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What to L is ten fo r in Jazz

Part I

What to Listen forin Jazz

IntroductionSome Common Overall Song Shapes

Big Building Blocks for Songs

New Bottle, Old Wine

What is This Thing Called Harmony?

Cadences – The Basic LEGO Brick

Using LEGO Bricks to Map a Song

All the Joins There Are

A Final Hover over Hovers

From Here…

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Part I: What to Listen For In Jazz

Introduction

In this chapter you will find out a lot about how jazz versions of 'standards' work. You willmeet the basic procedures used by jazz players, together with many of the patterns and other

phenomena that go into putting the music together .

What Is This Thing Called?Musicians use different words to describe the material they play. Words like Standard , Original ,

Tune, Number . They all mean the same thing. You will also hear the 'C' word, Composition,

used. (By the time you have finished this book you will see why this word is not just a ghastly

solecism, but actually militates against jazz players getting proper recognition - and money -for

what they do). The word I use in this book has been in general currency in jazz since the 1920's,

deployed by players of all schools, and that is Song . Note that calling something a song does not

necessarily imply the existence of words, simply of melody. We all know what we mean by a'singing' phrase or tone, and we have all heard of 'Songs Without Words'.

Only ConnectYou will discover just how much songs which are apparently different actually have in common

with each other. If you aren't a musician, this will probably surprise you at first. Then it will

delight you. If you are a musician, you will be able to reap immediate benefits in terms both of

being able to memorise more songs easily, and to think about them coherent ly while you play.

Either way, it is a real voyage of discovery.

Stop Look and ListenSimply by getting you to stop periodically and listen to a piece of music, this chapter will show

you how to acquire a comprehensive and fully detailed knowledge of the many notions and

procedures which make up the complex thing we know as jazz. Whatever else may happen,

wherever else you go, this will enrich your listening experience greatly and permanently.

But although this chapter uses no 'technical' language at all, musicians in particular should not be

tempted to skip it. The perspective it gives on the music is necessary for success in playing. All

of this knowledge is an essential prerequisite for players. In fact it is so important that it makes

no sense to clutter up the text (as so many books do) with the purely technical aspects until the

proper understanding is in place.

Human nature being what it is, the real temptation is somehow to feel that listening to music(which is all that What to Listen For asks you to do!) is not work.

I

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Do not yield to this, because on the contrary, listening is the real work!

This chapter will teach you from scratch if that is what you need, and if you already know a great

deal it will show you how to organise that knowledge to get more out of it.

Even non-musicians will acquire a comprehensive and natural-feeling vocabulary with which to

describe what they hear concisely and accurately

I promised you no jargon and I meant it.

Until you get used to listening for sections of songs, all problems of your locating the part of the

song I am referring to at particular times, are solved by using a vocal version, and referring to the

lyrics .

I do use a couple of terms to refer to musical 'things', but you will find you are already familiar

with them through listening, even if you didn't know the names before. The first is the word

'beat'. If you pat your foot, or clap along to the music, you know what the beat is. Associated

with that is the idea of the 'measure'. If you can tell a waltz when you hear one, you know whata measure is! You know it is a waltz because you can feel that 'one-two-three one-two-three' in

the rhythm. That is, you can hear that there is, regularly, a firmer beat among the others. When

counting, we start with this as 'One'. Musicians use the sensible word 'measure' to indicate the

space between these firmer beats. So for instance, in Waltz for Debby there are three beats to a

measure, in Autumn Leaves there are four beats to a measure.

The word 'bar' is also commonly used instead of 'measure', because of the bar (line), on sheet

music that separates one measure from another.

Make A Set of Companion Recordings

To use this section properly, you should first make up, on Cassette, MiniDisc, CD or whatever, asdescribed in the section of the Introduction called How to Get the Best Out Of This Book , a set of

recordings corresponding to the points where the text says ‘Listen Now’. Without the Companion

Recordings to hand, you won't know the sounds the text is referring to. And if you don't know

them, you won't learn them. And if you don't learn them you won't be able to use them. Take all

the time you need to get your Companion Recordings together.

Don't Expect Too Much Too SoonIn this chapter, most of the things described are simple, and relatively easy to grasp. Even so,

you may find yourself not understanding everything at once. The important thing is not to worry

about that! I suggest you read through the directed listening text, with the Compilation on as you

do it, but not expecting everything to go in the first time. Every moment you spend working onit, you are listening to some of the best music there is, so it is not a bad place to be. As you get

used to more and more of what this chapter teaches, you will feel free to concentrate on what is

left.

It doesn't get harder as it goes on, so not 'getting' something doesn't mean you have to stop.

And if your Companion Recordings have complete tracks, you have every chorus of the track to

listen over and over, while the message sinks in.

So your subsequent listening will consolidate the knowledge and experience. Feel free just to

plough on. The book will always be here for you to come back and check things out.

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Theme and VariationsMost jazz performances, and all the ones for which this book is designed to help you, use a basic

'theme and variations' approach. That is, usually, the 'theme' (the melody) is played at the outset

by one or more players, followed by one or more 'solos ', and concluded by some form of

repetition of the theme to bring everything back together.

This simple format (also used widely in many other different forms of music) works well

psychologically. The terr itory is staked out at the beginning (the opening theme statement) so

that the listener knows what the performance is going to be about. Because of this the listener

can keep the melody in mind as a guide with which to follow the logic of the 'solos'. The closing

theme statement is like the recapitulation at the end of a good lecture - it reminds listeners of the

subject, and consolidates the experience.

The simplicity is not prescriptive however. It does not force musicians to use a steady tempo, or

exact numbers of measures unless the players themselves want it to . And where the melody is

well known to the audience, it is even possible to dispense with playing it altogether, or to

substitute an alternative one, like playing Ornithology instead of How High the Moon . This highdegree of flexibility is another reason why the song form is so generally used. It is a real,

disciplined structure, but it allows almost unlimited freedom in practice. As we will see later (in

the section called The Song As Raga in Part II Perspectives and Polemics) there was a point in

jazz history where it looked as if 'theme and variat ions ' had run its course . But what in fact

happened was that many of the 'free' players came back to songs and played them even better than

before, because they brought their new discoveries with them.

An Introduction to Song Shapes

It may not have occurred to you that songs should have 'shapes', but the more you listen, the more

you find that that is the best way to think of them. They have 'sections' inside them, like

paragraphs in a book, or lines in a poem, and sometimes these sect ions are repeated, either withthe same, or more usually, with different words.

Some forms of country dancing use actual shapes on the printed page to describe the dance: a

(literal) set of motions to be gone through, and then gone through again for as long as the band

continues to play. In exactly the same way, when somebody sings or plays a song, you can think

of it as a sort of dance through the song's shape. With most songs, you know when the dance is

complete because usually, if the song doesn't just end, the words start again, or what is plainly a

new set of words starts, or it could be that an instrumental interlude begins.

The name for this dance through the shape is a chorus . And you can tell what the chorus is

because it is one complete set of words.

Most jazz performances of songs, by singers as well as by instrumentalists, involve doing the

'dance' more than once - that is taking several choruses.

So what musicians mean when they shout 'take another chorus' or 'one more', or something of the

sort, is to encourage the performer to repeat the dance over at least once again before they stop.

If you want to understand what jazz musicians are doing with songs, you must learn the songs

yourself , so that when you listen you can share with the musicians the knowledge of where they

are in the songs at any given point, and what they are doing.

'If You Have To Count, You're Lost'

Learning the songs consists of learning the melodies and then enough of the words to locate you

in the chorus. Why learn the words? As you will soon see, most songs repeat parts of theirmelodies, often several times over. If you think of these as just 'repeats', it is alarmingly easy to

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get lost because a single moment's lapse in concentration and you are no longer sure which repeat

you are on!

This can even happen to professionals. Even to John Coltrane! At the outset of his solo on Speak

Low from Sonny Clark's Sonny's Crib album (the originally issued take, not the alternative), heforgets the repeat of the first section of the tune. Only for a split second though, and he rapidly

resumes with where he should have been. Bassist Butch Warren accompanying Herbie Hancock

on Hank Mobley's Old Word, New Imports (originally issued on No Room for Squares, but now

on Straight No Filter ) also misses out the repeat of the first section of, this time, the second

chorus. The quick thinking here is done by Herbie Hancock, who, hearing Warren play Eb

instead of Bb instantly jumps to where Warren is. It is sad to see Bob Blumenthal's liner notes

blaming the impeccable Hancock for Warren's mistake. However it is probably pushing things

too far to see any significance in the fact that Butch Warren once wrote a song called Lost (it's on

Jackie McLean's A Fickle Sonance)!

Whether they have a propulsive rhythm section steaming at a fast tempo behind them, or whether

the performance is contemplative and out of tempo, or whether it mixes elements of both, jazz

players always have to know where they are in the chorus.

If you get used to locating yourself via the lyrics, it doesn't matter whether the song repeats itself

or not, because the lyrics are your guide. If there are no lyrics, then just try to see the whole

chorus in your mind, and not think of repeats.

If you know where you are in the tune, by definition you are not lost, even if you are not

counting at all!

So when you listen to a musician improvising on a song, practise keeping in mind the melody and

as much of the lyric as you need. There is no suggestion that you do anything as mechanical as

counting (the profound truth quoted in the heading above is from Thelonious Monk ). This is not

least because if you rely on counting, you will simply not know how to follow some of the

greatest jazz performances of songs, such as Miles Davis's 1964 My Funny Valent ine. There,there is no steady tempo or rhythm and the continuity is entirely in everyone knowing where they

are in the song's chorus. And the melody (explicitly as well as by references) is the guide to that.

All you have to do is trust the tune.

By emphasising the use of vocal versions of the songs, at least at the outset, this book offers you

the easiest way to do the necessary learning. Wherever possible, learn a vocal version before or

at the same time as trying an instrumental one. When you do listen to an instrumental version, try

consciously to run the lyrics in your mind when you listen to it, so that you could answer

immediately if anyone asked you 'where are we?'.

Learning about songs, what kinds of shape their choruses come in, where they are like one

another, and where different, is the best preparation for listening to jazz. And listening to jazz isthe first and most important preparation for actually playing it!

That is what the whole of this first chapter of the book is about.

Practical Activity

Test yourself (and your friends) often. Start by taking a track you know and starting it at random

part way through. Do you know whereabouts in the song you are? If you don't know at first, how

long does it take you to find out? Then do the same thing, but taking the track at random as well.

Now you have to work out a 'what' as well as a 'where '.

Don't worry if it is difficult at first. You are asking your brain to do something it has not done before, but if you keep asking, it will respond. And the speed of that response to what your ears

hear is the beginning of a proper response to jazz itself.

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A First Encounter with A Song Shape

Let's take one initial example to see how this works in practice.

We will briefly work through the Bob Haggart song What's New to show what we mean. Then wewill look at what use jazz musicians make of this sort of material in performance.

LISTEN NOW. What's New. Clifford Brown (1).

The words tell a story of two ex-lovers meeting following a break-up which the singer did not

want to happen.

Listening to any version, it becomes clear that it is not a continuous flow, but is divided up into

parts, like a poem would be divided up into lines.

There are four of these basic parts. These begin respectively with the words

'What's new?'

'What's new?'

'What's new?

'Adieu'

Take your time, and with repeated listening, you will begin to notice that the parts of the song

that begin with these words all have the same tune. What stops it from being monotonous is the

fact that the third section uses that same tune, but higher up than we have become used to from

the first two parts. This makes it more satisfying that the last part goes back again to where we

first heard it (try singing it!), although the poignancy of the song is enhanced by the words now

being 'Adieu ' instead of 'What's New'.

Having said that the parts of the song are like the lines of a poem, we can use the terminologyused to describe rhyme schemes, and apply it to the structure of songs as well.

So the first thing that happens is called 'A', the next different thing 'B' etc. Any repeat of a

previous part gets that part 's letter .

Here then, we would describe the scheme or structure of What's New a s AABA. The third part of

the tune, where the third 'What's new' happens, is the same melody, but is different musically

because it is sung at a different pi tch, so we call it B not A. The fourth part , al though it uses

different words, is the same tune at the same pitch as the first two parts.

Practical Activity

Having got your bearings, try out the other What's New versions recommended, the vocal one byRita Reys, and the instrumental one by Art Pepper. Can you still tell where you are in the 'solos'?

LISTEN NOW. What's New. Rita Reys (1).

LISTEN NOW. What's New. Art Pepper (1).

The Way Jazz Players Use Songs

In popular music, where the song is the entire piece, there is usually nothing much left to do after

you get through one chorus. A typical performance would have the singer sing a complete

chorus, then the orchestra come in for the AA of the second chorus, leaving the singer to re-enter

at the B and complete the second chorus, and with it the whole performance. Even more extreme

is for the orchestra to start the second chorus at B, leaving the singer just to finish off with the

last A.

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With jazz it is rarely like that.

For jazz musicians, even the opening 'theme statement' is there for them to explore and interpret

the melody, recasting it with their own personal stamp

(This is exactly comparable to the opening stage of an Indian Classical player starting to explore

a raga).

After the first chorus, the real process of development begins, as, with the tune in mind, but no

longer so dominant, the jazz player, along with the other musician(s), improvises (i.e. composes

spontaneously) a development of what happened in the first chorus. Usually after this has been

completed, (by as many 'soloists' as want to do it), the performance is drawn to a close by a

recapitulation of melody, again personalised.

