THINKING IN JAZZ
The Infinite Art of Improvisation
PAUL F. BERLINER
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 1994 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1994
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 6 7 8 9
ISBN (paper): 0-226-04381-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berliner, Paul.
Thinking in jazz: the infinite art of improvisation / Paul F. Berliner.
p. cm. — (Chicago studies in ethnomusicology)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ), discography (p. ), filmography (p. ), and index.
ISBN 0-226-04380-0. — ISBN 0-226-04381-9 (pbk.)
1. Jazz— History and criticism. 2. Improvisation (Music) 3. Jazz musicians—Interviews. I. Title. II. Series.
ML3506.B475 1994
781.65′136—dc20 93-34660
CIP
MN
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Pictured on cover, clockwise from left: Billy Bauer (guitar), Eddie Safranski (bass), Charlie Parker, and Lennie Tristano (piano).
eISBN: 978-0-226-04452-1
To the Artists of the Jazz Tradition
CONTENTS
List of Figures
list of Music Texts
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Picking Notes out of Thin Air?
Improvisation and Its Study
PART I
Initial Preparations for Jazz
Chapter One
Love at First Sound: Early Musical Environment
Chapter Two
Hangin’ Out and Jammin’: The Jazz Community as an Educational System
PART II
Cultivating the Soloist’s Skills
Chapter Three
A Very Structured Thing: Jazz Compositions as Vehicles for Improvisation
Chapter Four
Getting Your Vocabulary Straight: Learning Models for Solo Formulation
Chapter Five
Seeing Out a Bit: Expanding upon Early Influences
Chapter Six
The More Ways You Have of Thinking: Conventional Rhythmic and Theoretical Improvisation Approaches
Chapter Seven
Conversing with the Piece: Initial Routines Applying Improvisation Approaches to Form
Chapter Eight
Composing in the Moment: The Inner Dialogue and the Tale
Chapter Nine
Improvisation and Precomposition: The Eternal Cycle
Chapter Ten
The Never-ending State of Getting There: Soloing Ability, Ideals, and Evaluations
PART III
Collective Aspects of Improvisation
Chapter Eleven
Arranging Pieces: Decisions in Rehearsal
Chapter Twelve
Adding to Arrangements: Conventions Guiding the Rhythm Section
Chapter Thirteen
Give and Take: The Collective Conversation and Musical Journey
Chapter Fourteen
When the Music’s Happening and When It’s Not: Evaluating Group Performances
Chapter Fifteen
The Lives of Bands: Conflict Resolution and Artistic Development
PART IV
Additional Factors Affecting Improvisation, and Epilogue
Chapter Sixteen
Vibes and Venues: Interacting with Different Audiences in Different Settings
Epilogue: Jazz as a Way of Life
PART V
Music Texts
Appendix A: House Congressional Resolution 57
Appendix B: List of Artists Interviewed
Sources
Notes
Discography
Videography
Bibliography
Index
F I G U R E S
3.1 Simple blues progression
3.2 Popular song form AABA: “I Got Rhythm”
3.3 Popular song form ABAB’: “She Rote”
3.4 Popular song form ABAC: “On Green Dolphin Street”
3.5 ii–V–I progression within different compositions
3.6 Harmonic turnbacks
3.7 Lead sheet samples of alternative harmony, “I Thought about You”
3.8 Elaborate blues progression
4.1 Barry Harris’s dictation of common bebop figure
5.1 John McNeil’s genealogy of representative trumpet players, with focus on the years 1945–93
6.1 The beat as an elliptical figure
6.2 Barry Harris’s rhythmic chanting exercises
13.1 Synchronization between walking bass and cymbal time-keeping patterns
MUSIC TEXTS
1.1 Trumpet and saxophone notation key
1.2 Drum set notation key
3.1 Alternative representations of melody
3.2 Features of jazz vehicles
3.3 Various strategies in rendering melody
3.4 Alternative representations of harmonic form
3.5 Comparing harmonic movement within blues and AABA compositions
3.6 A sample of chord voicings
3.7 Embellishing chords
3.8 Substitutions: harmonic alteration chords
3.9 Substitutions: chords having different roots
3.10 Substitutions: harmonic insertion chords
3.11 Blues effects of substitute chords
3.12 Elastic interpretation of harmonic form
4.1 Joe Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues” solo and its re-creations, 1923-37
4.2 Diversity of jazz ideas or vocabulary patterns
4.3 Sources of vocabulary
5.1 Dizzy Gillespie’s complex approach to rhythm
5.2 Different approaches to melodic invention
5.3 Features of different vocabulary stores
5.4 Approaches to invention for solo piano
5.5 Approaches to invention for solo drums
5.6 Personalization of a vocabulary pattern
6.1 One-noting improvisations
6.2 Rhythmic phrasing in relation to harmonic form
6.3 Animating the features of phrases
