010 Part I

What to Listen for in Jazz

Part I What to Listen for in Jazz Introduction Some Common Overall Song Shapes Big Building Blocks for Songs New Bottle, Old Wine What is This Thing Called Harmony? Cadences – The Basic LEGO Brick Using LEGO Bricks to Map a Song All the Joins There Are A Final Hover over Hovers From Here…


Part I: What to Listen For In Jazz

Introduction

I

In this chapter you wi ll find out a lot about how jazz versions of 'standards' work. You will meet the basic procedures used by jazz players, together with many of the patterns and other ph en om en a th at go in to pu ttin g th e mu si c to ge th er .

What Is This Thing Called? Musicians use diff erent words to descri be the material they play. Words like Standard , Original , Tune , Numb er . They all mean the same thi ng. You wil l also hear the 'C' word, Composition , used. (By the time you have fini shed this book you will see why thi s word is not just a ghast ly solecism, but actually militates against jazz players getting proper recognition - and money -for what they do). The word I use in this book has been in general curre ncy in jazz since the 1920's , deployed by players of all schools, and that is Song . Note that calling somet hing a song does not necessarily i mply the existenc e of words, simpl y of melody. We all know what we me an by a 'singing' phrase or tone, and we have all heard of 'Songs Without Words'.

Only Connect You will discover just how much songs which are apparently different actually have in common with each ot her. If you aren' t a musici an, this will proba bly surprise you at fir st. Then it w ill delight you. If you are a musician, you will b e able to reap immediate benefi ts in terms both of be in g ab le to me mo rise mo re so ng s ea sily , an d to th in k ab ou t th em co he re nt ly wh il e yo u pl ay . Either way, it is a

real voyage of

discovery.

Stop Look and Listen Simply by getting you to stop periodically and listen to a piece of music, this chapter will show you how to acquire a comprehensive and fully detailed knowledge of the many notions and pr oc ed ur es wh ich ma ke up th e co mp lex th in g we kn ow as ja zz . Wh at ev er el se ma y ha pp en , wherever else you go, this will enrich your listening experience greatly and permanently. But although this chapter uses no 'technical' language at all, musicians in particular should not be tempted to ski p it. The perspective it gives on the music is necessary for success in pl aying. All of this knowledge is an essential pre requisite for player s. In fact it is so important tha t it makes no sense to clutter up the text (as so many books do) with the purely technical aspects until the pr op er un de rs tand in g is in pl ac e. Human nature being what it is, the real temptation is somehow to feel that listening to music (which is all that What to Listen For asks you to do!) is not work.


Do not yield to this, because on the

contrary, listeni ng is the real work!

This chapter will teach you from scratch if that is what you deal it will show you how to organise that knowledge to get

need, and if you more out of it.

already know a great

Even non-musicians will acquire a comprehensive and natural-feeling vocabulary with which to describe what they hear concisely and accurately I promised you no jargon and

I meant it.

Until you get used to listening for sections of songs, all problems of your locating the part of song I am referring to at particular times, are solved by using a vocal version, and referring to the lyrics .

the

I do use a couple of terms to refer to musical 'things', but you will find you are already familiar with them through l istening, even i f you didn't know the names before. The first i s the word 'beat' . If you pat your foot, or clap along t o the music, you know what the beat is. Associated with that is the idea of the 'measure' . If you can tell a wa ltz when you hear one, you know wha t a measure is! You know it is a walt z because you can feel that 'one -two-three on e -two-three' in the rhythm. That is, you can hear that there is, r egularly, a f irmer beat amo ng the others. When counting, we star t with this as 'One '. Musicians use the sens ible word 'measure' t o indicate the space between the se firmer beat s. So for instanc e, in Waltz for Debby there are three beats to a measure, in Autumn Le av es there are four beats to a measure. The word 'bar' is also commonly used instead of 'measure', because of the bar (line), on sheet music that separates one measure from another.

Make A Set of Companion Recordings To use this section properly, you should first make up, on Cassette, MiniDis c, CD or whatever, as described in the section of the Introduction called How to Ge t th e Be st Ou t Of This Bo ok , a set of recordings correspondi ng to the points where the text says ‘Listen Now’. Without the Companion Recordings to hand, you won't know the s ounds the text is referr ing to. And if you don't know them, you won't learn them. And if you don't learn them you won't be able to use them. Take all the time you need to get your Companion Recordings together.

Don't Expect Too Much Too Soon In this chapter, most of the thi ngs described are simple, an d relatively easy to grasp. Even so, you may find yourself not underst anding everything at once. The important thing i s not to worry about that! I suggest you read through the directed list ening text, with the Compilat ion on as you do it, but not expecting ever ything to go in the first t ime. Every moment you spend working on it, you are list ening to some of the best music the re is, so it is not a bad plac e to be. As you get used to more and more of what this chapter teaches, you will feel free to concentrate on what is left. It doesn't get harder as it goes on, so not

'getting' something doesn't mean you have to stop.

And if your Companion Recordings have complete tracks, you have every chorus of the track to listen over and over, while the message sinks in. So your subsequent lis tening will consol idate the knowledge and expe rience. Feel free just t o pl ou gh on . Th e bo ok wi ll al wa ys be he re fo r yo u to co me ba ck an d ch ec k th in gs ou t.


Theme and Variations Most jazz performances, and all the ones for which this book is designed to help you, use a basic 'theme and variations' approa ch. That is, usually, t he 'theme' (the melody) is played at the outs et by on e or mo re pl ay er s, fo llow ed by on e or mo re 's ol os ', an d co nc lu de d by so me fo rm of repetition of the theme to bring everything back together. This simple format (also used widely in many other different forms of music) works well ps yc ho lo gi ca lly. Th e te rr itor y is stak ed ou t at th e be gi nn in g (t he op en in g th em e st atem en t) so that the liste ner knows what the performance i s going to be about. Because of this the li stener can keep the melody in mind as a guide with which to fol low the logic of the 'solos'. The closing theme statement is like the recapitulation at the end of a good lecture - it reminds listeners of the subject, and consolidates the experience. The simplicity is not pr escriptive however . It does not force musicians to use a stea dy tempo, or exact numbers of measures unless the players themselves want it to . And where the melody i s well known to the audience, it is even possible to dispense with playing it altogether, or to substitute an alternative one, like playing Ornithology instead of How Hi gh the Mo on . This high degree of flexibi lity is another reason why the song form is s o generally used. It is a real, disciplined struc ture, but it allows almost unlimite d freedom in practice. As we will see later (in the section called The Song As Raga in Part II Pe rs pe ctiv es an d Pole mi cs ) there was a point in ja zz hi stor y wh er e it lo ok ed as if 'the me an d va ri at io ns ' ha d ru n its co urse . Bu t wh at in fa ct happened was that many of the 'free' players came back to songs and played them even better than be fo re , be ca us e th ey br ou gh t th ei r ne w di sc ov er ies wi th th em .

An Introduction to Song Shapes It may not have occurred to you that songs should have 'shapes', but the more you listen, the more you find that t hat is the b est way to thi nk of them. They have 'secti ons' inside the m, like pa ra gr ap hs in a bo ok , or line s in a po em , an d so me time s th es e se ct io ns ar e re pe ated , eith er wi th the same, or more usually, with different words. Some forms of country dancing use actual shapes on the printed page to describe the dance: a (literal) set of motions to be gone through, and then gone through again for as long as the band continues to play. In exactly the same way, w hen somebody sings or plays a song, you can think of it as a sort of dance th rough the song's shape. With most songs, you know when the dance i complete because usually, if the song doesn't just end, the words start again, or what is plainly a new set of words starts, or it could be that an instrumental interlude begins. The this dance be caname us e it for is on e co mp lethrough te se t ofthewoshape rd s. is a

s

chorus . And you c an tell what the chorus is

Most jazz performances of songs, by singers as well as by instrumentalists, involve doing the 'dance' more than once - that is taking several choruses. So what musicians mean when they shout 'take another chorus' or 'one more', or something of the sort, is to encourage the performer to repeat the dance over at least once again before they stop. If you want to understand what jazz musicians are doing with songs, you must learn the songs yourself , so that when you listen you can share with the musicians the knowledge of where they are in the songs at any given point, and what they are doing.

'If You Have To Count, You're Lost' Learning the songs consists of learning the melodies and then enough of the words to locate you in the chorus. Why learn the words? As you will soo n see, most songs repeat parts of their melodies, often sever al times over. If you think of these as just 'repeats ', it is alarmingly easy to


get lost because a single moment's lapse in concentration and you you are on!

are no longer sure which repeat

This can even ha ppen to professi onals. Even to John Col trane! At the outset of his solo on Speak Low from Sonny Clark's Sonny's Crib album (the srcinally issued take, not the alternative), he forgets the repeat of the first sect ion of the tune. Only for a split second t hough, and he rapidly resumes with where he shoul d have been. Bassist Butch Warr en accompanying Herbie Hancock on Mobley's Old) Word, New Imports (srcinally on No this Room forthe Sqsecond ua re s , but now on Hank Straight No Filter also misses out the repeat of theissued first section of, time, chorus. The quick thinki ng here is done by H erbie Hancock, who, hearing Warren pl ay Eb instead of Bb inst antly jumps to where War ren is. It is sad to see Bob B lumenthal's line r notes bl am in g th e im pe cc ab le Ha nc oc k fo r Wa rr en 's mi stak e. Ho we ve r it is pr ob ab ly pu sh in g th in gs too far to see any significance in the fact that Butch Warren once wrote a song called Lost (it's on Jackie McLean's A Fick le So na nc e )! Whether they have a propulsive rhythm section steaming at a fast tempo behind them, or whether the performance is contemplative and out of tempo, or whether it mixes elements of both, jazz pl ay er s al wa ys ha ve to kn ow wh er e th ey ar e in th e ch or us . If you get used to locating yourself via the lyrics, it doesn't matter whether the song repeats itself or not, because the l yrics are your guide . If there are no l yrics, then jus t try to see the whol e chorus in your mind, and not think of repeats. If you know where you

are in the tune,

by definition you are not lost, even if you are not counting at all!

So when you listen to a musician improvising on a song, practise keeping in mind the melody and as much of the lyri c as you need. There is no suggest ion that you do anythi ng as mechanical as counting (the profound trut h quoted in the heading above is from Theloni ous Monk ). This is not least because if you rely on counting, you will simply not know how to follow some of the greatest jazz performances of songs, such as Miles Davis's 1964 My Fu nn y Vale nt ine . There, there is no steady tempo or rhythm and the continuity is entirely in everyone knowing where they are in the song's chorus. And the melody (explicitl y as well as by references) is the guide to that . All you have to do is

trust the tune .

By emphasising the use of vocal versions of the songs, at least at the outset, this book offers you the easiest way to do the nec essary learning. Wherever possible, l earn a vocal version befor e or at the same time as trying an instrume ntal one. When you do listen to an instrumental versi on, try consciously to run the lyrics in your mind when you listen to it, so that you could answer immediately if anyone asked you 'where are we?'. Learning about songs, what kinds of shape their choruses come in, where they are like one another, and where different, is the best preparati on for listening to jazz. And listening to jazz is the first and most important preparation for actually playing it! That is what the whole of this first chapter of the book is about.

Practical Activity Test yourself (a nd your friends) often. Start by taking a tr ack you know and starting it at random pa rt wa y th ro ug h. Do yo u kn ow wh erea bo ut s in th e so ng yo u ar e? If yo u do n't kn ow at firs t, ho w long does it take you to find out? Then do the same thing, but taking the track at random as well. No w yo u ha ve to wo rk ou t a 'w ha t' as we ll as a 'w he re '. Don't worry if it is dif ficult at firs t. You are asking your brain to do something it has not done be fo re , bu t if yo u keep asking, it wi ll respond. And the speed of that response to what your ears hear is the beginning of a proper response to jazz itself.


A First Encounter with A Song Shape Let's take one initial example to

see how this works

in practice.

We will briefly work through the Bob Haggart song What's New to show what we mean. will look at what use jazz musicians make of this sort of material in performance.

LI ST EN NO W. What's New.

Then we

Clifford Brown ( 1).

The words tell a story of two ex-lovers meeting following a break-up which the singer did not want to happen. Listening to any version, it becomes clear that it is not a continuous flow, but is divided up into pa rts, like a po em wo ul d be di vi de d up in to line s. There are four of these basic part

s. These begin respective

ly with the words

'What's new?' 'What's new?' 'What's new? 'Adieu' Take your time, and with repeated listening, you will begin to notice that the parts of the song that begin with t hese words all have t he same tune. What stops it from bei ng monotonous is the fact that the third section uses that same tune, but higher up than we have become used to from the first two parts . This makes it more satisf ying that the last part goes back agai n to where we first heard it (try singing it!), although the poignancy of the song is enhanced by the words now be in g 'A di eu ' in stea d of 'W ha t's Ne w'. Having said that the parts of the song are like the lines of a poem, we can use the terminology used to describe rhyme schemes, and apply it to the structure of songs as well. So the first thi ng that happens is call pr ev io us pa rt ge ts th at pa rt 's le tter .

ed 'A', the next differ

ent thing 'B' etc.

Any repeat of a

Here then, we would describe the scheme or structure of What's New a s AABA . The third part of the tune, where the third 'What's new' happens, is the same melody, but is different musically be ca us e it is su ng at a di ffer en t pi tc h, so we ca ll it B no t A. Th e fo ur th pa rt , al th ou gh it us es different words, is the same tune at the same pitch as the first two parts.

Practical Activity Having got your bearings, try out the other What's New versions recommended, the vocal one by Rita Reys, and the instrum ental one by Art Pepper. Can you still tell where you are in the 'sol os'?


Rita Reys (1).


Art Pepper (1).

The Way Jazz Players Use Songs In popular music, where the song is the entire piece, there is usually nothing much left to do after you get through o ne chorus. A typical per formance would ha ve the singer sing a complet e chorus, then the orchestra come in for the AA of the second chorus, leaving the singer to re-enter at the B and complete the second chorus, and with it the whole perfor mance. Even more extreme is for the orchestra to start the second chorus at B, leaving the singer just to finish off with the last A.


With jazz it is rarely like that.

For jazz musicians, even the opening 'theme statement' is there for them to explore and interpret the melody, recasting it with their own personal stamp (This is exactly comparable to the opening stage of a raga).

an Indian Classical player starting to explore

After the first chorus, the real process of development begins, as, with the tune in mind, but no longer so dominant, the jazz player, along with the other musician(s), improvises (i.e. composes spontaneously) a devel opment of what happened in the first chorus. Usually after t his has been completed, (by as many 'soloists' as want to do it), the performance is drawn to a close by a recapitulat ion of melody, again personalised. Because of the personalisation, and (even worse!) the 'development' i.e. the solos, many 'composers' of popular songs have hated jazz versions of their work (even to the extent of getting legal injunct ions banning jazz rec ordings of them). This is because t hey view themselves as exactly that, compose rs, and their songs therefo re as compositions. (Legal and other aspects of this are discussed in the section called Copyright Royalties in Part II Pe rs pe ctiv es an d Po lemi cs ).

