31 March

Jazz on my mind, especially some ideas about "Coltrane changes". When I was in New York I got a couple of study books about the harmonic ideas John Coltrane developed for his first solo album - Giant Steps. The sequence links three key centres a major third apart - G, Eb and B. I have been reading the chapter in Lewis Porter's biography about Giant Steps.

One way of linking these centres is to use a pattern of stepping down by a semitone into a dominant chord. So from G down to a F#9 which is the dominant of B. The whole cycle would be:

G F#9 B Bb9 Eb D9 - you could keep this going indefinitely.

The second "idea" in Giant Steps uses a slightly elaborated version of this sequence:

Am7 D9 Gmaj7 C#m7 F#7 Bmaj7 etc

Time has Told Me uses a segment of the sequence in the bridge

E Eb7 Ab D7 G7

I realised yesterday that there was a parallel sequence which started with a classic blues change - to the subdominant seventh and then sidestepped down:

C F7 E A7 Ab Db7

I am thinking about using either of these sequences as turnarounds - the little vamp that goes at the end of a jazz sequence to bring it back to the beginning.

On Saturday in the sale I bought the 75th anniversary edition of the Miles Davis Quintet album ESP - recorded in early 1965. This is the first band Miles establishes after Coltrane left him that begins to rival what they achieved together. Giant Steps was recorded in 1959 as Trane was moving away from Davis. In the interim Trane's quartet had established itself as the best jazz group in the world. Finally with ESP Davis got a group of musicians together who could take a step beyond - Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.

I bought the vynil as soon as it came out as a teenager. I had already listened to a Milestones, Porgy and Bess and especially Kind of Blue. And I saw that new quintet at Hammersmith in October 1967.

The track ESP starts with a Hindemith like theme in fourths - a warning that what lies ahead will be radical. I listened to the CD last night. I know it off by heart from 35 years ago in one sense. In another sense the detailed notes in the anniversary edition should teach me a lot. I see Robin and Andrew have written about Easter Sunday. I heard a sermon by Robert Cotton - his question was "Who raised Jesus?" and his answer "God". Though he is the Rector of Holy Trinity - he didnt go into the question of whether Jesus was part of the Trinity before during after his resurrection. But it was an entertaining sermon. I read the New Testament lesson at choral evensong - Revealations Ch 19 the first eight verses which Handel used for the Hallelujah Chorus which the choir performed. Annie Dixon preached on the Song of Solomon - suggesting that what it is really about is what it seems to be about. Revealations 19 takes a different angle - Handel skipped the bit about the whore who had been fornicating with the world being set on fire. Before evensong Robert Cotton thanked me for the Easter present of the CD - Highveld Easter Plundafonix - which has one of Robin's songs on it. It also has lots of variants on the Easter hymn - When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. I performed this at Annie's request on Good Friday as part of a service of meditations - on guitar. I found a new way of putting Coltrane changes into it. I took the first phrase - e f d c - and harmonised it C maj7 Gm47 Abmaj7 and then started the phrase again in Ab from the c. Abmaj7 Ebm47 Emaj7 and same again Emaj7 Bm47 Cmaj7 I think this was the first time I have used Coltrane changes in public. For this performance I used my Chinese Duosonic and a Fender Delux 112 Plus on the clean channel.