© -Steven
Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“When Gil [Evans]
wrote the arrangement of "I Loves You, Porgy," he only wrote a scale
for me. No chords. And that... gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things.
When you go this way, you can
go on forever. You don't have to worry about changes and you can do more with
the [melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you
can be. When you're based on chords, you know at the end of 32 bars that the
chords have run out and there's nothing to do but repeat what you've just
done—with variations.”
- Miles Davis
“In All Blues, instead of a chord sequence, the improvisations are
based on a series of five scales, that is, five selections of notes from the
twelve available. Davis
constructed fragmentary tone-rows which replace harmony in giving the music
coherence.”
- Max Harrison
“With regard to style, Miles
Davis didn’t merely change with the times, but was largely – if not completely
– responsible for most of the
changes, particularly those disseminating the use of modal structure among
Jazzmen.”
- Jerry Coker
So much has been
written about Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue 1959 Columbia LP that I
hesitated to do a blog feature about it
But while
researching Ashley Kahn’s book Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis
Masterpiece [New York: Da Capo, 2000], I found that there were some
aspects of the music on the recording that were of particular interest to me
and which I wanted to emphasize in a posting about it.
One thing that
immediately struck me when I first heard the music on Kind of Blue was its
space; there was so much openness to it that the music seemed to hang in the
air.
Of course, much of
this room was due to the manner in which the music was constructed: modes or
scales were used as the basis for the improvisations on the recording instead
of chord progressions.
The excerpts from
Ashley’s book that follow this introduction will address the technical aspects
of what modal Jazz is in more detail.
But since modal
Jazz was relatively new as the basis for Jazz improvisation when Kind
of Blue was issued, Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball and pianist Bill Evans
were literally finding their way through relatively unfamiliar territory when
they constructed their solos around the album’s tunes.
The modes were
less compressed that the usual chord progressions that were the basis for bop
and hard bop Jazz recordings at the time and this allowed the solos based on
them to unfold, gradually.
The comparative
newness of the modes forced the soloist to explore, search in new directions
and try different ways to build their solos [i.e.: alternate melodies], which
was exactly what Miles Davis was trying to achieve on Kind of Blue.
Miles had been around
bebop almost from its earliest beginnings and he was desperate to escape the
frenetic running of the changes [chord progressions] that was so characteristic
of the early work of alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie, both of whom were viewed as the co-founders of Bebop.
Miles didn’t have
the flash and flair of Dizzy whose finger-poppin’ flights of fancy were
difficult for most Jazz trumpet-players to duplicate. Clifford Brown, Lee
Morgan, Conte Candoli and other trumpet players with more technical facility
and range could play in this manner, but Miles, to put it succinctly, didn’t
have those kinds of “chops” [musician speak for technical ability on an
instrument].
Besides, fast and
furious Bebop improvisations had all been done before; the twenty years or so
of Bebop that preceded the issuance of Kind of Blue in 1959 were awash in a
flurry of furiously played notes.
How does one catch
one breath? How does a modern Jazz musician go in a different direction? These were questions that were very much on
Miles mind and his search for answers to them led to Kind of Blue.
Miles adapted a
number of key concepts that, when applied to the themes on Kind of Blue, allowed for
a different avenue of Jazz expression.
One of these
conceptions was openness, a quality that Miles had been particularly taken with
when he first heard pianist Ahmad Jamal darting in-and-out or hovering over the
beautifully sustained time played by bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel
Fournier.
Miles called this
“playing the spaces” which, of course meant exactly the opposite – not playing
to allow for spaces in the improvisations.
Tempos were
another key ingredient: Miles simply slowed things down “… in order to think
and not just react.”
All of the tempos
on Kind
of Blue are either slow or medium which provided for a more relaxed
feeling; time to think; time to figure how where to insert space or inference.
Jimmy Cobb was the
perfect drummer for the space Miles wanted to bring forth on Kind
of Blue.
Philly Joe Jones,
whom Cobb replaced in Miles’ quintet just prior to the issuance of the album,
would have been too busy. Philly used a
lot of drum “chatter” to push the soloist forward.
By contrast, Jimmy
Cobb employed a 22” K-Zildjan ride cymbal with huge overtones which allowed the
music to float along almost as though it was being carried on a cloud.