Creativity and The Sound Of Surprise The jazz musician thewhich probleare used m differently to thethey 'composer '. In far India, nobeing one would have composed thesees ragas (even though are often very from simpleclaim to scales). In the West, everyone knows that fairy tales are part of a tradition, but can neverthel ess be re to ld in an y er a, or se ttin g. Well, the jazz musician views the song like that . A musical story, or set of events, a kind of synopsis. These need fleshing out and developing, to get the best out of the song's potential, just as you haven't read a novel at all if all you have done is read a pl ot su mm ar y. It is the jazz musician's art to tell these stories, in as elaborate or austere a way as circumstances or impulse dictates at the part icular time the performa nce is made. The answer to the often-aske d question about jazz, 'where's the melody?' is that it is omnipresent, as it is in say the Diabelli variations of Beethoven, or the cantus firmus in a Mass by Josquin. By being shared in t he minds of listener and performer, it sets up the basis for spontaneous two-way communication. Even apparently trite pieces , Chim Chim Ch er ee , say, or Santa Claus is Coming to Town the vehicle for profoundly emotional statements by jazz players.

can be

But musicians do rhythm more than j ust theLatin song American to play. etc.) They also select spee it at,jazz sometimes what to play it inselect (waltz, and then theywhat select how d to play high or low to play it. If there is a singer pres ent, that last choi ce may be constrained by how high or low the singer can actually sing, but otherwise musicians can choose what they like. These choices are a serious part of a jazz musician's creativi ty, and can have a significant impact on listeners. One reason why Chet Baker ve rsions of songs often s ound so melancholy is tha t he often plays lower than we expect. In fact even non-musicians get more accustomed than they probably suspect to a song being sung in a particular place . Test yourself: put on a record you know well , and just before it start s, sing the first note of the track. Even if you are not exactly right, you will usually find yourself prett y close.

Summary So Far idea with a In this chapter you learned that a song is not a 'composit ion'. It is a basic me lodic structured shape . Jazz musicians use a song as the 't heme' to which they 'warm' as they devel op


their solos. Lester Young used to talk about j azz players 't elling their story'. Thinking of it like that helps a lot. You know it is possible to tell a vers ion of say the story of Cinderella , or Faus t , and to make it at the same time both recognisable, an d entirely your own.

Some Common Overall Song Shapes The discussion of What's New raised the issue of the overall shape of a song - its 'internal architecture ' - comparable to a poetic form with rhyme and metr ic schemes. But there are more things to song shapes than we have so far seen, and we can now go on to look in more depth at what some of them are. One of the most useful things you can do at the outset is to heighten your awareness of form, so that you always know what the form of the song you are listening to is, and where you are in that form. Here we l ook at t he most fr equently found forms. Not just the 'rhyme scheme' part, but also the internal dynamics, which are just as important.

AABA We have already looked briefly at one AABA song, and then look at some others w they have in common.

ith the same overall

What's New . Here we review what we know, shape. We then consider some of the thi ngs

The Basic Shape of AABA Songs The AABA shape for a song is by far the most common among the sort of popular songs written from the late twenties onwards, including srcinal pieces from within the jazz tradition. The psychology behind it i s an internal 'theme a nd variations' in i tself. So the song is self contained structurally, even when sung through just the once, as opposed to the usual jazz pr ac tice of pl ay in g se ve ra l ch or us es . It wo rk s like th is : You state an idea

(the first A section , or front strain)

Then to make sure

that your audience have got it

properly, you repeat it

(the second A section) Then you state a

second idea, different in some way from and relief

the first, so as to

provide contrast

(the B section, or bridge).

Finally, you satisfy your audience by a restatement of

(the final A section)

your first idea


As we have seen, the AABA song What's New makes the simplest change possible for the B section, it repeats the A section, but higher The parts of AABA songs have names that are used by musicians, so you should be aware of them. The A part is cal led the 'front s train' or more us ually just the front . The B part is called the bridge . (There are some other names for the bri dge. Often it is call ed the 'release'. Many British musicians call it the 'middle eight' - even though it is not always eight measures long, and bo th Ch ar lie Pa rk er an d Jo hn Co ltra ne so me time s ca ll ed it th e 'c ha nn el ') .

Troubles over Bridges. The bridge always represents some kind of contrast, and often isn't as memorable as the front strain. This is why jaz z musicians incl ined to party game s play one called ' Troubles over Bridges', where you are played just the bridge from a song, the music fades as the front is about to reprise. You get the points i f you can say what the s ong is. In fact What's New could never be a candidate for inclusion in a session of 'Troubles over Bridges' because t he melody of the bridge is the same as the front , just higher. There are some other songs that replicat e bridges in this way. In looking at them we begin the exciting process of relating what we have learned so far to the repertoire.

'Replica Bridge' AABA Songs. We'll start with

Good Bait .

LI ST EN NO W. Good Bait.

John C oltrane (1).

When Lights are Low also has a replica br idge - but only on some versions! When Benny Carter wrote the song it had a normal contrasting bridge, and this is what you find on the recommended vocal version by Vic Damone , and the instrument al one by Jaki Byard. Miles Davis however started to do a version of When Lights are Low using the front strain higher up for the bridge, in the manner of What's New . So his version (and tha t of Eric Dolphy among other s) is different from the Carter srcinal . In my recommendations for the Companion Recordi ngs, there are three versions. The Miles version with the re plica bridge is fir st, followed by the 'easy li stening' Damone version with the ori ginal bridge. Finally there i s a delightful solo pi ano version by Jaki Byard, also using the srcina l bridge. This last is a version that doesn' t keep to the same tempo all the time, but you will find you have no trouble following it. LI ST EN NO W. When Lights are Low.

Miles Davis (1).

LI ST EN NO W. When Lights are Low.

Vic Damone (1).

LI ST EN NO W. When Lights are Low.

Jaki Byard (1).

Be ms ha Sw ing . The unusual thing about this song is that ea ch section is only four measures long, exactly half the length of the (more usua l) songs we have looked at s o far. Oddly enough, it means that you may have to concentrate a bit harder to get the picture. At first, everyt hing seems to fly by so fast, you don't know where you are until you recognise the bridge. LI ST EN NO W. Be ms ha Sw ing. John Coltrane (2).

'Normal' AABA Songs No w we ca n la y ou t an d ex am in e th e re al stru ct ur e of so ng s wi th th is fo rm at . We wi ll star t wi th a wholly typical one; I Can' t Ge t St ar te d . This is an example of what musicians call a 'catalogue song', because the lyrics are little more than a long list - in this case of the supposed achievements of the singer, none of which have


enabled him/her to get 'start ed' with the object of his/her devot ion. Indeed, the published sheet music has two choruses' worth of lyrics (together with a stern warning that the performance of any parodied version is prohibited!).

LI ST EN NO W. I Ca n' t Ge t St ar te d. Bunny B erigan (1). Each of the A sections ends wi th the title of the song pl us the words 'with you'. Allowing for Berigan's relatively free interpreta tion it is clear that the melodies of all three A sections are the same, except for the very end of each. This brings up a frequently r ecurring character istic of this shape of song. At the end of the first A section, Berigan sings the word 'you' higher than he does at the end of the second. Not just a higher version of the same not e, but a different note. The eff ect i s to leave you in suspense , but knowing that t he second A is coming. The second A ends firmly and definitely l ow, and you know that pr oceedings have come to a stop. So you are ready for something different - the bri dge. But the end of the bridge isn't a stop, the words 'and what good does it do?' are poised in mid air , and leave you with the feeling that you need the final A. Which is what you get. Note that at the ver y end of the chorus, Beri gan sings his final ' you' on a high, but resolved feeling, note, so you know the chorus is over. In terms of general shapes, the ends of the sections of AABA songs are more often like those in I Can't Get Started , than those in What's New . The latt er comes t o a stop at the end of each section, even the bridge, and so nowhere is the coming of the next section signalled.

I Can' t Ge t St ar te d has all the regular feature s found in typical AABA songs. By taking these on bo ar d an d list en in g ou t fo r th em yo u ar e ta ki ng yo ur se lf way beyond the basic recognition of the form. You are fin ding that t here is an emotional t erritory whi ch you can rec ognise. And when you come to play, your improvising will aut omatically ref lect it. At this juncture just pay attention to the way each of the four parts of the song end.

The section endings for normal AABA songs The first A ends with a

The second A ends

The bridge ends

suspended feeling.

You can feel that

there must be a repe at coming.

solid and quiet . You can feel that an end h as been reached.

poised to repeat the A . In fact as you get towards the end of t he bridge, you can tell it is working towards the point of being poised.

The final A ends

solid and triumphant .

Try this out on an instrumental version too, especially, if you can find it, the Booker Ervin one. Brian Priestley once rightly describe d this as not only the best version of I Can' t Ge t St ar ted , but one of the greatest jazz ballad recordings ever.

LI ST EN NO W. I Ca n' t Ge t St ar te d. Booker Ervin (1).


The only variant on the feeling of the section endings given above, when you hear a jazz pe rf or ma nc e of a so ng is th at on al l ch or us es ex ce pt th e la st on e, th e fi na l A of th e ch or us , wh ile it certainly ends solid and triumphant, also adds the feeling that it is turning itself around ready for another chorus. No t ev er y si ng le AA BA so ng de pl oy s th es e se ct io n en di ng s, bu t mo st of th em do . means that you will easily recognise ones which don't.

An d th at

Charlie Parker's Confirmation for instance has a bridge that ends up rather a long way from being po ised , an d so ha s to sc ra bb le a bi t at th e la st mo me nt to ge t ba ck to th e A. If yo u ge t th e Stev e Kuhn version, which has Sheila Jordan singing her own words to the song, you can also enjoy Steve Kuhn's blatant (and hilarious) disregard of constant tempo.

LI ST EN NO W. Confirmation . Steve Kuhn (1).

I Can' t Ge t St ar te d also showed us implicitly another of the most common characteristics of the AABA form. Both the A and t he B sections are the same l ength, and that length is ei ght measures. This is not invariably so, however. Here are two songs where the section lengt hs are different. John Coltrane's Naim a for instance is an AABA song where the A section is only half the length of the bridge. The A is four measures long, and the B is eight measur es.

LI ST EN NO W. Naim a . John Col trane (2).

Speak Low has a front strain of sixteen measures and a LI ST EN NO W. Speak Low.

bridge of eight measures.

Rita Reys (1).

And even where all section lengths are the same, they are by no means always eight measures, as we saw with Be ms ha Sw ing . Another example is the AABA song we look at next, Cherokee . I am including this song here for a number of reasons. •

•

•

It exhibits all the characteristics of the AABA form that we have just noted, and therefore serves to reinforce the knowledge gained. You will find that if you pat your feet to a performance of Cherokee , there are twice as many be at s to ea ch se ct io n as th er e ar e wi th I Ca n' t Ge t St ar ted . So the actua l length of the song is different, but the shape is the same. Although it is ver y often played, it

is a misunderst ood song.

It is wrongly t hought to be

difficult. muc so that in Part II Pe rs pe ct ives & Po or lemi cs , intend Cherokee has a section itself. ForSo now, weh can just lis ten, because if you aren't don't to become a jazz to musician, you will not see what the fuss is ab out. If you play, or intend t o play, then if this bo ok do es no th in g el se fo r yo u, it wi ll sh ow yo u th at so fa r fr om an y di ffic ul ty ar is in g wi th it, Cherokee is actually one of the easiest of songs ! Vocal versions are relatively rare, but do try to find, if you can, the excellent Rita Reys version. (In fact the whol e of the album it comes from is a model of good programming. Reys and her Dutch accompanists play splendidly, and there is the bonus of truly magnificent drumming by Kenny Clarke. If you can't get i t locally, it would justi fy a trip to Ams terdam to buy it ). I can't think of a better way to learn this song.

LI ST EN NO W. Cherokee . Rita Reys (1). The suspended feeling at the end of the first A is indicated by the words 'Cherokee sweetheart', and the solid feeling at the end of the other two A's is built up to by the 'Chero' syllables and delivered by the 'kee' syllable of 'Cher okee'. The 'poised' feeling at the end of the bridge is afte the word 'inside' has finished the real bridge lyric, the word 'my' carries the poised feeling prior to the last A starting with 'Sweet Indian baby'.

r


Jazz versions, more often than not, don't use the tune of Cherokee , possibly because it is so full of long notes that there doesn't feel to be much scope for a personal int erpretation. Sometimes they miss out a theme statement of any sort, as Charlie Parker did on Ko ko and Warming Up a Riff on No ve mb er 26 , 19 45 . (A ltho ug h in th e ab or te d firs t ta ke of Ko ko Dizzy Gillespie starts to play the tune). More often they make up another melod y, as Warne Marsh did with Ma rs hm al low , recorded for t he first ti me on June 28,1949. This practi ce of avoiding t he srcinal t une is examined in more depth later in this section, in the chapter called Ne w Bottle , Ol d Wi ne . At this stage my

recommended instrumental version is Clifford Brown.

LI ST EN NO W. Cherokee . Clifford Brown ( 1). After a deliberately cod 'war dance' introduction, the tune comes in strongly with Brown and Harold Land playi ng it together i n unison. The bridge melody i s played by Land, whil e Brown muses in the background behind him. Note that as with Berigan's I Ca n' t Ge t St ar te d , the resolved feeling at the end of the second and last A's is dealt with by finishing the second one low, and the last one high. Or at least i t would be high, exc ept that where you expe ct the equivalent of the syllable 'kee' you get a 'thump' from piano, bass and drums, and in the gap where you would draw breath in order to start another chorus, Brown plays an unaccompanied 'break' to launch his solo. During the solos, by Brown (two choruses), and Land, Powell, and Roach (one chorus each), try to keep the melody in mind . Even in Max Roa ch's drum solo you should do this. Apart from it be in g, as we ha ve sa id , mu ch ea si er th an co un ti ng , it le ts yo u he ar wh at Ro ac h is th in ki ng , an d if you get lost it is just the same as getting los t listening to a melody instrume nt. You find your pl ac e ag ain be ca us e yo u ca n re co gn ise a ne w se ct io n st ar ting , or a re fe re nc e to so me pa rt of th e tune you can pick up on. On the last chorus, the fi rst tune i s played by Land w ith Brown improvising behind him, and the second A the other way about, the bridge is played by Roach as a solo, and Brown and Land come back together again for the last A, again depriving us of the 'kee' syllable, replacing it this time with an ironic cliché ending.

