Modal & straight-ahead: plaese to explain
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
I have a general, musicological sense of what "modal jazz" refers to though I sort of feel it's better understood in listening to the music itself rather than having it broken down in a book sense.That said, can one provide an explanation of what difference - if any - there is between modal and straight ahead?
Comments
http://orgyinrhythm.blogspot.com/2006/09/mood-is-modal.html
The usual example everyone gives is "So What" which is basically 8 bars per 'mode'
it is actually a straight bop record...Trane is playing against the chord progressions..the tune "Giant Steps" is supposedly the be all and end all of Bop...there is a chord change EVERY bar...it is on some ridiculous shit, it is considered that because it cant get anymore complicated nor facemelting than his soloing on that tune...
edit: what hookup said basically, except there were plenty of bop songs where the changes were every bar (or two per bar, or even more) but the deal with Giant Steps was it eschewed normal songwriting patterns (where some chords are likely to lead into certain other chords).
Slash solos on the C chord in the song, he's free to explore all variations but is forced to stay in C, until the Chord changes in the song. In Rock music however you'll have a lot of different chord changes. Jazz usually explores the repetition of patterns.
In Modal Jazz, they shy away from staying within the limitations of the chord structure. Specifically they are given a mode, or scale. So they use the modal pattern without necessarily being forced to stay within a certain tone.
Straight forward - Most jazz prior to 1950
Modal - Coltrane - My favorite things
hm.. I typed it out in laymens but it still seems a bit complex.
- spidey
Here's something from wikipedia.. don't know if that helps.
Straight-ahead jazz is a term used to refer to a widely accepted style of jazz music playing that can be thought of as roughly encompassing the period between bebop and the 1960s styles of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.
As imprecise as the term is as used by jazz musicians, it can be loosely characterised by the following:
* A walking bass
* A swing 12/8 time signature in the drums
* In the piano, syncopated chords in the left hand, and melodic, mostly single-note soloing in the right hand
* A head followed by a solo by each melody instrument, and sometimes drums and bass, followed by a reprise of the head
However, many Latin rhythms are also sufficiently well-established to be considered straight-ahead. See also jazz waltz.
It is the Lingua franca of jazz jam sessions.
There are only 12 notes one can play, so we are just talking about the ways that they are combined and the varying degrees of structure that jazz players were using.
edit oops hookup already said that too.
Thank you.
Now which one of these terms would properly be used to refer to the music of Digable Planets, plaese?
Yes, Coltrane's "Giant Steps" is the antithesis of modal (fast, unusual, strict changes) -- and it's remarkable that Trane was doing this during the same period he was recording the big bang of modal with Miles' Kind Of Blue, "So What", after the success of the modal "Milestones".
modal is the same as changes except the changes don't change.
though, i feel Charlie Parker used this method as well, but i'm sure a lot of players during that time fed off of eachother and cultivated this style.
they be to jazz what teeth be to cock?
Me too...alla that...
Understanding modal versus straight shit is helped by first understanding the nature of improvisation.
Most early jazz stuff fit in the Statement, Fantasia, and Restatement structure. Meaning, the tune would start with the "chorus" (statement) then a solo (fantasia) and the restatement, ad infinitum. Songs were written around chord progressions. Solos were simply notes within the chords that were playing during any given bar.
New Orleans Jazz (1890s to 1920s) and Swing (1930s to 1940s) were both chord-based structured music forms with improvisation limited to the solos. Bebop (40s and 50s) made several breaks from NO and swing. While swing improvisation emphasized the notes of the chords forming the basic structure of the tune ("good" notes and "bad" notes theory), bop wrote tunes off of scales instead of chords, and everyone played off the same scale instead of playing over chords. Further, they extended the notion of what was good by using "passing" tones. (The notes halfway between other notes on the chromatic scale.)
Bop challenged the basic concept of harmonic structure itself. Bop guys chose strange key signatures, modes, scales, and time signatures to work in and improvise from. But for any experienced musician, switching keys or time signature is not hard. Look at studio session players who can play a song one way, then be told, "in C" and switch instantly. It's like math, really. Memorize the notes in a chord, memorize the scales, and everything can "fit" somewhere.
The later "free" schools suggested there are no harmonic or scalar constraints on notes. The musicians are spontaneously and simultaneously improvising the rules as well as the performance itself. This is where most people find their distaste for improvising.
Comparing Miles' early bop stuff to Miles Smiles shows the difference between modal and a more total improv thought. Sonny Rollins doing "I Got Rhythm" is exciting because he improvises the standard chord structure as well as the notes where most other versions played the same tired chord progression and improvised only in their solos. Charlie Parker's solos weren't formless. You would often hear him repeat the same thematic statements. But he was influential because he redefined improvisation by playing different combinations of notes that fit within a harmonic structure.
Others took it further and challenged the notion of form itself. Leaving the main melody left unstated, for example, and leaving it open for improvisation. In other words, the pretext for improvisation becomes improvising a pretext for improvisation.
modal is not a style
Oh shit!
Me too. I studied theory and counterpoint with an Andes classical guitarist who was incredible. I come from the punk school: power chords, fast, loud, screamy--"just add more distortion and it will be fine." And studying with him was very challenging. He was the complete opposite, understood theory and could dissect anything.
I studied with him mostly to learn more about melodic structure. We'd work on theory for an hour, then work on a jazz tune--improvising and running through the progression, then he'd ask me to play one of my songs so we could work on developing melodies.
It's funny to take time to write a song, work out chord changes, etc., then play it for a guy like him. He'd hear the first chord (never looking at what I was playing), close his eyes, nod a little, and then start playing melodies over it. It was incredibly weird for me to watch him play what I was trying to get out of my mind's ear for months.
Then we'd stop, he'd say, "well, it's a pretty basic minor seven thing that could benefit from some Phrygian action." He'd write out the scale, then start playing my song, and say, "now you solo!"
I'd be so pissed. I mean, he never once watched me play the song. I would always have to learn songs from watching other people play them. He could listen to the first few bars and pretty much figure out where the rest was going before I got there. It's really a beautiful thing to watch.
And it's a shame that most "musicians" today don't understand music theory, much less what "In the key of..." means.
fair enough.
how's about technique, or method?
kind of threw 'style' out there in a general sense, but thank you for correcting me.
cheers.
Oh fuck, I know just where you're coming from. I really need to step my theory game up. Just when your ego gets a bit up, then dude shits all over it. This is why I'm so humbled as a musician.
- spidey
Straight Ahead - Jazz that is not "free" or "avant-garde".
Modal - Jazz that is melodically based on one "scale" for the whole piece.
Modal stuff can sound "Straight Ahead".
Playing a real basic form of "modal jazz" is a easy way to get kids improvising early on. In classes I find a scale that will pretty much work over the changes for a certain standard (maybe a scale for the A section & a different one for the B section) teach the kids those scales & then they can just wail away over the progression & sound ok. Way easier for them than tackling the scales for each chord if their understanding isn't quite there yet (which is regularly the case at high school level, unless they are really hungering for the knowledge). Fun for them too.
the term modal has been used by dealers and collectors to mean a lot of different things now a days, waltzes are thrown under modal so is any jazz with a sitar or a repetitive bass line and the drummer playing on the toms
so when you see modal in a description usually you can bet it???s somewhat repetitive and might have an eastern sound to it, it has very little to do with composition or improvisation when it comes to records anymore