Most of Jimmy
licks and fills came down on the “ones” [first beat] of the next thematic
phrase which helped the soloists’ orientation as they explored Kind
of Blue’s modes.
Miles was also
finding his “voice” on the trumpet at this time, what Gil Evans refers to as
“changing the sound of the trumpet.”
Never the
pyrotechnic type and with a limited range on trumpet, Miles’s greatest strength
was his sound: warm, mellow and lyrical.
He needed a medium
to show off his sound and the modal Jazz format of the tunes on Kind
of Blue were a perfect vehicle to show off Miles’ unique sonority on
trumpet.
And then there was
the use of the modes themselves that served as substitutions for the usual
chord progressions.
Modes were the
keys that unlocked “the secrets” that Miles was looking for in the music at
that time.
Modal Jazz uses
scales instead of chord progressions as the basis for its themes [melodies] and
improvisations.
In Kind
of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, author Ashley Kahn further elaborates on these
modes and other qualities in Miles music from this period.
© - Ashley Kahn, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
“If there is one
word that accurately describes the unique and defining feature of all jazz
styles, it is improvisation. The spirit of jazz is spontaneous invention; the
standard form is variations played off the melodies of well-known blues or
songs. The melodies of tunes like "Wild Man Blues" would be
interpreted, played with, and "jazzed" to the delight of the soloist
and his or her audience. When pioneers like Louis Armstrong brought spirit and
form together, the result was timeless jazz.
A melody is
basically a line of notes, each a root to a matching chord, with the whole
melodic line moving (in jazz, swinging) horizontally through time. This
movement is referred to as "chord changes" or simply
"changes." In the notes of these chords—the "chordal
structure" that is often discussed in jazz theory—lies the harmony, or
vertical component of jazz. In almost all jazz prior to 1960, harmony was the
improvisers only compass. Without knowing which notes work with the chords
being played, the soloist was lost. Then came bebop to make the harmony even
more complex.
The genius of
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie was to reinvent jazz's harmonic and rhythmic
possibilities. Their solos broke through to new territory in jazz harmony,
locating new notes to play in the chordal structure. At full throttle, they
blew through the changes with phrasing that had become more elastic, bending
over and across bar measures with a flurry of sixteenth notes never heard
before.
With the advent of
Bird and Diz's pioneering daredevilry—richly expanding the number of notes
available to play within any given chordal structure—there came the need for an
even more accurate harmonic compass. In Cannonball Adderley's words: "Bebop's
discipline means that you have to have information to play bebop."
Despite bebop's
innovations, improvisation and chord changes remained inextricably linked.
Various alumni of bebop—and of the cool school that followed it—had tired of
the same changes defining the same well-trodden improvisatory paths. It wasn't
the material itself; jazz composers were still creating new, exciting tunes and
melodies. It was the too familiar structure of changes-after-changes that bred
dissatisfaction. By the fifties, signs were pointing players off the chordal
thruway, into a new jazz style: modal.
"Modal"
(or its synonym "scalar") literally means "of scales." By
this definition, all music, or any sonic system that follows a pattern with
one, central "tonic" note, is modal. "Modal jazz," in a
late fifties context, qualifies that denotation somewhat. Here's how Miles
Davis laid it out for Nat Hentoff in October of 1958:
When Gil wrote the arrangement of "I
Loves You, Porgy," he only wrote a scale for me. No chords. And that...
gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things.
When you go this way, you can go on
forever. You don't have to worry about changes and you can do more with the
[melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you can
be. When you're based on chords, you know at the end of 32 bars that the chords
have run out and there's nothing to do but repeat what you've just done—with
variations.
I think a movement in jazz is beginning
away from the conventional string of chords ... there will be fewer chords but
infinite possibilities as to what to do with them. Classical composers—some of
them—have been writing this way for years, but jazz musicians seldom have.
When I want J.J. Johnson to hear something
... we just play the music over the phone. I did that the other day with some
of [Aram]
Khachaturian's Armenian scales; they're different from the usual Western
scales. Then we got to talking about letting the melodies and scales carry the
tune. J.J. told me, "I'm not going to write any more chords." And
look at George Russell. His writing is mostly scales. After all, you can feel
the changes.”