Other Songs With Bridges The most common 'bridge' songs, other than AABA, ar

e ABA. Here are just two examples.

I' ll Re me mber Apri l . All it s sections are the same lengt h, namely 16 measures. We look at this song in more detail later as we start to consider harmony, as well as in Part VII A LEGO Bricks Appr oa ch to So me Core Re pe rt oi re . We can note now t hough that both A sections end in the same way, and that the bridge is another one that ends up a long way from the beginning of the A. No t po is ed at al l. A qu ick sc ra bb le in its la st me as ur e. LI ST EN NO W. I'll Re me mb er Apri l. Sara Vaughan (1).

Invi tation . The simplest way to see this song is as an ABA , where each par t is in two clear halves. As with I' ll Re me mb er Apri l the sections a re all equal at sixteen measure s. But we can hear the second half of the first A echo the first half, and until the last four measures we think that the last A i s like that too. The 'echo' idea occurs i n the bridge as well. As a whole the bridge is clearly divided into chunks of four measures, and the second and third chunks echo the first one. Then that sequence is abruptl y junked and the bridge ends up nicely poised to repeat the A. LI ST EN NO W. Invi tation . Sara Vaughan (2).

Songs of Two Halves Songs of this form a re usually in the f orm ABAC. Half way through the song, the srcinal melody starts again, and may indeed stay exactly the same for some time, even beyond the end of the repeated A section . Like the AABA form, t his has its conventions ab out what goes on in the


sections. In particular , the end of the B secti on is nearly always a 's low burn' to launch the reprise of the A, and the C section is frequently slightl y declamatory, prior to wrapping things up. It is less common

than the AABA form, although it predates it.

The song we will look at to introduce the form is Le tter .

I'm Gonn a Si t Righ t Do wn an d Wr ite My se lf a

LI ST EN NO W. I'm Go nna Si t Righ t Do wn an d Wr ite My se lf a Le tter . Rita Reys (1). The sections start with the following words: First A: 'I'm gonna sit right down....' B: 'I gonna wri te words oh so....' Second A: 'I'm gonna smile and say..' C: 'I'm gonna sit right down..'. This song is highly

typical of the form.

The 'slow burn' at the end of the B section is like the 'working up to being poised' feeling we noted at the end of normal bridges in AABA songs. You should take time out to feel the force of it . Here it is the phras e 'a lot of kisses.. .I'll be glad I got em'. When that phras e is through, you know you expect the A section to ret urn. Just as, at the end of the s ong, (the end of the C section), you know the phrase 'make believe it came from you' wraps the action up.

Blues The blues is an idio m as well as a form. Even more than with other jazz contexts, you ca nnot pl ay th e bl ue s co nv in cing ly un le ss yo u ar e im me rs ed in th e id io m, no ma tter ho w we ll yo u kn ow the form. Possibly the two hardest things to do in jazz are to play ba llad s we ll .

the blues convincingly, and to play

There are very many variations on blues form, but the essential one is of 2 lines, a rhymed couplet. Actually, as Leonard Bernstein noticed, they are a heroic couplet, in Shakespearean- style iambic pe nt am et er s! In hi s 19 55 TV pr og ra mm e What is Jazz , he performed a hilarious Ma cb eth Bl ue s . I will not be afraid of death and bane (I said) I will not be afraid of death and bane Till Birnan forest come to Dunsinane. As you see, a blues chorus is built from repeating the first line before singing the second one. Three sections in all. In the earliest forms the re peat of the first line used the same melody as the initial statement (oft en with 'I said' just before it), but the background is in a different place. Most often each of these three sections in a blues chorus takes four measures, making a twelve measure chorus - the 'twelve-bar blues' - although this is not invariable. Let's star t with the E mpress of the Blues, Bessi e Smith. On Re ck le ss Bl ue s , you can hear the repeated melody of the first line repeated over a different background, to make the second section. Notice too, that in most choruses , Bessie only sings over the first half of each sect ion, leaving Louis Armstr ong to play an 'answer' in the second half. the same background, it comes down to earth after what went on

Also, the second half always has in the first half.


LI ST EN NO W. Re ck le ss Blue s. Bessie Smith (1). To compare and contrast, I've chosen Bl ue s Wa lk , because the 'shouting' melody uses the same notes for the first and second sections, just like a traditional vocal blues would.

LI ST EN NO W. Blue s Wa lk . Clifford Brown (1).

Big Building Blocks For Songs We now know that songs ha ve their own shape s. And we know that the sections of s ongs have their own 'background feel ', 'home and dry', 'slow burn' etc. And we have seen that the bridge of What's New 'borrows' the background feel of its front. The more you listen to them, the more it becomes clear that there is a whole lot of borrowing, (or at least shar ing), going on. Some or all of t he component parts of more songs than you mi ght guess are shared with ot her songs. And that even when they are not act ually shared in full , the component shapes of ten have remar kably standard internal dynami cs. We have already s een some of this when we looked at how the sections of AABA songs typically end. Where a whole section is shared, you can think of

it as a

big building block .

What follows is jus t a very quick survey of some of t he most common of them. If you haven't noticed these similarities before, now is your chance to benefit from reorganising your existing knowledge. Either way, this should s tart you of f looking for similari ties. Take your ti me while you assemble the relevant records to lis ten to these songs and realise the connections . Any time you take here will be well invested. All the given examples of songs are there j You should add your own

ust to get you started. Their aim is not complete discoveries to them in each category.

ness.

Rhythm Changes One of the most borrowed songs is

I Got Rhyt hm , in its entirety, or just the front or just the

br id ge . Th e tu ne ma y be di ff er en t bu t th e ba ck gr ou nd is I Go t Rh ythm . Jazz musicians commonly call this background 'rhythm changes' or just 'rhythm', and speak of a 'rhythm changes br id ge ' or a 'r hy th m ch an ge s fr on t'. Mu sici an s wh o wr ite an al tern ativ e me lo dy , in stea d of th e trite Gershwin srcinal , do not write a set of explicit harmonies such as you find with other songs, they indicat e the key, and say it is rhythm changes. So Oleo for example could have its entire chord sequence described as 'Bb Rhythm'.

The Rhythm Changes Front The immediately obvious thing about the front of I Got Rhyt hm is that it is built on the kind of 'dah dah dah dah' vamp till ready a pit orchestra would use before the comedian comes on with a first joke. This is called a Turnaround . A turnar ound is a music al devi ce to mark ti me. Just like a piroue tte, it doesn't go anywhere. Valaida Snow's recording of I Go t Rhyt hm starts with exactly that. If you use this ver sion, or any typic al one from the 1930's, do not be confused by the 'tag' a t the end of the fi nal A. The words r epeat 'who coul d ask for anything more'. Jazz pl ay er s qu ite qu ic kl y stop pe d us in g th e ta g, as it in te rf er ed wi th th e flow .


The Rhythm Changes Bridge Especially exemplified in 1930's versions, such as the recommended Valaida Snow one, the br id ge of rh yt hm ch an ge s star ts wi th a fa irly ab ru pt (a nd in stan tly re co gn isab le ) ch an ge of ba ck gr ou nd , bu t th en he ad s in ex or ab ly , th ro ug h th e fo ur ph ra se s in th e wo rd s fo r th at lo gi ca l ju mp in g of f po in t we ha ve co me to ex pe ct , ju st be fo re th e la st A.

LI ST EN NO W. I Go t Rhyt hm . Valaida Snow (1).

Other Songs Using Some Or All Of Rhythm Changes If you check back to Good Bait , you will hear that it uses a 'rhythm changes front' for its front. And in fact, because it is a replica bridge song, it uses a rhythm changes front for its bridge too! Johnny Hodges's Squaty Roo uses an alternative melody for the front, and, like Scrapple from the Appl e below, no melody at al l for the bridge. (Presumably Hodges w as too lazy to writ e one). But you can hear it i s still rhyth m changes all the way thr ough. Note that on the recomme nded version, the A section is played twi ce as a sort of introduction. The real structur e of succeeding choruses only begins after that, with the entry of Hodges. LISTEN NOW.

Squaty Roo.

Charlie Parker's

An thropo logy has a complete alternati ve melody, bridge as

Duke E llington (1). well as front.

LI ST EN NO W. Anthropo logy . Elvin Jones (1). Charlie Parker's Scrapple from the Apple , another song without a melody for the bridge, doesn't start out sounding l ike rhythm changes, but t he similarit ies soon become apparent. Apart from the first half of the front, it's rhythm changes all right!

LI ST EN NO W. Scrapple from the Apple.

Charlie Parker (1).

The bridge of rhythm changes, partly because it is such a perfect bridge for improvisers, is frequently borrowed for use i n entirely different s ongs. Here are just a couple of examples

.

Robb ins Ne st has a front that is about as different from rhythm changes as it could be, but the br id ge is a st ra ig ht lift fr om th em . LI ST EN NO W. Robb ins Ne st . Buck Clayton (1).

I Can' t Be liev e That You' re In Love Wi th Me has a front that we examine shortly (see

Pe nn ie s

Endi ng s below), but a bridge that we know pretty well now. LI ST EN NO W. I Can' t Be liev e That You' re In Love Wi th Me . Valaida Snow (1). Be tw ee n the De vil an d the De ep Bl ue Se a uses a rhythm changes front, but with an entirely different bridge . But, different t hough the bridge may be, you can still recognise it as consist ing of turnarounds, except for the end, when it gets poised to repeat the front. LI ST EN NO W. Be twee n th e De vi l an d the De ep Bl ue Se a. Dicky Wells (1).

Other Turnaround Fronts The simplest for m of turnaround front us es the plain old 'dah dah dah dah' t urnaround. It does it three ti mes, then stops. Each turna round takes two measures , and s o does the stop. The stop, be in g th e en d of th e A se ct io n of an AA BA so ng , ob ey s th e co nv en ti on s of A se ct io n en di ng s. Here are two of the most obvious examples.


Bl ue Mo on is some kind of ultimate turnaround front. The first A is actually four of them, all the same, each a Plain Old Turnaround . That is beca use we expect a 'turning around' at the end of an y first A. The other two A's bring the pirouett ing to a halt after only three turna rounds. LI ST EN NO W. Blue Mo on . Clifford Brown (1).

These Foolish Things front.

has two of the clearest turnarounds you could wish for

LI ST EN NO W. These Foolish Things.

in the first half of its

Lee Konitz (1).

Hank Mobley's Old Word New Imports , the track in which it has already been noted, bassist Butch Warren gets lost, uses the same structure as Good Bait . That is, it takes the rhythm changes front, and uses it for the bridge as well. But the ever-resourcef ul Mobley wrote a different melody for the bridge. So this is a repli ca bridge song if you look just at the background feel, but not if you go by the tune.

LI ST EN NO W. Old Word New Imports.

Hank Mobley (1).

Pennies Endings An enormous number of ABAC songs have the same C section as Pe nn ie s fr om He av en , hence its be in g ca lled th e 'p en ni es en di ng '. Th er e are se ve ra l di st in ct stag es . In Pe nn ie s from He av en , there are 8 stages t o the Pennies Ending, mar ked as follows. Note that I give you the feel of the landscape at each point, with the points being indicated by the lyrics. ( So when you )

'up' and fa r away f rom home: Turning to face back home: (

hear it thunder )

Back home: ( Don' t run un de r a ) Drawing back (to get a better run at it): ( Driving hard towards home: (

tree…there'll be )

Pe nn ie s from He av en for )

Slowing down as home is in sight: ( Home at last, so we can stop: (

You and ) me )

Well-earned rest: (no lyrics)

The recommended version is Eddie Jefferson's glorious parody Be nn y' s from He av en , where at the start he sings the hilar ious new words. However in the last chorus he revert s to the conventional lyrics, and those are the ones in the diagram above.

LI ST EN NO W. Be nn y' s fr om He av en. Eddie Jefferson (1). We will now check out just a

few of the many other songs with this same ending.

I Ca n' t Give You An ythi ng But Love is for all practical purposes the same song, all the way through, not just in the ending, as Pe nn ie s fr om He av en . Apart from the melody of course. LI ST EN NO W. I Ca n' t Gi ve You Anyt hi ng But Love . Lucky Thompson (1).

Al l of Me just deploys t he pennies ending, ot herwise it is recommended version has a

lovely vocal by Billie Holiday.

a different song a ltogether.

The


LI ST EN NO W. All of Me . Lester Young ( 1).

I Th ough t Abou t You is a beautiful ballad, a long way from the rumbustious yet it too uses the same ending.

Pe nnie s fr om He av en ,

LI ST EN NO W. I Thou gh t Abou t You. Archie Shepp (1).

The More I See You LI ST EN NO W. The More I See You.

Hank Mobley (2).

On a Slow Boat to China LI ST EN NO W. On a Slow Boat to China.

Sonny Rollins (1).

Collect examples of thi s ending to add to this list. For example, in compact (four meas ure) form the pennies ending ends the second strain in At the Ja zz Band Ball . And, surpr isingly, it is the ba ck gr ou nd fo r th e la st tw o se ct io ns of th e bl ue s.

Payoff As well as the complete songs we already know, at this point we can add I Can't Believe that You're in Love With Me to our collect ion. We now have the whole of it, since it is an AABA song, where the front is a pennies ending (even though it is not used as an 'ending') and the br id ge , as we al re ad y kn ow , is rh yt hm ch an ge s.

Donna Lee Openings Picking one song from a list of ones with shared characteristics is sometimes (often, even) arbitrary. Probably more people play Do nn a Le e these days than play the other songs given here, so let's call the opening a Donna Lee . This opening has three st ages. It star ts solid f or, moves awa y, and then c omes home. all eight measures of the front.

This takes

LI ST EN NO W. Donn a Le e. Richie Cole (1).

Ex ac tly Like You gives us some lyrics t version by Eddie Jefferson, it covers the

o locate ourselves w ith. If you get the recommended voc part from 'Why should I...' to 'Exactly Like You'.

al

LI ST EN NO W. Ex ac tly Like You. Eddie Jefferson (2). Indi an a , the song whose background Miles Davis borrowed to support his new melody Do nn a Le e , shows the same flow of eve nts. If you get the recommended vocal version, it cove rs the part from 'Back Home Again...' to 'that I can see...'. LI ST EN NO W. Indi an a . Dicky Wells (1). The final suggestion is

Take the 'A' Train

LI ST EN NO W. Take the 'A' Train.

.

Duke El lington (2).

Payoff A payoff to think about is that in AABA songs (like Ex ac tly Li ke You and Take the 'A' Train you know the front, you know three quarters of the song.

), if


In fact, what a lot of songs you

know already, just by recognising like for like!

