Good place to start learning Jazz Harmony

[rackerg4]

The Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine

[Deep Purple]

OTOH you get maximal motion with eg. Giant Steps by Coltrane, albeit the device is relatively simple.

Tommy Flanagan probably still has nightmares about the 'Giant Steps' sessions.

[jancivil]

That account may be more notorious than it deserves. I just listened to the original recording and I didn't notice anything wrong.

The Berklee book is probably a good focus.

[jancivil]

Bill Evans' work in the song form paradigm uses really exemplary voice-leading and for the ultimate exquisite jazz flavor this is it IMO.

"Exquisite jazz flavor"...
This type of "jazz" has more in common with romanticism and impressionism than with dixie and blues or swing etc.

You will learn more from stuff like Persichetti or Ulehla's books.

Before this you did Jazz arrangers knew well Debussy and Ravel etc.



Ludmilla Ulehla appears to have written the one book: Contemporary Harmony – Romanticism Through the 12-Tone Row. Congrats, you cited something really obscure.

Trad jazz is just diatonic, there's no *jazz harmony* to speak of. Swing is before the harmonic interest really takes off.
Blues harmony?...

Bill Evans...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnhFSTG1m9Q

[Deep Purple]

That account may be more notorious than it deserves. I just listened to the original recording and I didn't notice anything wrong.

There aren't any suspect notes; I think the number of pauses in his solo comes over as a little awkward though.

I might be wrong, but I thought he expressed his displeasure at not having time to rehearse between being given the lead sheet and the start of recording.

[nordickvr]

That account may be more notorious than it deserves. I just listened to the original recording and I didn't notice anything wrong.

There aren't any suspect notes; I think the number of pauses in his solo comes over as a little awkward though.

I might be wrong, but I thought he expressed his displeasure at not having time to rehearse between being given the lead sheet and the start of recording.

He re recorded it in the 80’s (1982) with his trio.
Giant Steps (subtitled In Memory of John Coltrane).

[Michael L]

FYI, there are two book/CDs, The Harmony of Bill Evans vol 1 and 2 by Jack Reilly. Vol 1 is a harmonic, thematic, modal and intervalic analysis of eight songs. It presents relevant theory, points out examples, and then gives an overview of that section of the composition.

For example, Reilly presents the rules of voicing in “Peri’s Scope”
1. Use the root, third and seventh under the melody;
2. Omit the fifth of the chord;
3. For added, optional color, add a ninth, eleventh, or thirteenth

He then presents examples and says, "Observe in all of the examples that the root is always the bass note and above the root you place the third, seventh, and melody" and then describes how the voice leading alternates depending on the root movement.

Here's a live + midi version of that composition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks3ZAzy4TS0
This is just a slow walk through the intro to another Evans piece, following the harmony, tempo and voice leading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IImQRQmQVxY

[Deep Purple]

That account may be more notorious than it deserves. I just listened to the original recording and I didn't notice anything wrong.

There aren't any suspect notes; I think the number of pauses in his solo comes over as a little awkward though.

I might be wrong, but I thought he expressed his displeasure at not having time to rehearse between being given the lead sheet and the start of recording.

He re recorded it in the 80’s (1982) with his trio.
Giant Steps (subtitled In Memory of John Coltrane).

Didn't realize that - is it a good performance?

[nordickvr]

That account may be more notorious than it deserves. I just listened to the original recording and I didn't notice anything wrong.

There aren't any suspect notes; I think the number of pauses in his solo comes over as a little awkward though.

I might be wrong, but I thought he expressed his displeasure at not having time to rehearse between being given the lead sheet and the start of recording.

He re recorded it in the 80’s (1982) with his trio.
Giant Steps (subtitled In Memory of John Coltrane).

Didn't realize that - is it a good performance?

Well, I wouldn't be comfortable critiquing it.
That said, it'v been said that he wanted to do it again because he wasn't happy with the version he did on Coltrane's original record.

[jancivil]

Some remarks as to the Bill Evans presented there (the thumbnail depiction):

He likes the V4/2 to I6 voicing; the seventh in the bass on the dominant to the third in the bass in the resolution. The 6 chord m.o. is about temporary resolution and/or tonicizing other degrees.
You see the chord marked 'Dm7' and he's substituted an F^7. You get the extensions, 9th and 13th in close voicings.