Because of the personalisation, and (even worse!) the 'development' i.e. the solos, many

'composers' of popular songs have hated jazz versions of their work (even to the extent of getting

legal injunctions banning jazz recordings of them). This is because they view themselves as

exactly that, composers, and their songs therefore as compositions. (Legal and other aspects ofthis are discussed in the section called Copyright Royalties in Part II Perspectives and Polemics).

Creativity and The Sound Of Surprise

The jazz musician sees the problem differently to the 'composer'. In India, no one would claim to

have composed the ragas which are used (even though they are often very far from being simple

scales). In the West, everyone knows that fairy tales are part of a tradition, but can nevertheless

be retold in any era, or se tting. Well, the jazz musician views the song like that . A musical

story, or set of events, a kind of synopsis. These need fleshing out and developing, to get the best

out of the song's potential, just as you haven't read a novel at all if all you have done is read a

plot summary.

It is the jazz musician's art to tell these stories, in as elaborate or austere a way as circumstances

or impulse dictates at the particular time the performance is made. The answer to the often-asked

question about jazz, 'where's the melody?' is that it is omnipresent, as it is in say the Diabelli

variations of Beethoven, or the cantus firmus in a Mass by Josquin. By being shared in the minds

of listener and performer, it sets up the basis for spontaneous two-way communication.

Even apparently trite pieces , Chim Chim Cheree , say, or Santa Claus is Coming to Town can be

the vehicle for profoundly emotional statements by jazz players.

But jazz musicians do more than just select the song to play. They also select what speed to play

it at, sometimes what rhythm to play it in (waltz, Latin American etc.) and then they select how

high or low to play it. If there is a singer present, that last choice may be constrained by how

high or low the singer can actually sing, but otherwise musicians can choose what they like.

These choices are a serious part of a jazz musician's creativity, and can have a significant impact

on listeners. One reason why Chet Baker versions of songs often sound so melancholy is that he

often plays lower than we expect.

In fact even non-musicians get more accustomed than they probably suspect to a song being sung

in a particular place. Test yourself: put on a record you know well, and just before it starts, sing

the first note of the track. Even if you are not exactly right, you will usually find yourself pretty

close.

Summary So Far

In this chapter you learned that a song is not a 'composition'. It is a basic melodic idea with astructured shape. Jazz musicians use a song as the 'theme' to which they 'warm' as they develop

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their solos. Lester Young used to talk about jazz players 'telling their story'. Thinking of it like

that helps a lot. You know it is possible to tell a version of say the story of Cinderella, or Faust ,

and to make it at the same time both recognisable, and entirely your own.

Some Common Overall Song Shapes

The discussion of What's New raised the issue of the overall shape of a song - its 'internal

architecture' - comparable to a poetic form with rhyme and metric schemes. But there are more

things to song shapes than we have so far seen, and we can now go on to look in more depth at

what some of them are.

One of the most useful things you can do at the outset is to heighten your awareness of form, sothat you always know what the form of the song you are listening to is, and where you are in that

form. Here we look at the most frequently found forms. Not just the 'rhyme scheme' part, but

also the internal dynamics, which are just as important.

AABAWe have already looked briefly at one AABA song, What's New. Here we review what we know,

and then look at some others with the same overall shape. We then consider some of the things

they have in common.

The Basic Shape of AABA SongsThe AABA shape for a song is by far the most common among the sort of popular songs written

from the late twenties onwards, including original pieces from within the jazz tradition.

The psychology behind it is an internal 'theme and variations' in itself. So the song is self-

contained structurally, even when sung through just the once, as opposed to the usual jazz

practice of playing several choruses. It works like this:

You state an idea

(the first A section , or front strain)

Then to make sure that your audience have got it properly, you repeat it

(the second A section)

Then you state a second idea, different in some way from the first, so as to provide contrast

and relief

(the B section, or bridge).

Finally, you satisfy your audience by a restatement of your first idea

(the final A section)

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As we have seen, the AABA song What's New makes the simplest change possible for the B

section, it repeats the A section, but higher

The parts of AABA songs have names that are used by musicians, so you should be aware of

them. The A part is called the 'front strain' or more usually just the front. The B part is calledthe bridge . (There are some other names for the bridge. Often it is called the 'release'. Many

British musicians call it the 'middle eight' - even though it is not always eight measures long, and

both Charlie Parker and John Coltrane sometimes called it the 'channel ') .

Troubles over Bridges.

The bridge always represents some kind of contrast, and often isn't as memorable as the front

strain. This is why jazz musicians inclined to party games play one called 'Troubles over

Bridges', where you are played just the bridge from a song, the music fades as the front is about

to reprise. You get the points if you can say what the song is.

In fact What's New could never be a candidate for inclusion in a session of 'Troubles over

Bridges' because the melody of the bridge is the same as the front, just higher. There are some

other songs that replicate bridges in this way. In looking at them we begin the exciting process of

relating what we have learned so far to the repertoire.

'Replica Bridge' AABA Songs.

We'll start with Good Bait .

LISTEN NOW. Good Bait. John Coltrane (1).

When Lights are Low also has a replica bridge - but only on some versions! When Benny Carter

wrote the song it had a normal contrasting bridge, and this is what you find on the recommended

vocal version by Vic Damone, and the instrumental one by Jaki Byard. Miles Davis howeverstarted to do a version of When Lights are Low using the front strain higher up for the bridge, in

the manner of What's New. So his version (and that of Eric Dolphy among others) is different

from the Carter original. In my recommendations for the Companion Recordings, there are three

versions. The Miles version with the replica bridge is first, followed by the 'easy listening'

Damone version with the original bridge. Finally there is a delightful solo piano version by Jaki

Byard, also using the original bridge. This last is a version that doesn't keep to the same tempo

all the time, but you will find you have no trouble following it.

LISTEN NOW. When Lights are Low. Miles Davis (1).

LISTEN NOW. When Lights are Low. Vic Damone (1).

LISTEN NOW. When Lights are Low. Jaki Byard (1).

Bemsha Swing . The unusual thing about this song is that each section is only four measures long,

exactly half the length of the (more usual) songs we have looked at so far. Oddly enough, it

means that you may have to concentrate a bit harder to get the picture. At first, everything seems

to fly by so fast, you don't know where you are until you recognise the bridge.

LISTEN NOW. Bemsha Swing. John Coltrane (2).

'Normal' AABA Songs

Now we can lay out and examine the real structure of songs with this format . We will star t with a

wholly typical one; I Can' t Get Star ted .

This is an example of what musicians call a 'catalogue song', because the lyrics are little morethan a long list - in this case of the supposed achievements of the singer, none of which have

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enabled him/her to get 'started' with the object of his/her devotion. Indeed, the published sheet

music has two choruses' worth of lyrics (together with a stern warning that the performance of

any parodied version is prohibited!).

LISTEN NOW. I Can' t Get Star ted. Bunny Berigan (1).

Each of the A sections ends with the title of the song plus the words 'with you'. Allowing for

Berigan's relatively free interpretation it is clear that the melodies of all three A sections are the

same, except for the very end of each. This brings up a frequently recurring characteristic of this

shape of song.

At the end of the first A section, Berigan sings the word 'you' higher than he does at the end of

the second. Not just a higher version of the same note, but a different note. The effect is to

leave you in suspense , but knowing that the second A is coming. The second A ends firmly and

definitely low, and you know that proceedings have come to a stop. So you are ready for

something different - the bridge. But the end of the bridge isn't a stop, the words 'and what good

does it do?' are poised in mid air, and leave you with the feeling that you need the final A.

Which is what you get. Note that at the very end of the chorus, Berigan sings his final 'you' on ahigh, but resolved feeling, note, so you know the chorus is over.

In terms of general shapes, the ends of the sections of AABA songs are more often like those in I

Can't Get Started , than those in What's New. The latter comes to a stop at the end of each

section, even the bridge, and so nowhere is the coming of the next section signalled.

I Can' t Get Started has all the regular features found in typical AABA songs. By taking these on

board and listening out for them you are taking yourself way beyond the basic recognition of the

form. You are finding that there is an emotional territory which you can recognise. And when

you come to play, your improvising will automatically reflect it. At this juncture just pay

attention to the way each of the four parts of the song end.

The section endings for normal AABA songs

The first A ends with a suspended feeling. You can feel that there must be a repeat coming.

The second A ends solid and quiet. You can feel that an end has been reached.

The bridge ends poised to repeat the A. In fact as you get towards the end of the bridge, you cantell it is working towards the point of being poised.

The final A ends solid and triumphant.

Try this out on an instrumental version too, especially, if you can find it, the Booker Ervin one.

Brian Priestley once rightly described this as not only the best version of I Can' t Get Star ted , but

one of the greatest jazz ballad recordings ever.

LISTEN NOW. I Can' t Get Star ted. Booker Ervin (1).

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The only variant on the feeling of the section endings given above, when you hear a jazz

performance of a song is that on al l choruses except the last one, the final A of the chorus, while

it certainly ends solid and triumphant, also adds the feeling that it is turning itself around ready

for another chorus.

Not every single AABA song deploys these sect ion endings, but most of them do. And that

means that you will easily recognise ones which don't.

Charlie Parker's Confirmation for instance has a bridge that ends up rather a long way from being

poised, and so has to scrabble a bi t at the last moment to get back to the A. If you get the Steve

Kuhn version, which has Sheila Jordan singing her own words to the song, you can also enjoy

Steve Kuhn's blatant (and hilarious) disregard of constant tempo.

LISTEN NOW. Confirmation. Steve Kuhn (1).

I Can' t Get Star ted also showed us implicitly another of the most common characteristics of the

AABA form. Both the A and the B sections are the same length, and that length is eight

measures. This is not invariably so, however. Here are two songs where the section lengths aredifferent.

John Coltrane's Naima for instance is an AABA song where the A section is only half the length

of the bridge. The A is four measures long, and the B is eight measures.

LISTEN NOW. Naima. John Coltrane (2).

Speak Low has a front strain of sixteen measures and a bridge of eight measures.

LISTEN NOW. Speak Low. Rita Reys (1).

And even where all section lengths are the same, they are by no means always eight measures, as

we saw with Bemsha Swing . Another example is the AABA song we look at next, Cherokee. I

am including this song here for a number of reasons.

• It exhibits all the characteristics of the AABA form that we have just noted, and therefore

serves to reinforce the knowledge gained.

• You will find that if you pat your feet to a performance of Cherokee, there are twice as many

beats to each sect ion as there are with I Can' t Get Star ted . So the actual length of the song is

different, but the shape is the same.

• Although it is very often played, it is a misunderstood song. It is wrongly thought to be

difficult. So much so that in Part II Perspect ives & Polemics , Cherokee has a section to

itself. For now, we can just listen, because if you aren't or don't intend to become a jazz

musician, you will not see what the fuss is about. If you play, or intend to play, then if this

book does nothing else for you, it will show you that so far from any difficul ty ar ising with it ,Cherokee is actually one of the easiest of songs!

Vocal versions are relatively rare, but do try to find, if you can, the excellent Rita Reys version.

(In fact the whole of the album it comes from is a model of good programming. Reys and her

Dutch accompanists play splendidly, and there is the bonus of truly magnificent drumming by

Kenny Clarke. If you can't get it locally, it would justify a trip to Amsterdam to buy it). I can't

think of a better way to learn this song.

LISTEN NOW. Cherokee. Rita Reys (1).

The suspended feeling at the end of the first A is indicated by the words 'Cherokee sweetheart',

and the solid feeling at the end of the other two A's is built up to by the 'Chero' syllables and

delivered by the 'kee' syllable of 'Cherokee'. The 'poised' feeling at the end of the bridge is after

the word 'inside' has finished the real bridge lyric, the word 'my' carries the poised feeling priorto the last A starting with 'Sweet Indian baby'.

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Jazz versions, more often than not, don't use the tune of Cherokee, possibly because it is so full of

long notes that there doesn't feel to be much scope for a personal interpretation. Sometimes they

miss out a theme statement of any sort, as Charlie Parker did on Koko and Warming Up a Riff on

November 26, 1945. (Although in the aborted first take of Koko Dizzy Gillespie starts to play the

tune). More often they make up another melody, as Warne Marsh did with Marshmallow,recorded for the first time on June 28,1949. This practice of avoiding the original tune is

examined in more depth later in this section, in the chapter called New Bottle, Old Wine .

At this stage my recommended instrumental version is Clifford Brown.

LISTEN NOW. Cherokee. Clifford Brown (1).

After a deliberately cod 'war dance' introduction, the tune comes in strongly with Brown and

Harold Land playing it together in unison. The bridge melody is played by Land, while Brown

muses in the background behind him. Note that as with Berigan's I Can' t Get Started , the

resolved feeling at the end of the second and last A's is dealt with by finishing the second one

low, and the last one high. Or at least it would be high, except that where you expect the

equivalent of the syllable 'kee' you get a 'thump' from piano, bass and drums, and in the gapwhere you would draw breath in order to start another chorus, Brown plays an unaccompanied

'break' to launch his solo.

During the solos, by Brown (two choruses), and Land, Powell, and Roach (one chorus each), try

to keep the melody in mind. Even in Max Roach's drum solo you should do this. Apart from it

be ing, as we have sa id, much easier than counting, it lets you hear what Roach is thinking, and if

you get lost it is just the same as getting lost listening to a melody instrument. You find your

place again because you can recognise a new sect ion star ting, or a reference to some part of the

tune you can pick up on. On the last chorus, the first tune is played by Land with Brown

improvising behind him, and the second A the other way about, the bridge is played by Roach as

a solo, and Brown and Land come back together again for the last A, again depriving us of the

'kee' syllable, replacing it this time with an ironic cliché ending.

