Vocabulary: Part I

The importance of vocabulary to an improviser can be highlighted with a simple comparison to everyday speech (this metaphor has become commonplace by know, so if you know it and don't feel like hearing it again, skip this paragraph...). Verbal interaction between humans combines impromptu structuring ability and the recall of thousands of memorized phrases. Think back on the conversations of your day – even the passing greetings – and consider the amount of original material that any of the participants offered; you'll quickly see that at least 95% of these interactions contain mostly stock phrases that you've used countless times in the past. What changes from instance to instance is the context and stimulus for the conversation, both of which narrow down the selections of acceptable phrases to the few you consider at the moment. If this wasn't the case, merely ordering your lunch would be an almost insurmountable task. Now, return to our comparably more concrete world of jazz. Here the context is the chord being played by the piano player and the stimulus is the style of the song: ballad, medium swing, bossa nova, etc. In order to construct a coherent solo that capably stretches over multiple choruses, the experienced soloist draws upon the melodic material they've already learned to apply to these situations. In this sense, solos are constructed like a photo-montage, piecing together ideas of contrasting qualities to create a greater whole.

With that in mind, one of the first goals for a beginning improviser should be the establishment of a basic vocabulary. In this process, let your first rule be given to you from the possibly-apocryphal sayings of Pablo Picasso, “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Pick up your favorite album by your favorite artist – it doesn't matter if he or she plays the same instrument as you – and transcribe everything you can. For harmonic reference, it helps if you know the song that's being played, but if you don't, you can work on your ear training by figuring out the chords progressions in the song. If you don't already have it, the program Transcribe! – available at www.seventhstring.com -- is invaluable in this process and worth far more than its $50 price tag. Similarly, a notation program like Finale, Sibelius, or Guitar Pro will help you keep your notes neat and readable. Once you've got a good amount of material, find a way to separate and organize it: the simplest way would be to categorize by chord type or progression. The more systematic you are in your approach to this, the faster you'll see results; it's best to start a notebook to keep your material together for quick study.

The material you gather in this way will serve as the basis for everything you do after this. Memorization of the melodic patterns you transcribe will provide you with material to play over the chords in the songs you know. If you think this process leads to unoriginality, remember that Charlie Parker memorized the solos of Lester Young, Cannonball Adderly quoted the songs of Charlie Parker throughout his solos, and even in the composed world of classical music, Beethoven quoted Bach throughout his piano sonatas. But, in the end, your suspicions are correct; the material you gather through transcription functions best as a body of examples with which you can model your own ideas. Look at the licks you like best and ask yourself a series of questions: when do they use chord tones? When are upper extensions of the chord played? What kind of rhythms are used? What kinds of intervals are used? Once you've figured out the answers to these questions, you can begin to create original material with what you've learned. When you reach this point, you'll be able to return to the songs you know with the beginnings of a functional language and play better, more structured solos.

Composition in Jazz: An Introduction

Despite the efforts behind modern jazz education, the myth of spontaneous improvisation still dominates the perception of jazz. While it's true that the greatest players are known because of their soloing ability, the idea that the best of the best are able to magically conjure hundreds of measures of originally melody is provably false; one only needs to transcribe the solos of Charlie Parker to find an abundance of material that is repeated verbatim, showing that he'd practiced it thousands of times before the recording date or the gig. On some levels, this myth has been propagated not by the musicians, but the writers who write about the music, who, in their intentions to glorify their heroes, exaggerate aspects they don't really understand.

Simultaneously, people rarely broach the subject of composition when discussing about jazz. If Parker didn't come up with his ideas on the spot, he must have written them out before hand; while not composition on the symphonic level that people are trained to recognize it, Parker's success with this process shows that writing is a fundamental part of jazz – or really, any music – and might even be interchangeable with improvisation. Similarly, why is Thelonious Monk the only player truly able to sound naturally on his songs? Even with the best of players, there tends to be a break in continuity from the melody to the solos. It's simple: the idiosyncratic melodic language of Monk's heads is the same language he fills his solos with.

The next series of articles in this blog will focus on a wide array of the implications and applications of composition in jazz, ranging from the basic development of vocabulary, to the reconstruction of standards, to chromatic harmony and altered chords as they appear in the music of the 50's and 60's, to the use of composition in the process of generating a unique overall musical voice. Hopefully, this will provide some with the inspiration to put down their instrument and sit down at the piano (a difficult process for you piano players: you'll have to forget how to play for a few hours). Not having taken lessons in composition shouldn't stop anyone from writing their own music: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker never had these, and for that matter, neither did Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, or Milton Babbitt.

