It is confusing for sure. But strangely enough David Amram who is  
perhaps a bit more technically sophisticated than Bob Z. seems to  
have had a similar revelation.
He was jamming with some jazz musicians as the post-bop period was  
under way. He was not a sophisticated pianist and a guy who's name  
eludes me suggested that a way to voice more sophisticated chords  
without having a great deal of technique was to play a given chord  
(G7) and then double the third and the seventh
degree of the chord again in the other hand. Neat trick, but I have  
no idea what this has to do with the triplet issue...just a thought.

AA
On Mar 31, 2006, at 6:14 AM, Eric Goldberg wrote:

>> Eric -
>>
>> Perhaps you or someone else could help elucidate a mysterious  
>> passage from Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Part 1" where he writes  
>> about a revolutionary system taught to him by Lonnie Johnson, the  
>> great blues and jazz guitarist.
>>
>> Dylan writes (p. 157) that his guitarmanship was electrified in  
>> the 1980s when he learned how to play "based on an odd- instead of  
>> even-number system" that he learned from jazzman Lonnie Johnson: 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..."
>>
>> "Popular music is usually based on the number 2 [...] If you're  
>> using an odd numerical system, things that strengthen a  
>> performance begin to happen [...] 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 the 2 three times. Or  
>> you can use 4 once and 7 twice [...] The possibilities are endless  
>> [...] 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..."
>>
>> Is this a baffling to you as it seems to me?
>>
>> Russ Hamm
>>
>
> I have never thought of Bob Dylan as one of music's great  
> theorists, and now I know why. His technical description is at  
> least as confusing as some of his lyrics, which at least had the  
> advantae of being obscure in a poetic way.
>
> What I was describing in the drumming discussion was rhythmic, not  
> melodic. q  e
>
>
> Eric