Other Songs With BridgesThe most common 'bridge' songs, other than AABA, are ABA. Here are just two examples.

I' ll Remember Apri l . All its sections are the same length, namely 16 measures. We look at this

song in more detail later as we start to consider harmony, as well as in Part VII A LEGO Bricks

Approach to Some Core Repertoire . We can note now though that both A sections end in the

same way, and that the bridge is another one that ends up a long way from the beginning of the A.

Not poised at al l. A quick scrabble in its last measure.

LISTEN NOW. I' ll Remember Apri l. Sara Vaughan (1).

Invi tation . The simplest way to see this song is as an ABA, where each part is in two clearhalves. As with I' ll Remember Apri l the sections are all equal at sixteen measures. But we can

hear the second half of the first A echo the first half, and until the last four measures we think

that the last A is like that too. The 'echo' idea occurs in the bridge as well. As a whole the bridge

is clearly divided into chunks of four measures, and the second and third chunks echo the first

one. Then that sequence is abruptly junked and the bridge ends up nicely poised to repeat the A.

LISTEN NOW. Invi tation . Sara Vaughan (2).

Songs of Two HalvesSongs of this form are usually in the form ABAC. Half way through the song, the original

melody starts again, and may indeed stay exactly the same for some time, even beyond the end ofthe repeated A section. Like the AABA form, this has its conventions about what goes on in the

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sections. In particular, the end of the B section is nearly always a 'slow burn' to launch the

reprise of the A, and the C section is frequently slightly declamatory, prior to wrapping things up.

It is less common than the AABA form, although it predates it.

The song we will look at to introduce the form is I'm Gonna Si t Right Down and Write Myself a

Letter .

LISTEN NOW. I'm Gonna Si t Right Down and Write Myself a Letter . Rita Reys (1).

The sections start with the following words:

First A: 'I'm gonna sit right down....'

B: 'I gonna write words oh so....'

Second A: 'I'm gonna smile and say..'

C: 'I'm gonna sit right down..'.

This song is highly typical of the form.

The 'slow burn' at the end of the B section is like the 'working up to being poised' feeling we

noted at the end of normal bridges in AABA songs. You should take time out to feel the force

of it. Here it is the phrase 'a lot of kisses...I'll be glad I got em'. When that phrase is through,

you know you expect the A section to return. Just as, at the end of the song, (the end of the C

section), you know the phrase 'make believe it came from you' wraps the action up.

BluesThe blues is an idiom as well as a form. Even more than with other jazz contexts, you cannot

play the blues convincingly unless you are immersed in the idiom, no matter how well you knowthe form.

Possibly the two hardest things to do in jazz are to play the blues convincingly, and to play

ballads well .

There are very many variations on blues form, but the essential one is of 2 lines, a rhymed

couplet.

Actually, as Leonard Bernstein noticed, they are a heroic couplet, in Shakespearean-style iambic

pentameters! In his 1955 TV programme What is Jazz , he performed a hilarious Macbeth Blues.

I will not be afraid of death and bane

(I said) I will not be afraid of death and bane

Till Birnan forest come to Dunsinane.

As you see, a blues chorus is built from repeating the first line before singing the second one.

Three sections in all. In the earliest forms the repeat of the first line used the same melody as the

initial statement (often with 'I said' just before it), but the background is in a different place.

Most often each of these three sections in a blues chorus takes four measures, making a twelve

measure chorus - the 'twelve-bar blues' - although this is not invariable.

Let's start with the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith. On Reckless Blues, you can hear the

repeated melody of the first line repeated over a different background, to make the second

section. Notice too, that in most choruses, Bessie only sings over the first half of each section,

leaving Louis Armstrong to play an 'answer' in the second half. Also, the second half always has

the same background, it comes down to earth after what went on in the first half.

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LISTEN NOW. Reckless Blues. Bessie Smith (1).

To compare and contrast, I've chosen Blues Walk , because the 'shouting' melody uses the same

notes for the first and second sections, just like a traditional vocal blues would.

LISTEN NOW. Blues Walk. Clifford Brown (1).

Big Building Blocks For Songs

We now know that songs have their own shapes. And we know that the sections of songs have

their own 'background feel', 'home and dry', 'slow burn' etc. And we have seen that the bridge of

What's New 'borrows' the background feel of its front.

The more you listen to them, the more it becomes clear that there is a whole lot of borrowing, (or

at least sharing), going on. Some or all of the component parts of more songs than you might

guess are shared with other songs. And that even when they are not actually shared in full, the

component shapes often have remarkably standard internal dynamics. We have already seen

some of this when we looked at how the sections of AABA songs typically end.

Where a whole section is shared, you can think of it as a big building block .

What follows is just a very quick survey of some of the most common of them. If you haven't

noticed these similarities before, now is your chance to benefit from reorganising your existing

knowledge. Either way, this should start you off looking for similarities. Take your time while

you assemble the relevant records to listen to these songs and realise the connections. Any time

you take here will be well invested.

All the given examples of songs are there just to get you started. Their aim is not completeness.

You should add your own discoveries to them in each category.

Rhythm Changes

One of the most borrowed songs is I Got Rhythm , in its entirety, or just the front or just the

bridge . The tune may be different but the background is I Got Rhythm . Jazz musicians

commonly call this background 'rhythm changes' or just 'rhythm', and speak of a 'rhythm changes

bridge ' or a 'rhythm changes front'. Musicians who write an al ternative melody, instead of the

trite Gershwin original, do not write a set of explicit harmonies such as you find with other songs,they indicate the key, and say it is rhythm changes. So Oleo for example could have its entire

chord sequence described as 'Bb Rhythm'.

The Rhythm Changes Front

The immediately obvious thing about the front of I Got Rhythm is that it is built on the kind of

'dah dah dah dah' vamp till ready a pit orchestra would use before the comedian comes on with a

first joke. This is called a Turnaround. A turnaround is a musical device to mark time. Just

like a pirouette, it doesn't go anywhere. Valaida Snow's recording of I Got Rhythm starts with

exactly that. If you use this version, or any typical one from the 1930's, do not be confused by

the 'tag' at the end of the final A. The words repeat 'who could ask for anything more'. Jazz

players quite quickly stopped using the tag, as it interfered with the flow.

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The Rhythm Changes Bridge

Especially exemplified in 1930's versions, such as the recommended Valaida Snow one, the

bridge of rhythm changes star ts with a fairly abrupt (and instantly recognisable) change of

background, but then heads inexorably, through the four phrases in the words for that logical jumping off point we have come to expect , just before the last A.

LISTEN NOW. I Got Rhythm. Valaida Snow (1).

Other Songs Using Some Or All Of Rhythm ChangesIf you check back to Good Bait , you will hear that it uses a 'rhythm changes front' for its front.

And in fact, because it is a replica bridge song, it uses a rhythm changes front for its bridge too!

Johnny Hodges's Squaty Roo uses an alternative melody for the front, and, like Scrapple from the

Apple below, no melody at all for the bridge. (Presumably Hodges was too lazy to write one).

But you can hear it is still rhythm changes all the way through. Note that on the recommended

version, the A section is played twice as a sort of introduction. The real structure of succeeding

choruses only begins after that, with the entry of Hodges.

LISTEN NOW. Squaty Roo. Duke Ellington (1).

Charlie Parker's Anthropology has a complete alternative melody, bridge as well as front.

LISTEN NOW. Anthropology. Elvin Jones (1).

Charlie Parker's Scrapple from the Apple, another song without a melody for the bridge, doesn't

start out sounding like rhythm changes, but the similarities soon become apparent. Apart from

the first half of the front, it's rhythm changes all right!

LISTEN NOW. Scrapple from the Apple. Charlie Parker (1).

The bridge of rhythm changes, partly because it is such a perfect bridge for improvisers, is

frequently borrowed for use in entirely different songs. Here are just a couple of examples.

Robbins Nest has a front that is about as different from rhythm changes as it could be, but the

bridge is a st raight lift from them.

LISTEN NOW. Robbins Nest . Buck Clayton (1).

I Can' t Believe That You're In Love With Me has a front that we examine shortly (see Pennies

Endings below), but a bridge that we know pretty well now.

LISTEN NOW. I Can' t Believe That You're In Love Wi th Me. Valaida Snow (1).

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea uses a rhythm changes front, but with an entirely

different bridge. But, different though the bridge may be, you can still recognise it as consisting

of turnarounds, except for the end, when it gets poised to repeat the front.

LISTEN NOW. Between the Devi l and the Deep Blue Sea. Dicky Wells (1).

Other Turnaround FrontsThe simplest form of turnaround front uses the plain old 'dah dah dah dah' turnaround. It does it

three times, then stops. Each turnaround takes two measures, and so does the stop. The stop,

be ing the end of the A sect ion of an AABA song, obeys the conventions of A sect ion endings.

Here are two of the most obvious examples.

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Blue Moon is some kind of ultimate turnaround front. The first A is actually four of them, all the

same, each a Plain Old Turnaround. That is because we expect a 'turning around' at the end of

any first A. The other two A's bring the pirouetting to a halt after only three turnarounds.

LISTEN NOW. Blue Moon. Clifford Brown (1).

These Foolish Things has two of the clearest turnarounds you could wish for in the first half of its

front.

LISTEN NOW. These Foolish Things. Lee Konitz (1).

Hank Mobley's Old Word New Imports, the track in which it has already been noted, bassist Butch

Warren gets lost, uses the same structure as Good Bait . That is, it takes the rhythm changes front,

and uses it for the bridge as well. But the ever-resourceful Mobley wrote a different melody for

the bridge. So this is a replica bridge song if you look just at the background feel, but not if you

go by the tune.

LISTEN NOW. Old Word New Imports. Hank Mobley (1).

Pennies EndingsAn enormous number of ABAC songs have the same C section as Pennies from Heaven , hence its

be ing called the 'pennies ending '. There are several dist inct stages.

In Pennies from Heaven , there are 8 stages to the Pennies Ending, marked as follows. Note that I

give you the feel of the landscape at each point, with the points being indicated by the lyrics.

'up' and far away from home: (So when you)

Turning to face back home: (hear it thunder )

Back home: ( Don't run under a)

Drawing back (to get a better run at it): (tree…there'll be)

Driving hard towards home: ( Pennies from Heaven for )

Slowing down as home is in sight: (You and )

Home at last, so we can stop: (me )

Well-earned rest: (no lyrics)

The recommended version is Eddie Jefferson's glorious parody Benny's from Heaven , where at the

start he sings the hilarious new words. However in the last chorus he reverts to the conventional

lyrics, and those are the ones in the diagram above.

LISTEN NOW. Benny's from Heaven. Eddie Jefferson (1).

We will now check out just a few of the many other songs with this same ending.

I Can' t Give You Anything But Love is for all practical purposes the same song, all the way

through, not just in the ending, as Pennies from Heaven . Apart from the melody of course.

LISTEN NOW. I Can' t Give You Anything But Love. Lucky Thompson (1).

Al l of Me just deploys the pennies ending, otherwise it is a different song altogether. The

recommended version has a lovely vocal by Billie Holiday.

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LISTEN NOW. All of Me. Lester Young (1).

I Thought About You is a beautiful ballad, a long way from the rumbustious Pennies from Heaven ,

yet it too uses the same ending.

LISTEN NOW. I Thought About You. Archie Shepp (1).

The More I See You

LISTEN NOW. The More I See You. Hank Mobley (2).

On a Slow Boat to China

LISTEN NOW. On a Slow Boat to China. Sonny Rollins (1).

Collect examples of this ending to add to this list. For example, in compact (four measure) form

the pennies ending ends the second strain in At the Jazz Band Ball . And, surprisingly, it is the

background for the last two sect ions of the blues.

Payoff

As well as the complete songs we already know, at this point we can add I Can't Believe that

You're in Love With Me to our collection. We now have the whole of it, since it is an AABA

song, where the front is a pennies ending (even though it is not used as an 'ending') and the

bridge , as we already know, is rhythm changes.

Donna Lee Openings

Picking one song from a list of ones with shared characteristics is sometimes (often, even)

arbitrary. Probably more people play Donna Lee these days than play the other songs given here,

so let's call the opening a Donna Lee.

This opening has three stages. It starts solid for, moves away, and then comes home. This takes

all eight measures of the front.

LISTEN NOW. Donna Lee. Richie Cole (1).

Exactly Like You gives us some lyrics to locate ourselves with. If you get the recommended vocal

version by Eddie Jefferson, it covers the part from 'Why should I...' to 'Exactly Like You'.

LISTEN NOW. Exactly Like You. Eddie Jefferson (2).

Indiana, the song whose background Miles Davis borrowed to support his new melody Donna

Lee, shows the same flow of events. If you get the recommended vocal version, it covers the part

from 'Back Home Again...' to 'that I can see...'.

LISTEN NOW. Indiana. Dicky Wells (1).

The final suggestion is Take the 'A' Train .

LISTEN NOW. Take the 'A' Train. Duke Ellington (2).

Payoff

A payoff to think about is that in AABA songs (like Exactly Like You and Take the 'A' Train), if

you know the front, you know three quarters of the song.

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In fact, what a lot of songs you know already, just by recognising like for like!

StarlightThis big building block is named for the last section of Stella by Starlight . But it also turns up in

a surprising number of places, in a wide variety of songs. Its underlying feel is of a long journey

home, from some distant place. You immediately get the feeling of an established direction, and

are not surprised when you end up at your own front door.

To begin with, check out a vocal version. The starlight is where the words go from 'my heart and

I agree...' to 'on earth to me'.

LISTEN NOW. Stella by Starlight. Vic Damone (1).

