Sometimes when I use audio software I lose the transport bar � it sounds crazy doesn�t it � but it has happened a couple of times before and it happened to day � in Wavelab. I just couldn�t find it and so I ended up having to learn some keyboard commands. I got round it but it was a bit of a diversion. Well pretty irritating actually.

I was trying a cheap Shure that I have plugged into the soundcard on the portable � to see if I could get flute lines into WAV relatively easily. It�s a bi-product of spending more time practising the flute � and of practising those harmonies. So I worked away at improvising lines on the harmonies with particular rhythmic and contour patterns. Then I started editing the WAVs � inserting silence to make the line breath better. The question is whether to commit to a particular line and take it across into Cubase. There were some arpeggio ideas I quite liked � a combination of big and small steps in them � four notes (say) which don�t usually sound together.

Inside Wavelab its easy to use chorus, reverb and EQ to get different sounds on the line � is there one I especially want? No not really � just one that sounds adequate.

I had another progression thought � start with a major seventh chord � lift it by a semitone � drop the fifth by a semitone to make it a rootless thirteenth and resolve it naturally as a dominant seventh. Repeat the process twice to get back where you started.

Thinking so much about Miles in 1954 makes me start to think more about the subsequent years. When Ian Carr�s book came out in the 1980s I studied it pretty closely and bought lots of the recordings mentioned � and indeed formed a picture of the musical development. Roughly speaking, after the 1954 �masterpieces� , Miles forms a quintet in 1955 which is amazingly influential and records 4 or 5 LPs for Prestige. But then in 1957 there is an interruption for a number of separate reasons. Miles goes to France and records the film music for Lift to the Scaffold (which Ian Carr devotes a lot of time in the book seeing in it the anticipations of Miles� 60s and electric style). By this time Miles has already fired Coltrane because his habit is making him too unreliable.

Coltrane decides to clean up his act and he does two things which stand out. He records an album titled Blue Train which has four of his own compositions and he joins Thelonius Monk to make a quartet which plays a long stint at the Five Spot club in New York which hits new musical heights. Lots of musicians go to the club to hear whats going on. I played Blue Train this morning and heard it in the light of the 54 Miles recordings � it is even funkier and harder. Curis Fuller from Detroit is on trombone and Lee Morgan plays trumpet . The rhythm section is Miles� � Paul Chamber and Jo Jones. Lee Morgan was under 20 when this record was made. Like Trane he came from Philadelphia and was gigging by the time he was 15 - which brought him into contact to with Miles and Clifford Brown. Like Parker he died in his early 30s.

I discovered that Jo Jones was in London in 1968 doing some teaching � I wonder who he met?

The tune that I have played off Blue Train is Lazy Bird which is a kind of derivation from Lady Bird by Tadd Dameron which I have also played. The Lady Bird changes are:

C Maj7 Fm7 Bb7 Cmaj7 Bbmaj7 Eb7 Abmaj7 Am7 D7 Dm7 G7 Cma7 (turn around)

Which are really good fun to play � the passage from Abmaj 7 to Dm7 modulates it has the note C running through as an anchor.

Lazy Bird goes

Am7 D7 Cm7 F7 Fm7 Eb7 Ebmaj7 Am7 D7 Gmaj7 Abmaj7 Db7

in the A section. The II-V changes on the supertonic and subdominant which open the sequence are a common enough ploy. The interesting step is to use them as a step to the Ebma7 and then jump back to II-V into the tonic of Gmaj7. then there is the quirky turnaround using the flat supertonic to sidestep up to the beginning of the sequence. That bit is actually quite hard to play.

Analysts make a link between the middle part of Giant Steps which goes and this harmonic move:

Ebmaj 7 Am7 D7 Gmaj7 C#maj 7 F#7 Bmaj7 Fm7 Bb7 Ebmaj7 C#m7 F#7

In other words he uses that sequence three times over to go back through the key centres Eb � G � B. The A sction of the tune takes the keys in the opposite direction B � G � Eb in a faster more complicated way.

Anyway with all this stuff on my mind I remembered that I have a video which has collected all the known clips of Trane � I don�t play it much because it is not very well made and I don�t want to wear it out. We have a new video machine so I thought it was worth playing through � besides the playing you get interviews with Elvin Jones Reggie Workman and Jimmy Cobb. The one with Elvin Jones � who most people regard as one of the greatest drummers ever is astonishing � the humility he feels at having been part of the 4tet is very clearly expressed.

