Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  In the second A section, the drummer does not reinforce the pianist’s structural marker, but at the end of bar 13, he catches the piano punch and, in the next bar, reinforces the concluding pitch of the soloist’s phrase. The bass player creates considerable excitement during these events. Through his striking leap and off-beat improvised introductory figure in bar 9, he displaces by one bar, a version of his recurring gesture, before climbing gradually to the high register of his instrument. In bar 13, the soloist plays his first note outside the predominant mode. Over the course of the solo, such fleeting pitches (principally A, B, D, and E) add color and tension to the soloist’s figures. In some instances, the pitches allude to an underlying chord in the conventional progression. In other instances, appearances of A and B seem to represent a whimsical flirtation with movement to an altered version of the piece’s dominant chord (G7), displaced from its position within the form.

  Bars 17–24. Perhaps influenced by the bass player’s upper-register exploration, the soloist ascends to the upper saxophone register, where he performs a variant of his solo’s second gesture, then creates the chorus’s high point with improvised vocal cries. Meanwhile, differentiating treatment of the bridge from the A section, the pianist elaborates the composition’s progression, mixing conventional tertian voicings with quartal voicings, while the bass player largely emphasizes the conventional structure. While still in the high register in bar 19, however, the bass player introduces a prominent altered pitch, D, which the soloist instantly adopts for his climactic vocal cry—the first sustained venture outside the solo’s mode—and the pianist reinforces with his C79 chord voicing.

  In bar 20, the bass player performs a colorful tritone substitution beneath the cry. Then, as the rhythm section converges harmonically in the next bar, the soloist acknowledges the chord change with a passing A pitch. Subsequently, the pianist and bass player both perform a diminished chord substitution, whose ambiguity the soloist exploits with a climbing chromatic gesture. As the soloist reiterates his vocal cry with the piece’s tonic, distinctively inflected, the bass player reinforces the pianist’s syncopated punch. Next, the soloist emphasizes the A pitch once again, which the pianist instantly adopts for his voicing of an A chord insertion. The group converges on the conventional harmony on the downbeat of bar 24, with the soloist responding to the pianist’s altered G7 chord voicing by weaving B and A pitches into the solo line. Accompanying these developments to the conclusion of the bridge are intensified drum commentary and a piano part whose upper voice leaps high with the soloist’s vocal cry in bar 22, then follows its general descent, as does the bass line.

  Bars 25–32. As the soloist completes, then answers, his previous figure with a short response, the pianist repeats his previous accompaniment design of a leap and descent. Meanwhile, the bass player plays his tonic-to-dominant gesture, then, in bar 28, complements the pianist’s recurring altered ii–V substitution for the Fm7 chord. Subsequently, the soloist brings the chorus to a close with an animated, extended line beginning and ending with melody pitches; it rises to the upper register, then climbs down to a tonic riffing pattern, emphasizing the same pitch on which he began the chorus. In bar 30, the solo line includes the A pitch, perhaps responding to the pianist’s preceding altered Dm7 chord. Throughout the section, the drummer provides support by improvising two four-bar phrases, each gradually increasing in intensity and often reinforcing the pianist’s punches. The second phrase ends with distinctive hi-hat color and combined snare and bass drum kicks, while the pianist expands his voicings’ registral placement dramatically. At the same time, he features substitutions, which the bass player reinforces with a high D pitch before beginning his descent. The collective events highlight the close of the first chorus and propel the musicians into the next.

  Bars 33–40 (chorus 2). Although beginning with a familiar design of short ascending, then descending, figures, the soloist shifts the rhythmic target of his figures to beat four before reverting to the former target in bar 39. Meanwhile, the drummer continues to create commentaries of complex four-bar phrases. Initially, the bass player and piano player descend together in bars 33–35; then they move in contrary motion. The accompanists remain relatively close to the conventional progression throughout the new A section, but in bar 36, they perform the same chord substitution together, reacting, perhaps, to the soloist’s allusion to the dominant chord in the previous bar.