Now try an instrumental version of Stella by Starlight , to see what a starlight sounds like in a jazz

performance.

LISTEN NOW. Stella by Starlight. Booker Ervin (1).

Our first encounter with a starlight out of its home context is Dizzy Gillespie's song Woody 'n'

You. This is an AABA song, and its front is a starlight!

LISTEN NOW. Woody 'n' You. Max Roach (1)

Al l God's Chil lun Got Rhythm , by Bronislau Kaper, featured in The Marx Brothers' A Day at the

Races, uses a starlight in compact four measure form to start its B section ('ain't got money, ain't

got shoes'). The whole song is frequently borrowed for its background, as we shall shortly see.

Here, the recommended version mixes one of them, Little Willie Leaps, in with it.

LISTEN NOW. All God's Chillun Got Rhythm. Sheila Jordan (1).

Duke Jordan's song Jordu constructs its bridge from two compact starlights. The recommended

version is Duke Jordan's original trio version. It's worth looking out for Barney Wilen's album

Barney! (also re-issued as Barney at the Club Saint-Germain) if you can find it, because that has

a storming version, with Jordan and Kenny Dorham in the band. (The recommended version of

Ladybird , used later, is from the same session.)

LISTEN NOW. Jordu. Various Artists (1).

A starlight is also the background for the introduction to Monk's Round Midnight . Because most

versions go so slowly, you can really feel the 'pull' from one moment to the next.

LISTEN NOW. Round Midnight . Miles Davis (2).

There are many other places you will find starlights, even 'hiding', like in measures two through

five of the so-called Swedish Blues form, found in 'special' blues like Charlie Parker's Blues for

Al ice. (See the discussion of this sequence in Part VII, the Core Repertoire section, for more on

this).

On-Off-On Plus DropbackThis is a common opening section for songs. The background isn't always the same (e.g. the 'off'

can be off to different places) but the pattern is the same. It starts 'solid' (the 'on'), jumps to

somewhere else a little odd (the 'off'), comes back to the solid (the next 'on'), then 'leans back'

(the 'dropback'). Here we will illustrate two kinds of 'off'.

Nearby Offs

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Although more people play Groovin' High than the original song on which it was based,

Whispering , let's play a version of the original.

LISTEN NOW. Whispering. Miles Davis (1).

Heartaches isn't as trite a song as you may think. However, the only vocal version I could get

was Patsy Cline, which does perhaps make it seem superficial. The first 'Heartaches' is the 'on'.

The second is the 'off'. The next 'on' is 'my loving you...', and the third 'heartaches' is the

dropback. Whatever else this version does, it shows you how on-off-on plus dropback works!

LISTEN NOW. Heartaches. Patsy Cline (1).

Get your head back together with this fine version of Heartaches by Dexter Gordon.

LISTEN NOW. Heartaches . Dexter Gordon (1).

Another song which uses on-off-on to a nearby off, although it doesn't drop back, is I Remember

You.

Remote Offs

The 'nearby offs' above may not have struck you as particularly 'nearby'. They will do however,

when you compare them with 'remote' ones like you get in Out of Nowhere. With this song, there

is a real feeling of having gone somewhere unrelated. The word 'nowhere' really feels nowhere.

So try to get a vocal version, like the one recommended.

LISTEN NOW. Out of Nowhere. Bing Crosby (1).

There are hundreds of jazz versions of Out of Nowhere, both with its own melody as well as with

other ones, like Fats Navarro's Nostalgia and Lennie Tristano's 317 East 32nd Street . For now I

suggest one with the original tune. It is from Session at Riverside and features Coleman Hawkins

and Lou McGarity.

LISTEN NOW. Out of Nowhere. Various Artists (2).

In fact, as you may well have spotted, we already met an 'on' followed by a 'nowhere' 'off' in the

front of Robbins Nest , still recognisable, even though the 'off' didn't go back 'on' again. And I'm

Beginning To See The Light , although it postpones it until measure three of its front strain, has an

on-off-on plus dropback, with a 'nowhere' off: the song sounds different because that

postponement shif ts the emphasis within the eight measure sect ion.

New Bottle, Old Wine

At frequent places so far, I have indicated the existence of alternative melodies to existing

backgrounds. Some backgrounds are so at trac tive that many new tunes have been written. On

occasions they are there as throwaway tunes on record dates, designed to avoid royalties.

However, quite often, the new melody becomes itself a kind of standard, frequently preferred to

the 'original': this certainly happened to Groovin High/Whispering . In all cases, however, your

playing and listening experience will be improved by a knowledge of the or iginal .

Because these are (usually) complete songs, they are a good starting point in learning to listen for

connections between repertoire items. Some you may recognise yourself, others may be pointedout to you.

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Quite often, a liner note will attempt to identify the 'original' song. But this raises a very

important point. ALWAYS check this yourself, because sleeve-note writers are fallible, and

some appear to have cloth ears!

Mark Gardner, for instance, in his notes to Warne Marsh's Back Home album says:

'Rhythmically Speaking is derived from I Got Rhythm , Big Leaps for Lester is self-explanatory and I

leave you to sort out Two Not One - the solution key lies in the numbers!'

There are some bones to pick here!

The fact is that Rhythmical ly Speaking is based on All God's Chillun Got Rhythm. You could not

have a tune less like I Got Rhythm than that. Big Leaps for Lester , however is based on I Got

Rhythm . The title is a play on Lester Leaps In , which is itself based on I Got Rhythm . And as for

the 'solution key' to Two Not One. I simply can't relate what Gardner says to I Can' t Believe That

You're in Love With Me, which is what that song actually is.

Leonard Feather's Inside Jazz has quite a good list of alternative melodies, or clone tunes, to get

you started (on page 56). (However he gives up on rhythm changes and just says there are ‘fivezillion numbers’). And there are also odd ones nobody notices much, which I still like. Paul

Desmond's paraphrase of Heartaches , called Curacao Dolorosa, for instance. Or Bud Powell's

Parisian Thoroughfare , based on Between the Devi l and the Deep Blue Sea.

In looking at the 'new bottle, old wine' phenomenon here, many of the songs are already

extremely well known. So I am going to take a particular approach to them, one which I hope

will assist you in establishing a solid foundation in your listening and playing.

I am going to take a couple of the 'war-horses' of the repertoire, the ones which most often have

paraphrased melodies. By taking the 'original' , underlying song, I can then show some different

approaches to making the paraphrase. These include some or all of the following. A

straightforward bebop version. A Tristano style version, characterised by complicated tunes over

simple versions of the background. A Coltrane style version, characterised by fairly simple tunes,over radically more complex versions of the background.

War-horse number one: How High the Moon We'll start with a track well worth hunting down, since it combines elements of all approaches,

and will serve to launch this series of tracks, instead of using a vocal version. It is Satellite/How

High The Moon from Denny Zeitlin's Time Remembers One Time Once, on ECM. Satellite is

Coltrane's version of How High the Moon . As the track de-evolves back towards the original,

Charlie Haden's bass solo explicitly quotes Charlie Parker's version, Ornithology.

LISTEN NOW. Satellite. Denny Zeitlin (1).

As just noted, the regular bebop version is Ornithology, and I commend Vi Redd's alto playing onthe recommended version.

LISTEN NOW. Ornithology. Various Artists (3).

The Tristano version is Lennie Bird , a tune which in its opening phrases seems to view the 'pat

your foot' pulse through a prism. Don't get lost: many brave players have.

LISTEN NOW. Lennie Bird. Lennie Tristano (1).

War-horse number two: What is This Thing Called Love

First check out a vocal version.

LISTEN NOW. What is This Thing Called Love. Frank Sinatra (1).

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The usual bebop alternative tune for What is This Thing Called Love is Tadd Dameron's Hot

House, in which, interestingly, Dameron has produced an ABCA melody over an AABA

background.

LISTEN NOW. Hot House. Dizzy Gillespie (1).

The Tristano style one is Lee Konitz's Sub-Conscious Lee, first recorded in 1949. The

recommended version is from an extraordinary set of duets Konitz did with Martial Solal. All the

songs were ordinary, even run of the mill, and yet they proved strong enough for these two

players to get into some fair ly abstract realms. Konitz has a nice spoken introduction, recounting

the genesis of the song.

LISTEN NOW. Sub-Conscious Lee. Lee Konitz (2).

The Coltrane style one is Fi fth House, which first appeared on Coltrane Jazz .

LISTEN NOW. Fifth House. John Coltrane (2).

The New Bottle Prevails

To conclude this section, two songs where the bebop versions are now the conventional ones, and

the original is hardly played any more.

First is Groovin' High, based on Whispering (which we heard earlier). The recommended version

is from The Bop Session, featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Max Roach.

LISTEN NOW. Groovin' High. Various Artists (4).

Last is Donna Lee, based on Indiana (which we heard earlier). To bring things to a tidy

conclusion, I commend Lennie Tristano playing it.

LISTEN NOW. Donna Lee. Lennie Tristano (1).

What Is This Thing Called Harmony?

How are you doing so far? On my version of the Companion Recordings, we have just completed

listening to over four and one half hours -in excess of fifty tracks - of (mostly) wonderful music.

You may well have begun to listen in a more attentive, directed way, and to recognise parallels

and borrowings between songs. This is already a lot to know, but I am sure that you already

know even more than you think!

For instance, even if you couldn't define the word, I am sure that you already understand

harmony.

Perhaps the quickest way to realise objectively that you already have a feel for harmony is to

notice when you listen to music, that you can tell that the ending of a song feels like the ending.

Just think of the ending of any song you know, and think of the way you can 'see it coming'. That

in fact is you hearing and understanding the harmony. And in many ways that is all there is to

it.

If you can recognise that one song is a paraphrase of another, or say what song the soloist is

playing, even when you have not caught the theme statement, then, whether you realise it or

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not, you are well advanced in understanding harmony. The harmony is making sense to you: you

can 'read' its meaning.

Even so, perhaps you would still find it hard to say just what 'harmony' is.

So we had better deal with this word before we go much further, partly because it is used so

much, but mainly because its dictionary meaning has almost nothing to do with the way the term

is used in music. Put very briefly, 'harmony' refers to the sound of what we have being calling

the 'background' , or accompaniment, of the music which uses it. Like a carpet, which has a pile

and a pattern to it, it can be gorgeous or austere, but it establishes the context - the 'sound world' -

in which music is made. And it isn't just static, it can generate events, so we know something is

happening .

A first look at last things

Let's look a little further into the matter. We'll start by looking at the ending of a song we

haven't so far used, Cole Porter's At Long Last Love . It's quite important to get a vocal versionhere. The recommended one is Frank Sinatra.

LISTEN NOW. At Long Last Love . Frank Sinatra (2).

When the lyrics say, as the final phrase, 'Is it at long last love', the words 'long' and 'last' are

moving towards the end, and the word 'love' is where the movement stops. This is particularly

clear on the recommended Sinatra version. He sings through the whole song twice, but it is

clearest at the end of the first time through, where he sings the original tune unadorned.

Listening to it, we can feel that the word 'long' is pointing strongly to the word 'last'. With the

word 'last', we feel that we are nearly 'there'. So that when we get to the word 'love' we know

that we have got there , that is, to the place we have been pointing at, and that it is now time to

stop.

The distinct feelings we got from these three words are important, and we need to pause to thinkabout them. Not all movement has the same feel. The nature of the movement changes. Let's

take that last phrase of the song apart.

! The 'further away' feeling, on the word 'Long'. This has a strong sense of driving motion

towards the end of the phrase, and with the destination well in sight. This strength of motion

can be thought of as having a high degree of tension.

! The 'nearly there' feeling on the word 'Last'. Here the motion is much reduced, like

slowing down the car just before stopping. Psychologically it is interesting that the feeling of

greatest closeness to the destination also has the least feeling of momentum. The tension

reduces to almost zero because the end is in sight.

! The 'there' feeling on the word 'Love'. Here you know you have stopped, and there is nomore tension. What tension there was, has been resolved. In context, this 'non-movement' is

a kind of movement, in the sense of a continuous journey in time (the song) including some

periods spent stat ionary, like at traf fic lights before moving on or making a turn.

If you check back to the last half of the Pennies Ending above, you will see exactly the same

ground being covered.

These Things Called ChangesThis moving, or changing background, is the essence of what harmony is about. That is why the

jazz musician's term for harmony is 'the changes'.

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In At Long Last Love , and almost every other song, the ending has several different notes as well

as the harmonic movement we have just seen. (One exception is Speak Low, where in the

published sheet music, the same note repeats throughout the final phrase).

We can check out the idea of the background changing by referring to songs where the tune noteis the same, but the harmony changes. A very simple example is from the first song we looked at,

What's New. The 'new' at the beginning sounds resolved, or what we have been calling 'solid'.

No movement , but the next word 'How' is on the same note, but the harmony has changed from a

'there' to a 'further away' feeling. (That feeling in its turn, gives way to a 'nearly there' on the

word 'world', and a 'there' on the word 'you').

LISTEN NOW. What's New. Frank Sinatra (3).

My Funny Valent ine repeats the same phrase at the beginning of the song, and appears to be about

to do it a third time. This covers the words from 'my funny valentine' to 'you make me'. The tune

is obviously going nowhere at all just yet. But the harmony is moving inexorably downwards!

Try a jazz version which really makes the point, the one by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet

Baker.

LISTEN NOW. My Funny Valent ine. Gerry Mulligan (1).

A world without changes

So now you have an idea of what changes are. Interestingly, though, the fact is that most of the

world's music gets by without harmony and doesn't miss it. This is odd to us because in the West

it is so ubiquitous we tend to take it for granted. So maybe a good thing to think about as a

contrast is an improvising situation where harmony does not arise.

