December 07, 2004

John Coltrane's composition "Giant Steps" forms both a ditone and quadratone progression between the key centers of B, Eb and G. Uh, right. Don't know nothing about Jazz but when you play this little animation, you can see there's some wicked structure underneath it all. (via Waxy)
  • pretty colors!
  • fascinating
  • You can learn a bit about Jazz Theory at this site. I've been working on playing/composing Jazz pieces, so if any of you monkeys know of any other good Jazz theory sites, I'd be more than happy to see them!
  • Doesn't this piece refer to the "giants steps" that the first students Little Rock took at the desegregated high school (with the national guard and the angry white mobs and all)? Or am I totally making shit up?
  • The title Giant Steps refers to the bass line that Paul Chambers played over the changes for the song. In other Giant Steps trivia, apparently the band hadn't rehearsed the songs for the record until they got in to the studio. Coltrane sent the music out to everyone but only included changes and the melody. Wynton Kelly is reported to have said of the sessions "We knew what he wanted to play, but didn't know he wanted to play it that fast." This may have just been Kelly's excuse for getting lost in the form during his solo.
  • In fact, Mexi, that's Tommy Flanagan bumbling his way through the master take and Cedar Walton playing on the alternate. Wynton K plays on a couple of other track on Giant Steps, notably Naima.
  • This is cool. Thanks, StoryBored.
  • I'd like to see some Coltrane's later modal stuff illustrated this way.
  • also discussed here
  • Well it's pretty but it doesn't really explain anything that useful. All jazz musicians (who else would care?) should be already aware of the 3rd relationships of the root tones-the animation is just eye candy. The important thing is to be able to recognize and hear these relationships from just looking at or listening to the chord changes themselves as part of what should be a reflexive analytical sense. Don't get me wrong, I liked it- I just think it has limited pedagological value. Good entertainment value though!
  • The shape of this cool graphic is the sierpinsky triangle, a well-studied fractal shape. Wonder if that's supposed to illustrate something fractal in the music structure?