6.4 Unpredictable, playful use of rests
6.5 Elastic manipulation of rhythm
6.6 Melodic application of chord substitutions within blues structure
6.7 Barry Harris’s dictation of scale transformation by chromatic and mordent ornamentation
6.8 Charlie Parker’s practice of pivoting
6.9 Barry Harris’s derivation of rules from Charlie Parker solo
7.1 Blues structure of improvised phrases
7.2 Sample of melody rendition and its subsequent quotation
7.3 Patterns combined with diverse harmonic backgrounds
7.4 Displacement and transposition of vocabulary within different compositions
7.5 Rhythmic transformations of an etude
7.6 Expanding networks within a community of ideas
7.7 Interpretive extraction
7.8 Truncation and contraction
7.9 Pitch substitution
7.10 Conservative rephrasing
7.11 Radical rephrasing
7.12 Radical rephrasing with rest fragmentation
7.13 Expansion by interpolation
7.14 Cadential extensions
7.15 Improvising from finger patterns
8.1 Repeating an idea, while conceiving the idea
to follow
8.2 Running a figure into itself
8.3 Answering an idea by repeating it in a different octave
8.4 Creating sequences
8.5 Repeating an idea and extending it with a cadential figure
8.6 Repeating an idea approached through an introductory figure
8.7 Balanced call and response phrases with altered response
8.8 Interpretive extraction generating consecutive ideas
8.9 Developmental sections based on ostinatos
8.10 Developing ideas through rhythmic variation
8.11 Variations on complex rhythmic-melodic material
8.12 Extensive call and response practices
8.13 Multiple treatments of a Clifford Brown signature pattern
8.14 Forty-six years in the life of a lick, 1946-92
8.15 Going away from and returning to a pattern
8.16 Double-backing within an ongoing line
8.17 Beginning a phrase with the last pitch of the previous phrase
8.18 Working within particular intervals
8.19 Balancing the phrase lengths of consecutive ideas
8.20 Creating increasingly longer phrases
8.21 Expanding the range of consecutive phrases
8.22 Unfolding development of a chordal improvisation approach
8.23 Dynamic movements among different musical concepts
8.24 Formulating a unique solo chorus from components of different choruses
8.25 Chorus designs for solos
9.1 Figure in different linear settings
9.2 Different applications of an embellishing mordent
9.3 Different applications of a grupetto-like gesture
9.4 Booker Little pattern in various solo settings and roles
9.5 Recurring vocabulary patterns within a single performance
9.6 Booker Little solo “Minor Sweet” model: long chain of vocabulary patterns
9.7 Phrases derived from Booker Little solo “Minor Sweet” model
9.8 Radical departures from Booker Little solo “Minor Sweet” model
9.9 Artist’s re-creation of own precomposed solo
12.1 Approaches to invention for bass accompaniment
12.2 Common bass vocabulary patterns
12.3 The personalization of bass vocabulary patterns
12.4 Recurring vocabulary chains in bass lines
12.5 Ride cymbal and hi-hat time-keeping patterns: model and variants
12.6 Drum punctuations around time-keeping patterns
12.7 The personalization of drum vocabulary patterns
12.8 Drum fills as structural markers
12.9 Chorus designs for drum accompaniment
12.10 Chorus designs for piano accompaniment
13.1 Rhythmic tension among the accompanying parts
13.2 Balancing expressions of freedom and constraint between bass player and drummer
13.3 Exchanging patterns between drummer and pianist
13.4 Intensified interplay between drummer and pianist
13.5 Composite representation of chord by bass player and pianist
13.6 Bass player and pianist interrelating different harmonic pathways
13.7 Exchanging melodic-harmonic ideas between bass player and pianist
13.8 Melodic-rhythmic interplay between bass player and pianist
13.9 Interplay between bass player and drummer
13.10 Interplay between soloist and drummer
13.11 Melodic interplay between soloist and pianist
13.12 Rhythmic interplay between soloist and pianist
13.13 Harmonic interrelationships among pianist, bass player, and soloist
13.14 Melodic-rhythmic interplay between soloist and bass player
13.15 Intensified conversation across all the parts
13.16 Responding to ideas introduced in the previous solo prior to its final phrase
13.17 Responding to the previous soloist’s final phrase
13.18 Soloists trading fours and other short phrases
13.19 Range, voicing, and contour during group interplay
13.20 Accompaniments defining structural cadences through increased activity
13.21 Collaborative changes in mood, texture, and time-feeling
13.22 Musical save
13.23 Miles Davis Quintet large score segment: “Bye Bye, Blackbird”