When you listen to North Indian Classical Music for instance, you will notice that as well as the

prominent 'soloist ' and probably a tabla player , there is a continuous sound, or drone, in the background. Usually, if the soloist is a wind player , then the drone is played on wind

instruments, if a string player then on strings, or if a singer, then the drone might even be played

on a harmonium! And throughout the performance, the constant frame of reference to which

everything relates is the drone, just like everything a kite does is related to the fact that the string

on the ground is firmly held by the person flying it. The North Indian Classical Music improviser

is restricted to the notes in the original raga (a sort of scale), though they can be 'bent', sometimes

by as much as half an octave , so they set the mood. The stable , consistent , sound of the drone

frees the improviser to invent complex melodies and cross-rhythms within the mood, but always

with something solid and immovable to lean against.

Change is the constant

On the other hand, as we have seen, in musics which use what is called 'harmony', the backgroundis not stable all the time. It changes. We get changes of both movement and mood . Sometimes

the changes are smooth, sometimes abrupt. A song consists of both a melody, and, underneath, it

a set of changes. The improviser uses both together as a frame of reference for improvising,

producing a very different sort of musical situat ion from the North Indian one.

In the jazz performance of a song what happens (which is to say what everybody - including the

drummer - plays) takes place not just against the remembered background of the melody, but also

against the set of changes. It is like moving across a landscape. Players can go along the ground

following every contour exactly, and/or they can swoop through the air above it - as high as their

taste takes them - but the set of changes is still present, even when it is not a determining factor.

In earlier jazz, the pace at which you moved was determined by an unbroken beat, a constant

tempo to which you could tap your feet. But since the great breakthroughs made by Miles Davisand others in the 'heroic decade' (discussed in The Song as Raga in Part II Perspectives and

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Polemics), the constant tempo has not been de rigeur . Musicians have been free to go in and out

of tempo, to employ different rhythms, and to suspend progress through the song if they want to.

From the listeners point of view, we keep track of events (that is we avoid getting lost), by

keeping the original melody and some of the words in mind as we listen to a performance, and wesense the changes without having to 'know' what they are.

In The Mood

When we looked above at the ending of a typical song, we thought about the different kinds of

tension in the harmony, which produced feelings of movement (or lack of it) with different

degrees of urgency. Let us look now at the other variable in the harmonic background, its

emotional feel, or mood.

Songs share with non-harmonic musics the ability to suggest many different moods. Here we will

look at the three basic ones.

To begin with, to point up a contrast between two of them, take the song I' ll Remember Apri l ,

especially in the Frank Sinatra version.

LISTEN NOW. I' ll Remember Apri l. Frank Sinatra (4).

The first phrase of the song 'This lovely day...' is sung against a plain background, and you can

hear the 'colour' of the background because the words come in after a rest of one beat, so you hear

the background first. The words of the second phrase do too, which lets you hear that the

background switches , quietly but decisively, to a sad elegiac sound in that one beat, and sustains

it under the words 'We'll sigh goodbye...'.

I' ll Remember Apri l is a good song to start learning this effect on, because there is no flow or

movement under these two opening phrases, just a contrast of mood between the 'plain' and the

'sad'.

Straight and Sad Moods

Despite its contrast with the sad mood we have just listened to, the 'plain' one isn't exactly 'happy'

sounding, so much as just ordinary, regular or straight . From now on, this book will say

'straight' for that mood. The second mood however undoubtedly sounds sad, and that is the name

we will stick to from now on.

Another good song to practise recognising contrast between straight and sad with is Body and

Soul . In the bridge of the song the words 'I can't believe it' are sung to a straight sounding tune.

One phrase later the words 'Are you pretending' switch to a sad mood. The background has gone

sad, clouded over without moving, and even the tune is nearly the same (only the note for 'pre-

tending' is altered to get the sad effect). If you use the Mel Tormé version, the words to check for

are 'What is there for me' and 'Unless there's magic', and the changed, sad, note is 'there's'.

LISTEN NOW. Body and Soul . Mel Tormé (1).

When the musical mood is sad, everyone is sad together, e.g. the emphasised words in the

following two examples are where the sad really hits: 'You'd be so nice to come home to', or 'the

autumn leaves of red and gold'. Perhaps not surprisingly, thoroughgoing sadness is quite rare in

songs of the popular kind used by jazz musicians. Most songs that start out in a sad mood, such

as Blue Skies or Lullaby of Birdland , end up straight. Perhaps the fact that it is one of the

exceptions to that is what makes Autumn Leaves so poignant.

Blue Moods

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The other mood to be aware of is blue. This is not at all the same thing as 'sad', and should

never be confused with it. A sad mood is produced by the background being sad, and the melody

notes fitting in with it. A blue mood is suggested by the playing of blue notes, notes which are

sad, but against a background which is not sad. So typically, a blue mood or sound expresses the

alienation often implied by the idea of having the blues by having a melody note - a blue note -which itself is undeniably sad played over a background which is resolutely straight.

You can hear what this sounds like in Lover Man. Near the beginning where the word 'Never' is

sung, the first syllable is a clear 'blue note', generating a blue mood.

LISTEN NOW. Lover Man. Sarah Vaughan (3).

The melodies of classic blues from artists like Bessie Smith make great use of blue notes. Try

revisiting Reckless Blues, with the unbending harmonium and its hymn-like chords showing how

much contrast there is in Bessie's and Louis's use of 'bent' or 'blue' notes. Indeed, there are no

notes at all which are (in WEAM terms) in tune!

LISTEN NOW. Reckless Blues. Bessie Smith (1).

James Lincoln Collier (1978) makes the point well by considering King Oliver's Dippermouth

Blues solo, one of the definitive jazz statements, where the real interest comes from the blue

notes Oliver uses. Most of them are inflected versions of the note the solo starts on, all of which

are different, but in conventional musical notation would all have to be written down the same.

But as Collier points out, the notes do not stay still: 'nor are their pitches fixed; they shift as they

are played' (emphasis added).

LISTEN NOW. Dippermouth Blues. King Oliver (1).

Getting a blue effect does not depend absolutely either on straight backgrounds, or on particular

notes. What produces it is a melody note which is not derived from the background: the blueness

is in the degree of contrast that this creates.

Cadences - The Basic LEGO Brick

A musical story

The generic word for the kind of movement from tension to rest which we met at the end of At

Long Last Love is cadence.

A cadence is a true musical LEGO brick . It is a musical story with a beginning, a middle, and

an end. It packs a lot of information, with its three different feelings of tension and its regular

time frame, but it isn't itself complicated, and understanding of it is reinforced because of its

turning up so often in songs

There are several sorts of cadence, and an enormous number of variations on each. So one good

reason for getting the basic idea sorted out now is that with the fundamental form firmly in mind

you will be able to see the variations as just that, variations. Nothing new, just bells and whistles

on the underlying idea. Getting comfortable with that idea will prevent you from being distracted

by the bells and whistles into thinking you are looking at something different.

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Time And ChangesWe saw that At Long Last Love illustrates three kinds of movement, 'further away', 'nearly there'

and 'there'. A journey from tension to rest. As the tension comes off you begin to expect, and

then you get a resolution of the tension.

Almost every song you will ever come across finishes with this voyage through three musical

feelings. So it is worth taking the time to look closely at what is happening. For instance, the

proportion of time given to each feel ing within the phrase is not equal. But the resulting pattern

of proportions, the time frame, is also almost universal.

Start by revisiting At Long Last Love , and pat your feet as the final words of the chorus are sung.

LISTEN NOW. At Long Last Love . Frank Sinatra (2).

When you pat your foot to count the beats of the title phrase at the end of the chorus, you will see

that each word (including the gap before the next word) takes four beats, and that after 'Love'

starts there are eight beats, many of which are silent so far as Sinatra is concerned. This is usedon the Swingin' Affair record for the band to wind up for Sinatra to go through the song again,

this time with a more vigorous rhythm. Patting your foot also tells you that this song is measured

in four beat units, so we say four beats to a measure.

So we have three sections in our cadence. Two of one measure each, and one of two measures.

In this song it is the three words which mark the sections.

The first two sections taken together are called the approach chords, and they take up half the

cadence. Their function is to switch on the tension, announce the direction, and lead you to the

brink of resolution.

The third section is the resolution, where the tension switches off. The dramatic climax of the

cadence is the very first beat where you are there, 'home and dry', because the tension evaporates.

Let's draw a time frame and put the feelings into it. I've added the words in brackets in theappropriate boxes. The vertical lines separate the measures.

Further away

(Long)

nearly there

(Last)

There

(Love) (empty space)

All that 'empty' space at the end of the cadence explains why many bebop performances, when

they get to the first beat of the resolution, just stop. If it is the end of the first chorus, there is

usually an unaccompanied 'break' by the first soloist, to fill up the rest of the cadence: if it is the

last chorus, that is usually the end of the piece. We already met that on the first chorus of theMax Roach/Clifford Brown version of Cherokee. Try another example, for instance the Richie

Cole/Phil Woods album Side by Side (it should have been called Back to Front because that is

how they printed the cover photograph) includes a fine example in Donna Lee.

LISTEN NOW. Donna Lee. Richie Cole (1).

As you can see, the resolution lasts so long relatively that if a dramatic device like the bebop one

just described is not used, it might just seem a bi t boring. (A common mistake by amateur singers

of this sort of song is not to give the resolution its two measures before going on to the next bit of

the song).

What you will find in general is two sorts of use made of the quiet space after the first beat of the

resolution. One you have already met is at the end of the first A of an AABA song. You feel the

music turning around to play the same section again. The other is that you may feel the last

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measure given over to setting up some form of expectation, to launch a different bit of the song.

We will meet more examples of both later.

Straight cadencesThe last phrase from At Long Last Love is straight in mood all the way through, and has no mood

changes. So, to sum up, we can say that what we have just been looking at is our most basic

LEGO brick, a straight cadence.

Sad cadencesAll of the same components of structure, the three different kinds of tension, and the time allotted

to each, are present if the cadence is played in a sad mood. It is just that the mood is different.

At each stage there is a perceptibly sad version of the same feeling, whether it is 'further away',

'nearly there', or 'there'.

Sad cadences are what make some songs so poignant. Here are two versions of Beautiful Love , a

song whose first four measures sum up what sad cadences are about. If you can find a vocal

version, like that by Helen Merrill, the cadence is covered by the words up as far as 'all a

mystery'.

LISTEN NOW. Beauti ful Love. Helen Merrill (1).

The instrumental version I suggest here is by Jackie McLean, from Kenny Dorham's album

Matador .

LISTEN NOW. Beauti ful Love. Kenny Dorham (1).

A whole song built from cadences

It is possible build entire songs using nothing but cadences! So let's do that now. In so doing we

can point up the contrasts in sound between sad and straight cadences.

Let's look at a couple of versions of Autumn Leaves . This song consists of just two cadences, one

straight, and one sad. The contrast therefore stands out. And it is possible to draw a picture of

the song!

To demonstrate this song in the classroom, using real LEGO bricks, (sunshine yellow for a

straight cadence, and blue for a sad one), I make a little wall. Failing that I draw the picture

below on a blackboard, and colour the sect ions in. A whole song as if by Piet Mondrian! And it

emphasises the unrelieved sadness at the end. Follow the picture line by line, from left to right,

as you listen to Rita Reys.

straight sad

straight sad

sad straight

sad sad

LISTEN NOW. Autumn Leaves. Rita Reys (1).

And now try Chet Baker with Paul Desmond. (If you use this version don't be fooled by the littlevamp between choruses. It is a fine version, and Baker's solo is in Ken Slone's 28 Modern Jazz

Trumpet Solos).

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LISTEN NOW. Autumn Leaves . Chet Baker (1).

Basic Bells and Whistles for Ordinary Cadences

Compact cadences

All the examples we have specifically listened to take a full measure for each of the approach

chords, and two measures for the resolution. But the proportions appear in other lengths,

sometimes twice as long, sometimes half or even a quarter as long. The most common are half as

long, and these are compact cadences. Two beats each for the approach chords, and four beats

for the resolution. Before moving on we will just take a look at one, which turns up in an old

friend.

What's New, which we know quite well by now, has several compact cadences. Let's just look at

one, from right at the beginning. In the first phrase, the word 'New', including any gap after it,

lasts for one measure, four beats. Then comes the phrase 'How is the world treating you?'. This phrase is a compact cadence. The 'further away' approach chord is the two beats with 'How is the' .

The 'nearly there' approach chord is the two beats with 'world treating'. And the resolution is

'you', which lasts for four beats, including the gap after it. Exactly the same proportions as we

saw above.

LISTEN NOW. What's New. Lee Konitz (3).

Offset Sequences

Most of the songs we have looked at so far, have been substantially four square. That is, where

for instance, the sections of the song were eight measures long, the cadences sat four square

within four measure sections, like measures 1 through 4, or measures 5 through 8. Each four

measures started out with the approach chords to the cadence.

This is just a note to point out that not every song is like that. How High the Moon

(Ornithology/Lennie Bird ) starts with two resolved measures. The cadence that follows has its

approach chords in the last two measures of the first four measures, and its resolution in the first

two measures of the second four measure, so the first cadence in it is measures 3 through 6.. The

dominant feel of this song is of the first three of the four four-measure chunks in each half

starting resolved. If you need reminding, this song was War Horse Number One in New Bottle,

Old Wine.

