Still I Wonder

Sound Explorers Corner Your sound
#1

Stevie Wonder tunes with presets from the Stevie Wonder Tribute.

My Cherie d’Amour (R&B fakebook)
Piano: I Wish EP - Jerry Kovarsky
Bass: Keep Running Bass - Reverb Machine
Lead: Evil Lead - Reverb Machine
Drums: Moderm Sounds and R&B - Addictive Drums
Guitar: Ibanez Law Suit guitar AER amp

Knocks me off my feet (Unreal Fakebook)
Lead: Stevie Harmonica Breath - Jerry Kovarsky
Piano: That Girl Tremolo - Jerry Kovarsky
Bass: Love Light Bass - Reverb Machine
Drums: Moderm Sounds and R&B - Addictive Drums
Guitar: Ibanez Law Suit guitar AER amo

In the sunshine of your love (Fun take on You Are The Sunshine of my Life)
Bass: Keep Running Bass - Reverb Machine
Drums: Vintage Dead- Addictive Drums
Guitar: Ibanez Law Suit guitar on OpAmp Strat preset modified, Delay Brigade

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#2

Lovely! glad that you enjoyed the bank

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#3

Thank you, Lily.
I was not really a Stevie Wonder fan. But I took him more seriously when I noticed his songs made it in jazz fakebooks.
I like Reverb Machine’s presets for Arturia instruments and as a retired teacher, I admire his work devoted to teaching harmony on his website.

#4

@francoise

Stevie is MUCH underrated by those unfamiliar with his work, the guy IS a true musical genius!!!
Ok some of his work is ‘a bit cheesy’ at times, but look at any prolific artist and you’ll find plenty of ‘not so good’ work in their catalogue.
There aren’t many artists that are as proficient, and prolific, in so many genres and over such a long period of time.
So much of his work has been sampled and covered by MANY people over the decades.
Somehow i don’t think people will be studying most of today’s newer artists in 300 years time, but i’m pretty sure Stevie will be on the curriculum for most ‘classical music’ courses by that time. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#5

In the song sample of the Wonder Tribute, you have an harmonic chord progression moving down which you find in many Stevie’s songs. You find that type of progression in jazz but, he adds , here and there, a blue note typical of blues.

For example, Summer Soft goes chromatically F#6> F7 > Emaj7 > Am7b5 (= Eb) and concludes with B. Similarly Send One your Love goes A maj7> G#7 > G maj7> F#7 > F maj7 and back to G maj7. In Cherie d’Amour, the melody goes F# > F > E.
When your hear this chromatic descent, you say: Oh ya, that’s him. Not always of course.

In Cherie d’Amour, going from Gmaj chord to C7 and Fmaj is bold since the F# in Gmaj clashes with C7 and Fmaj. But it’s ok since the melody is chromatic. Clever.

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#6

I discovered a great song by Wonder, Lately , while searching through his music sheets.
It’s relatively difficult to play with many chords and harmonic changes but it’s so beautiful. Here’s a rendition in La Belle Electrique (Grenoble - France).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX99r5eKeis

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#7

That’s not a bad version, but you should check this out…

If you’re not familiar with them, it would be REALLY worth you checking out some of his albums, i’d suggest Innervisions, Music of My Mind (those are my own two personal favourites), and of course ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ as well as ‘Talking Book’… i think you’ll be highly impressed by them!

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#8

Thank you, Mat.

I’m not familiar with his works except well known titles; I wasn’t much interested in R&B and Soul. Till I discovered Duke Ellington’s soul influenced pieces. Stevie Wonder wrote Sir Duke as a tribute to Ellington, inspired by Ellington’s Prelude to a Kiss.
I’ll check Innervisions, Music of my Mind and the two other mentioned.
And particularly the music sheets of Wonder’s songs.
For instance, Visions in Innervisions has relatively complex chord changes.
https://musescore.com/static/musescore/scoredata/gen/8/1/4/105418/f03f6c8c536ecbabc67e8a9a3ad01ec9c63adb68/score_0.png@850x1100?no-cachee=1557952198
I thought Higher Grounds was a Red Hot Chilli song! Good simple funk on the Clavinet like Superstition.

Reverb Machine (Dan Carr) teaches harmony on his site (bravo!); he should look into some of Wonder’s songs. Some are quite complex and unorthodox.

I mentioned the Grenoble version to stress how popular the song is.

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