  Bars 41–48. Here, the rhythm section plays an especially dramatic role in intensifying the music by introducing polyrhythmic tension, then resolving it. On the downbeat of bar 41, the pianist reiterates his structural marker figure without the drummer’s reinforcement, then continues to create patterns emphasizing dotted-quarter-note groupings, while the drummer initiates, on the second beat, patterns emphasizing groupings of three quarter-notes. Meanwhile, the bass player departs from walking bass lines to create wide leaps and a broken syncopated figure whose initiation coincides with the second drum kick. Amid this instability, the soloist reacts to the rhythm section’s altered dominant chord by ending his phrase with a B pitch. Subsequently, as the soloist sets up striking call and response patterns with wide leaps in bars 45–46, the rhythm section suddenly changes the music’s texture again. The pianist drops out, the drummer reduces his part to cymbals, and the bass player returns to a lower range to perform an off-beat, syncopated variation on his recurring gesture. Two bars later, when the soloist rests, the pianist rejoins the performance, rapidly expanding the registral placement of voicings, the bass player develops an ascending walking line, and the drummer introduces an intense fill. All together, the rhythm section players drive toward the temporary release of tension on the downbeat of the bridge.

  Bars 49–56. Perhaps inspired by the rhythm section’s previous ascending figures, the soloist again creates a series of patterns climbing into the upper register. In contrast, the pianist reduces the range and rhythmic density of his accompaniment or comping figures markedly, returning to the strategy of mixing tertian and quartal voicings and elaborating the conventional progression. The bass player and pianist follow the same general plan, with occasional deviations and exchanges. In bar 51, the bass player emphasizes the E pitch from the conventional harmony for the first time, which the pianist, after playing a substitution, includes in his delayed performance of an altered C+7 voicing. Reacting to the changing harmonic complexion of the accompaniment, the soloist, in bar 52, weaves the pianist’s augmented-fifth pitch and the bass player’s prominent flat-ninth pitch into his line, then, in the next bar, plays an E pitch for the first time. Subsequently, the bass player and pianist collaborate on diminished substitutions, prompting the soloist to venture momentarily outside the mode again. Such interplay, like that of the flat-ninth exchange above, is reminiscent of the improvisers’ interplay during the previous B section. Meanwhile, the drummer begins the bridge by playing the accentuation pattern associated with the pianist’s structural marker figure, but without piano reinforcement. Later, responding to the soloist’s extended phrase and emphatic ending in bar 56, he closes the bridge with a strong fill that features the bass drum and reinforces some of the piano punches. The last piano punch includes a prominent B in the upper voice that resolves the raised-ninth tension in the preceding sustained voicing.

  Bars 57–64. Against the background of the pianist and drummer independently hinting at the structural marker figure, and their most recent coordinated punches above, the two accompanists set up another musical intensification episode in bar 57. Not only do they coordinate their performance of the marker, as they did initially in bar 1 of the solo, but they develop its dotted-quarter-note element together. Increasing the density of their coordinated punches, they superimpose upon the underlying meter a polyrhythmic scheme, which the drummer accentuates further with combined snare and bass drum punches. At the same time, the bass player creates tension by moving into the extreme high register and shifting his eighth-note embellishment of the walking bass l
ine, before gradually reducing range. Meanwhile, in bar 57, the soloist concludes his short answering phrase with a B pitch, possibly in response to the pianist’s preceding dominant chord voicing, then continues to use the pitch in his next phrase, accompanied by similar harmonic flirtations in the bass and piano parts. Finally, increasing the range and length of his ideas, he rides the crest of the rhythm section’s wave to create the chorus climax: performing his highest sustained wailing figures over the accompaniment. The soloist reduces his intensity only slightly by returning to the tonic at the close of the chorus, which the drummer marks with a powerful distinctive drum fill.

