{"id":705,"date":"2016-11-08T16:07:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-08T20:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=705"},"modified":"2021-12-26T23:24:17","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T03:24:17","slug":"now-what-a-modal-melody-collage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2016\/11\/08\/now-what-a-modal-melody-collage\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Now What?’: a modal melody collage (and a history of the ‘So What’ progression)"},"content":{"rendered":"

My improvisation class begins by studying tunes and chord progressions that were common in the swing and bebop eras, including the blues (in the form of the Charlie Parker tune \u2018Billie\u2019s Bounce\u2019), \u2018Stompin at the Savoy\u2019 and rhythm changes (i.e. the changes from George and Ira Gershwin\u2019s \u2018I Got Rhythm\u2019).\u00a0 It then takes a sudden turn toward modal jazz with Miles Davis\u2018 \u2018So What\u2019, a tune that uses the same 32-bar AABA form as \u2018I Got Rhythm\u2018, but reduces its constant harmonic motion to just two chords, D minor seventh and E flat minor seventh.\u00a0 The melody, with its one-bar bass phrases answered by a chordal phrase that uses the same rhythmic pattern as Bobby Timmons\u2019 \u2018Moanin\u2019, lays out the D dorian and E flat dorian scales.\u00a0 These scales can be created by flatting the third and seventh degrees in the D and E flat major scales.\u00a0 (The tune seems to have been conceived at least partly on piano, as D dorian uses only white keys and E flat dorian uses only black keys.)\u00a0 We initially learn to improvise over So What through learning an outline of the progression based on one scalar lick and two arpeggio licks<\/a>.\u00a0 (Note: The recording to which the link takes you has a three-beat countoff: beats 2, 3 and 4 played on the hi-hat of the drum kit.)<\/p>\n

While having fewer harmonic goals can seem to make the improviser\u2019s task easier, anyone who has tried to solo on \u2018So What\u2019 knows that having fewer harmonic landmarks can make it more challenging to maintain the AABA form on this tune (in other words, more challenging to remember where the second chord change arrives.)<\/p>\n

One technique that a number of improvisers have used on this type of tune is to quote 4-bar melodic phrases from pop songs, folk songs, other solos, etc. as a way of building their solo.\u00a0 This kind of quoting can be heard in Cannonball Adderley\u2019s solo on the Miles Davis tune \u2018Miles\u2019 <\/a>(often mislabeled ‘Milestones’ and confused with the John Lewis tune of that name recorded by Miles and Charlie Parker), Clark Terry\u2019s solo on Bob Brookmeyer\u2019s \u2018Hum\u2019<\/a>, and more recently, a solo by pianist Tadataka Unno<\/a> on vocalist Gabrielle Stravelli\u2019s \u2018So What Boy,’ (from her album ‘Waiting In Vain’, available on iTunes), a truly swingin’ vocal tune based on an altered version of the ‘So What’ progression.\u00a0 In a number of these solos, the soloists quote tunes that originally appeared in different harmonic contexts. Adderley quotes \u2018I Can\u2019t Get Started\u2018, a major-key tune, as well as a phrase from Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’ over the A minor 7th chord in \u2018Milestones\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 Unno quotes \u2018Rain Check\u2019 and \u2018I Found A New Baby\u2019 over the D minor 7th chord in \u2018So What Boy\u2018.\u00a0 (This reminds me of something that one of my jazz education mentors, Alex Stewart, mentioned to me: that he likes to play the dorian mode off the 5th of dominant 7th chords and the seventh scale (i.e. the mixolydian) off the 11th of minor 7th chords.) Gershwin\u2019s \u2018Fascinating Rhythm\u2018 is also quoted in (I believe) all three solos; the tune\u2019s first four measures are used prominently by Adderley and Terry while Unno, by contrast, only hints at the second measure.\u00a0 Finally, to my ear Terry and Unno both quote Miles Davis\u2019 \u2018So What\u2019 solo.<\/p>\n