The Lost Quintet

It's quite possible that the peak of Miles Davis's musical power will forever remain out of print. This 1969 live recording of the Mile Davis quintet at the Antibes Jazz Fest was last printed on CD in 1995, and at this time, is only available as an import from third-party sellers online. The music found on this recording reveals Davis in a transitional period that, in a way, embodied everything he had done and would go on to do. Recorded with what has become known as the “Lost Quintet” – for reasons that become evident if you reread the first sentence of this entry – this album shows Davis's full control of the free jazz concept, his virtuosity on the trumpet in a way rarely seen elsewhere, his nascent vision of jazz-rock fusion, and his emotional ties to the body of work that had made him famous. The band itself was a rare mixture of the past and the future. Of the Second Great Quintet, only Wayne Shorter remained in the band by this time. English bassist Dave Holland had replaced Ron Carter, Chick Corea – playing electric keyboard – took Herbie Hancock's place, and the powerful drummer Jack DeJohnette filled the gaping hole left by the departure of Tony Williams.

Of the songs played on this concert – “Directions”, “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”, “Milestones”, “Footprints”, “Round Midnight”, “It's About That Time”, and “Sanctuary” – two dated from the 1950's, two came from the period of the Second Great Quintet, and two would soon appear on the landmark albums In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew (strangely, “Directions” would remain unreleased until 1980). Yet all are approached from the same free-jazz-plus-rock-intensity angle. In all of the pieces, Jack DeJohnette has the burden of time-keeping taken away from him, allowing him to accompany in a frenetic style. The keyboard solos of Chick Corea frequently ignore the song-forms entirely, instead focusing on the creating soundscapes with the new instrument. Shorter, playing soprano sax on many songs, plays with an energy and complexity rarely found on any of other recordings, channeling the voice of the recently deceased John Coltrane in his solos. True to the band's concert practice of the late 60's, the songs are played without break, creating one hour-long suite that could well be considered one of the greater long compositions of the 20^th century.

As for Davis's playing on the concert, a transcription of his solos would suffice as an encyclopedia of everything he would ever do on the trumpet. The bulk of the material he plays remains in the chromatic style he developed during the time of the Second Great Quintet – which itself recalled his early bebop playing with Charlie Parker – but echoes of other times appear throughout the concert. His solo on “Milestones” recalls his original recording of it, as well as the light, melodic style he played in with the First Great Quintet, but his playing on the long stretches of A minor that make up the bridge could have come right off of “Flamenco Sketches”. The solo on “Footprints” begins in the slow, bluesy world of the song, but ends with what may be the longest lines he ever recorded. The new melodic material he had developed in the recording sessions of In a Silent Way – a style that wouldn't be heard on recording until later collections of the studio sessions would be released in the 80's – is on full display here, with its frequent use of long chromatic scales and a rhythmic shift towards the sixteenth note.

There is one commercially available recording of this band – Live at the Fillmore East: It's About That Time – and really, the only bad thing that can be said about it is that it's not the recording of the Antibes Jazz Fest. The same level of intensity is maintained throughout the concert, which is about 45 minutes longer than the 1969 recording. If you can't find the Festival De Juans Pins recording anywhere, this is as close of a substitute as you'll be able to find.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

But all great things must come to an end. By the end of the decade, the members of Davis's band found themselves in the same position that those that came before had. Each of the band members had launched successful solo careers years before and found themselves in periods of artistic change. Shorter's compositions moved closer and closer to free jazz, with his 1969 Super Nova even including free versions of three earlier songs, “Water Babies”, “Capricorn”, and “Sweet Pea”. Tony Williams took an increasing interest in rock music, eventually founding Lifetime with guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young and releasing the group's first record – arguably the first jazz fusion album – in 1969. Carter and Hancock had ample job opportunities elsewhere as well, Hancock eventually going on to form Headhunters and fuse more modern African-American music with jazz.

The jazz scene in the late 60's was undergoing drastic change as well. The death of John Coltrane in 1967 is undoubtedly one of the largest events in the history of American music. Coltrane's unflinching dedication to pursuing the freedom of expression he saw in free jazz made him a hero to a younger generation of players that felt his interest endorsed their work. While his death certainly did not end this musical trend, it marked a point of divergence, after which many musicians had difficulty finding their own way. Simultaneously, rock music took more and more young listeners away from jazz, the rise of the Beatles signaling the fall of almost every jazz musician's career. While by this point, Davis had succeeded in making himself a pop culture icon who had to worry less about fleeting trends, even he realized that in order to remain culturally relevant, he'd have to draw inspiration from this new music.

Elements of this change appear before the impending break-up of the Second Great Quintet. The final albums the group released, Miles in the Sky and Filles De Kilimanjaro, introduced electric keyboard and bass to the instrumentation and experimented with long, open-ended jams as song form, pulling from rhythmic styles of the pop world. While traces of the spirit remained, the music on these albums demonstrated very readily that the character of the group had begun to move away from the brooding, chromatic post-bop world it defined into something new. Yet this material is still transitional, the full introduction into Davis's next period had yet to come, and the almost forgotten “Lost Quintet” had yet to solidify as a group.