Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  Completing his analysis of the piece’s last four bars—“a wild chord sequence”—Bailey commented that they produce a very “open sound [in which] you can play most anything.” To develop a consistent approach to the section, however, he invented a scale from the important tones and altered pitches of the chord, and added it to the other performance models he had mapped out for his solos.

  Such possibilities for planning are endless. When expert players work from the most general kinds of designs, they may simply restrict a portion of a solo chorus to one register or another, emphasize an off-beat rather than on-beat feeling, or create shapes that are more melodic than rhythmic. During his rehearsal, Benny Bailey mapped out such models for use as chords superimposed on those of the progression, common tones within particular chord sequences to serve as focal points for his inventions, discrete pitches from the tune intended for rhythmic and tonal variation, and pitch collections of particular scales and interval configurations.

  Physical considerations may enter into these general theoretical strategies. A soloist might routinely minimize the difficulty of improvising over a segment of a progression whose chords involve awkward fingerings by playing common tone tremolo patterns, by quoting a phrase from the piece, or by resting for the duration of the segment each time through the chorus. Curtis Fuller favors particular chord substitutions to bypass keys involving awkward movements of the trombone slide. Other individuals use substitutions to facilitate the conception and execution of particular kinds of melodic patterns. For Kenny Barron, playing in “different keys brings out different things” in solos. Because of the “different fingerings and because of the physical structure of the keyboard, certain ideas that I might play in the key of B won’t suggest themselves in the key of B. It’s very different playing in E major or in A major or in C major, because the fingering is so different.”

  Regarding large-scale strategies for structuring improvisations, artists sometimes apply, over an entire solo, the operations described earlier for developing ideas from phrase to phrase. For example, they may develop each new pattern as an organic outgrowth of the preceding one. Within the framework of a short form, they may introduce a new idea in each final turnaround section and treat the idea as a motive for the chorus that follows. 13 The exploitation of range can be especially effective. Starting “in the middle register, gradually bringing in the registral extremes.” John Coltrane often “construct[ed] successive waves, each one reaching for a higher note then rapidly falling off.” In this manner, he “[built] methodically toward the highest note of the piece, which may [have reached] far into the altissimo range,” the climax of a solo commonly occurring about “two-thirds of the way through.”14

  Other plans create a three-part ABA shape in which soloists work initially within certain bounds, then expand the possibilities for invention through a contrasting approach, and return, finally, to the original approach. Sonny Rollins commonly begins improvisations by varying short rhythmic patterns of restricted range; then he gradually explores longer phrases of increased range; and finally he returns to simpler patterns, varying them as in the initial part of the Solo.15 An alternative design involves an ABC structure in which the performer gives each section successively greater intensity. For instruments capable of multipart invention, textural strategies can play a role. Wes Montgomery often structured his guitar solos by improvising initial choruses of unaccompanied melodic lines, following them with choruses of phrases doubled in octaves, then bringing the solo to a climax with thickly textured melodies in which each note is harmonized by a chord.16

  The character of individual pieces or particular harmonic forms sometimes influences an artist’s use of materials with distinct functions to mark off discrete parts of a solo. With respect to AABA compositions, for example, Lester Young would sometimes adopt a three-part “rhetorical plan” over a two-chorus solo. In the initial part, he emerged from the band with a relatively simple idea, generally a four-bar phrase. Subsequently, he demonstrated his technical mastery of the instrument or his mastery of the idiom; in the latter case, for instance, he might resort to “polymetric or otherwise unbalanced phrasing rather than rapid playing.” Finally, he “return[ed] to the band” and wrapped things up with “an expressive peak reached by using common property, a riff, or a well-known lick.” 17 In contrast, when improvising on a blues structure, Young would often begin each chorus with “a very distinctive idea,” which developed “organically for the rest of the chorus,” at times concluding the solo with repeated riffs that built up great “rhythmic intensity.”18

  As indicated above, the improviser’s precompositional activities can range from designing the most general strategies of rhythm, harmony, texture, and mood to plotting specific figures, either for liberal use wherever complementary chords occur in a progression, or, more sparingly, for a particular harmonic segment such as an especially challenging bridge within each solo chorus (LD). In practice, such plans guide the artist’s musical formulations and assist in achieving goals for solos.

