#jazz modal blues

[guitarguitarworld]

Modal Chords For Guitar:

CLICK SUBSCRIBE! Please watch video above for detailed info: Hi Guys, Today, a quick look at modal chords. The chords are from the backing track [below in this page] and they are “Transposed” with C as the root note. These are exploited in the 12 bar form of a fusion blues. Here are the chords for the chart: To begin with, we will take the first chord for the basic Ionian/Major sound. Here…

[musicollage]

Herbie Hancock — Inventions And Dimensions. 1963 : Blue Note BLP 4147.

[brusiocostante]

Miles Davis - All Blues (Official Audio)

[severalpossiblemusiks]

I dunno about you, but walking through a light rain after dark while listening to jazz just does something to you

[stillunusual]

Miles Davis - So What? (1959)

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #1,090 - December 25th, 2022

Album: Ready For Freddie (Blue Note, 1962)

Artist: Freddie Hubbard

Genre: Hard Bop, Modal Jazz

Track Listing: 

"Arietis"

"Weaver Of Dreams"

"Marie Antoinette"

"Birdlike"

"Crisis"

Favorite Song: "Birdlike"

[nicoooooooon]

Wayne Shorter  – “Night Dreamer” vinyl cover (1964)

Photography by Francis Wolff Cover Design by Reid Miles

“What I'm trying to express here is a sense of judgment approaching – judgment for everything alive from the smallest ant to man. I know that the accepted meaning of ‘Armageddon’ is the last battle between good and evil – whatever it is. But my definition of the judgment to come is a period of total enlightenment in which we will discover what we are and why we're here.”

Wayne Shorter † March 2, 2023.

[tren-de-manchas]

Ese primer sentimiento

[1001albumsrated]

#21: Miles Davis - Kind of Blue (1959)

Genre(s): Modal Jazz

Of all 1001 albums in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Kind of Blue might be the most heavily written about, and likely one of the most talked about as well. If someone says "hey I'm curious about jazz but don't know where to start" (or, in 2024, googles a recc chart), this is unilaterally the starting point. Kind of Blue is the Rome that all jazz roads lead to (and from!). I wouldn't say it's my favorite jazz album, and you can argue endlessly on whether it's the best, but it's without a doubt the most centrally located. The tunes are highly accessible, but possess enormous theoretical depth and showcase exceptional technical prowess from the players. And while sales numbers are far from everything, Miles drove sports cars and dated models for a reason: Kind of Blue is RIAA certified 5x platinum as of 2019, making it the best-selling jazz album of all time by an enormous margin (beating the 2nd highest, Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters, 5 times over; no, I'm not going to count the fucking Kenny G Christmas album or whatever, we're talking real jazz here).

It's also a landmark in the explosion of modal jazz, turning previous hard bop and bebop styles on their heads. You can find more compelling music theory explanations of modal jazz elsewhere (I'm confident there's an Adam Neely video somewhere that does it justice), but the short version is that it moved the focus from a more traditional "this song is in a key, play chords from that key and solo over them in the same key" approach to a more open ended approach of playing with a focus on the mode rather than the key, allowing for a much wider tonal palette for improvisation and creating a wildly different sound (you can think of modes as a both a subset and a superset of keys; they essentially rearrange a key to change the root note it starts and ends on while maintaining the same collection of notes, which in practice can dramatically change the feel of the key and allows for modulation between keys to sound more enharmonic. This is a super simplified explanation, again, go learn about the theory if you want to know more).

To me, this album is an old friend. This is one of the first albums that really made jazz click for me. Like most non-jazz listeners, I felt at the time like the bulk of jazz I heard was either dreadful old man coffee shop music or the sound of toddlers causing a directionless racket in the studio. I remember being in my bedroom as a teenager, listening to low quality rips of these tracks in the early days of YouTube, mind blown at the sounds I was hearing. It was laid back, but still had a lot of motion and technicality, and was deeply evocative. Today, so many years later, I feel the same things I felt then. Kind of Blue is one of those very rare, special albums that simply doesn't wear out. I've heard it a million times and can anticipate every note, but it's still a joy to listen to every time.

