Jazz for Piano – Review
The next piece we will look at is ‘Reflections’ by Thelonious Monk so it seems appropriate to reflect back on some of the concepts we have discussed so far.
Let’s begin with a cautionary quote from Dylan Thomas in 1952:
”It isn’t about trends and impacts and the influence of someone on someone else. It isn’t trying to prove anything by quotations, to groove one hypothetical school of poetry oilily into another. To jigsaw all the pieces which are poems into one improbable picture and then say here it is – ‘This is modern poetry!’” Dylan Thomas
So… if Dylan Thomas is correct what the heck are these Analyses all about!
(1) Jazz does evolve. Composers and improvisers learn from the music that preceded them.
(2) Through hundreds of years we have developed a set of expectations about how a piece of music will unfold.
(3) These expectations create a framework for musicians to manipulate. At its core. Jazz is about toying with expectations. Listeners that don’t like surprises won’t like Jazz!
(4) Being faithful to the intent of a composer is important.
There were three basic “frameworks” at play during the period these Lessons concentrate on (the 1950s & 60s): The blues, gospel, which we discuss in the analysis called “Gospel” (Link) and the popular music of the day.
The blues offered a simple framework of dominant chords built on the I, IV and V chords. It also conditioned our ears to hearing a liberal mix of 3 and b3, 7 and b7 and, to some extent 5 and b5. The basic blues is discussed on the page “Foundational Blues for Jazz Players” (Link).
Popular song leaned heavily on ‘cycle of fourth’ patterns. Here is the root movement for that cycle in the key of Ab, the key for ‘Reflections’.
The other concepts you should be familiar with at this point are: (1) Chord extensions (Link) (2) “sister chords”, diminished chords and tritone substitutions (Link) and (3) How to recognize and play some variations in both major and minor keys (Link).