  Example 13.25 Miles Davis Quintet large score segment: “I Thought about You”; Miles Davis, trumpet; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drum set

  General accompaniment characteristics. The group’s performance illustrates the expanded role and expression of the sixties rhythm section, even when creating jazz within the structure of a conventional progression. There is constant interplay among the musicians. From moment to moment, different individuals take initiative for the music’s direction, respond to their counterparts (overtly absorbing material from them or offering complementary support), recede into the group’s musical texture, or temporarily drop out of the performance. Operating within the piece’s ABAC form and a rich emotional atmosphere created by the soloist’s affective melody rendition, the band members sometimes take great liberties. They shift unexpectedly into double time in bar 19, rather than at the beginning of a major harmonic section; the soloist extends his performance into the second chorus structure, rather than concluding at the end of the first chorus (bar 47 in the double-time numbering system). Throughout, the artists interpret rhythm with endless nuances. In relation to the original or subsequent tempo, the band members sometimes double up on the time or play at the slower rate, establish a two-beat or a four-beat feeling, or emphasize even eighth-note and sixteenth-note subdivisions or, to varying degrees, swing them. Amid the group’s fluid rhythmic shifts, the players sometimes juxtapose different grooves, increasing tension; other times, they converge on the same groove, resolving tension.

  Just as the soloist remains close to the melody in his rendition, the bass player and pianist remain close to the composition’s conventional progression. Occasionally, they embellish it with tritone substitutions or alter the quality of chords for coloristic effect. For the most part, the bass player drives the group with a highly rhythmically embellished, two-beat style. Articulating pitches with a distinctive singing quality, he provides a solid harmonic foundation emphasizing chord roots and fifths, with periodic double stops combining roots and thirds. This approach frees the pianist from the necessity of providing complete, root-based chord voicings. Rather, he emphasizes texturally and rhythmically diverse structures with striking harmonic alterations, which he alternates with periodic melodic commentary. Meanwhile, the drummer creates an inventive part whose rhythmic figures, instrumentation, color, and dynamics are ever changing. He rarely creates separate layers of ostinato time-keeping patterns and drum punctuations. Instead, he creates unique linear ideas featuring individual instruments, or pairs of instruments, or· various combinations in integrated, constantly unfolding gestures of drum and cymbal sound.

  Bars 1–4 (chorus 1). The soloist rephrases the standard melody, leaving a substantial rest between phrase components, which the bass player and pianist fill together with a nearly identical gesture. The gesture establishes the tempo and creates an embellished two-beat feeling as the drummer enters with soft brush strokes. Amid the dense texture of the pianist’s appoggiatura-like figures, the bass player’s double stops and slides, and imitative triplet motion across the parts, the soloist completes his melody phrase with a highly vocalized, speech-inflected delivery. Subsequently, the bass player creates a fill with strong rhythmic motion over the barline to the root on the downbeat, an approach he favors throughout the performance.

  Bars 5–8. The pianist reduces activity during the soloist’s initial statement, then responds to the bass player’s triplet chromatic gesture by creating inner-voice piano movement, which in tum inspires the soloist’s affective chromatic slides and timbral changes when varying the melody. In bars 7-8, the bass player and pianist develop the triplet gesture further, the pianist initially absorbing the soloist’s melody pitches into the right-hand voicing and creating distinctive patterns of descending parallel fourths. At the same time, the group converses through a scheme of alternating harmonic dissonance. The rhythm section embellishes the progression with tritone substitution chords, and in between its alterations, the soloist concludes his melody variant with a pitch that is a tritone away from the root of the prevailing harmony. In bar 8, the bass player’s rhythmic motion over the barline to the subsequent chord root resolves the dissonance.

  Bars 9–11. The music’s mood changes unexpectedly as the artists intensify their conversation. The pianist, predicting the soloist’s double-time variation on the melody, plays it in near unison, then, while the soloist rests, performs a rapid interlocking fill with the bass player. In tum, the pianist rests and the bass player reduces activity while the soloist continues with a melody variant. Responding to the variant, the pianist and bass player perform melodic fills in contrary motion. This propels the soloist’s ascent to a sustained pitch, which generates tension in relation to the active accompaniment. Meanwhile, in bar 11, the bass player reacts to the pianist’s grace note by creating a similar effect within an off-beat double-pedal figure, and the drummer suddenly drops out of the performance.

