Interspersed with the short examples in the first part of part 5 are excerpts from the large score segments. The titles of the compositions set these excerpts apart from surrounding material, as do a number of graphic identifiers: measure numbers, time signatures, braces, and abbreviated instrumental identification. Chords appearing in brackets above each excerpt refer to the score’s lead sheet; harmonic analysis of greater detail appearing without brackets refers to the total group harmonic sonority. Examples from the larger performances that are not represented in the scores, and examples from other sources, typically appear without measure numbers and time signatures. Unless otherwise indicated, they are in 4/4 meter.
The scores and other transcribed examples draw attention to different facets of jazz improvisation and include, accordingly, different degrees of musical detail. Readers should consult examples 1.1 and 1.2 for a description of the notational symbols that portray, in some transcriptions, subtle trumpet and saxophone timbral variations and pitch inflections and, in others, components of drum set figures. To maintain a consistency of appearance with the original transcriptions in this work, borrowed material from other authors’ transcriptions notated for B instruments appears transposed to C within the octave. Additionally, I have made minor editorial changes with respect to articulation marks, chord representation, and the like, and I have added such analytical marks as boxes, circles, arrows, braces, and brackets to highlight particular features within examples. Slight differences in notation among the examples reflect peculiarities of the two music-writing programs used for the presentation, “Score” and “Finale.”
In a rich, essentially oral tradition like jazz—whose language and forms are not rooted in single, definitive written models—no feature of the music is free from interpretation. Correspondingly, this work’s transcriptions simply represent interpretations of selective features of the original recorded performances. In the preparation of the scores, individuals named in the acknowledgments took primary responsibility for translating into music notation the parts improvised by performers of the same instrument that the transcriber played. After compiling individual parts into scores, we invited other musicians to join us in comparing the transcriptions to the original recordings and suggesting revisions. The current versions, which represent the most recent collective interpretations of several artists, are the outcome of this process. As such, they reflect the mutual exchange of knowledge, the sharing of insights from different musical perspectives, and, in some instances, the spirit of compromise that underlie learning and musical understanding in the jazz community.
The process of score revision brought to light numerous factors that potentially distinguish interpretations of recorded performances. One is the sound quality of the original recording and its subsequent reproductions as records, cassettes, and CDs. Different pressings or reissues sometimes reveal substantial variance in the products’ overall clarity or transparency, a function of such features as signal-to-noise ratio and the balance among the parts. Similarly, the individual qualities of sound systems (including, for example, record players, tape players, CD players, amplifiers, speakers, and headphones), play an obvious role in determining the information artists can glean from recorded performances. Transcribers found that some equipment revealed significant timbral variations and dynamic accents in an improviser’s part—and, occasionally, entire gestures—that were inaudible or undecipherable on other equipment. The capacity of equipment for the isolation and replay of particular passages (recently facilitated with the advent of CD players and digital sampling equipment) also influences interpretation and analysis.
Even when transcribers work with the same recorded examples and the same playback system, their relative sensitivity to different features of music—harmony or rhythm or melody—distinguishes interpretations. Details that some players hear in the music simply elude other players. A related issue is the number of listenings over which artists study a recorded performance, each revealing slightly greater musical detail. The performances chosen for the large score segments are well known in the jazz community, and some of the transcribers had been listening to them repeatedly since their teens, acquiring an intimate knowledge of the music before trying their hands at transcription.
The instrument performed by the interpreter and the interpreter’s physical characteristics can also be critical. Pianists commonly interpret the chords of other players in terms of how they themselves voice chords, in part a function of the size of their hands. Drummers commonly interpret the figures of another percussionist in terms of their own arrangement of drums and the sticking patterns that are comfortable for them.
Prior knowledge of the boundaries of an individual’s improvisation style and of the performance conventions associated with particular jazz idioms also influences the interpretation of musical events. Especially when a recording lacks transparency, listeners tend to fill in a part’s obscure details by assessing the likelihood of particular kinds of gestures occurring at particular points in an improvisation.
Along these lines, knowledge of the form of the composition is also essential. During one transcribing session, a highly skilled player was frustrated in his initial efforts to analyze the structure of a solo. He succeeded only after transcribing and analyzing the harmony of the recorded composition, which provided the key to understanding the soloist’s elusive treatment of the form. Likewise, artists commonly interpret the accompaniment provided by rhythm section players as likely representations of the composition’s structure, rather than inferring the structure from an analysis of individual bass line components or the pianist’s isolated voicings alone. This is especially the case when performances feature incomplete chord voicings and bass lines in which arrival at periodic harmonic goals is more important than spelling individual chords.
The musical background and training of artists also distinguish interpretations. As expected, in the revision of the scores, musicians with the most experience writing music proposed especially elegant solutions to problems depicting elusive jazz rhythms. Likewise, training in musical analysis—whether acquired in the Western music theory classroom or from private study or from other players—influences the particular theoretical conventions improvisers favor for analyzing jazz harmony.