At [56] you see both a Bb7 and an E7 depicted; B in the left hand agrees with Cb in the right hand, a b9 on Bb, while Bb is the b5 of E. Classic flat five substitution principle.

These are all defining features of modern jazz harmony.

[nordickvr]

@Jancivil
This is not often that I'v heard Bill Evans playing a twelve bar blues.
Its not even clear in my memory that I'v ever did...
Thanks for posting.

re: Peri's Scope
This sequenced version fells pretty weird to listen at.
Interesting to learn, obviously.
But the way Bill Evans phrases flow, the way it breathes.
Its totally out of this world.
Not sure if my bad english even makes some sense here...

re: Mr Flanagan
I just cannot stop listening back to this take of Mack the Knife he did with Ella Fitzgerald at some TV show in the 60's (seems to be at Stockholm in 1963...).
Can hear the full orchestra just listening to his comping.
And lets just not even talk about Madame Fitzgerald's.
As a Jazz lesson, one can come back to it at infinity...

[jancivil]

A real salient point of Aimee's deconstruction is the sort of blur of ii and V there in the last resolution in the analysis: Cm - F7 - Bb^7; one thing she didn't point to there was the ii chord focused on the root and 3rd of I. The resolution is oblique, too. So there's a lot of techniques there; anticipation being one. Also see how it's Bb+5 on top of the ostensible F7 (sus 4* b9 13).

Also note the close voicing which gets you such pungent dissonances.


But as to Bill Evans being 'impressionistic/romantic' "jazz" in scare quotes rather than real jazz, modern jazz notices *those things and leverages them for the emotions; but the turnarounds, the treatment of dominant (and tonicizing other degrees) is an abstraction of popular song treatments, does amounts to "tropes" and cannot be dismissed if we're talking about the idiom.

syntax

[mguerrero90]

Jazz is all about improvisation and getting used to using the more dissonant harmonies in meaningful context. Stuff like modal jazz is a lot simpler than it sounds since its whole point is to focus more on the patterns than the notes, so stuff like simple repeating patterns in techno could be said to have some heritage from modal jazz. And that comes from debussy where he placed a focus on impressionism that make us react CULTURALLY more than harmonically. That is a focus of jazz as well, to make sounds that reflect our real life, like a horse, like a crash, like a walk, etc. The point of music is to make the listener react and feel something in some way, its not to get deep into abstract theory and that was a central idea to the genesis of the golden era of jazz and the music that inspired it.

I think the etudes by debussy is a great listening exercise to see what I mean. Its not just about the notes, the articulation and the emotion are key as well. Music is NOT about the theory, its about what you hear and feel as a result of a performance. The same piece of music will have a different effect when played by different people, if you cant tell the difference between different versions of the same piece you really arent able to enjoy jazz properly. If for you, some dumb ho playing a piece sounds just as powerful as a grandmaster, then jazz will be noise to you.

Also, a lot of jazz sounds like shit on purpose because they knew white dumbasses would listen just to seem superior. For example, is bitches brew a good jazz album? There is a lot of literature and opinions on both sides of the argument you could read if you want to familiarize yourself more with the attitudes and ideas surrounding jazz. For me, my favorite jazz composer was Mingus. Even if I sound this pretentious (lol) jazz is incredibly deep, and jazz artists were incredibly able and well versed in being commercial and artistic at the same time.

[Poppamoet]

just learn scales and intervals to start with . when your talking jazz its just about improv and extended chords . progressions like 2,5 , 1 lots of 7th chords, 13th, 11, 9ths, 6ths , swing and different polyrythms

[tapper mike]

re: Peri's Scope
This sequenced version fells pretty weird to listen at.
Interesting to learn, obviously.
But the way Bill Evans phrases flow, the way it breathes.
Its totally out of this world.
Not sure if my bad english even makes some sense here...

That makes perfect sense from what I know. Evans threw away the metronome. What he performed wasn't rubato instead it was a push pull thing. He would displace time.

Marian McPartland interviewed Bill Evans. Well worth a listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-8VamlySXU&t=421s