Starlight This big building block is named for

the last section of

Stella by Starlight

. But it also turns up in

ahome, surprising of places a wide variety of songs. Its underlying feel i s ofdirection, a long journey from number some distant place. , in You immediately get the feeli ng of an established and are not surprised when you end up at your own front door. To begin with, check out a voc I agree...' to 'on earth to me'.

al version.

LI ST EN NO W. Stella by Starlight.

The starligh t is where the words go fr

Vic Damone (1).

No w try an in stru me nt al ve rs io n of Stella by Starlight pe rfor ma nc e.

LI ST EN NO W. Stella by Starlight.

, to see what a starlight sounds like in a jazz

Booker Ervin (1).

Our first encounter with a starlight out of its home context is Dizzy Gillespie's song You . This is an AABA song, and its front is a starli ght!

LI ST EN NO W. Woody 'n' You.

om 'my heart and

Woody 'n'

Max Roach (1)

Al l Go d' s Chil lun Go t Rhyt hm , by Bronislau Kaper, featured in The Marx Brothers' A Da y at the Race s , uses a starlight in compact four measure form to start its B section ('ain't got money, ain't got shoes'). The whole song is fre quently borrowed for i ts background, as we shal l shortly see. Here, the recommended version mixes one of them, Little Wi llie Le ap s , in with it. LI ST EN NO W. All Go d' s Chillun Go t Rhyt hm . Sheila Jordan ( 1). Duke Jordan's song Jo rdu constructs i ts bridge fr om two compact st arlights. The recommended version is Duke Jordan's or iginal trio vers ion. It's worth looking out f or Barney Wilen's album Barn ey ! (also re-issued as Barn ey at the Club Sa int-Ge rm ai n ) if you can find it, because that has a storming version, wi th Jordan and Kenny Dorham in the band. (The recommended version of Lady bi rd , used later, is from the same session.)

LI ST EN NO W. Jord u. Various Artists (1). A starlight is also the background for the introduction to Monk's versions go so slowly, you can really feel the 'pull' from one moment

Roun d Mi dn ight . Because most to the next.

LI ST EN NO W. Roun d Mi dn ight . Miles Davis (2). There are many other places you will find starlights, even 'hiding', like in measures two through five of the so-called Swedish Blues form, found in 'special' blues like Charlie Parker's Blue s for Al ice . (See the discussion of thi s sequence in Part VII, the Core Reper toire section, for mor e on this).

On-Off-On Plus Dropback This is a common opening section for songs. The background isn't always the same (e. g. the 'off' can be off to different pla ces) but the pattern is t he same. It starts 'sol id' (the 'on'), jumps t o somewhere else a little odd (the 'off'), comes back to the solid (the next 'on'), then 'leans back' (the 'dropback'). Here we will illust rate two kinds of 'off'.

Nearby Offs


Although more people play Groovin' High Whispering , let's play a version of the srcinal.

LI ST EN NO W. Whispering.

than the srcinal song on which it was based,

Miles Davis (1).

He ar tach es isn't as tri te a song as you may think. However, the only vocal version I could get was Patsy Cline, whi ch does perhaps make it seem superfici al. The first 'Heartaches' is the 'on'. The second is the 'of f'. The next 'on' is 'my lo ving you...', and t he third 'hearta ches' is the dropback. Whatever else this versi on does, it shows you how on-off-on plus dropback works! LI ST EN NO W. He ar ta ches . Patsy Cline (1). Get your head back together with this fine version of

He ar tach es by Dexter Gordon.

LI ST EN NO W. He ar ta ches . Dexter Gordon (1). Another song which uses on-off-on to You .

a nearby off, although it doesn't drop

back, is

I Re me mb er

Remote Offs The 'nearby offs' above ma y not have struck you as part icularly 'near by'. They will do however, when you compare them with 'remote' ones like you get in Out of Nowhere . With t his song , ther e is a real feeling of havi ng gone somewhere unrelated. The word 'nowhere' really fee ls nowhere . So try to get a vocal version, like the one recommended.

LI ST EN NO W. Out of Nowhere.

Bing Crosby (1).

There are hundreds of jazz versions of Out of Nowhere , both with its own melody as well as with other ones, like Fats Navarro's Nost al gi a and Lennie Tristano's 317 East 32nd Street . For now I suggest one with th e srcinal tune. It is from Session at Riverside and features Coleman Hawkins and Lou McGarity.

LI ST EN NO W. Out of Nowhere.

Various Artists (2).

In fact, as you may well have spotted, we already met an 'on' followed by a 'nowhere' 'off' in the front of Ro bbin s Ne st , still reco gnisable, even though the ' off' didn't go back 'on' again. And Be gi nn ing To Se e The Ligh t , although it postpones it until measure three of its front strain, has an on-off-on plus dropback, with a 'nowhere' off: the song sounds different because that po stpo ne me nt sh if ts th e em ph as is wi th in th e ei gh t me as ur e se ct io n.

I' m

New Bottle, Old Wine At frequent places so far, I have indicated the existence of alternative melodies to existing ba ck gr ou nd s. So me ba ck gr ou nd s ar e so at trac tive th at ma ny ne w tu ne s ha ve be en wr itte n. On occasions they are there as throwaway tunes on record dates, designed to avoid royalties. However, quite often, the new melody becomes itself a kind of standard, frequently preferred to the 'srcinal': this certainly happened to Groovin High/Whispering . In al l cases, however, your pl ay in g an d list en in g ex pe rien ce wi ll be im pr ov ed by a kn ow le dg e of th e or ig in al . Because these are (usually) complete songs, they are a good starting point in learning to listen for connections between reper toire items. Some you may recognise yourself, othe rs may be pointed out to you.


Quite often, a line r note will attempt t o identify the 'srci nal' song. But this raise s a very important point. ALWAYS check this yourself, because sleeve-note writers are fallible, and some appear to have cloth ears! Mark Gardner, for instance, in his notes to Warne Marsh's

Back Ho me album says:

'Rhythmically Speaking is derived from I Got Rhythm , Big Leaps for Lester is self-explanatory and I leave you to sort out Two Not One - the solution key lies in the numbers!' There are some bones to pick here! The fact is that Rhyt hm ic al ly Sp ea king is based on All God's Chillun Got Rhythm . You could not have a tune less like I Go t Rh yt hm than that. Big Le aps for Le ster , however is based on I Go t Rhyt hm . The tit le is a play on Le st er Le aps In , which is itself based on I Go t Rhyt hm . And as for the 'solution key' to Two Not One . I simply can't relat e what Gardner says to I Ca n' t Be liev e That You're in Love With Me , which is what that song actually is. Leonard Feather's Insi de Ja zz has quite a good list of alternative melodies, or clone tunes , to get you started (on page 56). (However he gives up on rhythm changes a nd just says there ar e ‘five zillion numbers’). And there are also odd ones nobody notices much, which I still like. Paul Desmond's paraphrase of He ar ta ches , called Curacao Dolorosa , for inst ance. Or Bud Powell's Pari si an Thor ou gh fare , based on Be twee n the De vi l an d th e De ep Blue Se a . In looking at the 'new bottle, old wine' phenomenon here, many of the songs are already extremely well known. So I am going to t ake a particular approach to them, one which I hope will assist you in establishing a solid foundation in

your listening and playing.

I am going to take a couple of the 'war-horses' of the repertoire, the ones which most often have pa ra ph ra se d me lo di es . By ta ki ng th e 'o ri gi na l', un de rlyi ng so ng , I ca n th en sh ow so me di ff er en t approaches to making the paraphrase. These include some or all of the following. A straightfor ward bebop version. A Tristano style versi on, characteris ed by complicated tunes over simple versions of the background. A Coltrane style version, charact erised by fairly simple tunes, over radically more complex versions of the background.

War-horse number one: How High the Moon We'll start with a track well worth hunting down, since it combines elements of all approaches, and will serve to launch this serie s of tracks, instead of using a vocal versi on. It is Satellite/How Hi gh Th e Mo on from Denny Zeitlin's Time Remembers One Time Once , on ECM. Satellite is Coltrane's version of Ho w Hi gh the Mo on . As the tr ack de-evolves b ack towards t he srcinal, Charlie Haden's bass solo explicitly quotes Charlie Parker's version, LI ST EN NO W. Satellite. Denny Zei tlin (1). As just noted, the regular bebop the recommended version.

version is

Ornithology .

Ornithology , and I commend Vi

Redd's alto playing on

LI ST EN NO W. Ornithology . Various Artists (3). The Tristano version is Le nnie Bi rd , a tune which in its opening phrases seems to view the 'pat your foot' pulse through a prism. Don't get lost: many brave players have.

LI ST EN NO W. Le nn ie Bi rd. Lennie Tristano (1).

War-horse number two: What is This Thing Called Love First check out a

vocal version.

LI ST EN NO W. What is This Thing Called

Love. Frank Sinatra (1).


The usual bebop alternative tune for What is This Thing Called Love is Tadd Dameron's Ho us e , in which, interestingly, Dameron has produced an ABCA melody over an AABA ba ck gr ou nd .

Hot

LI ST EN NO W. Hot Ho us e. Dizzy Gillespie (1). The Tristano style one is Lee Konitz's Sub-Conscious Lee , first recorded in 1949. The recommended version is from an extr aordinary set of duets Konit z did with Martial Solal . All the songs were ordinary, even run of the mill, and yet they proved strong enough for these two pl ay er s to ge t in to so me fa ir ly ab st ra ct re al ms . Ko ni tz ha s a ni ce sp ok en in trod uc tion , re co un ting the genesis of the song.

LI ST EN NO W. Sub-Conscious Lee. The Coltrane style one is

Lee Konitz (2).

Fi fth Ho us e , which first appeared on

Coltrane Jazz .

LI ST EN NO W. Fifth Ho us e. John Coltrane (2).

The New Bottle Prevails To conclude this section, two songs where the the srcinal is hardly played any more.

bebop versions are now the

conventional ones, and

First is Groovin' High , based on Whispering (which we heard earlier). The recommended ver sion is from The Bop Session , featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Max Roach.

LI ST EN NO W. Groovin' High.

Various Artists (4).

Last is Do nn a Le e , based on Indi an a (which we heard earlier). conclusion, I commend Lennie Tristano playing it.

To bring things to a tidy

LI ST EN NO W. Donn a Le e. Lennie Tristano (1).

What Is This Thing Called Harmony? How are you doing so far? On my version of the Compan ion Recordings, we have just completed listening to over four and one half hours -in excess of fifty tracks - of (mostly) wonderful music. You may well have begun to listen in a more attentive, directed way, and to recognise parallels and borrowings betw een songs. This is alre ady a lot to know, but I am sure that yo u already know even more than you think! For instance, even if you couldn't define the word, I am sure that you already harmony.

understand

Perhaps the quickest way to realise objectively that you already have a feel for harmony is to notice when you listen to music, that you can tell that the ending of a song feels like the ending. Just think of the endi ng of any song you know, and think of the way you can 'see i t coming'. That in fact is you hearing and understanding the harmony . And in many ways that is all there is to it. If you can recognise that one song is a paraphrase of another, or say what song the soloist is pl ay in g, ev en wh en yo u ha ve no t ca ug ht th e th em e st at em en t, th en , whether you realise it or


no t , you are well advanced can 'read' its meaning.

in understandi ng harmony.

Even so, perhaps you would still find it hard to say

The harmony is ma king sense to you:

you

just what 'harmony' is.

So we had better deal with this word before we go much further, partly because it is used so much, but mainly because its dictionary meaning has almost nothing to do with the way the term is used in music. Put very brief ly, 'harmony' ref ers to the sound of what we have being calling the 'background' , or accompaniment, of the musi c which uses it. Like a carpet, which has a pil e and a pattern to it, it can be gorgeous or austere, but it establishes the context - the 'sound world' in which music is made. And it isn't just s tatic, it ca n generate events, so we know somet hing is happening .

A first look at last things Let's look a lit tle further i nto the matter. We'll start by l ooking at the ending of a song we haven't so far used, Cole Porter's At Lo ng Last Love . It's quite important t o get a vocal version here. The recommended o ne is Frank Sinatra.

LI ST EN NO W. At Long Last Love . Frank Sinatra (2). When the lyrics say, as the final phrase, 'Is it at long last love', the words moving towards the end, and the word 'love' is where the movement stops.

'long' and 'last' are This is part icularly

clear on the re commended Sinatra ve rsion. He sings through the whole song twi ce, but it i s clearest at the end of the first time through, where he sings the srcinal tune unadorned. Listening to it, we can feel that the word 'long' is pointing strongly to the word 'last'. With the word 'last', we feel that we are nearly 'there' . So that when we get to the word 'love' we know that we have got there , that is, to the place we have been pointing at, and that it is now time to stop. The distinct feelings we got from these three words are about them. Not all movement has the same feel. take that last phrase of the song apart.

important, and we need to pause to think The natur e of t he movement changes . Let's

!

The 'further away' feeling, on the word 'Long' . This has a strong sense of driving motion towards the end of the phrase, and wi th the destination wel l in sight. This strength of moti on can be thought of as having a high degree of tension.

!

The 'nearly there' feeling on the word slowing down the car just before stopping.

'Last' . Here t he moti on is much redu ced, l ike Psychologicall y it is interesting that the feel ing of

greatest close ness to the destinati on also has the least feel reduces to almost zero because the end is in sight. !

ing of momentum.

The tension

The 'there' feeling on the word 'Love' . Here you know you have stopped, a nd there is no more tension. What tension the re was, has bee n resolved . In context, this 'non-mov ement' is a kind of movement, in the sense of a continuous journey in time (the song) including some pe ri od s sp en t st at io na ry , like at traf fic ligh ts be fo re mo vi ng on or ma ki ng a tu rn .

If you check back to the last half of the ground being covered.

Pennies Ending

above, you will see exactly the same

These Things Called Changes This moving, or changing bac kground, is the essence of wha ja zz mu si ci an 's term fo r ha rm on y is 'the changes' .

t harmony is about.

That is why the


In At Long Last Love , and almost every other song, the ending has several different notes as well as the harmonic movement we have j ust seen. (One excepti on is Speak Low , where in the pu bl ishe d sh ee t mu si c, th e sa me no te repe at s th ro ug ho ut th e fi na l ph ra se ). We can check out the idea of the background changing by referring to songs where the tune note is the same, but the ha rmony changes. A very simple example is f rom the first song we l ooked at, What's New . The 'new' at the beginni ng sounds resolved, or what we have been calling 'soli d'. No motoveame nt , buaway' t th e ne rd 'H(That ow ' isfeeling on th in e same note,gives but the harmony has changed from 'there' 'further feext wo ling. it s turn, way to a 'nearly there' on the a word 'world', and a 'there' on the word 'you'). LISTEN NOW. What's Ne w. Frank Sinatra (3).