13.24 John Coltrane Quartet large score segment: “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise”
13.25 Miles Davis Quintet large score segment: “I Thought about You”
13.26 Miles Davis Quintet large score segment: “Blues by Five”
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Any work of this kind, which has been in the making for many years and has depended on many different methods of data collection—each with its own demands on time and resources—owes its success to the cooperation and support of many individuals and institutions. I am indebted, foremost, to the musicians/interviewees named in appendix B, whose views inspired and challenged my own thinking about music throughout the study, constantly influencing its course. Readers who are not familiar with the artists by reputation will find short biographies of most in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Kernfeld 1988d). Providing an invaluable background for the project was private study over the years with several other jazz musicians cited in the work: trumpeters Johnny Coppola, Julius Ellerby, and Herb Pomeroy; pianists Howard Levy and Alan Swain; and saxophonists Joe Giudice, Warren James, Charlie Mariano, and Makanda Ken McIntyre. (I did course work with McIntyre as well in graduate school at Wesleyan University.) Still others, artists Donald Byrd, Betty Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Warren Kime, Don Sickler, Ira Sullivan, Art Taylor, Billy Taylor, and Dick Whitsell, shared ideas with me informally at nightclub and concert engagements and other venues.
Different aspects of the research were carried out under the auspices of a number of organizations. In 1978 Northwestern University’s Office for Research and Sponsored Programs funded a pilot project, which crystallized many questions for further research. Two years later, a National Endowment for the Humanities grant supported comprehensive interviews with jazz musicians in New York City, and assistance from the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries helped with the interviews’ transcription. Generous sponsorship by the Spencer Foundation subsequently provided the opportunity to analyze the interview data, to initiate a component of the project transcribing recorded improvisations, and to begin preparation of a manuscript based on the study’s preliminary findings. I am especially grateful to Mr. H. Thomas James, the Foundation’s former president, his wife, Mrs. Vienna James, and to Mrs. Marion M. Faldet, former Foundation vice-president and secretary, for their special interest in the research and commitment to its goals. My residence as a research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Study and Conference Center in the spring of 1984 produced a major breakthrough in teasing out the themes of the oral history material, and, between 1988 and 1990, a partial research fellowship and supplementary assistance from Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (under the directorships of Susan Lee and Dwight Conquergood) enabled me to integrate the oral history material with additional musicological data. The University’s Center and School of Music helped subsidize a continuation of the transcription work and the preparation of musical examples for this book. I am especially appreciative of the personal encouragement I received throughout the study from the School’s former dean, Thomas W. Miller, and his wife, Peggy Miller, and from the current dean, Bernard Dobroski.
A number of professional jazz musicians, composers, and music theorists with jazz performance experience collaborated with me in transcribing recorded improvisations and participated in the collective process of score revision described in the headnote to part 5 of this work. Bassist Larry Gray focused largely on transcribing bass and piano parts; drummer David Fodor, the drum set parts; guitarist Stephen Ramsdell and tuba player Richard Watson, the solo parts. Joining us in
editing the transcriptions were music theorist-pianist James Dossa, pianist Michael Kocour, keyboardist Shawn Decker, and saxophonist Robert Fried. An overlapping team helped prepare computer-generated music copy. Ryan Beveridge, Shawn Decker, David Fodor, Arne Eigenfeldt, and Robert Fried worked with the “Finale” program; James Dossa, with “Score.” Building on the herculean efforts of their colleagues, Fried and Dossa’s skillful work is largely responsible for the professional appearance of the final examples. No challenge seemed beyond their virtuoso control of the music writing programs.
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