As with so much in artistic matters, conventions exist to set up expectations in the audience, and

artists are able to exploit that expectation by denying it, and hoping, in the surprised reaction, to

generate a ‘YES!’ response. We will see examples of this within cadences later, but it exists

within the structures of songs too. The whole idea of four measure, four square sections, impliesa sort of heavier bar line after every four bars, with each section complete before the next one

starts.

‘Offset sequences’ have the identical conventional internal four section pattern to their cadences,

but ge t a different dynamic by placing them across this heavy bar line , so that their first two

sections occur before it, and the last two after it. We ‘cross the bar’ in full flight towards our

goal, not after having peacefully reached it. If this applies to the end of four measure sections, it

applies even more so to the end of eight measure ones, where the bar line is even heavier.

Equally, after every two measures there is an implicitly heavier bar line too, though not so heavy

as the one after four.

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Using LEGO Bricks To Map A Song

We can now discuss ways of remembering the whole of a song using LEGO Bricks. We already

have two LEGO bricks in our kit. One the Cadence we have just discussed at length. The other,

the Turnaround, we looked briefly at earlier, in the section called Big Building Blocks for Songs.

The third brick we will need is where nothing at all happens in the background, it just stays there

for a while before moving on. We will call that brick a Hover.

But what about ‘moving on’ from brick to brick? Not every song breaks down into permutations

of cadences as easily as Autumn Leaves has just done. We need another device in our tool kit to

describe how one LEGO brick leads on to another, the point where you can feel the ground shift

under you as you listen.

That device is the Join .

Joins

Real LEGO bricks have to be joined by being snapped together. Just placing them next to each

other does not connect them in any way. But music exists in a time frame, and the beginning of

the next measure is 'super glued' to the end of the current one because of the shared bar-line, like

the next second of your life is joined to this one. So in music, mere juxtaposition is a joining

together. In this book, the idea of the join is very prominent. If you are inside a LEGO brick,

then the issue of joins does not arise. If you move to another brick, you will feel the join!

Magic Moments and Super GlueIt is the moments when the background shifts under you that are important. We already met one

such moment in that point at the beginning of What's New, when the word 'how' comes in on the

same note as the word 'new'. We can feel that something has happened. In the case of What's

New, we are abruptly shifted to what we can now recognise as the beginning of a cadence.

Think of the opening of There Will Never Be Another You, where the song starts solid and

confident, 'there will be many other nights...' and then the background shifts with 'like this....'.

These moments are the magic ones.

The way you know what the tune is when you listen to a solo without having heard the theme

statement is by recognising these moments when the background changes. You don't have to

know any technical terms to know what song you are listening to.

And because you can tell the difference between, say, a rhythm changes bridge and other bridges,

you can already distinguish between the kinds of shift the background makes. The moment of

shift defines what the song is. Truly a defining moment.

The importance of these moments cannot be overstated. They tell you, by the way they feel, what

the song is. And they feel just the same whatever key the song is being performed in. Relative

to where you are, something happens.

If we are building our songs from LEGO bricks, such as we did with Autumn Leaves above, then

these moments are what we should call the join between one brick and another.

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If you can hear the joins in songs like There Will Never Be Another You, you already know

everything you need to. All I have to do is to prove it to you!

Making the Map

Finding your way through a song is not unlike following a set of directions. ‘Go straight down

there, take the first left and the third right....’. That sort of thing.

In a LEGO make, we don’t say ‘make a left’ or anything like that, we say the name of the join we

make. But what do we call the joins? There are in fact 12 of them (trust me, I’m a doctor), so we

need 12 names. In my experience it doesn’t help musicians, let alone non-musicians to use

convention musical terminology to do it, things like ‘up a fourth’. Nicknames based on what they

sound like, or on the name of the song in which they are most prominent, are the easiest to

remember, and so the most useful.

But before we get to work making our maps, bear with me while I take a little time out to discussthis whole potentially risky business of adding more terminology to the ways we can discuss

music.

A Note On Naming The LEGO Bricks

Naming the pieces of real LEGO bricks is a matter of colour, size, and characteristics, and is

fairly unequivocal. With the jazz LEGO bricks there isn’t any agreed pre-existing vocabulary

with which to describe things adequately. As will be clear by now, I don’t think that the fact of a

term being used within WEAM makes it ‘right’, unless it is useful.

So you will find some terms used which come from that musical world. And while they may not

mean exactly what they do to a WEAM analyst, they won’t do violence to the general sense. E M

Forster once said everything was like something, and so when he had to learn about someapparently new thing he would say ‘what is this like?’. So where there isn’t an obvious

‘mechanical’ explanation (and sometimes where there is) the names of the harmonic LEGO bricks

are derived from one of the songs in which they can be clearly seen.

There are two things we have to have names for. First, the individual parts of songs, from terms

like ‘bridge’ right down to a specific LEGO brick like a ‘sad cadence’. Second, the joins between

the LEGO bricks, so that we can build the map of the song.

This ‘nickname’ approach has two benefits. First, it really does mean that even a total non-

musician can, if they want, have a detailed appreciation of what is going on, without having to

know anything technical. Second, it means that there is much less for a musician to remember in

a playing situation.

To make an analogy. It is certainly true from an industrial chemist’s point of view that you get a

particular paint colour from specif ic propor tions of specific pigments. And it is relevant if you

are a chemist. If you are an artist, you will very likely not know (and probably not care) about

what the chemist knows. You will call a colour by a single phrase, of one or two words (‘Black’,

‘Chrome Yellow’) which may seem irrelevant or even bizarre to the chemist. So in harmony,

which, as we have seen, is primarily about things moving in particular directions in particular

ways, we do better to find ways of describing these things, from the point of view of the artist

not the chemist.

If a single word, or a short phrase summons up a complete description of, say half a song, then

your creative flow is not interrupted by the equivalent of having to remember the 19 times table.

To do it any other than the most efficient way is to introduce irrelevant jargon (however

‘accurate’ and sanctified by WEAM teaching practice) which gets in the way of the real businessof expressing yourself adequately!

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It is not simply a question of reducing the real-time computational load on the improviser’s brain,

important though that is. The fact that the LEGO bricks approach starts from the song not the

individual chord or scale means that your basic orientation as you play your solos will be

properly creative, right from the outset , however inexperienced as a player you are.

When you learn to drive a car, the very last thing you get around to considering is the most

interesting part: where to drive to in it. You spend a long time learning how to make things

happen. Much jazz education has tended to start in the same way, or even worse, with the

equivalent of being expected to know how to service the car before you are allowed to go on

holiday in it! The LEGO bricks approach to improvising means that right from the beginning you

are thinking about where you are, and where you are going, and there is no 19 times table.

Since it is now nearly twenty years since the first edition of Harmony with LEGO Bricks came

out, there is by now quite a community of people who remember the harmonies of songs using the

LEGO bricks approach. The names used in the book now are the ones which have gained general

currency -and they aren’t always the ones I myself at first used. So the ‘vocabulary’ has been

subject to the natural evolution of any living language, and developments continue.

Mapping Blue Bossa If I may interject a personal note here, I recently spent some hours with Barry Harris, going

through much of the text of the previous edition of this book. (He likes it, I am relieved to

report!) But when he saw Blue Bossa amongst the Core Repertoire in Part VII, he jabbed a finger

accusingly at it and said ‘what’s that doing in here?’

I said that to begin with, it was short, and therefore less confusing for people getting used to

mapping songs with LEGO bricks, but more importantly, it used the same cadence twice, but

because you came at each instance of the cadence from a different direct ion, it effectively gave it

a different musical significance each time.

‘Right’, he said, ‘you teach movement, like I do, not harmony’. It was like getting an approving

nod from Coltrane after finishing a solo!

Let us see what this means when we look at Blue Bossa.

Coming Home

Inside a cadence, there is no question of a join at all. The journey from further away to there is a

coming home. But although cadences may be satisfying, they are also predictable. You know

what to expect.

If a cadence is repeated, as in the last section of Autumn Leaves , you know you haven’t left home.

If you sing along, you will find that each ends at the same place.

If you kept doing that it would become boring.

Home Sweet Home?

But that doesn’t mean you can’t build an interesting song from nothing but cadences. The reason

is that, as we saw in Autumn Leaves , the new cadence isn’t always a repeat, it often goes

somewhere else. When you are inside a cadence, you know where you are going. When you

start a new one which goes somewhere else, it is like the driver of a car taking a sudden turning

you didn’t expect. Once the turn has been made, you know where you are going again - at least

until the next turn.

Just noticing whether the song hangs around home, or heads off to somewhere else puts you incharge, right in among the music.

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As we saw, What’s New starts at home, the ‘What’s’ that precedes the first beat is nearly there,

and the ‘New’ is home. But ‘How is the world treating you’ makes a journey to somewhere else.

The place you are at when the cadence is a strange place, a long way from home. Listen again,

and feel just how far from home you are when ‘you’ is sung. Except that, paradoxically, the

somewhere else is home now, at least for the moment.

Any place a cadence hangs its hat is home. Anywhere the song then goes to is somewhere else.

In its turn, that somewhere else is quite likely to become the new home.

In Blue Bossa, we have a song built almost entirely from cadences, so we can explore the idea of

going somewhere else.

If you listen to a good version of this, such as Art Pepper’s, from Among Friends, you can see

how the story of the chorus unfolds. Be prepared to play the track several times, if that is what it

takes.

LISTEN NOW . Blue Bossa. Art Pepper (1).

Blue Bossa has the following structure:

Two sad static measures at home, followed by two sad staticmeasures somewhere else

A sad cadence to somewhere else

A straight cadence to somewhere else

A sad cadence to somewhere else

The above Blue Bossa diagram is a set of instructions to be followed blindly. You will get to

where you want to be, but you won’t understand where you are. Halfway through the first line

you make a turn. Then, at the beginning of each line, you make a turn as well.

If you sing or play along with the song, paying attention to the bass line, you will find that not

only does Blue Bossa start and finish in the same place - the same home - but that the cadence in

the second line comes home too. The only non homes where anything settles are at the end of the

first and third lines. Plus, you should hear that apart from the static measures on the first line, the

rest of the song is just cadences.

So a better way to map Blue Bossa is like this:

Two sad static measures at home, followed by two sad staticmeasures somewhere else

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A sad cadence back home again

A straight cadence to somewhere really foreign

A sad cadence back home again

The static measures just hang about, so we can recognise them as hovers.

But what joins do we need?

We need one to move from the first hover to the second.

We need one to move from the second hover to the second line.

We need one to move from the second line to the third line.

We need one to move from the third line to the fourth line.

All these joins are different. Each defines a different distance between the LEGO bricks. And, in

LEGO brick terms, each join has its own unique name. All of these names are defined, explained

and illustrated in a moment, but if you will trust me, I will represent Blue Bossa, with the joins

named.

Two measure sad hover, Highjump to another 2 measure sadhover.

Sad Backslider

Straight Cherokee

Sad Downwinder

So as you think your way through a chorus of Blue Bossa, whether as a listener or a player, you

know whether you are ‘hovering’ or on your way through a cadence, and you know where and

what the joins are.

The Best of Both Worlds

This third diagram combines the best of both worlds.

It has the simplicity and reliability of the first diagram: a foolproof set of directions which won’t

get you lost. You are always somewhere in the song. If you are in the middle of a LEGO brick,like a cadence, you just follow it through to the end. At the end of the brick, you meet a named

join, and then you are into another LEGO brick.

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But it combines that with what the second diagram offers, the potential to understand the context,

to know something of the destination, and the local stopping places en route. This increased

depth of knowledge will automatically feed into your listening and playing.

This LEGO bricks approach works with songs of all structures, even where repeats of bricks don’tcrop up. With growing experience, you will know that making the second join after the first one

in Blue Bossa is going to bring you back where you started. Just as making the join at the

beginning of the last line , having previous ly made the join at the beginning of the third line , will

do the same.

But the important point is that you don’t have to know that to begin with. In a car, to travel four

sides of a square, and come back to where you started, you might be told ‘first left, first left, first

left, and first left again’. The same join four times, and you wouldn’t get lost. After a while, as

you got to know the territory, you would become increasingly aware of where you were in

relation to your starting point. But you didn’t have to know that at first. Right from the

outset, you had a foolproof way of finding the route, but rich with the potential to understand the

territory.

For Musicians Only

Can you see what this buys you? Knowing what a cadence looks like, you can see at a glance that

Blue Bossa has 3 of them, 75% of the song. So you don’t have to remember those changes, you

just note the joins to get to them, a Backsl ider , a Cherokee, and a Downwinder. The hovers in the

first line can be remembered in a flash too, including the Highjump between them.

So committing the song to memory is literally the work of seconds.

But there is more. By remembering the song as a map, not a set of specified changes in a

particular key, you can play it in any key as well , without having to do anything mechanical like

transposing it mentally!

Because there are only twelve notes, there are only twelve possible joins. Blue Bossa has four of

them. So this one simple song shows you a whole third of the total territory! You don’t have to

know anything about which note the join goes to. You just have to notice that, say, How High

the Moon doesn’t sound the same as There Will Never be Another You.

Never Mind The LEGO Brick, Feel The Join

There are exactly 12 possible joins, and each has its own particular sound. What we are going to

do now is explore the territory they cover by looking at some easy to follow ‘maps’ of songs and

parts of songs. We star t by considering repeats of the same cadence (with some bells and

whistles), in Coming Home. Then in Bridge Starts , we consider the possibilities in the most

obvious place to hear a join in a song, the movement from the repeat of the front strain into the beginning of the bridge , through the use of many examples. Finally, because, as we said, there

are only 12 of them, we systematically list All The Joins There Are.