My Fu nn y Vale nt ine repeats the same phrase at the beginning of the song, and appears to be about to do it a third time. This covers the words from 'my funny valenti ne' to 'you make me' . The tune is obviously going nowhere at all ju st yet. But the harmony is moving inexorably downwards ! Try a jazz version which really makes the Baker.

point, the one by the

Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet

LI ST EN NO W. My Fu nn y Vale nt ine. Gerry Mulligan (1).

A world without changes changes are. Interestingl y, though, the fact is that most of the So now you have an idea of what world's music gets by wi thout harmony and doesn't miss i t. This is odd to us because i n the West it is so ubiqu itous we tend to t ake it for gr anted. So maybe a good thing t o think about as a contrast is an improvising situation where harmony does not arise.

When you listen to North Indian Classical Music for instance, you will notice that as well as the pr om in en t 's ol oi st ' an d pr ob ab ly a ta bl a pl ay er , th er e is a co nt in uo us so un d, or dr on e, in th e ba ck gr ou nd . Us ua lly, if th e so lo ist is a wi nd pl ay er , th en th e dr on e is pl ay ed on wi nd instruments, if a string player then on strings, or if a singer, then the drone might even be played on a harmonium! And throughout the performance, the constant frame of reference to which everything relates is the drone, just like everything a kite does is related to the fact that the string on the ground is firmly held by the person flying it. The North Indian Classical Music improvi ser is restricted to the notes in the srcinal raga (a sort of scale), though they can be 'bent', sometimes by as mu ch as ha lf an oc ta ve , so th ey se t th e mo od . Th e stable , consistent , sound of the drone frees the improviser to invent complex melodies and cross-rhythms within the mood, but always with something solid and immovable to lean against.

Change is the constant On the other hand, as we have seen, in musics which use what is called 'harmony', the background is not sta ble all t he time. It changes. We get changes of both movement and mood . Sometimes the changes are smooth, someti mes abrupt. A song consists of both a melody, and, undernea th, it a set of changes . The improviser uses both together as a frame of reference for improvising, pr od uc in g a ve ry di ff er en t so rt of mu si ca l situ at io n fr om th e No rth In di an on e. In the jazz performance of a song what happens (which is to say what everybody - including the drummer - plays) takes place not just against the remembered background of the melody , but also against the set of changes . It is like moving across a landscape. Players can go along the ground following every contour exactly, and/or they can swoop through the air above it as high as their taste takes them - but the set of changes is still present, even when it is not a determining factor. In earlier jazz, the pace at which you moved was determined by an unbroken beat, a constant tempo to which you coulddecade' ta p your feet. in But sinceThe the great made Mile s Davis and others in the 'heroic (discussed Song asbreakthroughs Raga in Pa rt IIbyPe rs pe ctiv es an d


Pole mi cs ), the constant tempo has not been de rigeur . Musicians have been free t o go in a nd out of tempo, to employ different rhythms, and to suspend progress through the song if they want to. From the listeners point of view, we keep track of events (that is we avoid getting lost), by keeping the srcinal melody and some of the words in mind as we listen to a performance, and we sense the changes without having to 'know' what they are.

In The Mood When we looked above at the ending of a typical song, we thought about the different kinds of tension in the harmony, which produced feelings of movement (or lack of it) with different degrees of urgency. Let us look now at t he other variable in the harmonic backgr ound, its emotional feel, or mood . Songs share with non-harm look at the three basic ones.

onic musics the abili ty to suggest many differe

To begin with, to point up a contrast between two of them, take the song especially in the Frank Sinatra version.

nt moods.

Here we will

I' ll Re me mber Apri l ,

LI ST EN NO W. I'll Re me mb er Apri l. Frank Sinatra (4). The first phrase of the song 'This lovely day...' is sung against a

plain background, and you can

hearbackground the 'colour' offirs the background because the se words comedoin too, after whic a rest ofh one beat, so you the t. The words of the cond phrase lets you hear tha hear t the ba ck gr ou nd sw itch es , qu ie tly bu t de cisi ve ly , to a sad elegiac sound in that one beat, and sustains it under the words 'We'll sigh goodbye...'.

I' ll Re me mber Apri l is a good song to start learning this effect on, because there is no flow or movement under these two opening phrases, just a contrast of mood between the 'plain' and the 'sad'.

Straight and Sad Moods Despite its contrast with the sad mood we have just listened to, the 'plain' one isn't exactly 'happy' sounding, so much as just ordinary, regular or straight . From n ow on, this book wil l say 'straight' f or that mood. The second mood however undoubtedly sounds sa d , and that is the name we will stick to from now on. Another good song to practise recognising contrast between straight and sad with is Body an d Soul . In the bridge of the song the words 'I can't believe it' are sung to a str aight sounding tune. One phrase later the words 'A re you pretending' switc h to a sad mood. The background has gone sad, clouded over without moving, and even the tune is nearly the same (only the note for 'pre tending' is altered to get the sad effe ct). If you use the Mel Tormé version, the words to check for are 'What is there for me' and 'Unless there's magic', and the changed, sad, note is 'there's'.

LI ST EN NO W. Body an d Soul . Mel Tormé (1). When the musical mood is sad, everyone is sad together, e.g. the emphasised words in the following two examples are where the sad really hits: 'You'd be so nice to come home to', or 'the autumn leaves of red and gold' . Perhaps not surpr isingly, t horoughgoing sadness is quite rare i n songs of the popular kind used by jazz musicians. Most songs that start out in a sad mood, such as Blue Skies or Lullab y of Bird land , end up strai ght. Perhaps the f act that it is one of the exceptions to that is what makes Autumn Le av es so poignant.

Blue Moods


The other mood to be aware of is blue . This is not at all the same thing as 'sad', and should never be confused with it. A sad mood is produced by the background being sad, and the melody notes fitting in with it. A blue mood is suggested by the playing of blue notes , notes which ar e sad, but against a background which is no t sad. So typicall y, a blue mood or sound expresses t he alienation often implied by t he idea of having t he blues by having a melody n ote - a blue note which itself is undeniably sad played over a background which is resolutely straight . You what thisissounds like'blue in note', Love r Ma n . a Near begi nning where the word 'Neve r' is sung,can the hear first syllable a clear generating blue the mood.

LI ST EN NO W. Love r Ma n. Sarah Vaughan (3). The melodies of class ic blues from arti sts like Bessie S mith make great use of blue not es. Try revisiting Re ck le ss Blue s , with the unbending harmonium and its hymn-like chords showing how much contrast ther e is in Bessie's a nd Louis's use of 'bent' or ' blue' notes. Indeed, there a re no notes at all which are (in WEAM terms) in tune!

LI ST EN NO W. Re ck le ss Blue s. Bessie Smith (1). James Lincoln Collier (1978) makes the point well by considering King Oliver's Di pp er mo ut h Blue s solo, one of the definitive jazz statements, where the real interest comes from the blue notes Oliver uses. Most of them are inflected version s of the note the solo starts on, all of which are different, but in conventional musical notation would all have to be written down the same. But as Collier points out, the notes do not stay still: 'nor are their pitches fixed; they shift as they

ar e pl ay ed' (emphasis added). LI ST EN NO W. Dipp er mout h Bl ue s. King Oliver (1). Getting a blue effect does not depend absolutely either on straight backgrounds, or notes. What produces it is a mel ody note which is not derive d from the background: . is in the degree of contrast that this creates

on particular the blueness

Cadences - The Basic LEGO Brick A musical story The generic word for the kind of movement from tension to rest which we met at the end of Long Last Love is cadence .

At

A cadence is a true musical LEGO brick . It is a musical story with a beginning, a middle, and an end . It packs a lot of informati on, with its three di fferent feeli ngs of tension and its regular time frame, but it isn't itself complicated, and understanding of it is reinforced because of its turning up so often in songs There are several sort s of cadence, and an enormous number of variatio ns on each. So one good reason for getting the basic idea sorted out now is that with the fundamental form firmly in mind you will be able to see the variations as just that, variations . Nothing new, just bell s and whist les on the underlying idea. Getting comfortabl e with that idea will pre vent you from being distract ed by th e be lls an d wh is tles in to th in ki ng yo u ar e lo ok in g at so me th in g di ffer en t.


Time And Changes We saw that At Long Last Love illustrates three kinds of movement, 'further away', 'nearly there' and 'there'. A journey from tensi on to rest . As the te nsion comes of f you begin to expect , and then you ge t a resolution of the tension. Almost every song you will ever come across finishes with this voyage through three musical feelings. So it i s worth ta king the ti me to look closely at what is ha ppening. For instanc e, the pr op or ti on of ti me gi ve n to ea ch fe el in g wi th in th e ph ra se is no t eq ua l. Bu t th e re su ltin g pa tter n of proportions, the time frame , is also almost universal. Start by revisiting

At Long Last Love , and pat your feet as

the final words of the chorus are sung.

LI ST EN NO W. At Long Last Love . Frank Sinatra (2). When you pat your foot to count the beats of the title phrase at the end of the chorus, you will see that each word (including the gap before the next word) takes four beats, and that after 'Love' starts there are ei ght beats, many of which are sil ent so far as Sinatra is concer ned. This is used on the Swingin' Affair record for the band to wind up for Sinatra to go through the song again, this time with a more vigorous r hythm. Patting your foot als o tells you that this song is measur ed in four beat units, so we say four beats to a measure. So we have three sec tions in our cadenc e. Two of one measure e ach, and one of two meas In this song it is the three words which mark the sections. The first two sections taken together are called the cadence. Their function is t o switch on the tension, br in k of re so lu tion .

ures.

approach chords , and they take up half the announce the directi on, and lead you to the

The third section is the resolution , where the t ension switches off. The dramatic cl imax of the cadence is the very first beat where you are there , 'home and dry', because the tension evaporates. Let's draw a time fr ame and put the feelings int o it. I've added the words in bracke ts in the appropriate boxes. The vertical lin es separate the measures.

Further away

nearly there

There

(Long)

(Last)

(Love)

(empty space)

All that 'empty' space at the end of the cadence explains why many bebop performances, when they get to the first beat of the resolution, just stop. If it is the end of the first chorus, there is usually an unaccompanied 'break' by the first soloist, to fill up the rest of the cadence: if it is the last chorus, tha t is usually the end of t he piece. We already met that on the f irst chorus of the Max Roach/Clifford Brown version of Cherokee . Try another example, for instance the Richie Cole/Phil Woods album Side by Side (it should have been called Ba ck to Fr on t because that is how they printed the cover photograph) includes a fine example in Donn a Le e .

LI ST EN NO W. Do nna Le e. Richie Cole (1). As you can see, the resolution lasts so long relatively that if a dramatic device like the bebop one ju st de sc ribe d is no t us ed , it mi gh t ju st se em a bi t bo ring . (A co mm on mi stak e by am at eu r sing er s of this sort of song is not to give the resolution its two measures before going on to the next bit of the song). What you will find in general is two sorts of use made of the quiet space after the first beat of the resolution. One you have alre ady met is at the end of the first A of an AABA song. You feel the music turning around to play the same s ection again. The other is tha t you may feel the l ast


measure given over to setting up some form of We will meet more examples of both later.

expectation , to launch a different bit of the song.

Straight cadences The last phrase from

At Long La st Love is straight in mood all the way through, and has

changes . So, to sum up, we can s ay that what we have j ust been looking at LEGO brick, a straight cadence .

no mood

is our most basic

Sad cadences All of the same components of structure, the three different kinds of tension, and the time allotted to each, are present if t he cadence is played in a sad mood. It is just that t he mood is different. At each stage there is a perceptibly sa d version of the same feeling, whether it is 'further away', 'nearly there', or 'there'. Sad cadences are what make some songs so poig nant. Here are two versions of Be au tiful Love , a song whose first four measures sum up wh at sad cadences are a bout. If you can find a vocal version, like that by Helen Merrill, the cadence is covered by the words up as far as 'all a mystery'.

LI ST EN NO W. Be auti ful Love . Helen Merrill (1). The instrumental version I suggest here is by Jackie McLean, from Kenny Dorham's album Ma tado r .

LI ST EN NO W. Be auti ful Love . Kenny Dorham (1).

A whole song built from cadences It is poss ible build entire songs u sing nothing but can point up the contrasts in sound between sad and

cadences! So let's do that now. straight cadences.

In so doing we

Let's look at a couple of versions of Au tumn Le av es . This song consis ts of just two cadences, one straight, and one sad. The contrast therefore st ands out. And it is pos sible to dr aw a picture of the song! To demonstrate this song in the classroom, using real LEGO bricks, (sunshine yellow for a straight cadence, and blue for a sad one), I make a litt le wall. Failing that I draw the pict ure be lo w on a bl ac kb oa rd , an d co lo ur th e se ct io ns in . A wh ol e so ng as if by Pi et Mo nd ri an ! An d it emphasises the unrelieved sadness at the end. Follow the picture line by line, from left t o right, as you listen to Rita Reys. straight

sad

straight

sad

sad

straight

sad

sad

LI ST EN NO W. Autumn Leav es . Rita Reys (1). And now try Chet Baker wit h Paul Desmond. (If you use this vers ion don't be fooled by the lit tle vamp between choruses. It is a fine ver sion, and Baker's s olo is in Ken Slone' s 28 Modern Jazz Trumpet Solos ).


LI ST EN NO W. Autumn Le av es . Chet Baker (1).

Basic Bells and Whistles for Ordinary Cadences Compact cadences All the examples we have specifically listened to take a full measure for each of the approach chords, and two measures for t he resolution. But the proport ions appear i n other lengths, sometimes twice as long, somet imes half or even a quarter as long. The most common are half as long, and these are compact cadences . Two beats each for the approach chords, and four beat s for the resolution. Before moving on we will just take a look at one, which turns up in an old friend.

What's New , which we know quite well by now, has several compac t cadences. Let's just look at one, from right at the beginning . In the first phrase, the wor d 'New', including any gap after it, lasts for one measure, four be ats. Then comes the phras e 'How is the worl d treating you? '. This ph ra se is a co mp ac t ca de nc e. Th e 'f ur th er aw ay ' ap pr oa ch ch or d is th e tw o be ats wi th 'H ow is th e'. The 'nearly there' a pproach chord is the two beat s with 'world tr eating'. And the resoluti on is 'you', which lasts for four beat s, including the gap afte r it. Exactly the same proport ions as we saw above. LI ST EN NO W. What's New.

Lee Konitz (3).

