Brief history of “No limits” Musical

Composition: Modern Jazz.

You Have Nothing to Lose but Your

Chains
Modern Jazz can be described as ‘The Decline & Fall of the Chord‘
or ‘The War on Chords‘ – with the ultimate goal of freer
improvisation.

In the early 20th century, Jazz was tonal. Dixieland Jazz, Bebop,
Hard-bop, Cool Jazz – these are all different styles of Jazz, each
with their own characteristics and complexities, but they are all
tonal. Tonal Jazz relies heavily on chord progressions. Solos are
derived almost entirely from the underlying chords (by
playing Guide Tones and avoiding Avoid Notes). This (thinking in
terms of chords and progressions) is called ‘Vertical Thinking‘.

But then Miles Davis came along, with his Kind of Blue album. This
introduced (along with the album Milestones before it) modality to
Jazz. It moved away from the ‘dense’ and ‘thick’ chord heavy
compositions of Bebop and moved towards a less busy style of
Jazz, with fewer chords and a slower harmonic rhythm. This meant
soloist couldn’t rely solely on the chords to get him (or her) through
an improvisation, instead he had to create interesting melodies
himself. The soloist was free to explore a particular scale or mode
without regard for guide tones or avoid notes or any nonsense like
that. This (thinking in terms of scales and melodies) is called
‘Horizontal Thinking‘. Miles himself called Modal Jazz “a return to
melody”. Thus improvisation slightly loosened the chains that bound
it to the chord.

Free Jazz took this trend further by discarding chords completely

(at least in Ornette Coleman’s version of Free Jazz). Thus there
was literally no harmony at all to adhere to. The soloist was
completely free to play anything he (or she) wanted. Thus
improvisation nally broke free of the chains that once tied it to the
chord.

Improvisation Unbound
Below is a brief summary of the key characteristics of Tonal, Modal
and Free Jazz.

Tonal Jazz Modal Jazz Free Jazz

Chords Functional Non-Functional No Chords
Voicings Tertial (3rds) Quartal (4ths) No Chords
Chord Mvt Circle of Fifths Stepwise None
Melody Guide Tones Character Tones Chromatic
Improv Solo Improv Solo Improv Collective
Improv
Goal of Restate Explore scale Emotive
Improv Chords Melody
Thinking Vertical Horizontal Horizontal
(chords) (scales)
Meter 4/4 - 3/4 etc. 4/4 - 3/4 etc. None
Form Short Form Short Form Extended Form
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Vertical vs Horizontal
Modern Jazz can also be described is the gradual moving away
from vertical thinking, towards horizontal thinking. These terms
were alluded to above, but it’s worth restating them here.

• Vertical Thinking = in terms of chords

• Horizontal Thinking = in terms of scales
Note: Both ‘ways of thinking’ can use chromatic notes and a vertical
solo can sound exactly the same as a horizontal – this is purely a
way of thinking about improvisation.

Modern Jazz – The Only Rule is that There

are No Rules
In Modern Jazz – all things are relative. There are no rules. There
are no right or wrongs. You can do whatever you like, as long as
you want to do it (i.e. this is not Aleatoric Music – it’s NOT pure
randomness and chance). If there is a Tonal Centre, then it
functions as a reference point for your relativity.

And while it can be fun & challenging to play a whole song in modal
or atonal harmony, Contemporary Jazz doesn’t restrict itself to only
one type of ‘harmony’. You can and should use a combination of
tonality, modality, and atonality all in the same song – this makes for
a much more interesting performance. This is how music (and
everything else in society) evolves. First whatever currently exists
(Swing) is taken to the extreme (Bebop), then there is a reaction
against it (Modal and Free Jazz), then both are incorporated into
the mainstream (Contemporary Jazz). This is called the Hegelian
Dialectic. Once the novelty of ‘the new thing‘ has worn off, it is just
absorbed into the mainstream and used as one of the many colours
on a musicians palette.
 • Hegelian Dialectic: a thesis elicits a reaction and gives rise to
its own antithesis, until both are absorbed by a synthesis.

