![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dweniusIn honor of what would have been his 80th birthday, here is a nifty flash animation of John Coltrane's Giant Steps, created by Michal Levy.
The animation covers the head, tail, and Coltrane's first solo only. This might be because animation is hard, and nobody would want to download a six minute flash movie, but noticeably absent is Tommy Flanagan's marginal piano solo. This reminds me of the story that throws into very sharp relief one of the reasons Coltrane is still held in such high esteem by many (myself included).
You see, Flanagan's piano solo isn't very good because at the time that Giant Steps was released, for all intents and purposes, no one except Coltrane could play those changes. In writing the tune, he was the very first composer to use movement by major thirds as the one and only harmonic engine of the piece. Oh, in the 30s and 40s there were scattered tunes that had one jump by a major third somewhere in the bridge or something, but that was a one time exception to traditional harmony and didn't cause people to have fits when improvising.
By devoting an entire song to the practice, Coltrane created a beast. He took the B scale, and divided the octave into 3 even sections, leaving him with 3 keys to work with, B, G, and Eb. Then he built ("ANSI Standard Jazz") V-I or ii-V-I chord progressions around each of those 3 key centers, strung together a reasonable 26 chord loop of those progressions, and put a deceptively simple sounding melody over the top of it. When you compare his soloing on the piece to Flanagan's, though, it's pretty obvious that he spent a lot of time (Coltrane practiced beyond the point of obsession) working on the song before bringing it to the band. Flanagan (and to be fair to the man, anyone else who tried to play over "Coltrane changes" for the better part of the next decade) has trouble getting clean runs out within a given key center, never mind following the whole roller-coaster progression. 'Trane cuts loose in double time with a stream of ideas, pausing for maybe a half dozen breaths.
Mark Levine likes to tell his students that every musician he knew during this era wore out at least one record needle playing that track and trying to figure out just what the hell Coltrane was doing. There was no sheet music, and having a good ear wasn't much help given both the novelty of the arrangement and the absurd tempo. Hell, 40+ years later, even with printed sheet music and specific hints and tricks from guitar magazines, Coltrane changes hurt my brain. It is like trying to solve the Times crossword in translation; you can succeed in unraveling the underlying meaning or structure of the question, after much effort, only then to discover that you still haven't got a clue about the answer.
The animation covers the head, tail, and Coltrane's first solo only. This might be because animation is hard, and nobody would want to download a six minute flash movie, but noticeably absent is Tommy Flanagan's marginal piano solo. This reminds me of the story that throws into very sharp relief one of the reasons Coltrane is still held in such high esteem by many (myself included).
You see, Flanagan's piano solo isn't very good because at the time that Giant Steps was released, for all intents and purposes, no one except Coltrane could play those changes. In writing the tune, he was the very first composer to use movement by major thirds as the one and only harmonic engine of the piece. Oh, in the 30s and 40s there were scattered tunes that had one jump by a major third somewhere in the bridge or something, but that was a one time exception to traditional harmony and didn't cause people to have fits when improvising.
By devoting an entire song to the practice, Coltrane created a beast. He took the B scale, and divided the octave into 3 even sections, leaving him with 3 keys to work with, B, G, and Eb. Then he built ("ANSI Standard Jazz") V-I or ii-V-I chord progressions around each of those 3 key centers, strung together a reasonable 26 chord loop of those progressions, and put a deceptively simple sounding melody over the top of it. When you compare his soloing on the piece to Flanagan's, though, it's pretty obvious that he spent a lot of time (Coltrane practiced beyond the point of obsession) working on the song before bringing it to the band. Flanagan (and to be fair to the man, anyone else who tried to play over "Coltrane changes" for the better part of the next decade) has trouble getting clean runs out within a given key center, never mind following the whole roller-coaster progression. 'Trane cuts loose in double time with a stream of ideas, pausing for maybe a half dozen breaths.
Mark Levine likes to tell his students that every musician he knew during this era wore out at least one record needle playing that track and trying to figure out just what the hell Coltrane was doing. There was no sheet music, and having a good ear wasn't much help given both the novelty of the arrangement and the absurd tempo. Hell, 40+ years later, even with printed sheet music and specific hints and tricks from guitar magazines, Coltrane changes hurt my brain. It is like trying to solve the Times crossword in translation; you can succeed in unraveling the underlying meaning or structure of the question, after much effort, only then to discover that you still haven't got a clue about the answer.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 08:33 pm (UTC)