Each join has its own sound, and, inevitably, some songs use the same joins as others. In what

follows, I have classified all the possible joins between LEGO bricks, given each join a name,

(where we have not already named it) and listed some songs which use each join.

You should enjoy listening to the records which illustrate this. When you make your own

Companion Recordings, you might want to record yourself saying the name of the join before the

examples are heard. Many of the names derive from song titles, and all are reasonably

entertaining, however serious in intent

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Almost any jazz book will teach you about cadences, whether it calls them II-V7-I’s or whatever.

Important as that is, it is only the beginning! By taking the notion of jo ins on board, you really

put power into the system. (That is what Barry Harris meant by ‘movement’.) And if you are a

musician, joins will enable you to take in the whole of a song at a glance, and to play it in anykey at all without having to think about it.

Home from home

There are times when one cadence comes after another, but we know that we didn’t go anywhere

different. A stroll around the block, from home, to home. We have already met examples of this,

and called the two kinds the ‘homer’ and the ‘retake’. The difference between the two being

simply in what happens in the last measure of the first cadence. A homer is where the both of the

last measures of the first cadence are normal: at rest. A retake is where the final measure ‘draws

breath’ as it were, or drops back a bi t to get a run at the repeat .

Then there is the ‘pullback’ . This goes one step further than a retake. The first cadence does notresolve to a ‘there’ feeling at all. Instead, it does what you normally get at the end of the first A

of an AABA song. It suspends the resolution while it turns around to have another go.

Once again a lot of mileage is to be got from simple material. None of these devices sound

identical, and indeed their impact differs considerably. And yet, at the ‘technical’ or conceptual

level, those differences are absolutely trivial. Once again, using this book gives you simple

means of leveraging enormous emotional potential in your solos.

I Get a Kick out of You is a good song to look at. Its front consists of four versions of the same

cadence. The second is a retake of the first. The third and fourth together make a pullback . It

then starts what appears to be another retake. But it turns out to be the same as the second half of

the front of I’ ll Remember Apri l (from ‘alone...’ to ‘and be glad’). A pullback , is where the

cadence starts normally, but instead of resolving, pulls back to get a longer run in to the

resolution.

The words may help, so first try a vocal version. The first cadence starts ‘I get no kick’. The

retake starts ‘mere alcohol’. The pullback is ‘so tell me...’.

LISTEN NOW . I Get a Kick out of You. Frank Sinatra (5).

Now an instrumental version. This one, by the way, like many songs in the Max Roach/Clifford

Brown repertoire ‘plays’ with the song rhythmically during the head. Once the solos start,

however, you get the structure in very straight ahead fashion.

LISTEN NOW . I Get a Kick out of You. Clifford Brown (1).

Another Whole Song Built from Cadences

Baubles Bangles and Beads is all cadences. And except for using one particular join between

repeats, it is all variations on repeated ones. Let’s take it apart.

The first two cadences are a cadence and a retake. You know itis going to be a retake because the words ‘jing jinga linga’ give

you that ‘drawing back’ feeling.

After the first two cadences, there is an abrupt change tosomewhere else, before we get another pair of cadences. Thisabrupt change is so distinctive (and characteristic of this song)

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that it is called a bauble. The two cadences we get to are apullback. The only difference from the retake is that instead of a

resolved ‘there’ feeling when we get to ‘my heart will sing’, wecan feel the resolution is suspended.

The same bauble join takes us to the bridge of the song, ‘I’llglitter and gleam’. Bridges, we know, usually resolve to a

‘nearly there’ relative to the ‘there’ of the end of the song. Ifthe second cadence of this bridge resolved though, it would

be to the ‘there’. So it does what a pullback does, it‘resolves’ to a suspension of the there: ‘dream, so that’.

That kicks off the final section of the song, which itself is a sort

of double pullback. Twice, it refuses to resolve. ‘Buy me a ring,ringa linga’ and ‘leads, wearing’. Only then do we get a

straightforward cadence to finish the song.

Baubles Bangles and Beads can feel very ‘swirly’ to play, because those retakes and variants

make you dizzy. And the final A of the song, coming after a bridge which finished with what the

last A starts with, and including extra cadence at the end, means that there are four goes at the

same thing before the chorus ends. Phew!

The recommended vocal version is by Sara Vaughan.

LISTEN NOW . Baubles Bangles and Beads. Sara Vaughan (2).

The instrumental version recommended is by Bill Evans, playing solo piano. This is the third

song in a medley recorded on January 10, 1963, unissued until the invaluable Riverside box was

published.

LISTEN NOW . Baubles Bangles and Beads. Bill Evans (1).

This mad frustrating game about finally getting to somewhere you can stop is the ‘story’ of the

song. If you enjoy Baubles Bangles and Beads at this stage, you are already responding to the

game. By concentrating a bit more, and learning to follow the ‘narrative’ I have just given, not

only do you get much more out of it, but you are preparing to be able to play your own

authoritative versions of it.

Please bear this song in mind when reading the 'two-cadence bridge' section titled

bauble+bauble in the next section.

Bridge StartsOften, with AABA songs, the ‘big moment’ is at the point the B section, the bridge, starts. It’s

the definitive point where the journey to somewhere else starts. So it’s a great way to start to

recognise that the song moves away from home. And also to see that not every ‘somewhere else’

is the same. And also to see that some of these ‘somewhere elses’ are the same. We’ll do it by

looking at quite a lot of bridge starts, and naming the different ‘somewhere elses’ we find.

BootStraps at bridge starts

We begin with the ‘BootStrap’ feel. The feeling here is of the song picking itself up by its own

bootstraps, (or putt ing a bomb under itself), af ter the quiet at the end of the second A. The

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propulsion you can get is enormous! All of the songs coming up start their bridges with

cadences with the bootstrap feel. Give yourself the time to appreciate the effect.

The next 10 tracks feature AABA songs where all of the bridges start with a bootstrap. In

addition, some of these songs have two-cadence bridges (see next section). This means simplythat halfway through the bridge there is a join to another cadence, so that the whole bridge can be

expressed as just two joins – one to get into the bridge, and one to join the second half of the

bridge . Please refer forward to the next sect ion Two Cadence Bridges when listening. Rather

than repeat the tracks immediately in the next section, they are delineated accordingly here.

The next three songs, Broadway , Daahoud , and Crazy Rhythm, (covering four tracks), all have

identical bridges. (See below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+New Horizon).

For Musicians especially: just a thought for you. Simply by being able to play cadences in

any key and by knowing what the joins are you can play all these bridges in any key too,

without a second thought . The complete set of possible joins is covered shortly in All the Joins

There Are, and in Part IX of the book, The Harmony With LEGO Bricks Playalong .

Broadway’s bridge starts with the words ‘Out of town...’. Note that the second half of the bridge

is a cadence too.

LISTEN NOW . Broadway. Rita Reys (2)

Gerry Mulligan’s version shows Zoot Sims exploiting the moment.

LISTEN NOW . Broadway . Gerry Mulligan (2).

Daahoud by Clifford Brown.

LISTEN NOW . Daahoud. Clifford Brown (2).

Crazy Rhythm by Benny Carter. The amazingly swinging bass playing here is by Jimmy

Garrison, from John Coltrane’s quartet.

LISTEN NOW . Crazy Rhythm. Benny Carter (1).

The next two songs, You Can Depend on Me and Honeysuckle Rose both have identical bridges.

(See below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+Woody).

You Can Depend on Me . The second half of this bridge is a cadence too, but not the same as

Broadway’s . You can feel that the end of it is not resolved but applies some tension so as to be

ready to repeat the front.

LISTEN NOW . You Can Depend on Me. Dexter Gordon (2).

Honeysuckle Rose .

LISTEN NOW . Honeysuckle Rose . Benny Carter (1).

On the Sunny Side of the Street . This is nearly the same bridge as the last two songs: the join in

the middle is there OK, but there is a variation at the point of the second resolution.

LISTEN NOW . On the Sunny Side of the Street . Lester Young (2).

Our Delight . I have chosen the alternative master to recommend here because it has always

seemed to me that in Fats Navarro’s solo, his playing of the first half of the bridge is just about

the perfect way to play a bootstrap bridge start.

LISTEN NOW . Our Delight . Fats Navarro (1).

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Confirmation. The second half of this bridge is obviously a cadence, but not to anywhere we

have been so far, hence the quick ‘launch’ in its last measure. (See below under 2 Cadence

Bridges: Bootstrap+Highjump).

LISTEN NOW . Confirmation. Dexter Gordon (2).

Af ternoon in Paris. The second half of the bridge seems to be a repeat of the first half, except

that the resolution goes kind of ‘shifty’ feeling, as the song gets ready to repeat the front. (See

below under 2 Cadence Bridges: Bootstrap+Homer).

LISTEN NOW . Afternoon in Paris. Sonny Stitt (1).

Incidentally, if you get the CD reissue of this (Sonny Stitt/Bud Powell/J.J. Johnson on OJCCD-

009-2) you will find the take used here - the one we've always known - described as 'take 1', a

'bonus track'. Don’t be fooled. The 'take 2' is much less assured, and considerably worse in

recording quality.

Two Cadence Bridges

We have just noticed that several of the songs which started their bridges with bootstraps had

cadences in the other half of their bridges too. Some of them were the same as each other, some

different. The join to the second cadence is just as important as the one to the first one.

Because you now know what a cadence is, you should be able to recognise one when you hear it.

And that means you should be able to recognise when, for example, a bridge consists of just two

cadences. The feeling you get as each cadence starts is recognisable. It is recognisable because

you can tell that sometimes it is the same as in another song, sometimes it is different.

These recognisable ‘joins’ between cadences are the most important ‘events’ in the songs. Yet

the idea of joins, one of the easiest things for non-musicians as well as musicians to grasp, is

almost entirely neglected in jazz education.

So here are a few songs with two cadence bridges, presented in an order which helps you to learn.

We begin with examples where the first half of the bridge is a bootstrap, only the cadence in the

second half of the bridge is different.

Rather than repeat tracks which have just been referred to as having bootstraps at bridge starts,

we refer back to those examples. Take your time, and listen often.

Bootstrap + Woody

The move to the second cadence is called a woody because it is so beautifully clear in Woody ‘n’

You. That song isn’t on the list just yet, because, although its bridge is basically a bootstrap +

woody, the two cadences are not quite usual. (We get around to their particular variation soon).The two songs noted so far are You Can Depend on Me and Honeysuckle Rose . (And On the

Sunny Side of the Street is nearly the same).

Bootstrap + Highjump

The move to the second cadence is called a highjump , because although it is a bit abrupt, it does

seem within reach, as though you could reach it with a high jump. We have met highjumps

before, al though we didn’t comment at the time. For instance, the star t of the bridge in I’ll

Remember Apri l , where the words say ‘I’ll be content’. Confirmation starts the second half of the

bridge with a highjump.

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Bootstrap + New Horizon

The move to the second cadence is called a new horizon because it starts from the same place

that was just resolved to, but this time with a ‘further away’ feel. Like walking up a mountain to

where it meets the sky, only to find it isn’t the top: there’s a new horizon even further up. Thestart of the bridge to What is This Thing Called Love starts with a new horizon. Here the songs

we noted were Broadway , Daahoud , and Crazy Rhythm.

Bootstrap + Homer

The move to the second cadence is called a homer, because, since it seems to be a repeat of one

just played, it is coming home. Afternoon in Paris was the song noted above.

But by no means all two cadence bridges start with a bootstrap.

Woody + New Horizon

I Can’t Get Star ted uses these two movements, one to get into each half of its bridge. Note that

its cadences are ‘unconventional’ in the same way as Woody ‘n’ You.

LISTEN NOW . I Can't Get Started . Art Farmer (2).

Homer + Retake

We already met a homer in Afternoon in Paris. A retake is just a homer that you are ready for.

With a homer, the previous resolution just sits there, so you don’t know what to expect until the

new cadence starts. With a retake, the last measure of the previous resolution is a ‘drop back’, to

launch the next cadence. So you are expecting a retake of the same cadence. The bridge of Alice

in Wonderland does this. But we have met a retake before, in I’ll Remember Apri l . The second

cadence of the bridge (starting with the words ‘your lips were warm’) is a retake.

LISTEN NOW . Alice in Wonder land . Bill Evans (2).

Bauble + Bauble

The characteristic feel of Baubles Bangles and Beads ( or Gorbals Bangor and Leeds, as touring

British players call it) is of a particular movement from one cadence to another which keeps on

cropping up throughout the song. It could hardly be called anything other than a bauble.. The

bridge star ts with a bauble, and the second half is another bauble! (Please refer back to the Sarah

Vaughan and Bill Evans versions above in Another Whole Song Built from Cadences).

New Horizon + New Horizon

My Shining Hour does this. It isn’t a strict AABA song, though. More an ABCA1. Nevertheless,

the third eight, whether you think of it as the B or the C section certainly feels and functions like

a bridge. The whole of the resolution of the second cadence is given over to launching the reprise

of the A.

LISTEN NOW. My Shining Hour. John Coltrane (2).

Fresh Air Bridge Starts

Not al l br idges star t with cadences. Some start resolved but in a completely different place to the

end of the front. A change of air, you might say. Often the distance travelled is the same as Out

of Nowhere travelled to get to the word ‘nowhere’. Here are some examples. The ‘Up’ ones feel

as though they have moved up, and the ‘Down’ ones feel as though they have moved down. Both

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are remote from the end of the front, but neither are like the other. If you can’t hear whether they

are ‘up’ or ‘down’ at first, don’t worry. You can still use the names to distinguish them.

