamp in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Sources
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Marshall, Wolf (2008). Stuff! Good Guitar Players Should Know, p.138. ISBN 1423430085.
- ^ Corozine, Vince (2002). Arranging Music for the Real World: Classical and Commercial Aspects. Pacific, MO: Mel Bay. p. 124. ISBN 0-7866-4961-5. OCLC 50470629.
- ^ a b Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, Eddie S. Meadows (1998). California Soul, p.224. ISBN 0520206282.
- ^ a b Craig, David (1990). On Singing Onstage, p.22. ISBN 1557830436.
- ^ a b Craig (1990), p.23.
- ^ Craig (1990), p.26.
- ^ a b "Vamp: Definition, Synonyms and Much More". Answers.com. Answers Corporation.
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