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Recommended Reading
John Coltrane
‘Coltrane' was a saxophonist who worked primarily in the Hard Bop and Bepop idioms early on in his career and was later one the pioneers of the modal jazz movement and free improvisation. I will be focusing on his Hard Bop and Bebop playing. He had a prolific recording career with fifty sessions as a leader and many more as a sideman with other giants of the Jazz world such as Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis. Before the transcriptions of Coltrane can be analysed his sound and style must first be considered.
To describe his playing as powerful would certainly be an understatement and without a doubt it is the focal point of the vast majority of his recordings. His bright edgy tone has been a source of discussion for decades with saxophonist’s world wide trying to take on aspects of it and there have been few success stories. It is believed that one of the main reasons Coltrane sounded so different from all other tenor players at the time was due to poor dental health that meant his embouchure technique was significantly different from other Saxophonists at the time.
Coltrane employed extremely dense improvisational patterned lines comprised of high-speed arpeggios played in rapid success, he also made large use of chromaticism in his improvisations. These lines were sometimes faster than semi–quavers and could be made up of anything from quintuplets to septuplets and due to their rapid nature would sound like glissandi. It is thought Coltrane invented this style of improvisation when playing with Thelonious Monk and developed it further when returning as a sideman once again to the Miles Davis group. In an issue of Downbeat magazine in 1958 the Jazz critic Ira Gitler most adeptly summarises this style of playing.
"As he learned harmonically from Davis and Monk, and developed his mechanical skills, a new more confident Coltrane emerged. He has used long lines and multi-noted figures within these lines, but in 1958 he started playing sections that might be termed 'sheets of sound'."
It is thought that Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’ period of playing was mainly between the years 1957 – 1960 and those are exactly the years that I will be studying.
Note - Students will gain far more from this article if they have a correct and accurate transcription of Coltrane's solo from Giant Steps to reference.
Giant Steps
As a band leader Coltrane gave us many musical gifts throughout his sadly short musical career; arguably one of his greatest works and in my opinion one of the most famous and technically demanding pieces he composed has to be his 16 bar epic; Giant Steps. Recorded in 1960 when his Bepop playing was at its strongest Giant Steps is a significant landmark on the musicians map from beginner to master.
Giant Steps exemplified Coltrane’s melodic phrasing that nowadays is known as ‘sheets of sound’ and featured what was a new harmonic concept of the time, a peculiar set of changes that tend to move in thirds, known as ‘Coltrane changes’. With its original tempo set around 290bpm and the harmony moving lightning fast, to adeptly perform Giant Steps is no easy task.
Giant Steps is a perfect example of John Coltrane’s virtuosity and why he is one of the greatest Tenor Saxophonists ever. This is evident from the last two choruses of his first solo (12 and 13) in that his playing in a very difficult area of the saxophone sounds so proficient and natural. With regards to the technical aspect of Coltrane’s improvisations his musicianship is absolutely flawless. He displays a wonderful sense of feel throughout with blistering quaver lines incorporating extended harmony and use of ghost notes. Coltrane is ahead of the beat throughout the recording and this gives an intense sense of urgency to his playing, even the melody is pushed as most lead sheets for the head of Giant Steps would have you believe the melody is primarily made up of minims but an inquisitive ear will notice that is actually a dotted crotchet and then a quaver more often than not. (Bars 1-4)
His phrasing throughout is a perfect example of his ‘sheets of sound’ style of playing, employing extremely dense improvisational yet patterned lines consisting of rapid arpeggios and scale patterns played in rapid succession. Throughout his ideas are almost entirely diatonic, due to the tempo of the recording and the difficulty of the harmonic content it would be unrealistic for even a master improviser like Coltrane take his improvisations ‘outside’. This is seen from the outset of his solo as bars 1-8 are comprised of 1235 chord tone patterns and arpeggiated lines.
Coltrane uses the bepop scale and pre conceived licks and motifs to great effect throughout his solo, especially on the 2-5 movements; this is evident in almost every chorus in bar 8 and 14 over the 2-5-1 in to F major. Again this can be seen in Bar 2 of chorus 1,4 12 and 13 where he plays the exact same descending 4 note motif over the C7 starting on the 9 of the mixolidian scale.
While it is evident the vast majority of his improvisational ideas have come from pre-conceived patterns and licks Coltrane does still display a use of melodic development using his ‘3 times’ rule discussed previously in the analyses of ‘Blue Train’. In this context however it is far more subtle and stretched out through the entirety of the solo. Triadic arpeggios and triplet patterns are a significant feature in Bar 12 of the form also.
Another interesting observation on Giant Steps is this the way in which he often slides up to notes in the upper register, especially E. This is due to a slight flaw in his technique as perhaps he had some difficulty hitting the high notes bang on. It is well know his intonation was rarely perfect when playing high and often sharp so it is likely he used glissandi to acquire greater intonation in what was comparatively for him a relatively weak area of the instrument.