While I wouldn\u2019t advise a developing improviser to consciously plan to quote tunes in a solo, I think that composing solos that make deliberate use of borrowed melodic material can be a useful exercise for modeling the process of altering and fusing short patterns that occurs at a subconscious level in \u2018real-time\u2019 improvising.\u00a0\u00a0 The title of my tune \u2018Now What?\u2019 is a condensation of a question students might well ask when \u2018So What\u2019 is introduced in my class: \u2018so far we\u2019ve learned a bunch of tunes and melodic ideas based on major and dominant 7th chords, and suddenly we\u2019re supposed to improvise on a couple of long minor 7th chords – now what do we play on that??\u2018\u00a0\u00a0 I composed the tune to demonstrate to my class how, in addition to using the dorian scale to improvise on the \u2018So What\u2019 progression, one can also use melodic ideas originally based in other modes and harmonic contexts.<\/p>\n

Using other scales that use the same group of notes as the dorian scale can be an effective strategy, as it was in the Adderley, Terry and Unno solos.\u00a0 When improvising over a minor seventh chord in the context of the dorian mode, one can use ideas based in the major scale starting on seventh of the chord (the tune starts with quotes from Louis Armstrong\u2019s solo on \u2018Hotter Than That\u2019 and Ella Fitzgerald\u2019s solo on \u2018Cottontail\u2019.)\u00a0 One can also, to use Alex Stewart\u2019s concept, use ideas based in the seventh scale starting on the 11th of the chord (as in the quote from John Coltrane\u2019s solo on \u2018So What\u2019).\u00a0 The tune continues with another Ella quote from the same \u2018Cottontail\u2019 solo and some patterns based on the one-bar ii-V progressions (these can be found in the \u2018Midnight Donna and Reets in Paris\u2019<\/a> post) which outline various inversions of the minor 7th chord.\u00a0 The tune goes on to use the 5-4-3-2 licks that we study in my class (these are explained in my post on Anthropology), which can be thought of as based on the major scale but can be applied in a wide variety of contexts, and ends up with some four-bar ii-V-I patterns from Clifford Brown and Charlie Parker which also work over the extended minor seventh harmony of the \u2018So What\u2019 progression.<\/p>\n

I hope you enjoy working on ‘Now What?’; here’s a link to my solo piano recording of it<\/a>.\u00a0 (Although in this solo piano version I do it as a fast samba, keep in mind the tune can also be played or sung slower and with swing eighth notes.)\u00a0 I encourage you to learn the scale\/arpeggio outline first, as it shows the context on which \u2018Now What\u2019 builds.\u00a0 I hope that by either listening to or working on the tune, you might also get interested in further investigating the solos that \u2018Now What\u2019 borrows from, composing your own line on the \u2018So What\u2019 progression, or most important of all, doing your own improvising on this progression.<\/p>\n

A quick roundup of some other tunes which, like ‘So What Boy’, are based on ‘So What’:\u00a0 Probably the best known tune based on ‘So What’ changes is John Coltrane’s ‘Impressions’; he recorded this tune many times, but I recommend starting with this shorter version<\/a>.\u00a0 Wes Montgomery’s live version from 1965<\/a> has a great piano solo by Harold Mabern.\u00a0 Oscar Pettiford’s tune ‘Why Not? That’s What<\/a>‘ responds to ‘So What’, but without exactly paralleling its chord progression.\u00a0 The Fifth Dimension tune ‘Don’tcha Hear Me Callin’ To Ya<\/a>‘, which sets the ‘So What’ chord progression to a rock beat, was written by Rudy Stevenson, a guitarist who also recorded with Wynton Kelly.\u00a0 On Kelly’s trio version of ‘Don’tcha Hear Me Callin To Ya’<\/a> from the album ‘Full View’,\u00a0 his approach to improvising is a fascinating contrast to the very different approach taken by Bill Evans on the original recording.\u00a0 Kelly’s solo is in a style I would describe as ‘dialogic’, where the left and right hands can be heard having a conversation with one another; Evans’ solo is more focused on textures (particularly tone clusters) than on a melodic line.<\/p>\n

\"now-what-concert\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My improvisation class begins by studying tunes and chord progressions that were common in the swing and bebop eras, including the blues (in the form of the Charlie Parker tune \u2018Billie\u2019s Bounce\u2019), \u2018Stompin at the Savoy\u2019 and rhythm changes (i.e. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1822,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/1822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}