Offset Sequences Most of the songs we have looked at so far, have been substanti ally four square. That is, where for instance, the sections of the song were eight measures long, the cadences sat four square within four measur e sections, l ike measures 1 thr ough 4, or measures 5 thr ough 8. Each four measures started out with the approach chords to the cadence. This is just a note to point out that not every song is like that. How Hi gh the Mo on ( Ornithology/Le nnie Bird ) starts wi th two resolved measur es. The cadence that fol lows has its approach chords in the last two measures of the first four measures, and its resolution in the first two measures of the second four mea sure, so the first cadence in it is measures 3 t hrough 6.. The dominant feel of this song is of the first three of the four four-measure chunks in each half starting resol ved. If you need reminding, this song was War Horse Number One in Ne w Bo ttle , Old Wine . As with so much in artistic matters, conventi ons exist to set up expectations in the audience, and artists are able to exploit that expectation by denying it, and hoping, in the surprised reaction, to generate a ‘YES! ’ response. We will see examples of t his within cadences l ater, but it e xists within the structure s of songs too. The whole idea of four measure, four square sections, impl ies a sort of heavier bar line after every four bars, with each section complete before the next one starts. ‘Offset sequences’ have the identical conventional internal four section pattern to their cadences, bu t ge t a di ff er en t dy na mi c by pl ac in g th em ac ro ss th is he av y ba r line , so th at th eir firs t tw o sections occur before it, and the las t two after it. We ‘cross the bar’ in full flight towar ds our goal, not after having peaceful ly reached it. If this applies to the end of four measure sec tions, it applies even more so to the end of eight measure ones, where the bar line is even heavier. Equally, after every two measures there is an implicitly heavier bar line too, though not so heavy as the one after four.


Using LEGO Bricks To Map A Song We can now discuss ways of re membering the whole of a song using LEGO Bri cks. We already have two LEG O bricks in our kit. One the Cadence we have just discussed at length. The other, the Turnaround , we looked briefly at earlier, in the section called Bi g Buil di ng Bl oc ks for So ng s . The third brick we will need is where nothing at all happens in the background, it just stays there for a while befor e moving on. We will call t hat brick a Hover . But what about ‘movi ng on’ from brick to br ick? Not every song breaks down i nto permutations of cadences as easily as Autumn Le av es has just done. We need another devi ce in our tool ki t to describe how one LEGO brick leads on to another, the point where you can feel the ground shift under you as you listen. That device is the

Jo in .

Joins Real LEGO bricks have to be joine d by being snapped together. Just placing them next to each other does not connec t them in any way. But music exist s in a time frame , and the beginning of the next measure is 'super glued' to the end of the current one because of the shared bar-line, like the next second of book, your lif is joined music, mere juxta is a joinibrick, ng together. In this the ie dea of t heto this jo inone. is very So proinminent. If you are i position nside a LEGO then the issue of joins does not arise . If you move to another brick, you will feel the join!

Magic Moments and Super Glue It is the moments when the background shifts under you that are important. We already met one such moment in that point at the beginning of What's New , when the word 'how' comes in on the same note a s the word 'new'. We can feel that somethi ng has happened. In the c ase of What's Ne w , we are abruptly shifted to what we can now recognise as the beginning of a cadence. Think of the opening of There Will Never Be Another You , where the song starts solid and confident, 'there will be many other nights...' and then the background shifts with 'like this....'. These moments are the magic ones. The way you know what the tune is when you listen to a solo without having heard the theme statement is by recognisi ng these moments when the background changes. You don't have to know any technical terms to know what song you are listening to. And because you can tell the difference between, say, a rhythm changes bridge and other bridges, you can already disti nguish between the kinds of shift the background makes . The moment of shift defi nes what the song is. Truly a defining moment . The importance of these moments cannot be over stated. They tell you, by the way they feel, what the song is. And they fee l just t he same whatever key the song is being performed in. Relative to where you are, something happens. If we are building our songs from LEGO bricks, such as we did with Autumn Le av es above, then these moments are what we should call the jo in between one brick and another.


If you can hear the joins in songs like everything you need to.

There Will Never Be Another You , you already know All I have to do i s to prove it to you!

Making the Map Finding your a so is right....’. not unlike foll set of dire ctions. there, take theway firstthrough left and the ng third That owing sort of a thing.

‘Go straight down

In a LEGO make, we don’t say ‘make a left’ or anything like that, we say the name of the join we make. But what do we c all the joi ns? There are i n fact 12 of t hem (trust me , I’m a doctor ), so we need 12 names. In my experience it doesn’t help musi cians, let alone non-musicia ns to use convention musical termi nology to do it, things like ‘up a fourth’. Nicknames based on what they sound like, or on the name of the song in which they are most prominent, are the easiest to remember, and so the most useful. But before we get to work making our maps, bear with me while I take a little time out to discuss this whole potentially risky business of adding more terminology to the ways we can discuss music.

A Note On Naming The LEGO Bricks Na mi ng th e pi ec es re altheLEjazz GO LEG br ic ks a mathere tter iofsn’t co lo ur ,agreed si ze , an ar ac te rivocabul stic s, anary d is fairly unequivoca l. of With O is bricks any pred ch -existing with which to describe things adequat ely. As will be clear by now, I don’t think that the fact of a term being used within WEAM makes it ‘right’, unless it is useful. So you will find some terms use d which come from that musical world. And while they may not mean exactly what they do to a WEAM analyst, they won’ t do violence to the general sense. EM Forster once said everything was like something, and so when he had to learn about some apparently new thing he would say ‘what i s this l ike?’. So where t here isn’t an obvious ‘mechanical’ explanati on (and sometimes where there is) the names of the harmonic LEGO bricks are derived from one of the songs in which they can be clearly seen. There are two things we have to have names for. First, the indi vidual parts of songs, from terms like ‘bridge’ right down to a specif ic LEGO brick like a ‘sad cadence’. Second, the joins between the LEGO bricks, so that we can build the map of the song. This ‘nickname’ approa

ch has two benefits.

First, i t really does mean that even a tot

al non-

musician can, iftechnic they want, a detailed appreciation ofi what is going on,a without having to know anything al. have Second, it means that there s much less for musi cian to remember a playing situation.

in

To make an analogy. It is certainly tr ue from an industrial chemist ’s point of view that you get a pa rtic ul ar pa in t co lo ur fr om sp ec if ic pr op or tion s of sp ec ific pi gm en ts . An d it is rele va nt if yo u are a chemist. If you are an artist, you will ver y likely not know (and probably not care) about what the chemist knows. You will call a colour b y a single phrase, of one or two wor ds (‘Black’, ‘Chrome Yellow’ ) which may seem ir relevant or even bi zarre to the c hemist. So in harmony, which, as we have seen, is primarily about things moving in particular directions in particular ways, we do better to find ways of describing these things, from the point of view of the artist not the chemist. If a single word, or a short phrase summons up a complete description of, say half a song, then your creative flow is not interrupted by the equivalent of having to remember the 19 times table. To do it any other than the most efficient way is to introduce irrelevant jargon (however ‘accurate’ and sanctified by WEAM teaching practice) which gets in the way of the of expressing yourself adequately!

real business


It is not si mp ly a question of reducing the real-time computationa l load on the improviser’s brain, important though t hat is. The fact that th e LEGO bricks approach s tarts from the song not the individual chord or scale means that your basic orientation as you play your solos will be pr op er ly cr ea ti ve , ri gh t from th e ou tset , ho we ve r in ex pe rien ce d as a pl ay er yo u ar e. When you learn to drive a car, the very last thing you get around to considering is the most interesti ng part: where to dr ive to in it. You spend a long time le arning how to make thi ngs happen. jazz education has t how ended to startthe i n sameyou way, even wto go orse, equivalent Much of being expected to know to service carthe before areorallowed on with the holiday in it! The LEGO bricks approach to impr ovising means that right fr om the beginning you are thinking about where you are, and where you are going, and there is no 19 times table. Since it is now nearly twenty years since the first edition of Harmony with LEGO Bricks came out, there is by now quite a community of people who remember the harmonies of songs using the LEGO bricks approach. The names used in the book now are the ones which have gai ned general currency -and they aren’ t always the ones I myself a t first used. So the ‘vocabulary’ has be en subject to the natural evolution of any living language, and developments continue.

Mapping Blue Bossa If I may interject a personal note here, I recently spent some hours with Barry Harris, going through much of the t ext of the previous edition of thi s book. (He likes it , I am relieve d to report!) But when he saw Blue Boss a amongst the Core Repertoire in Part VII, he jabbed a finger accusingly at it and said ‘what’s that doing in here?’ I said that to begin with, it was short, and therefore less confusing for people getting used to mapping songs with LEGO bricks, but more importantly, it used the same cadence twice, but be ca us e yo u ca me at ea ch in st an ce of th e ca de nc e from a di ff er en t di re ct io n, it ef fe ctiv el y ga ve it a different musical significance each time. ‘Right’, he said, ‘you teach movement , like I do, not harmony’ nod from Coltrane after finishing a solo! Let us see what this means when we

look at

. It was like getti ng an approving

Bl ue Bo ss a .

Coming Home Inside a cadence, t here is no question of a join at all. The journey from furthe r aw ay t o there is a coming home. But althou gh cadences may be sat isfying, they are also predic table. You know what to expect. If a cadence is repeated, as in the last section of Autumn Le av es , you know you haven’t left home. If you sing along, you will find that each ends at the same place. If you kept doing that it would become

boring.

Home Sweet Home? But that doesn’t mean you can’t buil d an interesting song from nothi ng but cadences. The reason is that, as we saw in Autumn Le av es , the new cadence isn’t always a repeat, it often goes somewhere else . When you are i nside a cadence, you know where you are goi ng. When you start a new one which goes somewhere else, it is like the driver of a car taking a sudden turning you didn’t expect. Once the turn has been made, you know where you are going aga in - at least until the next turn. Just noticing whether hangs around home, or heads off to somewhere else puts you in charge, right in among the the song music.


As we saw, What’s New starts at home, the ‘What’s’ that precedes the first beat is nearly there, and the ‘New’ is home. But ‘How is the world t reating you’ makes a jou rney to somewhere else . The place you are at when the cadence is a st range place, a long way from home. Listen again, and feel just how far fr om home you are when ‘you’ is sung. Except that, parad oxically, the somewhere else is home now, at least for the moment. Any place a cadence hangs its hat is home.

Anywhere the song then goes to is somewhere else.

In its turn, that somewhere else is quite likely to become the new home. In Blue Boss a , we have a song built almost entirely from cadences, so we can explore the idea of going somewhere else. If you listen to a good version of this, such as Art Pepper’s, from Am ong Fr ie nd s , you can see how the story of the chorus unfolds. Be prepared to play the track several times, if that is what it takes.

LI ST EN NO W . Blue Boss a. Art Pepper (1).

Bl ue Boss a has the following structure:

Two sad static measures at home, followed by two sad static measures somewhere else

A sad cade nce to so mewhere else

A straight cadenc e to some where else

A sad cade nce to so mewhere else

The above Bl ue Bo ss a diagram is a set of instructi ons to be followed bl indly. You will get to where you want to be, but you won’t understand w here you are. Halfway through t he first li ne you make a turn. Then, at the beginning of each line, you make a turn as well . If you sing or play along with the song, paying attention to the bass line, you will find that not only does Blue Boss a start and finish in the same place - the same home - but that the cadence in the second line comes home too. The only non homes where anything settles are at t he end of the first and third lines . Plus, you should hear that apart fr om the static measures on the first l ine, the rest of the song is just cadences. So a better way to map

Blue Boss a is like this:

Two sad static measures at home, followed by two sad static measures somewhere else


A sad cade nce ba ck home again

A straig ht cadenc e to some where really fore ign

A sad cade nce ba ck home again

The static measures just hang about, so we can recognise them as hovers. But what joins do we need? We need one to move from the first hover to the second. We need one to move from the second hover to

the second line.

We need one to move from the second line to the third line. We need one to move from the third line to the fourth line. All these joins a re different. Each defines a diff erent distance bet ween the LEGO bricks. And, in LEGO brick terms, each join has its own unique name. All of these names are defi ned, explained and illustrated in a moment, but if you will trust me, I will represent Blue Boss a , with the joins named.

Two measure sad hover,

Highjump to another 2 measure sad hover.

Sad Backslider

Straight Cherokee

Sad Downwinder

So as you think your way through a chorus of Blue Boss a , whether as a listener or a player, you know whether you are ‘hovering’ or on your way through a cadence, and you know where and what the joins are.

The Best of Both Worlds This third diagram combines the best

of both worlds.

It has the simplicity and reliability of the first diagram: a foolproof set of directions which won’t get lost. You always theend. song. AtIfthe youend areofinthethe middle of meet a LEGO brick, like you a cadence, you jareust follow somewhere it t hrough tointhe bric k, you a named jo in , an d th en yo u ar e in to an ot he r LE GO br ic k.


But it combines that with what the second diagram offers, the potential to understand the context, to know something of the destinat ion, and the loca l stopping place s en route. This increas ed depth of knowledge will automatically feed into your listening and playing. This LEGO bricks approach works with songs of all structures, even where repeats of bricks don’t crop up. With growing experience, you will know tha t making the second join after the first one in Blue Boss a is going to bring you back where you started. Just as making the join at the be nnsame. in g of th e last line , ha vi ng pr ev io us ly ma de th e jo in at th e be gi nn in g of th e th ird line , wi ll do gi the But the important poi nt is that you don’t have t o know that to begin with. In a car, to travel four sides of a square, and come back to where you started, you might be told ‘first left, first left , first left, and fir st left again’ . The same join four ti mes, and you wouldn’t get lost. After a while, as you got to know the territory, you would become increasingly aware of where you were in relation to your starting point. But you didn’t have to know that at first. Right from the outset, you had a foolproof way of finding the route, but rich with the potential to understand the territory.

For Musicians Only Can you see what this buys you? Knowing what a cadence looks l ike, you can see at a gl ance that Blue Bossa has 3 of them, 75% of t he song. So you don’t have to remember t hose changes, you ju st no te th e jo in s to ge t to th em , a Ba ck sl id er , a Ch er ok ee , an d a Do wn wi nd er . Th e ho ve rs in th e first line can be remembered in So committing the song to

a flash too, including the Highjump

memory is literally the work of

between them.

seconds.

But there is more. By rememberi ng the song as a ma p , not a set of specified changes in a pa rtic ul ar ke y, yo u ca n pl ay it in an y ke y as we ll , wi th ou t ha vi ng to do an yt hi ng me ch an ic al like transposing it mentally! Because there are only twelve notes, there are only twelve possible joins. Bl ue Boss a has four o f them. So this one simple song shows you a whol e third of the total t erritory! You don’t have to know anything about which note t he join goes to. You just have to noti ce that, say, Ho w Hi gh the Moon doesn’t sound the same as There Will Never be Another You .