Call it The Modal Manifesto. Subtitle: You Can Feel the Changes. In one way,
modal jazz was a step in re-simplifying the music, in that it created a
structure over which to improvise that, unlike bebop, did not demand extensive
knowledge of chords and harmonies. In another way, the use of modes implied a
greater responsibility for the musician. Without an established chordal path,
the soloist had to invent his own melodic pattern on the spot.
The idea of soloing
extensively over one chord was not alien to jazz musicians. Jazz educator and
pianist Dick Katz points out that since chords imply certain scales, and modal
jazz is all about soloing on one scale for an extended period,
“it's like a structured cadenza, where at
the end of a piece you take one chord and run with it. Or like in Latin music,
a lot of Latin bands will stay on one chord and these virtuoso trumpet players
would really do their thing. Or you know there's that Duke Ellington tune,
"Caravan." It has twelve bars on one chord (sings) until you land on
that F minor chord.”
Miles himself had
touched upon modal ideas in the past. His "Swing Spring" from 1954
flirted with modal construction. In 1956, he approached a ubiquitous pop song
modally as a made-to-order addition for Avakian, slowing down the rate of chord
changes and quieting the harmonic activity of the song. Avakian recalls:
“Leonard Bernstein wanted me to give him a
version of "Sweet Sue" done in cool jazz style for the album that we did
together called What Is Jazz?
Instead of using house musicians to see how it would sound if Miles Davis were
doing it, I said, "Let's have Miles Davis play it." I had Miles do
two versions and what he did when he performed "Sweet Sue"—a very
familiar, trite song deliberately chosen by Bernstein—was a formal introduction
before it goes into total improvisation, very free. It was a sudden departure
in which he streamlined the chordal structure of the melody — it sort of lost
the harmony of the song. That could well have been a spark for his going into
the floating quality of what he did on Kind
of Blue.”
Modal jazz was
different because it was composed with that simpler approach as its primary
goal. Relative to the complexities and intellectual heights jazz had attained,
it was a step backward. It seemed to question the progress of jazz up to bebop
and beyond. "Playing changes was the sign of elegance," commented
keyboardist and jazz writer Ben Sidran. Miles himself had sought that elegance
at one time. "When I asked him in the forties what music he was
playing," recollected George Russell, "he said he wanted to learn all
the changes. That sounded ridiculous to me. Miles knew how to play all the
changes." Russell recognized in that comment the essence of the search
that eventually led Davis to modes and modality.
“I felt that Miles was saying he wanted a
new way to relate to chords, and the thought of how he might go about seeking
this way was constantly dwelled on. Miles and I talked about modes in the late
forties and I wondered what was taking him so long, but when I heard "So
What" I knew he was using it.”
It is worth noting
that the brand of modal jazz brought forth in the latter half of the fifties
was not pure modal music. When faced with strict modal guidelines, music
scholar Barry Kernfeld explains, many jazz soloists would play off a prescribed
scale—hitting the same bluesy notes that were an inherent part of chordal jazz.
Even musicians like Miles and Coltrane, who adhered more closely to the modal
path, suggested chordal patterns in their solos.
There were two
immediate effects—and recognizable characteristics—of late fifties modal jazz.
The first was that, reflecting the esthetic espoused by Davis and other modal
pioneers at the time, it brought the tempos down to a slower, more deliberate
pace. As a means of comparison, author Lewis Porter noted that "in most
jazz pieces, the chords and their associated scales change about once a
measure. But Davis's new music would stay on the same scale for as long as sixteen
measures at a time."
Jazz writer Barry
Ulanov recognizes that the structure of modal jazz elicited a welcome
relaxation of tempo, further emphasizing the "linear," melodic aspect
of the music.
“I think that was a happy development in jazz.
As in Baroque music and the classical tradition, when you move into long
[melodic] lines, there's a softness and slower speed that follows because
you're concentrating on what you're trying to say and not surrounding yourself
with overwhelming sound.”
The second effect
was that modal jazz compositions tended to extend the duration of solos. Loosed
from the traditional thirty-two or twelve-bar song structure—the most common
lengths of jazz compositions (ballads at thirty-two, blues at twelve)—the soloist
was free to invent and reinvent as long as necessary to tell the story. In
theory, with no chords to define a melody, the solo became the song and the
improviser became the composer. The modal jazz soloist was indeed the master of
the creative moment.