  Inferring Soloists’ Models

  If in some instances advanced players discuss these matters with learners—providing insight from a personal operational standpoint—in other instances learners discern in the performances of other artists the elements they can interpret as improvised and precomposed. To the extent that artists remain faithful to particular plans when improvising, students may be able to infer them by comparing different recorded versions of solos and, within each version, comparing successive solo choruses, scrutinizing them for resemblances. Precise correspondences at different levels of invention suggest the operation of precomposed models, whereas looser similarities, such as patterns displaying a mixed bag of shared and individual features, lend themselves to wider interpretation. The figures may be variants of one another, or both may be variants of one common unstated model in the mind of the improviser. 19

  The circumstances under which artists compose musical ideas and the time frame within which they retain or transmit them are also matters for conjecture. Recurring features in an improvisation may reflect either that players prepared ideas before the performance, or that they conceived them while performing, subsequently retaining them from chorus to chorus, or even from take to take (that is, over successive recorded performances of the piece). The learner’s own powers of musical apprehension and recall also bear on the analysis. The subtler or less detailed soloists’ models are to begin with, or the more soloists transform model patterns in performance, the greater are the skills students need to detect the presence of the models and to appreciate the commonalities models represent across different choruses or solos. As learners grapple in their own performances with the imaginative union of figures and other transformational processes described earlier, they are better able to discern comparable processes at work producing variants in great solos.

  Repeated figures, only thinly veiled, are obviously the simplest for students to identify. Individual strategies for quoting from the melody of a familiar composition can be especially accessible. In Booker Little’s extended improvisation on “Old Folks,” he quotes and varies a particular phrase from the A section of the melody during nearly every solo chorus. Kenny Dorham adopts another approach in his performance of “I Love You,” quoting his own initial rendition of the composition’s melody throughout the bridge of each solo chorus.20

  An improviser’s own recurring vocabulary patterns are most apparent when they are isolated by rests or otherwise exposed within the context of surrounding material. Examples abound. In Miles Davis’s solo on “Miles Ahead,” he performs minor variations on a discrete figure, in the same part of the progression, four times during consecutive choruses, and over the course of his solo on “Freddie Freeloader,” he varies the model of a distinctive call and response pattern (exx. 9.5a–b). In the A section of Dorham’s performance of “I Love You,” he uses an ascending minor arpeggio as a catalyst for his improvised phrases three times and repeatedl
y features a descending melodic pattern as a cadential figure. Performances like John Coltrane’s solo on “Giant Steps” make constant reference to the same figure.21

  Other models can require greater skill to discern. In improvisations based on “Mohawk.” Charlie Parker performs many phrases that, although different overall, conform to the same general profile. Each is relatively short, two to three bars in length, and comprises a rhythmically active pattern that comes to rest on the same target pitch—the sustained third of the tonic chord, approached, typically, from below with a leap of a third or fifth. The target pitch sometimes forms a cadential pattern with a subsequent pitch a fifth above it and may be extended slightly further. 22

  As implied above, improvisers differ both in the proportion of material they fix in relation to the larger solo’s design and in the liberties they take with the material. In some instances, performers adopt the entire melody of a tune as a solo’s underpinning, preserving the tune’s shape throughout. Similarly, they may depend on extensive chains of their own preplanned vocabulary patterns. By narrowing vocabulary options from chord to chord over a piece’s progression or a major segment of it, artists can produce a relatively consistent model to playoff of during solos. Unless listeners have exceptional abilities to grasp and retain musical ideas, they may initially be oblivious to the role of such models, especially when they are long and complex and soloists perform them at fast speeds. It often requires transcription to bring them to light.

  Examples of this type of model are found in improvisations based on Booker Little’s original composition “Minor Sweet,” in which he guides successive choruses with strategically placed patterns that form a melodic line running through the better part of the progression’s A section. 23 From chorus to chorus, Little sometimes interprets the line faithfully, while at other times he contracts, expands, embellishes, and displaces its features with the techniques for small-scale invention described earlier. Moreover, he cleverly disguises the model by performing only selective excerpts from it. Starting and ending at various positions in the model has the effect of varying the lengths of phrases and highlighting different idea components at the opening and close of phrases, contributing to the fresh impression each makes upon the listener (exx. 9.6, 9.7a–e). Moreover, Little periodically interlaces the model with patterns unrelated or only loosely related to it, at times developing them sequentially (ex. 9.8).

  A comparable range of models and operations arises in double and triple versions of solos by Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Fats Navarro, and Charlie Parker, as well as early players like Joe Oliver. These performances reveal the transmission of musical ideas over a longer time frame, that is, from one take to another during a studio recording session and, in other instances, from performances executed a month or even years apart.24 As for the successive choruses described above, resemblances among solo versions involve models that differ in character, occur in different parts of the form, and represent different proportions of the overall performance.

  The takes of solos also reveal that artists may assign individual phrases a specialized role, not simply within a progression’s scheme, but within the scheme of the larger performance. Players also describe this. Harold Ousley sometimes specifically “begins a solo with a certain phrase because,” as he says, “it gives me a head start, a starting point to work with. It’s like shoving off from go. . . . Getting into that phrase could also lead me to something else.” Other figures are particularly effective for closing solos, for they leave a lasting impression on audiences. “Miles always seems to save something special for the last part of his solos.” Benny Bailey notices. Soloists would favor particular ideas for elaboration in some instances, be it in improvised introductions to pieces, in improvised cadenzas, or in improvised breaks.

