Miles Davis' "AURA" and the album of the same name...

So Long's article is pretty good at describing - musically - what Aura is all about. Or is he missing something obvious. Yes.

Obvious to me as I am a percussionist. While listening to Aura the first time - I bought it on vinyl the day it was released - AND while perusing the titles listed, the various hues and so forth, I noticed something. I noticed that some of the songs were in odd meter (you know, 5/4, 3/4, 12/8 and then...) and one in particular was a song in 11. 11? Yes, 11. It happened to be also TRACK 11.

That got me investigating, using the tone arm as my tool Track 5 (on my hunch) was/is indeed in 5/4 time. Track 3 is in 3/4. Track 1 has no discernible main beat but a pulse of - one would say - conducted in 1. Track 7 is in 7/4 or7/8 depending on how slow or fast you want to count it.

Furthering the infinity of numbers, the musical thematic material (ignoring the colors for now) brings similarities of track 1 in track 11. Track 5 in track 10. Track 2 in 4 and then in 8. Now, bring in colors = since Green has Blue & Yellow in it......guess what matches this time, not time, but chords. Yep. The chord changes are interrelated using color matching. On a 12-tone (Long incorrectly identifies track 1 as having only a 10 note theme*) system, assign the number 1 to track one's color then see if when you match tonal centers of the Blue track and the Yellow track that you don't see a correlation in the Green track? Freaky, huh?

Listen again if you think I am exaggerating this.


The Amazing Aura of Miles.

*This assumes that my mathematical application is the correct one, for there lies the possibility that the 10 notes Long identifies are mathematically related to a different number base. In other words, taken to its extreme, the numbering theory here would be that of adding or subtracting a melody line based upon some formula I have not yet uncovered, but indeed someone here is not counting on something!
-
-
- read Long's article by clicking on the word "Link" just below this line...