Typically, musicians adding chord symbols to the scores treated the symbols flexibly, applying them to suit different kinds of description and analysis. In part, their applications reflected the dynamic processes of listening within the group and the different models improvisers draw on when creating the music. At some points, for example, they labeled the harmony according to their own version of a lead sheet without feeling the need to account for greater detail or deviations in any of the individual parts. At other points, they derived chord labels from an analysis of the pitches emphasized by the soloist. At yet other points, their labels represented a detailed description of the pianist’s precise voicings, or the bass player’s line, or any combination of the options above. To provide a consistent sample of the possibilities for interpretation, the final scores present two basic chord lines, the first representing a skeletal lead sheet model, the second representing an analysis of the total group harmonic sonority.
The analysis of group harmonic sonority includes a representative sample of decorative and embellishing chords, but it largely emphasizes functional harmony, depicting chords whose placement and duration are structurally significant in relation to the underlying form. Similarly, it emphasizes the identification of tensions within chords that are structurally significant over those that provide harmonic color. Typically, in up-tempo performances such as “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” the fleeting notes of walking bass lines are not included in the analysis. Exceptions include structurally important bass ostinatos, pedal points, and notes representing an alternative interpretation of the harmony that create interesting harmonic effects.
In addition to their use of common schemes of chord labeling and analysis, the scor
es adopt the following alternative conventions within the jazz community: the sonority of a dominant seventh chord with a flatted fifth is labeled as a half-diminished seventh chord; the sonority including both the seventh and the thirteenth is labeled as a thirteenth chord, but if the seventh is omitted, it is labeled as a sixth chord; the dominant sonority including both a fifth and a raised eleventh is labeled as a raised-eleventh chord, but if the natural fifth is omitted, it is labeled as a dominant chord with a flatted fifth; a dominant chord including both a fifth and a flat thirteenth is labeled as a flat-thirteenth chord, but if the natural fifth is omitted, it is labeled as an augmented-fifth chord. The tension of a flat tenth, which typically functions as a blue note, is labeled as a raised ninth. Chords with upper tensions like thirteenths may include such lower tensions as the ninth and eleventh. Finally, some chord labels include the symbol sus4 to indicate a harmonic suspension in which a pitch a fourth above the root substitutes for the third.
The extended harmonic practices of post-fifties jazz improvisation, including quartal voicings and other imaginative structures based on allusive or incomplete chords (in which interpreting harmony as listeners or improvisers does not necessarily require the presence of chord roots), can present challenges to conventional Western chord classification and reveal the limitations of conventional analysis for understanding the practices of jazz. To indicate musical inventions that are especially problematic for analysis, the scores use two devices. Parentheses appear around incomplete or implied chords at structural points in the music in which, for example, the piano is absent, or anticipations or delays in performing the harmony temporarily obscure the form. Braces appear around the analysis of harmonic structures open to multiple interpretations that defied consensus among transcribers.
Finally, all transcriptions, no matter how detailed, comprise reductive representations of the original recordings. Especially elusive are essential rhythmic and timbral features of jazz performance and the ever-changing blend of its composite harmonies, the complexities and subtleties of which staff notation can only portray to varying degrees. The jazz community typically uses the uniform rhythmic notation of even beat subdivision, leaving unnotated the subtle variations associated with swing, particularly the triplet swing feeling (ex. 1.2d). This work largely adopts the same convention. The score to “I Thought about You,” however, endeavors to portray literally the performance’s diverse rhythms and pronounced changes of time-feeling. Ultimately, the large score segments in this work and their captions are intended to serve as companions to the recorded performances, attuning readers to various facets of individual creativity and group interaction that seasoned jazz musicians appreciate in each other’s improvisations.
Example 1.1 Trumpet and saxophone notation key
a. Normal timbre and timbral variations
1. pitch with normal timbre: full bodied, open sound
2. pitch with half-closed sound: partially muted. slightly compressed quality
3. pitch with closed sound: muted, compressed, nasal quality produced by half-valve or alternate fingering technique
4. harmonic: especially reverberant sound comprising two pitches produced simultaneously by saxophone alternate fingering technique
5. split attack: includes extraneous pitch or unpitched sound
6. pitch with raspy or buzzy sound
7. ghosted pitch: barely audible or implied sound
b Other expressive devices
Example 1.2 Drum set notation key
a. Position of noteheads on staff
b. Abbreviations and symbols
rc = main body of ride cymbal struck by tip of drumstick, creating a ping sound (the, closer the strike to the edge of the cymbal, the greater its sustained, ringing quality)
cup = raised center portion of cymbal struck by stick, creating a kang sound
hh = hi-hat cymbals struck by stick, creating a tick sound
+ = closed hi-hat: hi-hat cymbals struck together with foot pedal, creating a chick sound
o = open hi-hat: hi-hat cymbals struck together with foot pedal but allowed to vibrate against each other, creating a sizzle sound
rs = rim shot: rim and head of drum struck simultaneously by stick, creating a kak sound
Z = multiple stroke or press roll: drum head struck by stick(s) bounced rapidly and repeatedly, creating a buzz sound
sh = ride cymbal struck by shoulder of stick (directly behind the tip), creating a pang sound
= snare drum played by brushes, creating a legato swishing sound; accent symbol over brush work indicates audible pulse
c. Sample drum part
d Rhythmic notation
For ease of reading, the drum notation typically represents eighth notes phrased with a triplet swing feeling [1-2] as even eighth notes [3]. Three of this work’s scores rely heavily upon this convention because of the relatively consistent swing feeling present in the drum set performances. In contrast, the score to “I Thought about You” endeavors to portray literally the performance’s diverse rhythms and pronounced changes of time-feeling.