  Bars 12–14. The pianist and bass player create coordinated contrapuntal patterns over the barline, reestablishing a clear two-beat feeling with a rhythmically spare, harmonically lush accompaniment in relation to the fluid vocalized solo phrase.

  Bars 15–18. In bar 16, the group’s rhythmic activity heats up again with rapid downward gestures in the soloist’s and bass player’s parts. The bass player’s development of the descending gesture elicits an imitative response in the next bar from the pianist, while the soloist creates contrary motion with a melody variant, which expands upon the dynamic swell in the pianist’s gesture. Amid the group’s melodic- rhythmic commentaries, triplet and sixteenth-note activity builds in intensity across the parts until, in bar 18, near-simultaneous sixteenth-note gestures by the soloist and bass player and a hard-driving, bluesy piano fill inspire the soloist to leap dramatically to the high trumpet register on the downbeat of the next measure.

  Bars 19–22. The soloist’s leap reinforces the group’s formal change to double time. Instantly, the drummer rejoins the performance to complement the change, using sticks to create an analogous leap from the snare drum to cymbals and generating a strong sense of swing by accenting the open backbeats in the solo part with hi-hat punches. Meanwhile, the pianist, switching to a conventional block chord comping style, also imitates the soloist’s gesture with a leap and descent in the top line of his chord voicings, as the bass player creates a swinging, highly rhythmically embellished, two-beat accompaniment. After descending, the soloist intensifies the music’s swing by creating a metrically displaced, hemiola-like pattern whose blues inflections elicit a bluesy grace note response in the piano part, and whose rhythm inspires a comparable pattern in the drum part, supported by the bass player’s and pianist’s triplet figures. In relation to this section’s simple lead sheet model, the group’s elaborate harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic creations underscore the extent to which compositions serve jazz musicians as vehicles for their own inventions.

  Bars 23–25. In bar 23, the group dissolves its new groove as suddenly as it established it. To allow space for the soloist’s new idea, the pianist drops out, and the drummer and bass player simpify their parts. As the bass player outlines a descending step progression, the soloist improvises a rhythmically fluid, harmonically ambiguous, climbing chromatic gesture, whose concluding pitch the pianist reinforces with a comparably ambiguous altered chord. In bar 2
5, the bass player responds with a chromatically embellished fill over the barline, and the drummer provides a short punctuating press roll.

  Bars 26–29. The music’s complexion changes once again as the drummer develops a rhythmically intense idea that combines different cymbal sounds and spare drum punches, the pianist plays a unique melodic-rhythmic fill, and the soloist introduces a new ascending gesture, perhaps imitating the leap in the piano part. Meanwhile, the bass player, supported by the drummer’s overlapping figures, develops a descending gesture, whose triplet eighth-note ornament, in bar 27, the soloist instantly seizes for the sequential development of his figure. Reminiscent of the bass line in bars 23-25, the peaks of the soloist’s sequence create a descending step progression, which leads into the melody pitch in bar 29. In bar 29 (bar 24 at the original tempo), the rhythm section marks the conclusion of the bridge with an intense drum fill and tritone substitute root movement to the following chord.

  Bars 30–34. In bars 30-31, the soloist performs a descending signature pattern- reinforced, in part, by the drummer’s kicks and a similar piano gesture-which leads to a familiar, near-simultaneous performance of a melody variant by the soloist and pianist. (The pianist’s earlier performance of the soloist’s signature pattern in bars 10-11 may have suggested its subsequent use to the soloist.) In bars 32-33, the rhythm section fills in the rest in the solo part with exciting motion. Creating wide leaps, the bass player flirts momentarily with a four-beat pattern before returning to lively, embellished two- beat figures. Meanwhile, the pianist leaps to the upper register and expands the registral placement of his voicings, and the drummer intensifies his commentary by shifting to a predominantly off-beat, straight eighth-note groove-juxtaposing this with the ongoing swing triplet feeling of his counterparts. The changing accompaniment prompts the soloist’s ascent to the upper trumpet register through rapid triplet motion. At the same time, in bars 32-34, the pianist and bass player create harmonic tension, in part by anticipating or delaying their respective performance of the conventional chord changes.