Never Mind The LEGO Brick, Feel The Join There are exactly 12 pos sible joins, and e ach has its own partic ular sound. What we are going to do now is explore the territory they cover by looking at some easy to follow ‘maps’ of songs and pa rts of so ng s. We st ar t by co ns id er in g re pe at s of th e sa me ca de nc e (w ith so me be lls an d whistles), in Coming Home . Then in Br idge St ar ts , we consider the possibilities in the most obvious place to hear a join in a song, the movement from the repeat of the front strain into the be gi nn in g of th e br id ge , th ro ug h th e us e of ma ny ex am pl es . Fi na ll y, be ca us e, as we sa id , th er e are only 12 of them, we systematically list All The Jo ins Ther e Ar e . Each join has its own soun d, and, inevitabl y, some songs use the same joi ns as others. In what follows, I have classified al l the possible joins between LEGO bricks, given each join a name, (where we have not already named it) and listed some songs which use each join. You should enjoy li stening to t he records which i llustrat e this. When you make your own Companion Recordings, you might want to record yourself saying the name of the join before the examples are heard. Many of the names derive from song ti tles, and all are reasonably entertaining, however serious in intent


Almost any jazz book will teach you about cadences, whether it calls them II-V7-I’s or whatever. Important as that is, i t is only the beginning! By taking the notion of jo in s on board, you really pu t po we r in to th e sy st em . (T ha t is wh at Ba rry Ha rris me an t by ‘m ov em en t’.) An d if yo u ar e a musician, joins will enable you to take in the whole of a song at a glance, and to play it in any key at all without having to think about it.

Home from home There are times when one cadence comes after another, but we know that we didn’t go anywhere different. A stroll around the bl ock, from home, to home. We have already met examples of this, and called the two kinds the ‘ homer’ and the ‘retake’ . The difference betwe en the two being simply in what happens in the last measur e of the first c adence. A homer is where the both of the last measures of the first cadence are normal: at rest . A retake is where the final measure ‘draws br ea th ’ as it we re , or dr op s ba ck a bi t to ge t a ru n at th e re pe at . Then there is the ‘ pullback’ . This goes one step f urther than a retake. The firs t cadence doe s not resolve to a ‘there’ f eeling at all. Instead, it does what you nor mally get at the end of the first A of an AABA song. It suspends the resolut ion while it turns around to have another go. Once again a lot of mileage is t o be got from si mple material. None of these devic es sound identical, and indeed their imp act differs considerabl y. And yet, at the ‘technical’ or conceptual level, those differences are absolutely trivial. Once again, using this book gives you simple means of leveraging enormous emotional potential in your solos.

I Ge t a Ki ck ou t of You is a good song to look a t. Its front consi sts of four ver sions of the same cadence. The s econd i s a retake of the first . The third and four th together make a pullback . It then starts what appe ars to be another retake. But it turns out to be the sa me as the second half of the front of I’ ll Re me mb er Apri l (from ‘alone... ’ to ‘and be glad’). A pullback , is where the cadence starts normally, but instead of resolving, pulls back to get a longer run in to the resolution. The words may hel p, so first try a vocal ver sion. The first cadence starts retake starts ‘mere alcohol’. The pullback is ‘so tell me...’.

‘I get no kic k’. The

LI ST EN NO W . I Ge t a Ki ck ou t of Yo u. Frank Sinatra (5). No w an in stru me nt al ve rs io n. Th is on e, by th e wa y, like ma ny so ng s in th e Ma x Ro ac h/ Cl if fo rd Brown repertoir e ‘plays’ wit h the song rhythmicall y during the head. Once the solos sta rt, however, you get the structure in very straight ahead fashion.

LI ST EN NO W . I Ge t a Ki ck ou t of Yo u. Clifford Brown (1).

Another Whole Song Built from Cadences Baub le s Bang les an d Be ad s is all cadences. And except for using one part icular join between repeats, it is all variations on repeated ones. Let’s take it apart.

The first two cadences are a cadence and a retake. You know it is going to be a retake because the words ‘jing jinga linga’ give you that ‘drawing back’ feeling.

After the firs t two cadenc es, there is an ab rupt change to somewhere else, before we get another pair of cadences. This abrupt change is so distinctive (and characteristic of this song)


that it is called a bauble . The two cadences we get to are a pullback. The only difference from the retake is that instead of a resolved ‘there’ feeling when we get to ‘my heart will sing’, we can feel the resolution is suspended.

The same bauble join takes us wetoknow, the bridge the song, to ‘I’lla glitter and g leam’. Bridges, usu of ally resolve ‘nearly there’ r elative to the ‘th ere’ of the end of the song. If the second cadence of this bridge resolved though, it would be to the ‘th ere’. So it does what a pu llback does, it ‘resolves’ to a suspension of the there: ‘dream, so that’.

That kicks off the final section of the song, which itself is a sort Twice , it refuses to resolve. ‘Buy me a ring, of double pullback. ringa linga’ and ‘leads, wearing’. Only then do we get a straightforward cadence to finish the song.

Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ad s can feel very ‘swirly’ to play, because those retakes and variants make you dizzy. And the final A of the song, comi ng after a bridge which fini last A starts with, and including extra cadence at the end, means that there are same thing bef ore the chorus ends. Phew!

shed with what the four goes at the

The recommended vocal version is by Sara Vaughan.

LI ST EN NO W . Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ads.

Sara Vaughan (2).

The instrumental ver sion recommended is by Bill Evans, pl aying solo piano. This is the third song in a medley recorded on January 10, 1963, unissued until the invaluable Riverside box was pu bl is he d.

LI ST EN NO W . Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ads. Bill Evans (1). This mad frustrating game about finally getting to somewhere you can stop is the ‘story’ of the song. If you enjoy Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ads at this stage, you are already responding to the game. By concentrating a bit mor e, and learning to foll ow the ‘narrative’ I have j ust given, not only do you get much of more authoritati ve versions it. out of it, but you are preparing to be able to play your own Please bear this song in mind when reading the 'two-cadence bridge' section titled bauble+bauble in the next section.

Bridge Starts Often, with AABA songs, the ‘big moment’ is at the poi nt the B section, the bri dge, starts. It’s the definitive poi nt where the journey to somew here else starts . So it’s a great way to st art to recognise that the song moves away from home. And also to see that not every ‘somewhere el se’ is the same. And also to see tha t some of these ‘s omewhere elses’ ar e the same. We’ll do it by looking at quite a lot of bridge starts, and naming the different ‘somewhere elses’ we find.

BootStraps at bridge starts We begin with the ‘BootSt rap’ feel. The feeling here is of t he song picking itself up by its own bo ot st ra ps , (o r pu tt in g a bo mb un de r itse lf), af te r th e qu iet at th e en d of th e se co nd A. Th e


propulsion you can get is enormous! All of the songs coming up star t their br idges with Give yourself the time to appreci ate the effect. cadences with the bootstrap feel.

The next 10 tracks f eature AABA songs wher e all of the bri dges start wit h a bootstrap. In addition, some of these songs have two- cadence bridges (see next section). This means simpl y that halfway through the bridge there is a join to another cadence, so that the whole bridge can be expressed as just two joins – one to get into the bridge, and one to join the second half of the br id ge . Plea re feimmediately r fo rw ar d to th e ne xt sect io n Two Bridges when listening. than repeat the se tracks in the next section, theyCadence are delineated accordingly here.

Rather

The next three songs, Br oa dw ay , Daah ou d , and Crazy Rhythm , (covering four tracks), all have identical bridges. (See below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+New Horizon ).

For Musicians especially: just a thought for you. Simply by being able to play cadences in any key and by knowing what the joins are you can play all these bridges in any key too, without a second thought . The complete set of possible joins is covered shortly Al in l th e Jo in s There Are , and in Part IX of the book, The Harmony With LEGO Bricks Playalong .

Br oa dw ay ’s bridge starts with the words ‘Out of tow is a cadence too.

n...’. Note that the second half of the bridge

LI ST EN NO W . Broa dw ay . Rita Reys (2) Gerry Mulligan’s version shows Zoot Sims exploiting the moment.

LI ST EN NO W . Broa dw ay . Gerry Mulligan (2).

Da ah oud by Clifford Brown. LI ST EN NO W . Daah ou d. Clifford Brown (2).

Crazy Rhythm by Benny Ca rter. The amazingly Garrison, from John Coltrane’s quartet. LI ST EN NO W . Crazy Rhythm.

swinging bass

playing here

is by Ji mmy

Benny Carter (1).

The next two songs, You Can Depend on Me and Ho ne ys uc kl e Rose bo th ha ve id en tica l br id ge s. (See below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+Wood y ).

You Can Depend on Me . The second half of this br idge is a cade nce too, but not the same as Br oa dw ay ’s . You can feel that the end of it i s not resolved but appli es some tension so as to be ready to repeat the front. LI ST EN NO W . You Can Depend on Me

. Dexter Gordon (2).

Ho ne ys uc kl e Rose . LI ST EN NO W . Hone ys uc kl e Rose . Benny Carter (1).

On the Sunny Side of the Street . This is nearly the s ame bridge as the last t wo songs: the join in the middle is there OK, but there is a variation at the point of the second resolution. LI ST EN NO W . On the Sunny Side of the

Street . Lester Young ( 2).

Our Delight . I have chosen t he alternati ve master t o recommend here bec ause it has always seemed to me that in Fats Navarro’s solo, his playing of the first half of the bridge is just about the perfect way to play a bootstrap bridge start. LI ST EN NO W . Our Delight . Fats Navarro (1).


Confirmation . The second half of this bridge i s obviously a cadenc e, but not to a nywhere we have been so far, hence the quick ‘ launch’ in it s last measur e. (See below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+High jump ). LI ST EN NO W . Confirmation.

Dexter Gordon (2).

Af tern oo n in Paris . The second half of t he bridge seems to be a repeat of the f irst half, except that the resoluti on goes kind of ‘shifty’ feel ing, as the song gets ready to repeat t he front. (See be lo w un de r 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+Homer ). LI ST EN NO W . Afte rnoo n in Pa ris. Sonny Stitt (1). Incidentally, if you get the CD reissue of this ( Sonny Stitt/Bud Powell/J.J. Johnson on OJCCD009-2) you will find the take used here - the one we've always known - described as 'take 1', a 'bonus track'. Don’t be fool ed. The 'take 2' is much less assured, and considerably wor se in recording quality.

Two Cadence Bridges We have just noticed that several of the songs which started their bridges with bootstraps had cadences in the other hal f of their bridges t oo. Some of them were the same as ea ch other, some different. The join to the second cadence is just as i mportant as the one to the first one. Because you now know what a cadence is, you should be able to recognise one when you hear it. And that means you should be able to recognise when, for example, a bridge consists of just two cadences. The feeling you get as eac h cadence start s is recogni sable. It is r ecognisable becaus e you can tell that sometimes it is the same as in another song, sometimes it is different. These recognisable ‘j oins’ between cadences are the most impor tant ‘events’ in the songs . Yet the idea of joins, one of the easiest things for non-musicians as well as musicians to grasp, is almost entirely neglected in jazz education. So here are a few songs with two cadence bridges, presented in an order which helps you to learn. We begin with examples where the first half of the bridge is a bootstrap, only the cadence in the second half of the bridge is different. Rather than repeat tracks which have just been referred to as having bootstraps at bridge starts, we refer back to those examples. Take your time, and listen often.

Bootstrap + Woody The move to the second cadence is called a woody because it is so beautifully clear in Woody ‘n’ You . That song isn’t on the list just yet , because, although its bri dge is basically a bootstrap + woody, the two cadences are not quit e usual. (We get around to their part icular variat ion soon). The two songs noted so far are You Can Depend on Me and Ho ne ys uc kl e Rose . (And On the Sunny Side of the Street is nearly the same). Bootstrap + Highjump The move to the second cadence is called a highjump , because although it is a bit abrupt, it does seem within r each, as though you c ould reach it w ith a high jump. We have met highjumps be fo re , al th ou gh we di dn ’t co mm en t at th e time . Fo r in stan ce , th e star t of th e br id ge in I’ll Re me mber Apri l , where the words say ‘I’ll be content’. Confirmation starts the second half of the br id ge wi th a hi gh ju mp .


Bootstrap + New Horizon The move to the second cadence is called a new horizon because it starts from the same place that was just resolved to, but thi s time with a ‘further away’ feel . Like walking up a mountain to where it meets the sky, onl y to find it isn’t the top: t here’s a new horizon even further up . The start of the bridge to What is This Thing Called Love starts with a new hor izon. Here the songs we noted were Br oa dw ay , Da ah ou d , and Crazy Rhythm .

Bootstrap + Homer The move to the second cadence is called a homer, because, since it seems to be a repeat of one ju st pl ay ed , it is co mi ng ho me . Afte rnoo n in Pari s was the song noted above. But by no means all two

cadence bridges start with a bootstrap.

Woody + New Horizon

I Ca n’ t Ge t St ar te d uses these two movement s, one to get into each ha lf of its bridge. its cadences are ‘unconventional’ in the same way as Woody ‘n’ You .

Note that

LI ST EN NO W . I Can't Get Started . Art Farmer (2).

Homer + Retake We already met a homer in Afte rnoo n in Pari s . A retake is just a homer that you are ready for. With a homer, the previous resolution just sits there, so you don’t know what to expect until the new cadence starts. With a retake, the last measure of the previous resolut ion is a ‘drop back’, to launch the next cadence. So you are expect ing a retake of the same cadenc e. The bridge of Alic e in Wonderland does this. But we have met a retake before, in I’ll Re me mber Apri l . The second cadence of the bridge (starting with the words ‘your lips were warm’) is a retake.

LI ST EN NO W . Alic e in Wo nder land . Bill Evans (2).

Bauble + Bauble The characteristic feel of Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ad s ( or Gorbals Bangor and Leeds , as touring British players call it) is of a particular movement from one cadence to another which keeps on cropping up throughout the song. It could hardly be call ed anything other than a bauble .. The br id ge st ar ts wi th a ba ub le , an d th e se co nd ha lf is an ot he r ba ub le ! (P leas e re fe r ba ck to th e Sa ra h Vaughan and Bill Evans versions above in An ot he r Wh ol e So ng Built fr om Ca de nc es ).

New Horizon + New Horizon My Sh ining Ho ur does this. It isn ’t a strict AABA song, though. More an ABCA1. Nevertheless, the third eight, whether you think of it as the B or the C section certainly feels and functions like a bridge. The whole of the resolution of the second cadence is given over to launching the repr ise of the A. LISTEN NOW.

My Sh ining Ho ur . John Coltrane (2).

Fresh Air Bridge Starts No t al l br id ge s star t wi th ca de nc es . So me st art re so lv ed bu t in a co mp le te ly di ffer en t pl ac e to th e end of the fr ont. A change of ai r, you might s ay. Often the dis tance tra velled is t he same as Out of Nowhere travelled to get to the word ‘nowher e’. Here are some examples. The ‘Up’ ones feel as though they have moved up, and the ‘Down’ ones f

eel as though they have moved down.

