Miles Davis "Summertime" (1958)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxwQ6VzxnUg&hl=en&fs=1&]

in 1953, pianist George Russell published his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, which offered an alternative to the practice of improvisation based on chords. Abandoning the traditional major and minor key relationships of Western music, Russell developed a new formulation using scales or a series of scales for improvisations. Russell's approach to improvisation came to be known as modal in jazz. Davis saw Russell's methods of composition as a means of getting away from the dense chord-laden compositions of his time, which Davis had labeled 'thick'. Modal composition, with its reliance on scales and modes, represented, as Davis put it, "a return to melody" (rovingeye2)

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George Russell checked out last night.
The Concept lives on.

Improvisation is Plural

Miles Davis illustrated the collective coherence of improvisation by having the so-called 'backing' players punctuate the soloist lines with ad-hoc phrases, jarring the 'leader' back into the real-time, a push-pull give-take phrase by phrase inter-PLAY described by Ornette as "what if 10 people all 'solo' at once?"; ex-Allman Bros guitarist Warren Haynes says much the same in this clip, he talks about being "one second behind your brain" and being "in the moment" as he's trading musical words in a southern blues dialect with Phish lead Trey Anastasio; there's also a brief guitar lesson over at gibson.com where Warren talks about Miles, about the spaces between notes and giving others room to be part of the now of the sound.


Amazon: Warren Haynes