The version I'm listening to today is the 2007 Japanese SACD (another fascinating element to Kind of Blue is how radically different the various versions of it out there sound, with different mixes often completely rearranging the soundstage). This edition is one of my favorites; it's still the more modern Mark Wilder mix and benefits from the higher degree of clarity his mix brings, but it has a warmer, more laid back feel to it than most of the other iterations of his mix on various other formats. My chief complaint on his Miles mixes in general has always been that they're overly bright, to the point of Miles' trumpet often sounding harsh, and this is one of the very rare versions of the KoB Wilder mix that feels more natural to me.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention the quality of the personnel on this one: the sextet here is an extension of Miles' "First Great Quintet", featuring the dynamite rhythm section of Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers, with the impressionistic Bill Evans on piano (and his replacement Wynton Kelly on Freddie Freeloader, as Evans was mostly retired from the band at this point after burning out from the band's rigorous touring schedule), and the all-star sax section of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. All of the players (with the exception of Cobb) were great bandleaders in their own right, and all were top-notch players. We'll see most (if not all) of these folks again on this list, with a few showing up later as bandleaders. This is one of the things that I've always found appealing about jazz: every week is a crossover episode. I'm forever discovering that a player I love played as a sideman on this other album, and the bandleader on that one used to play with this other guy, and so on in a web that seems to stretch out forever. Jazz is far from the only thing I listen to, but it's one of the easiest genres for me to get engrossed in on account of the constant interconnections between players (my obsession with Wikipedia and Discogs diving and biography reading doesn't help).

Also of historical interest is the fact that only a few weeks after recording the final KoB sessions, John Coltrane would return to the studio to record the legendary Giant Steps with his own band; this album, for reasons beyond any and all comprehension or semblance of good taste, has been excluded from 1001 Albums. It's laughable to omit both it and My Favorite Things, both of which are major touchstones in jazz (soloing over Giant Steps, referring to the song rather than the album here, is still a mountain that any serious jazz player will climb today during the process of mastering their instrument). And maybe it's my huge obsession with free and spiritual jazz talking here, but I think there's a strong argument for including at least one of Coltrane's freer post-A Love Supreme albums; his interplay with Pharoah Sanders is spectacular, as is the way he and his wife Alice lock in, and those albums would go on to inform all flavors of "out" jazz and experimental music to come (also, while I'm complaining, it's equally ridiculous to omit both Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane from the book as bandleaders, and doing so really shows the authors' collective ignorance when it comes to any jazz that cuts deeper than surface level).

Ok, I'm done griping about the list (for now). Anyways, Kind of Blue is one of the highest pinnacles of musical achievement, yes you MUST hear it before you die. If you somehow haven't heard it, log off and go listen. You'll thank me later.

Coming up next time: we pivot back to country with the legendary Marty Robbins album, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs (or, for the terminally online, the one with Big Iron on it 😉).

[onryou-onryou]

The Book That Changed Jazz Forever

[evilvillain123456789]

lets see... "About Me." Well, first off, when I say I listen to all music, I really mean all of it. Rap, Country, freeform jazz, goregrind, plunderfonix, soft rock, harsh noise, black midis, brown notes, drone😜, groan, progesterone, Brazilian throat singing, Mongolian bossanova, Appalachian lined-out hymnody, Christian dubstep, Wahhabi shoegaze, blue metal, black grass, dungeon synth, DPRKpop, modal plainsong, and yes, even "hyper Pop"... The only thing is I don't fuck with ANY music made by women OR femmes. Grimes is okay during her tomboy era, as is Britney Spears specifically with the shaved head, but if you're here hoping to see posts about Ethel, Chapelle, Megan, Bjork, Mitsky, Anohni, Tori, Lizzo, Blondie, Haella, Pharmakon, Azealea Banks, Iggy Azalea, Iggy Pop, Jeff Magnum, Marc Almond, Macy Gray, Beyoncé, trampdog, suckstamps, Nancy Sinatra, Alice Coltrane, your mom, my mom, auntie's harp, grandmother's hands, or any other she/her in the business, you're gonna leave disappointed. It's personal, it's complicated, and no, I will not 🚫 explain. Anything else? Name, age😏 , pronouns, DNI? Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy pants, click through to my Medium and comb through decades of epileptic logorrhea LIKE AN ADULT. I hate this website sometimes, I swear... Oh and before you ask

😠 it's always okay to reblog my nudes........😠..