Both


are remote from the end of the front , but neither are l ike the other. If you can’t hear whether they are ‘up’ or ‘down’ at first, don’ t worry. You can still use the names to distingui sh them.

Up Nowhere Bridges We met one of these earlier, in are ‘SWonderful ...

Be tw ee n the De vi l an d the De ep Blue Se a . Also using t his de vice

LI ST EN NO W . ‘SWonderful.

Lee Konitz (4).

... and Polk a Dots an d Mo on be am s .

LI ST EN NO W . Polk a Do ts an d Mo on be am s. John Coltrane (1).

Down Nowhere Bridges Two ballads which use these are

Da rn That Dr eam ...

LI ST EN NO W . Darn That Dr ea m. Dexter Gordon (2). ... and Easy Livi ng . The recommended ve rsion is by Wardell Gray.

LI ST EN NO W . Easy Li ving . Various Artists (5).

All The Joins There Are Above, when we took Blue Boss a apart, I said that there were only twelve joins (and that Boss a had four of them). Along the way, in looking at bridges and retakes, we met some Here we look at listen to.

all twelve, including all of the ones so far

Blue

more joins. encountered, with lots of examples to

Is this all there is? Yes!

So take your time and listen often.

The suggested tracks will t

each you

everything .

Repeats Of The Same Cadence Repeats of the same cadence ar e a special category, since they don’t go anywhere new. As we have seen, the difference between a homer and a retake is that the ‘silent’ last quarter of the first cadence is treated differently. In a homer the last section has no change from the ‘there’ third section. In a retake , that last section has a ‘dropback’ feel, a drawing back to get a bit of a run at the repeat.

Homers These turn up all over, like Al ice in Wo nd er land (first four measures of the bridge), and You can De pe nd on Me (second half of the front ). The recommended example is from All the Things You homer . Ar e , where the first four measures of the bridge are a LI ST EN NO W . All the Things You Ar e. Serge Chaloff (1)


Retakes These are common too, and we have heard a lot of them so far. Alic e in Wo nd er land (second four measures of the bridge); Baub le s Ba ng les an d Be ad s (second four measures); I’ ll Re me mb er Ap ril (second four me asures of the bridge). And literal ly hundreds more . As an example l et’s take a song not referred to so far, It ’s You or No-O ne . The second four meas ures are a ret ake of the fi rst cadence.

LI ST EN NO W . It’s You or No -O ne . Dexter Gordon (3).

New Horizons Who would have thought that, say, La ur a and How Hi gh The Mo on had so much in common! With Harmony with LEGO Bricks it becomes cl ear just how much. It also become s clear that ‘harmony’ can’t be the driving force for the improviser’s line, otherwise those two songs would sound like each other . Yet they both new horizon twice, and bauble to get back home . Carla Bley’s song Ne w Hy mn is secretly re-titled (by me) Ne w Ho rizo n Hy mn , because new horizon jo in s ar e th e ke y to th e wa y th e so ng wo rk s. You find examples in Ho t Ho us e (into the bridge); Cherokee (all three joins inside the bridge), Invi tation (first two joins in the bridge); Ornithology : (offset in first and second four measures); Afte rn oon in Pari s (measures two and four); I Can’ t Ge t St ar te d (into second half of the bridge); Br oa dw ay ( into second half of the bridge); Da ah ou d (into second half of the bridge); The Night

has 1000 Eyes (into the second four measures of the C section); Solar (measures seven and ten). In both Tune Up and La ur a , the new horizons come at the same pla ce. Both start wi th three straight cadences , thus with two joins. And in both songs, both joins are new horizons. LI ST EN NO W . Tune Up.

Miles Davis (1).

And La ur a ...

LI ST EN NO W . Laur a. Eric Dolphy (2).

Downwinders These have their approach chords start a notch up, and their resolution end up a notch down. They come in straight and sad moods. The launcher at the end of Solar , for example is a straight one. And the final ca dence in Blue Boss a is a sad one. The illustr ation here i s All the Things You Ar e , which downwinds ‘makes the lonely winter’ after a resolved start in the last four measures be fo re th e br id ge .

LI ST EN NO W . All the Things Yo u Ar e. Hampton Hawes (2).

Cherokees Although the name obviously comes from Cherokee , because of the prominence of the Cherokee jo in at th e st ar t of th e br id ge , th er e ar e pl en ty of ot he r so ng s wh ic h us e on e to o. Blue Bo ss a’ s third four measures are a Cherokee, and so is the launcher Bo dy & So ul uses to get into its bridge. But let’s stick to Cherokee as an illustration.

LI ST EN NO W . Cherokee.

Barry Harris (1)


Woodys We have encount ered many of these. The second half of the bridges Ho ne ys uc kl e Rose , and You Can Depend on Me , are all entered via woodys. uses one to get int o its bridge. Our example uses Woody ‘n’ You .

of

Woody ‘n’ You, I Ca n’ t Ge t St ar te d

LI ST EN NO W . Woody ‘n’ You . Miles Davis (1).

Highjumps A highjump was how we got into the bridge of I’ll Re me mber Ap ril . Among oth er ones in the repertoire are, going into the second half of the bridge of Confirmation , into the B section of It ’s You or No-One , into the second cadence of the A section of Be au tiful Love , and also from the first to the second half of the first measure of Central Park West . Our exampl e comes from The Night Ha s 10 00 Ey es . As you come out of the Latin ABAB sections, and go into the swing of the C section, you do it with a highjump.

LI ST EN NO W . The Night Has 1000 Eyes.

Stan Getz (2).

Baubles We have already noted the fact that if you have three cadences joined with new horizons, and want to get back to where you s tarted, you have to use a ba uble. So that accounts f or Af tern oo n in Paris , Laur a , How Hi gh The Mo on , and Tune Up . Plus of course Baub le s Bang le s an d Be ad s itself!. Having started with a cadence and a retake, it baubles to another cadence with a retake. The bridge is entered via a bauble , and is two cadences joined with a bauble Enough baubles to bu y Ma nh at tan? In me as ur e fo ur of What’s New (‘you haven’t changed a bit’) there is a bauble too. But our example i s Gone With the Wind . The A section starts with two compact cadence s, the second a retake of the first. Then there is a bauble and the song does a new compact cadence, and r etakes that one too. (That’s half t he song remembered already).

LI ST EN NO W . Gone With the Wind.

Stan Getz (3).

Sidewinders These aren’t named for

Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder , but because they actually seem to sidewind . There you are in the song, solid and r esolved. Then suddenly t he harmony sl ips down a notch, and it’s away! Straight ones in clude the join into the sec ond half of the bridge of All the Things You Are (‘the dearest things I know’), the join into both the third and fourth cadences of the bridge to I’ll Re me mber Apri l , the join into the B section of You Stepped Out of a Dream , and the join into the second half of the third measure of Central Park West . Sad ones include t he join into the third measure of Weaver of Dreams , and the same place in There Will Never Be Another You . That last one is our illustration.

LI ST EN NO W . There Will Never Be Another You.

Stan Getz (4).

Half Nelsons These are named for the approach chords in

Ha lf Ne lson /Lad yb ir d , at the end of the A section,

used to launch the beginning of the B section. Actually onl y Lady bi rd does it in ‘pure’ form; Ha lf Ne ls on usually uses Stablemates approach chords, which we meet later in our complete


LEGO bricks kit . The basic form is the s ame join we noted right at the beginning, in What’s Ne w , where the lyric s say ‘How’. Our example is from Cole P orter’s I Love You , the song with the big jump down at the start from ‘I Love’ to ‘You’. As you go into the C section of this ABCD song, you get a half nelson join.

LI ST EN NO W . I Love You . Bill Evans (1).

Backsliders Although it doesn’t seem like it at first, backsliders travel the same distance as the amen cadences in gospel music and soul-inf lected jazz – (we meet them later in this book) . It is simply that the amen cadence does i t straight and dir ect. One moment it’s on ‘A- ’ the next it’s on ‘men’. A backslider is where we have got to a resolved place, and want to go to where an amen would take us, but take t he cadence route instead, so there’s some scener y along the way. The second four measures (the first cadence) of Blue Bo ss a is a sad backslider to get back to where the song starte d. The second half of t he front to Ho t Ho us e is a sa d backslider too. Our example is a straight one, in You Stepped Out of a Dream . The song starts wi th a hover for tw o measures, moves up a notch and hovers again, then does a full four measure straight backslider.

LI ST EN NO W . You Stepped Out of a Dream.

Dexter Gordon (4).

Stellas When I first wrote

Harmony with LEGO Bricks I couldn’t find any straight cadences where the jo in wa s a ‘n ow he re ’. Th e ne ar es t I go t wa s Stella By Starlight , (‘that ripples through a nook’). But when that resolves to ‘at eventide’ it turns out to have been what we will later call a Yardbird cadence, when we come to put our complete kit of LEGO br icks together. But it wa s the best I could do then, and so the join attracted the name Stella , (although maybe it should actually have been nowhere ). It is in any c ase the only join without a conventi onal playalong cadence track to itself in the Harmony with LEGO Bricks pl ay al on g. Th is is pa rtly be ca us e it is so rare, and partly because, effective though it is, if you join a straight cadence with a Stella, then jo in th at on e wi th an ot he r St ella , yo u ar e ba ck re pe at in g th e firs t ca de nc e. Sinc e th en Central Park We st has impinged itself, and so this fascinating short song by John Coltrane is our example. Most of its changes are compact.

Central Park West starts resolved, highjumps , stellas , sidewinds , stellas again, highjumps again, then sidewinds again! Its back where it start ed, but with the harmonic rhythm slowe d right down to on e chord per measure instead of the three which eve ry one has had until now. A be au tifu lly pe ac ef ul en d. LI ST EN NO W . Central Park West.

John Coltrane (2).

Bootstraps We met a lot of bootstraps when we looked at bridg e starts. They were certai nly a spectacular way of getting int o a bridge, but I d on’t intend to rep eat all that l ist now. You can hear bo ot stra ps in ot he r pl ac es to o. Th e fron t of Cherokee has an offset cadence starting after its first two measures, where the lyrics say ‘maiden’. That is a bootstrap. Solar also uses one. It star ts with two measures resolved, then bootstraps . (After this it new horizons twice in a row, which gets it rather a long way from home, a problem it solves by a downwinder launcher to get back to the top). In a Me ll ot on e/Ro se Room ’s first ei ght measures a re two cadences. The join betwe en them is a bootstrap . But the bootstrap brings to a close this list of joins, and the best example to do it with is still, it seems to me, an entry into a bridge. Charlie Parker’s Confirmation .

So the final illus tration is one of the best songs there i

s,


LI ST EN NO W . Confirmation.

Jackie McLean (2).

A Final Hover over Hovers So far we have only glance at hovers, the two short ones in the first line of Bl ue Boss a . But they have more uses than you might think, and occur more widely too, as well as generally lasting for longer than they do in Blue Boss a . Hovers don’t pirouette like turnarounds, but functionally they share the function of marking time be fo re go in g so me wh er e. As we wi ll se e in a mo me nt , so me time s, as at th e be gi nn in g of Invi tation , they sort of lie quiet. Sometimes, li ke in the first half of the bridge of Take the ‘A’ Train , they can really wind up the tension. So, by definition, a h over is where the harmonic move ment is suspended. It is n’t going anywhere, it st ays in the same pl ace, and you can feel that the background doe s not shift. In pr ac tica l te rm s, be ca us e tw o me as ur es on a gi ve n ch or d is a co mm on pl ac e ev en t, no th in g is usually (except for Blue Boss a )considered to be a hover unless it is more than two measures long. So wouldn’t consider the resolution of a cadence to be a hover! Hovers are actually fairly uncommon in songs, and so are easy to spot - and they can be very effective. In what is called ‘modal jazz’, the whole of the song is usually built from hovers containing no internal tension, and so having no need to go anywhere, with the interest coming, as in North Indian Classical Music, from the ingenuity of the improvised line against the static background, and from occasional shifts to a hover at a different pitch. A fine example of this is So What from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue . So What is an ordinary 32 measure AABA song, but built entirely from hovers. The front i s a hover i n a colour cal led ‘Dorian’ based on a parti cular ‘root’ note . The bridge is also col oured Dorian, but you can hear that the ‘root’ shif ts up when it begins. You can also hear that it shifts bac k down again to begin the reprise of the front . While you are in any of the sections, ther e is no feeling of wanting to go anywhere else, just a wish to explore the static space, as if it were the inside of a cathedral.

LI ST EN NO W . So What. We know now what to

Miles Davis (3).

call the opening half of the front to

hovers over the same place, a on starts ‘this lovely day’, and

I’ ll Re me mb er Apri l . It starts with two

st raight one and a sad one, eac h four meas ures long. the sad one with ‘we’ll sigh goodbye’.

The strai ght

LI ST EN NO W . I’ll Reme mb er Apri l. Kenny Dorham (2).

Invi tation starts both of its f irst sections wi th sad hovers lasting for four mea lasts in the lyrics up to the point where the title ‘Invitation’ comes in. LI ST EN NO W . Invitation.

sures. The first one

Joe Henderson (1).

Sometimes in conventional (non-modal) songs the presence of a hover means that there is no tension, but not al ways. However, some other songs us e the hover to build up tens ion so that you are nearly screaming to get it to ‘break’.

Take the ‘A’ Train has a four measure hover at the sta rt of its bridge. If you have the wonderful Stuff Smith album Swingin’ Stuff you can hear Neils-Henning exploiting that by just playing the root note on every beat in Smi th’s second solo chorus. It builds the te nsion up, so that you po si tive ly leap into the second half of the bridge, which is the expected slow launcher to reprise the front.


LI ST EN NO W . Take the ‘A’ Train.

Stuff Smith (1).

Irving Berlin’s Re me mb er has a three measure hover at the start of its bridge, also building up the tension, but ‘breaking’ in the fourth measure.

LI ST EN NO W . Re me mb er . Hank Mobley (3).

From Here... What you do next depends on you. Apart fr om the book’s own ‘bridge sec tion’ Part II Pe rs pe ctiv es & Po le mics , the rest of this text is aimed primarily at musicians. There is a complete and detail ed discussion of all the LEGO bricks in common use in son gs in Part V A Kit of LEGO Bricks to Build Songs With . And, except for the fact that ea ch LEGO brick is illust rated with an actual example of what it looks like as a written out chord sequence, it is no more technical than what y ou have read so far. And it comes complete wit h the final example tr acks for your Companion Recordings. So even if you aren’t a musician, you should still be able to pick up on everything. If you aren’t a musician, and would like to become one, go through Part II I Ju st Do It , and Pa rt IV The Tran si tion Fr om List ening to Play ing , and you will be ready to take on the world – and the rest of this book! If you are already a musician, you should still check out Parts III and V. It’s take on t he basics might change your life!

IV, rather than jump to Part

010 Part I

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