  As such practices are borne out by the multiple versions of solos mentioned above, small-scale correspondences include Navarro’s intricate five-bar catalytic phrase to open two solo takes on “Lady Bird,” Davis’s opening to three takes of “Barbados,” and Brown’s distinct, virtuosic motivic figure developed in the middle of three takes of “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” In Charlie Parker’s work, large-scale correspondence appears in two versions of his solo on “Red Cross,” including an entire precomposed bridge and surrounding material, amounting to eighteen bars in all, and in three takes of “Tiny’s Tempo,” in which there are several recurrences of a four- to six-bar phrase, featured, in particular, at the conclusion of his solos25

  Displaying another profile are triple performances of solos by Navarro and Morgan that are framed by planned events: five- to eight-bar phrases repeat at the openings of the first, and in some instances successive, solo choruses, and additional models of two- to five-bar phrases conclude the same solos. Some alternate takes by Davis reveal the repeated use of a plan for the better part of an entire blues chorus, and, in one instance, Davis applies the model outside the boundaries of the piece, treating it as a long crip for improvisations within other blues26

  Finally, representing the extreme end of the spectrum are two-chorus performances of a Navarro solo on “Jahbero” that involves a nearly through-composed model.27 From take to take, as with the successive choruses by Booker Little discussed earlier, Navarro treats the model’s phrases with varying degrees of liberty (ex. 9.9). Different versions of solo performances by Joe Oliver in the twenties, and by Rex Stewart and Louis Armstrong in the thirties, demonstrate the continuity of the improviser’s practices of precomposition.28 So do “different out-takes of the Ellington Band playing the same pieces,” in which as Don Sickler observes, “some of the solos by the ‘same players sound almost exactly alike.”

  Continuous perusal of the artworks of improvisation increases learners’ insight into the underlying processes of their production. Eventually, they discover that fundamental principles govern many different aspects of musical invention. Precomposed materials from the most modest to the most expansive can be manipulated as construction components: pitches combine into vocabulary patterns as patterns combine into phrases and phrases combine into solo choruses. Even complete bridges or choruses can be reused in the formulation of larger solos.29 Players can apply other procedures across these diverse models to transform them: pitches substitute for one another within a pattern as patterns substitute for each other within a phrase.

  Learners’ observations also provide insight into the assignment of musical functions to components and the creation of designs for solos. Just as particular precomposed patterns may play a cadential role within the setting of longer phrases, particular phrases may playa cadential role within the setting of different choruses or within the overall scheme of improvisations. Every musical feature that students notice in expert solos—every procedure that they infer from analyzing them—expands knowledge acquired from personal experience with improvisation and contributes to their ongoing development as jazz orators.

  The diversified approaches that artists adopt for solo formulation, and the particular blend of improvised and precomposed features of performances that they achieve, can reflect the musicians’ whims and, as enumerated later in this work, the variable conditions surrounding performances. Additionally, the use and treatment of preplanned material can also reflect the different value that individuals generally attach to spontaneity of invention relative to other issues such as the cogency or coherence of musical ideas and originality.

  Minimizing spontaneity, some musicians view improvisation as a process with the goal of creating an original but relatively fixed solo particular to the piece that has served as its vehicle, and they deliberately consolidate their most successful patterns from previous performances into a fully arranged model. “One older player explained to me,” Don Sickler says, “that he was a melody player. After he came up with a basic melody for a solo on a certain tune, then he’d vary other things during his performances—like the dynamics, the phrasing, the embellishments, and so on. He still felt he was improvising w
hen he approached the solo that way, but improvising within a different parameter.”

  The technology of recording has facilitated and even encouraged the use of through-composed solos. Musicians who initially conceived them during recording sessions sometimes relearned them later from recordings to satisfy audiences who grew fond of the solos and regarded them as integral parts of the compositions’ performance tradition. 30 As described earlier, members of other bands followed suit, making substantial references to the solos or performing them in their entirety in specific performance settings.

  Once solos evolve to a fixed state in which they consist of minor embellishments or slight revisions of completely arranged models, they function for improvisers like the melodies of compositions. In fact, they sometimes acquire independent lives as compositions, 31 “Well, it’s the same thing really,” Harold Ousley says. “In jazz compositions, most of the time the melodies are solos, the difference being that in a solo, it’s more or less a spontaneous kind of situation. But when you have some solo phrases that you lock in together and play over and over the same way, then you have the melody for a song. What makes it a melody is that it has taken on a consistent, finalized identity.” In between the extremes represented by complete model solos with “finalized” identities and those created “spontaneously” —that is, without any specific blueprint beyond the progression—jazz musicians typically apply different kinds of consideration to their musical parts and plan different amounts of material for use in each. 32