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Kind of Blue is arguably Miles’ greatest hit, the one album with which he is most associated. It is still one of the most popular jazz albums of all time, outselling most contemporary recordings and prized as a harbinger of modal jazz and revered as a paradigm of improvisation over reduced harmony—creating a perfect balance of sound and space. Outside the jazz realm, it is consistently chosen by music historians and critics as one of the best albums of all time, alongside evergreen classics by The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and others. 

Inspired by many ideas—mood-painting, modal structures—behind the soundtrack to Elevator to the Gallows, Kind of Blue can be seen as Miles’ signature work not only in its enduring popularity, but its attitude as well; in many ways the album’s cool and aloof effect, with its minimal, almost dismissive musical gestures, serves as a sonic reflection of Miles legendary aloofness. The title of its famous opening track—“So What”—is a perfect reflection of Miles’ insouciant, sunglasses-at-midnight way of being.

Numerous other elements specific to Kind of Blue push it to the top of the “Best Of” lists: the all-star sextet Miles had assembled to accompany him, including three players (John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley) who would themselves prove to be jazz legends, and a rhythm section (Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb) that outswung any other in its day. There was the shared feeling of fresh discovery in the studio on those two days in 1959, as almost all the tracks were the first complete takes—no edits, no second tries. There was Bill Evans’ evocative essay on the album’s back cover highlighting that idea of “first-mind, best-mind”, comparing their music to the spontaneous, unerasable ink-on-rice-paper work of a Japanese calligrapher.

Miles Davis

[jazzandother-blog]

The John Coltrane Quartet. (L to R): Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison

(English / Español)

In 1960 John Coltrane travelled to Europe for the first time, where he received a great reception. On his return he decided to form his own group. It was in 1960 and it was formed by the pianist McCoy Tyner, the double bass player Steve Davis, later replaced by the definitive Jimmy Garrison, and the drummer Elvin Jones. The change to modal music began in October 1960 when they recorded the song "My Favorite Things" and incorporated the soprano saxophone into their repertoire, an instrument that no one had incorporated into modern jazz since the days of Sidney Bechet, with the exception of Steve Lacy.

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En 1960 John Coltrane viaja por primera vez a Europa donde es recibido multitudinariamente. A su regreso decide formar su propio grupo. Es en 1960 y lo forman el pianista, McCoy Tyner, el contrabajista, Steve Davis, sustituido luego por el definitivo, Jimmy Garrison, y el batería, Elvin Jones. El cambio a la música modal se inicia en octubre de 1960 cuando graba el tema: «My Favorite Things» e incorpora a su repertorio el saxo soprano, un instrumento que desde los tiempos de Sidney Bechet y con la excepción de Steve Lacy, nadie lo había incorporado al jazz moderno.

Fuente: Pasión por el Jazz y Blues.

[diceriadelluntore]

