FAVORITE MODAL JAZZ ALBUM...
Swayze
14,705 Posts
Post your favorite Modal Jazz album(s)(from wikipedia):An understanding of modal jazz requires knowledge of musical modes. In bebop as well as in hard bop, musicians used chords to provide the background for their solos. A song would start out with a theme, which would introduce the chords used for the solos. These chords would be repeated throughout the whole song, while the soloists would play new, improvised themes over the repeated chord progression. By the 1950s, improvising over chords had become such a dominant part of jazz, that sidemen at recording dates were sometimes given nothing more than a list of chords to play from. Creating innovative solos became exceedingly difficult.In the later 1950s, spurred by the experiments of composer and bandleader George Russell, musicians began using a modal approach. They chose not to write their songs using chords, but instead used modal scales. This meant that the bassist, for instance, did not have to 'walk' from one important note of a chord to that of another - as long as he stayed in the scale being used and accentuated the right notes within the scale, he could go virtually everywhere. The pianist, to give another example, would not have to play the same chords or variations of the chords, but could do anything, as long as he stayed within the scale being used. The overall result was more freedom of expression.In fact, the way that a soloist creates a solo changed dramatically with the advent of modal jazz. Before, the goal of a soloist was to play a solo that fit into a set of chords. However, with modal jazz, a soloist must create a melody in one scale (typically), which could be potentially boring for the listener. Therefore, the goal of the musician was now to make the melody as interesting as possible. Modal jazz was, in essence, a return to melody. 
Comments
This is probably the only album that fully let me understand what modal jazz was. Coltrane really owns this.
In case anyone needs to be reminded.
- spidey
i been listenin to that spirit free plays starship quite a bit lately
i love that joint. i think thats a modal jazz album
Thanks a lot for this! Tears almost came!
Nice list of course. Turkish women at the bath isn't the "biggest item" up there but it is very serious indeed.
I will trade you a copy of joe henderson for "companionship," cool? Then you could find it!
Did that just happen?
Timeless music is incapable of being 'played out'.
IT SOUNDS BETTER IN UNBOXED MONO SHEFFIELD PLANT PRESSING WITH LOW STAMPER NUMBER
DEAL
some of the (more or less) modal jazz highlights of my collection:
Joki Freund - Jogi Jazz
Nathan Davis - HipWalk
Gunter Hampel - Heartplants
Sahib Shihab - Jazz Sahib
Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland - Latin Kaleidoscope/all blues/all smiles..
i would kill for a copy of james tatum..
many of these records are not modal.
Is there a question you won't answer with this record?
Do you sleep with it under your pillow?
Now now SoI, he's got a Karin Krog album too he occasionally uses for answering
hey, besides that..its my avatar!
ok, i might have overused the record on soulstrut already, but hey, here it fits just perfectly.
i dont sleep with records. it doesnt fit.