So a Contemporary Jazz song may use tonality, modality & atonality

all in a single song:

• Tonal → Modal → Tonal → Atonal → Silence → Tonal

Have a Listen to
• For songs that jump between Tonal & Modal check out:
• Juju ~ Wayne Shorter
• House of Jade ~ Wayne Shorter
• Dolphin Dance ~ Herbie Hancock
• For songs that jump between Tonal & Atonal check out:
• Early Cecil Taylor (‘Looking Ahead!’ album)
• Early Ornette Coleman (‘The Shape of Jazz to Come’
album)
• For songs that jump between Modal & Atonal check out:
• Most of Coltrane’s albums in the 1960’s. Check
out ‘Impressions’, ‘A Love Supreme’, ‘Meditations’ and
‘Live in Seattle’
Playing From Nothing
Jazz Improvisation
The way we typically approach Jazz Improvisation is through:

• Learning to play the chord progression and melody of a song;

and then
• Improvising over that same chord progression
In this way we spontaneously create a new melody over a given
chord progression.

But as a pianist, you control both the harmony (generally in your left
hand) and the melody (generally in your right hand), so there is no
real reason for you to stick to a given chord progression. This is
only helpful if you’re playing in a band (so that everyone knows
what they should be playing). As a solo pianist, however, you can
improvise both the harmony AND the melody simultaneously – and
thus improvise the entire song. This is sometimes referred to
as Playing from Nothing.

Playing from Nothing

The Jazz pianist most associated with this approach to performance
is Keith Jarrett. He is known to improvise entire hour long concerts
(see Köln Concert for a well known example of this). When he sits
down to play at the piano he doesn’t have any speci c repertoire or
song or melody or scale or chord progression or key in mind. He
just puts his ngers on the keys and plays whatever comes into his
mind at that particular moment. So in this lesson we will discuss
how you too learn to and practice playing from nothing. But rst we
need to discuss semantics.
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Playing from Nothing is a misleading term. You can never truly play
from ‘nothing’ because you have already played lots of different
songs, melodies, chord progressions, scales, styles, etc. All these
things you have played in the past are in your ngers and can be
drawn upon when ‘playing from nothing’.

While ‘playing from nothing’ sounds intimidating at rst because of

the unlimited possibility (as a philosophical aside: we often need
boundaries and limitations to fully express our freedom and
creativity), it’s really not materially different from ‘regular’
improvisation. When improvising a new melody we draw upon
elements that we have practiced in the past. You have already
practiced playing licks, and scales, and arpeggios, and melodies,
etc. and so your solo is informed all these elements. Playing from
Nothing simply takes this one step further and forces you to draw
from previous chord progressions that you have played.

Practicing Nothing
In order to be able to sit down at the piano and spontaneously play
something that sounds half decent, we will need to practice a few
separate elements and follow a few general rules.First, practice
playing and improvising over lots of different but simple chord
progressions in different keys. I prefer 2 or 4 diatonic chord
progressions because they are simple and pleasant sounding. Our
goal here is to be comfortable playing small and simple chord
progressions that sound good in isolation, with the aim of then
combining these little chord progressions into a larger one that will
still sound good in aggregate. Below is a list of chord progression,
keys, and melodic ideas that it’s recommended to practice.
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 Training schematic

Minor Progs Major Frogs Melodic Ideas

I - VI - II - V I - VI - II - V Chords

I - IV - III - V I - V - VI - IV Arpeggios
(Let it be)
I - VI - IV - V I - VI - IV - V Diatonic Scale
(Heart & soul)
I - VII - VI - V I - IV Blues Scale
(Gymnopèdie)
I - VII I - Vsus Chromatic Scale
(Peace piece)
Minor Keys Major Keys Metric
(most used) (most used)

Am, Dm, Em, Gm, Cm C, F, G, Bb, Eb Various

So for example, learn to play and improvise over a 1-6-4-5 chord

progression in Dm ( Dm | Bb | Gm | A7 :|| ) in the left hand while
improvising using the stated melodic ideas in the right hand. And
practice doing this for all combinations and permutations of the
chord progressions and keys. This will give you more than enough
material to then be able to combine into a varied and interesting
longer piece.
Second, we want to follow a few rules to make this improvisation a
little bit more interesting and sophisticated.

• Left Hand
• Play the chords
• Repeat a chosen chord progression (This element can
occasionally change when you begin a new ‘section’)
• Use a repeating pattern/ostinato/vamp rather than just
playing and holding the chords (This element can
occasionally change when you begin a new ‘section’)
• Keep a steady tempo (This element can occasionally
change when you begin a new ‘section’)
• Use a II-V-I perfect cadence to change key
(prepared modulation)
• Right Hand
• Plays the melody (solo)
• Alternate between melodic ideas/scales
• Use repetition / motifs
And that’s it. If you can do the above competently, you’re 90% of the
way to being able to improvise from nothing. By combining the
above progressions in different keys and in different tempos you
can create an interesting and sophisticated sounding solo built from
quite simple elements.