In the case of
Miles's sextet, this elastic approach to solo length was particularly suited to
Coltrane, whose penchant for long, tireless improvisations had become
legendary. And sometimes, as Gil Evans remembered, an occasion for sarcasm:
“One day when Miles came back from a tour I
said "Miles, how was the job?" and he said "It's fine. Coltrane
played fifty choruses, Cannonball played forty-six and I played two."”
Saxophonist Jimmy
Heath, an old friend of Coltrane's from Philadelphia who would later sub for him in the sextet,
recalls how the freedom offered by modal jazz pieces might have exacerbated
Coltrane's long-windedness.
“Coltrane said the reason he played so long
on [modal runes like "So What"] was that he couldn't find nothing
good to stop on. That statement really holds true, too. Because if you haven't
played in the modal concept, you're looking for some final cadence to stop. I
know musicians had the same problem I did, a lot of them because of the absence
of the final cadence of II-V-I[the typical ending of a chorus] or some of the
cadences that music, heretofore, had been affording.”
It should be added
that Heath may well be speaking more of his own trouble with modal structures
than Coltrane's, since ‘Trane's recordings from the late fifties and sixties
certainly reveal other factors that motivated his verbosity, including an
ability to hear and play extended statements and phrases.
What of the modes
that gave modal jazz its name? Jazzmen of the fifties—in the spirit typified by
Miles's music library visits—sought out new and unusual modal patterns beyond
the usual major and minor scales. Those who attended music school could study
the twelve modes of the Western musical tradition. All permutations of the
basic major scale, the twelve scales were originally defined in the Middle
Ages, some to classify Gregorian chants, and were arbitrarily named after
ancient Greek cities and regions. Some, like the Ionian and Aeolian modes, are
basically modern major and minor scales, respectively. Other modes correspond
to folk music scales of various countries. For example, the Phrygian can be
exploited to exude a Spanish sonority, as on Sketches of Spain. The Dorian
mode— favored by classical composers like Ravel and Rachmaninoff—works well as
a blues scale and was employed by Miles on "Milestones" off the album
of the same name.
New scales would
also be found in musical exercise books. "A lot of the scalar material
Coltrane was playing was Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic
Patterns," keyboardist Joe Zawinul remembers, and he adds: "Most of
the reed and trumpet players played out of different violin books, and also
scale books like [Carl] Czerny."
Other New York musicians discovered modal inspiration
nearby, in local restaurants. David Amram recalls:
“I knew about some of those primary modes,
because living in New York
you could go to these belly-dancing restaurant-bars like the Egyptian Gardens
and hear Egyptian, Lebanese and sometimes music from Morocco,
all of which had in common a certain rhythmic pattern and a certain mode. Some
of the jazz players were really into that. They'd say, "The baddest cats
are Bela Bartok, Arnold
Schoenberg, and the guys playing in those belly-dancing clubs."”
During the
fifties, exotic scales—particularly those of India and various Middle Eastern cultures—found
their way into the jazz lexicon, and wound up under the "modal jazz"
rubric as well. Miles writes of turning Dizzy on to the "Egyptian minor
scales" he had learned at Juilliard. Coltrane shared his own fascination
with foreign sounds when he wrote in 1960:
“I want [my solos] to cover as many forms
of music as I can put into a jazz context and play on my instruments. I like
Eastern music ... and Ornette Coleman sometimes plays music with a Spanish
content as well as other exotic-flavored music. In these approaches there's
something I can draw on and use in the way I like to play.”
The Austrian-born
Zawinul, who would join forces with Miles in the late sixties, brought a native
familiarity with ethnic modalities of eastern Europe when he arrived in New York in 1958.
“In the early fifties, we were doing modal
stuff in Vienna,
you know? We were getting into all these different scales from folk music.
Where I come from there were all these different influences from Slavic music,
Turkish, Rumanian and Hungarian. I was actually surprised when I came to the
States that more people weren't doing this.”
By the late
fifties, that would change.
Miles Davis – with
Coltrane and the rest of the sextet – was at the vanguard of this new wave of
experimentation that would lead to the prime statement of modal Jazz: Kind
of Blue.”
