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Keith Waters
What is modal jazz? Jazz historians usually have no trouble identifying Miles Davis' 1958 recording of "Milestones," and his 1959 recordings of "So What," and "Flamenco Sketches" ( Kind of Blue ) as important points of departure for modal jazz. In addition to Davis, historians are quick to cite John Coltrane as the other early representative of modal jazz, usually beginning with Coltrane's 1960 recording of "My Favorite Things," and including "Impressions," "India," up through Coltrane's 1964 landmark recording A Love Supreme . Following this first wave of modal jazz, other musicians, including Davis' and Coltrane's sidemen--pianists Herbie Hancock and McCoy Tyner, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter--continued and extended the modal innovations pioneered by Davis and Coltrane.
But while it is relatively easy to identify who , it is still difficult to identify specifically what modal jazz is. General discussions of modal jazz rely on descriptive terms such as static harmony, ambiguous harmony, the use of "sus" chords or chords built in fourths. More analytical presentations typically call attention to roughly tour related characteristics: 1) the use of extended pedal points; 2) the suppression or absence of standard functional harmonic progressions; 3) slow harmonic rhythm, in which 4, 8, 12, 16, 32 or more measures may consist of a single harmony; and--significant for the use of the term "modal"--(4) the association of a seven-note scalar collection (the mode) for each harmony, providing a source of pitches for improvisation
miles davis (r) and john coltrane (c) were early representatives of modal jazz. ray avery archives or accompaniment.
Some of the problems and ambiguities of the term "modal" seem clear from the list above. Do these characteristics describe improvisation , related to a soloist's available note choices? Do they describe accompaniment , related to the harmonies provided by the comping instruments? Or do they describe composition , related to the original melody and chords of the composition itself? Clearly these ideas of improvisation, accompaniment, and composition are closely related; but they don't necessarily refer to the same thing. And some historians and theorists have even called into question the adequacy of the term "modal," since the characteristics itemized above--the characteristics associated with modal jazz--don't all specifically have to do with the use of a modal...