Storia di Musica #334 - Jackie Mclean, It's Time!, 1965

È stata la vista di un poster del disco di oggi che mi ha inspirato la scelta del punto esclamativo, come trait d’union dei dischi del mese di Luglio. Il suo autore è poco conosciuto ai più, ma è uno di quelle “divinità minori” della Storia del Jazz che hanno passato gli stili, suonato con i più grandi, indirizzato anche le scelte musicali, ma appena un gradino dietro le Divinità Maggiori. John Lenwood McLean, per tutti Jackie, nasce nel 1931 in una famiglia di musicisti, a New York. Sfortuna vuole che nel 1939 suo padre muoia, ma ha la piccola fortuna di poter continuare a studiare musica grazie al padrino e al nuovo compagno di sua madre, che possedeva un negozio di dischi. Ma più che altro, quando è adolescente, Jackie ha la fortuna di vivere vicino ad alcuni di quelle Divinità Maggiori: passa infatti spesso a casa di Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker e soprattutto Bud Powell, che quando Jackie ha 13-14 anni intravede del talento. Inizia a suonare in un’orchestra il sassofono, insieme a Sonny Rollins, si innamora dello stile di Parker e quando a 20 anni è chiamato da Miles Davis per delle registrazioni. Davis raccontò che per le registrazioni di Dig (del 1951, il disco uscirà solo nel 1956) in studio si presentò Charlie Parker, rendendo nervosissimo McLean, terrorizzato di suonare davanti al suo idolo: “Continuava ad andare da lui a chiedergli cosa ci faceva lì, e Bird (il soprannome di Parker, ndr) a rispondergli che si stava solo facendo un giro. Gliel'avrà chiesto un milione di volte. Jackie voleva che Bird se ne andasse perché così sarebbe stato più rilassato. Ma Bird continuava a dirgli come suonava bene e a incoraggiarlo, e questo alla fine rese la prova di Jackie davvero fantastica”. Con Davis suonerà anche in molti altri dischi tra il 1952 e il 1952 e parteciperà allo storico Pithecanthropus Erectus di Charles Mingus: leggenda vuole che Mingus lo picchioò, McLean tentò di pugnalarlo e per ripicca se ne andò a suonare con i Jazz Messenger di Art Blakey.

La sua carriera sembra avvia al massimo successo, ma come moltissimi jazzisti di quegli anni, McLean divenne schiavo delle droghe: per questo motivo gli fu ritirato il permesso di tenere concerti in pubblico a New York e questo lo obbligò a un intenso lavoro in studio, che si rifletté nel gran numero di registrazioni a suo nome negli anni 1950 e anni 1960. Dopo aver registrato per la Prestige Records, egli firmò un contratto con la Blue Note Records per cui incise dal 1959 al 1967. Il suo stile hard bop diviene riconoscibile per il particolare modo di suonare il suo sax contralto, e tra la fine degli anni ’50 e gli inizi degli anni ’60 scrive i suoi dischi capolavoro: prove grandiose sono Quadrangle, da Jackie’s Bag del 1959, e il disco Let Freedom Ring, del 1962, meraviglioso lavoro dove aggiunge elementi distintivi della rivoluzione che Ornette Coleman aveva iniziato pochi anni prima, il free jazz, alla sua comunque ancora solida struttura hard bop.

Il disco di oggi è registrato nel 1964 con una band composta da il trombettista Charles Tolliver, il pianista Herbie Hancock, in uno dei suoi primi lavori di una carriera sconfinata, il bassista Cecil McBee e il batterista Roy Haynes. It’s Time! ha oltre 200 punti esclamativi in copertina quasi a sottolineare una vitalità creativa fiorente e incontenibile, in un periodo alquanto particolare della Storia del jazz: in questo disco è decisivo l’intervento di Tolliver che scrive con Mclean tutti i pezzi, continuando questo fruttuoso percorso al confine tra post-bop modale e free jazz. L'improvvisazione accordale gioca ancora un ruolo importante nella musica di questo bel disco. L'assolo di Hancock nell'apertura di Cancellation è un gioco di spigolature, scandite da un tempo semplicemente mozzafiato. Il funky di McLean Das' Dat ha sicuramente un debito con Horace Silver, ma l'elemento blues, che rimarrà per sempre uno degli amori del nostro, è puro Jackie McLean. Il modo di suonare di McLean non è particolarmente avventuroso, anche se a volte spinge il suo sassofono oltre i limiti. It’s Time! è micidiale - con Tolliver e McLean che si scontrano in un duello spettacolare- così come il ritorno del blues in Snuff. Tolliver, che ha fatto il suo debutto alla Blue Note con It's Time!, ha registrato tre album con McLean e diventerà noto per la sua voce di tromba fluida e lirica. Revillot di Tolliver (il suo nome al contrario) è un altro trampolino di lancio per grandi improvvisazioni. Il bassista Cecil McBee fa un breve assolo nella title track, il suo unico assolo in questa registrazione, anche se aiuta a guidare l'intera sessione.