Up Nowhere BridgesWe met one of these earlier, in Between the Devi l and the Deep Blue Sea. Also using this device

are ‘SWonderful ...

LISTEN NOW . ‘SWonderful. Lee Konitz (4).

... and Polka Dots and Moonbeams.

LISTEN NOW . Polka Dots and Moonbeams. John Coltrane (1).

Down Nowhere Bridges

Two ballads which use these are Darn That Dream...

LISTEN NOW . Darn That Dream. Dexter Gordon (2).

... and Easy Living . The recommended version is by Wardell Gray.

LISTEN NOW . Easy Living. Various Artists (5).

All The Joins There Are

Above, when we took Blue Bossa apart, I said that there were only twelve joins (and that Blue

Bossa had four of them).

Along the way, in looking at bridges and retakes, we met some more joins.

Here we look at all twelve, including all of the ones so far encountered, with lots of examples to

listen to.

Is this all there is? Yes!

So take your time and listen often. The suggested tracks will teach you everything.

Repeats Of The Same CadenceRepeats of the same cadence are a special category, since they don’t go anywhere new. As we

have seen, the difference between a homer and a retake is that the ‘silent’ last quarter of the first

cadence is treated differently. In a homer the last section has no change from the ‘there’ third

section. In a retake, that last section has a ‘dropback’ feel, a drawing back to get a bit of a run at

the repeat.

Homers

These turn up all over, like Al ice in Wonderland (first four measures of the bridge), and You can

Depend on Me (second half of the front). The recommended example is from All the Things You

Are, where the first four measures of the bridge are a homer.

LISTEN NOW . All the Things You Are. Serge Chaloff (1)

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Retakes

These are common too, and we have heard a lot of them so far. Alice in Wonderland (second four

measures of the bridge); Baubles Bangles and Beads (second four measures); I’ ll Remember April

(second four measures of the bridge). And literally hundreds more. As an example let’s take asong not referred to so far, It ’s You or No-One . The second four measures are a retake of the first

cadence.

LISTEN NOW . It’s You or No-One. Dexter Gordon (3).

New HorizonsWho would have thought that, say, Laura and How High The Moon had so much in common!

With Harmony with LEGO Bricks it becomes clear just how much. It also becomes clear that

‘harmony’ can’t be the driving force for the improviser’s line, otherwise those two songs would

sound like each other. Yet they both new horizon twice, and bauble to get back home. Carla

Bley’s song New Hymn is secretly re-titled (by me) New Horizon Hymn , because new horizon joins are the key to the way the song works.

You find examples in Hot House (into the bridge); Cherokee (all three joins inside the bridge),

Invi tation (first two joins in the bridge); Ornithology: (offset in first and second four measures);

Afternoon in Paris (measures two and four); I Can’t Get Started (into second half of the bridge);

Broadway ( into second half of the bridge); Daahoud (into second half of the bridge); The Night

has 1000 Eyes (into the second four measures of the C section); Solar (measures seven and ten).

In both Tune Up and Laura, the new horizons come at the same place. Both start with three

straight cadences, thus with two joins. And in both songs, both joins are new horizons.

LISTEN NOW . Tune Up. Miles Davis (1).

And Laura...

LISTEN NOW . Laura. Eric Dolphy (2).

DownwindersThese have their approach chords start a notch up, and their resolution end up a notch down.

They come in straight and sad moods. The launcher at the end of Solar , for example is a straight

one. And the final cadence in Blue Bossa is a sad one. The illustration here is All the Things You

Are, which downwinds ‘makes the lonely winter’ after a resolved start in the last four measures

before the bridge.

LISTEN NOW . All the Things You Are. Hampton Hawes (2).

CherokeesAlthough the name obviously comes from Cherokee, because of the prominence of the Cherokee

join at the star t of the bridge , there are plenty of other songs which use one too. Blue Bossa’s

third four measures are a Cherokee, and so is the launcher Body & Soul uses to get into its bridge.

But let’s stick to Cherokee as an illustration.

LISTEN NOW . Cherokee. Barry Harris (1)

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WoodysWe have encountered many of these. The second half of the bridges of Woody ‘n’ You,

Honeysuckle Rose , and You Can Depend on Me, are all entered via woodys. I Can’t Get Started

uses one to get into its bridge. Our example uses Woody ‘n’ You.

LISTEN NOW . Woody ‘n’ You. Miles Davis (1).

Highjumps

A highjump was how we got into the bridge of I’ll Remember April . Among other ones in the

repertoire are, going into the second half of the bridge of Confirmation, into the B section of It ’s

You or No-One, into the second cadence of the A section of Beautiful Love , and also from the first

to the second half of the first measure of Central Park West . Our example comes from The Night

Has 1000 Eyes .

As you come out of the Latin ABAB sections, and go into the swing of the C section, you do itwith a highjump.

LISTEN NOW . The Night Has 1000 Eyes. Stan Getz (2).

Baubles

We have already noted the fact that if you have three cadences joined with new horizons, and

want to get back to where you started, you have to use a bauble. So that accounts for Af ternoon

in Paris, Laura, How High The Moon , and Tune Up. Plus of course Baubles Bangles and Beads

itself!. Having started with a cadence and a retake, it baubles to another cadence with a retake.

The bridge is entered via a bauble , and is two cadences joined with a bauble Enough baubles to

buy Manhattan? In measure four of What’s New (‘you haven’t changed a bit’) there is a baubletoo. But our example is Gone With the Wind .

The A section starts with two compact cadences, the second a retake of the first. Then there is a

bauble and the song does a new compact cadence, and retakes that one too. (That’s half the song

remembered already).

LISTEN NOW . Gone With the Wind. Stan Getz (3).

SidewindersThese aren’t named for Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder , but because they actually seem to

sidewind . There you are in the song, solid and resolved. Then suddenly the harmony slips down

a notch, and it’s away! Straight ones include the join into the second half of the bridge of All the

Things You Are (‘the dearest things I know’), the join into both the third and fourth cadences of

the bridge to I’ll Remember Apri l , the join into the B section of You Stepped Out of a Dream, and

the join into the second half of the third measure of Central Park West . Sad ones include the join

into the third measure of Weaver of Dreams, and the same place in There Will Never Be Another

You. That last one is our illustration.

LISTEN NOW . There Will Never Be Another You. Stan Getz (4).

Half Nelsons

These are named for the approach chords in Half Nelson/Ladybird , at the end of the A section,

used to launch the beginning of the B section. Actually only Ladybird does it in ‘pure’ form; Half Nelson usually uses Stablemates approach chords, which we meet later in our complete

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LEGO bricks kit. The basic form is the same join we noted right at the beginning, in What’s

New, where the lyrics say ‘How’. Our example is from Cole Porter’s I Love You, the song with

the big jump down at the start from ‘I Love’ to ‘You’. As you go into the C section of this ABCD

song, you get a half nelson join.

LISTEN NOW . I Love You. Bill Evans (1).

Backsliders

Although it doesn’t seem like it at first, backsliders travel the same distance as the amen

cadences in gospel music and soul-inflected jazz – (we meet them later in this book). It is simply

that the amen cadence does it straight and direct. One moment it’s on ‘A-’ the next it’s on ‘-

men’. A backslider is where we have got to a resolved place, and want to go to where an amen

would take us, but take the cadence route instead, so there’s some scenery along the way. The

second four measures (the first cadence) of Blue Bossa is a sad backslider to get back to where

the song started. The second half of the front to Hot House is a sad backslider too. Our example

is a straight one, in You Stepped Out of a Dream . The song starts with a hover for two measures,moves up a notch and hovers again, then does a full four measure straight backslider.

LISTEN NOW . You Stepped Out of a Dream. Dexter Gordon (4).

StellasWhen I first wrote Harmony with LEGO Bricks I couldn’t find any straight cadences where the

join was a ‘nowhere’. The nearest I got was Stella By Starlight , (‘that ripples through a nook’).

But when that resolves to ‘at eventide’ it turns out to have been what we will later call a

Yardbird cadence, when we come to put our complete kit of LEGO bricks together. But it was

the best I could do then, and so the join attracted the name Stella, (although maybe it should

actually have been nowhere). It is in any case the only join without a conventional playalongcadence track to itself in the Harmony with LEGO Bricks playalong. This is partly because it is

so rare, and partly because, effective though it is, if you join a straight cadence with a Stella, then

join that one with another Stella, you are back repeat ing the first cadence. Since then Central

Park West has impinged itself, and so this fascinating short song by John Coltrane is our example.

Most of its changes are compact.

Central Park West starts resolved, highjumps, stellas, sidewinds , stellas again, highjumps

again, then sidewinds again! Its back where it started, but with the harmonic rhythm slowed right

down to one chord per measure instead of the three which every one has had until now. A

beautifully peaceful end.

LISTEN NOW . Central Park West. John Coltrane (2).

BootstrapsWe met a lot of bootstraps when we looked at bridge starts. They were certainly a spectacular

way of getting into a bridge, but I don’t intend to repeat all that list now. You can hear

bootstraps in other places too. The front of Cherokee has an offset cadence starting after its first

two measures, where the lyrics say ‘maiden’. That is a bootstrap. Solar also uses one. It starts

with two measures resolved, then bootstraps. (After this it new horizons twice in a row, which

gets it rather a long way from home, a problem it solves by a downwinder launcher to get back to

the top). In a Mellotone/Rose Room’s first eight measures are two cadences. The join between

them is a bootstrap.

But the bootstrap brings to a close this list of joins, and the best example to do it with is still, it

seems to me, an entry into a bridge. So the final illustration is one of the best songs there is,

Charlie Parker’s Confirmation.

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LISTEN NOW . Confirmation. Jackie McLean (2).

A Final Hover over Hovers

So far we have only glance at hovers, the two short ones in the first line of Blue Bossa. But they

have more uses than you might think, and occur more widely too, as well as generally lasting for

longer than they do in Blue Bossa.

Hovers don’t pirouette like turnarounds, but functionally they share the function of marking time

before going somewhere. As we will see in a moment, sometimes, as at the beginning of

Invi tation , they sort of lie quiet. Sometimes, like in the first half of the bridge of Take the ‘A’

Train, they can really wind up the tension.

So, by definition, a hover is where the harmonic movement is suspended. It isn’t going

anywhere, it stays in the same place, and you can feel that the background does not shift. In

practical terms, because two measures on a given chord is a commonplace event, nothing is

usually (except for Blue Bossa)considered to be a hover unless it is more than two measures long.

So wouldn’t consider the resolution of a cadence to be a hover! Hovers are actually fairly

uncommon in songs, and so are easy to spot - and they can be very effective.

In what is called ‘modal jazz’, the whole of the song is usually built from hovers containing no

internal tension, and so having no need to go anywhere, with the interest coming, as in North

Indian Classical Music, from the ingenuity of the improvised line against the static background,

and from occasional shifts to a hover at a different pitch.

A fine example of this is So What from Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue . So What is an ordinary 32

measure AABA song, but built entirely from hovers. The front is a hover in a colour called

‘Dorian’ based on a particular ‘root’ note. The bridge is also coloured Dorian, but you can hear

that the ‘root’ shifts up when it begins. You can also hear that it shifts back down again to begin

the reprise of the front. While you are in any of the sections, there is no feeling of wanting to go

anywhere else, just a wish to explore the static space, as if it were the inside of a cathedral.

LISTEN NOW . So What. Miles Davis (3).

We know now what to call the opening half of the front to I’ ll Remember Apri l . It starts with two

hovers over the same place, a straight one and a sad one, each four measures long. The straight

on starts ‘this lovely day’, and the sad one with ‘we’ll sigh goodbye’.

LISTEN NOW . I’ll Remember Apri l. Kenny Dorham (2).

Invi tation starts both of its first sections with sad hovers lasting for four measures. The first one

lasts in the lyrics up to the point where the title ‘Invitation’ comes in.

LISTEN NOW . Invitation. Joe Henderson (1).

Sometimes in conventional (non-modal) songs the presence of a hover means that there is no

tension, but not always. However, some other songs use the hover to build up tension so that you

are nearly screaming to get it to ‘break’.

Take the ‘A’ Train has a four measure hover at the start of its bridge. If you have the wonderful

Stuff Smith album Swingin’ Stuff you can hear Neils-Henning exploiting that by just playing the

root note on every beat in Smith’s second solo chorus. It builds the tension up, so that you

posi tively leap into the second half of the bridge, which is the expected slow launcher to reprisethe front.

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LISTEN NOW . Take the ‘A’ Train. Stuff Smith (1).

Irving Berlin’s Remember has a three measure hover at the start of its bridge, also building up the

tension, but ‘breaking’ in the fourth measure.

LISTEN NOW . Remember. Hank Mobley (3).

From Here...

What you do next depends on you. Apart from the book’s own ‘bridge section’ Part II

Perspectives & Polemics , the rest of this text is aimed primarily at musicians. There is a

complete and detailed discussion of all the LEGO bricks in common use in songs in Part V A Kitof LEGO Bricks to Build Songs With. And, except for the fact that each LEGO brick is illustrated

with an actual example of what it looks like as a written out chord sequence, it is no more

technical than what you have read so far. And it comes complete with the final example tracks

for your Companion Recordings. So even if you aren’t a musician, you should still be able to pick

up on everything.

If you aren’t a musician, and would like to become one, go through Part III Just Do It , and Part

IV The Transi tion From Listening to Playing , and you will be ready to take on the world – and the

rest of this book!

If you are already a musician, you should still check out Parts III and IV, rather than jump to Part

V. It’s take on the basics might change your life!

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