I started work on James Jamerson bass lines. The Cd that comes with the book has people like Macca and Entwhistle giving testimony to how much influence JJ had over them. The book says that one or two of the Funk Brothers actually played with Parker Stitt and Gillespie � Yusef Lateef taught others. Well that�s in the bag then.

I am especially listening to the Bridget St John duet on Robins new CD which I think works amazingly well and suits her lyric style of writing. There is an earlier song where there is a �2 voices� effect which I like as well.

Any way here's a review of Blue Train which puts the points well:

The only album John Coltrane recorded for Blue Note as a leader turned out to be one of his most rewarding statements, not to mention a highlight of Blue Note's recording history. Coltrane didn't stay in pure "hard bop" territory very long. He would soon after return to Miles Davis' group to pursue modal-based jazz and continue on to explore Eastern motifs and free jazz. At the time of this recording, he was working in Thelonious Monk's legendary Five Spot quartet. The frontline of Coltrane, trumpeter Lee Morgan, and trombonist Curtis Fuller is a hard bop fan's dream. Pianist Kenny Drew supplies the blues and funk elements while Davis stalwarts Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones anchor the rhythm section. The opening blues of the title track shows just how far Coltrane had come since he began his first stint with Miles two years earlier. Even the simplest of blues structures provided enough room for Coltrane's harmonic curiosity, his searing emotional flurries, and his "sheets of sound" approach. The buoyant original "Moment's Notice" offers especially exuberant solos from all three hornmen plus a terrific arco (bowed) solo from Chambers. The fast blues "Locomotion" displays the leader's ability to mix jarring, seemingly off-key moans into a coherent blues progression. You can hear the difference between Coltrane's ideas and the equally compelling but less adventurous solos from Morgan and Fuller. Despite all of the sharp, piercing tones elsewhere, Coltrane proves he can handle a ballad ("I'm Old Fashioned") with the utmost tenderness. Blue Train represents the best opportunity to hear Coltrane in a true, blowing-session context. While he reaches the heights of hard bop, you can also sense that he was eager to expand beyond its limitations. He would certainly do so in the near future.

And here s another:

John Coltrane was a monster of the tenor sax as early as 1955, when he first joined Miles Davis' band. An overachiever, Coltrane had a relentless and unvarying passion for practice, for improving his skills as an artist. As he progressed through his quite legendary career, he never ceased to amaze. BLUE TRAIN (1957) is a classic; an album often heralded as one of the greatest records of the 1950s by fans and jazz educators alike. It gives the listener a very clear view of what made these musicians so great. You will notice things like Coltrane's (and pianist Kenny Drew's) tasteful and masterful usage of the blues scale in the chant-like title cut. Many musicians have the tendency to drive that scale into the ground when playing the blues. Not so here: these guys were well beyond that sort of thing. On Jerome Kern's "I'm Old Fashioned," you will hear Coltrane's (or was it Kenny Drew's?) ascending-stepwise reharmonization. The Lee Morgan and Curtis Fuller solos on "Locomotion" are a delight, but that's true of the entire album. It is well known that the Coltrane composition "Giant Steps" (released in 1959) is a bear to play, to improvise on the changes. But, even here, Coltrane was writing tunes that could shake a few people up. "Moment's Notice" is one such tune. It has an ABAC structure (8 bars, 8 bars, 8 bars, 14 bars: a total of 38 bars for one time through)--hard enough to follow--along with a barrage of formidable chord changes. Some say the song got its name when Curtis Fuller asked, "You expect me to play these changes at a moment's notice?" BLUE TRAIN is certainly deserving of being hailed as a "classic," a term grossly overused these days. Imagination or creativity doesn't always come in the form of extreme busyness, and if you give this album your full attention, it will offer riches galore. There is good reason why BLUE TRAIN is listed on many a jazz educator's essential recordings list: It IS essential. (Seeing that this reissue gives you all the bonus extras for just a few bucks more, I can't see going for the earlier one.)

The first time I went to the US I got in the lift in the hotel to go down to breakfast and Blue Train was on speakers - I thought - OK gotit - sounds promising.