Example 3.1 Alternative representations of melody “Like Someone in Love” (notated for B trumpet)
Example 3.2 Features of jazz vehicles
a. Blues with single repeating figure Thelonious Monk, composer, “Monk’s Point”
b. Blues with AA’B melodic prototype Miles Davis, composer, “Blues by Five”
c. Ballad with ABAC melodic prototype
Jimmy Van Heusen, composer, “I Thought about You”
d. Bebop composition with AABA melodic prototype
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, composers, “Anthropology”
Example 3.3 Various strategies in rendering melody
a. Interpretive devices, including timbral changes, slides, fall-offs, and shaping melody to speech rhythm
Miles Davis solo, “I Thought about You” (all excerpts =54–56)
b. Transformation of single-phrase model through improvised introductory figures, rephrasing, and ornamentation Clifford Brown solo, “What’s New?”
c. Comparing samples of artists’ melody renditions
John Coltrane, Kenny Dorham, Lee Morgan, and Booker Little solos, “Like Someone in Love”
This illustration presents excerpts from repeated statements of the melody by artists at the beginning and end of their respective group’s performance (the former, labeled hc for head chorus; the latter, oc for out chorus). Scanning each vertical column reveals the players’ individual approaches. Additionally, a comparison of different renditions by the same artist suggests that soloists alternate between exploring new possibilities for transforming the melody in performance and playing a personal version that they have composed previously—either before the recording session or during their first melody statement at the session—and retained as a model.
In bars 1–4, Coltrane displaces the initial melody phrase, whereas Morgan and Little approach it through short improvised introductory figures (M1, L1). Little’s gesture features a distinctive mix of whole-tone and double-diminished scale degrees. Individual practices also include Coltrane’s scalar fills between melody pitches (C2: bar 3), Morgan’s consistent grace note ornamentation (M1, M2: bar 3), and Little’s use of a recurring descending gesture to approach the concluding pitch of the melody phrase (L1, L2: bars 3–4). Also noteworthy are Little’s octave transposition of the melody (L2: bars 1–2) and the exceptionally slow tempo and elastic rhythmic feeling with which he renders the Ll version.
In bars 13–16, Morgan and Little once again append the phrase with short introductory gestures (M1, L1). Pursuing his own approach, Coltrane repeats the same rhythmic displacement at the beginning of both versions, then, two bars later, departs from the melody to improvise figures that serve as responses to the preceding material (C1, C2: bars 15–16). Morgan features comparable grace note ornamentation (M1, M2: bars 13–14) and melody variants (bars 15–16) in his renditions, whereas Little fills in a static portion
of the melody with his own gesture in one version (L1: bar 16), and in the other version departs radically from the melody to improvise complex phrases that periodically loop through pivotal melody pitches and include colorful harmonic alterations (L2: bars 13–16).
In bars 17–20, Morgan differentiates renditions by applying an ongoing triplet figure to prominent melody pitches in one instance (M2) and radically rephrasing the last two bars of both versions. Little transforms the melody through his unique use of octave displacement, grace note ornamentation, and radical rhythmic rephrasing, in one instance (L2) stretching out and developing his familiar descending A-to-E gesture. Drham’s rephrasing of the melody is also individual (01, 02: bars 17–18).
In bars 21–24, Dorham’s versions illustrate the skillful use of ornamentation, subtle variation, and radical rephrasing to create different shapes from the same skeletal melody. Representing the opposite strategy, Morgan’s versions are nearly identical to one another. The versions’ consecutive use of grace note and upper neighbor embellishment and imitative leaps to melody notes also reveal the improviser’s interest in the continuity and development of ideas, whether at the level of ornamentation or variation. Little’s renditions follow a characteristic plan of their own, with the second rendition representing a simplification of the first.
d. Expressive liberties within a complete melody rendition
Miles Davis solo, “I Thought about You”
Thinking in Jazz Page 76