Nel 1964 McLean passò sei mesi in prigione per questioni di droga, che segnerà sia la via privata sia la sua musica (che si sposterà con forza verso i primi esperimenti di acid jazz e alla sperimentazione più estrema. Tanto che nel 1967 la Blue Note, a seguito del cambiamento di gestione, pose fine al suo contratto, come fece in quegli anni con molti altri artisti d'avanguardia. Le prospettive di registrazione erano talmente poche e malpagate che egli preferì dedicarsi interamente ai concerti e all'insegnamento, che iniziò nel 1968 alla The Hartt School della prestigiosa University of Hartford del Connecticut. Negli anni successivi, egli avrebbe creato il Dipartimento di Musica Afroamericana (ora chiamato "Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz") e l'intero programma di studi jazz. Nel 1970, con la moglie Dollie, fondò a Hartford il gruppo Artists' Collective, Inc. dedicato alla conservazione delle tradizioni africane negli Stati Uniti, promuovendo e realizzando programmi di istruzione nella danza tradizionale, il teatro, la musica e le arti visuali. È stato sempre, come molti jazzisti, artista decisamente impegnato sul fronte sociale, culturale e politico, sin dai tempi delle contestazioni contro la guerra del Vietnam. Uno dei bellisismi documentari di Ken Burns sui grandi del Jazz è dedicato a lui. Morirà dopo una lunga malattia nel 2006, e nello stesso anno fu nominato nella Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. Un musicista da riscoprire.

[burlveneer-music]

Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra - L’Inter Communal and Le Musichien, Souffle Continu Records reissues of albums from 1978 and 1983

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an “old hand” of French free jazz, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais) in 1965. But, six years later Tusques had had his fill of free jazz. After having wondered, together with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), if free jazz wasn’t a bit of a dead end, Tusques formed the Inter Communal, an association under the banner of which the different communities of the country would come together and compose, quite simply. If at first the structure was made up of professional musicians from the jazz scene it would rapidly seek out talent in the lively world of the MPF (Musique Populaire Française).{French Popular Music, ndlt} Compiled of extracts from concerts given between 1976 and 1978, L’Inter Communal is not the first album from the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra. But it is the one which shows with the most exuberance the “social function” which inhabited free jazz and popular music at the time. All the more so as, to head up the project, the group (made up of wind instruments: Michel Marre, Jo Maka, Adolf Winkler and Jean Méreu) called upon Spanish singer Carlos Andreu. Andreu, claimed Tusques, was a griot “who created of new genre of popular song improvised with our music, based on events going on at the time”. As with L’Inter Communal a few years earlier, Le Musichien follows on from the group of varying musicians that Tusques had conceived as a “people’s jazz workshop”. In 1981, at the then famous Paris address, 28 rue Dunois, the pianist sang with his partner Carlos Andreu an “afro-Catalan tale”. Over a slow bass line (exceptional work from Jean-Jacques Avenel) backed by percussion from Kilikus, saxophones (Sylvain Kassap and Yebga Likoba) and trombone (Ramadolf) which presented a myriad of constellations. The sky has no limits, let’s make the most of it. The following year, at the ‘Tombées de la Nuit’ festival in Rennes, bassist Tanguy Le Doré would weave with Tusques the fabric on which would evolve an explosive “brotherhood of breath”: Bernard Vitet on trumpet, Danièle Dumas and Sylvain Kassap on saxophones, Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Philippe Le Strat on… bombards. With hints of modal jazz inspired by Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders, the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra is an ecumenical project which speaks to the whole world. 

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #978 - September 4th, 2022

Album: Maiden Voyage (Blue Note, 1965)

Artist: Herbie Hancock

Genre: Modal Jazz

Track Listing: 

"Maiden Voyage"

"The Eye Of The Hurricane"

"Little One"

"Survival Of The Fittest"

"Dolphin Dance"

Favorite Song: "Survival Of The Fittest"