One for the Post Bop nerds...

[princeplanet]

https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/view...&context=gamut

If you make it to the end, the author makes a case for Shorter's chord/scale relationships having more in common with Schoenberg than with Debussy.
Perhaps one or two of you might find this interesting?...

[princeplanet]

... no bites yet, fair enough, it's a long dissertation. How about looking at page 139 to see the 8 different scales that are used in the following analyses of the Shorter solos for E.S.P, Juju and Iris ? Interesting? Useful? Or just too academic?

[bako]

Downloaded the paper
Thanks
will check it out later and let you know what I think.
‘What are your thoughts?

[Christian Miller]

I think I’ve seen this one and mentioned it here on JGO. I didn’t like the basic chord scale analysis so didn’t go any deeper with it. Also chord scale networks and neo-Reimannian theory, ah … the most non judgemental thing I would say it’s High Music Theory… not my bag in any case.

It’s like building castles in the air, but I can’t see that it has much to do with what Wayne actually wrote and played. But it did give me the inspiration to check out this tune!

Tbh I haven’t spent time trying to understand the guts of the theory in the thesis, so I’ll leave it there. (But if I don’t agree with the basic analysis, there seems little point carrying on. I had the same problem with George Russell.)

As I’ve bored on about, I think it’s really evident that Wayne Shorter is more to do with the blues and possibly Vaughan Williams (his favourite composer) than either Debussy or Schoenberg. The basis of his compositional melodic technique seems to me not to be seven note chord scales, but a sort of expanded petatony - at least in his 60s music - (which you do find in Debussy and Ravel). That’s fairly clear in the melody of ESP.

It does yield very well to a Jordan Klemons/Stefon Harris style quadratonic analysis though .

As for what Wayne actually PLAYS in his solo - that’s something else altogether, and quite defiant of the CST analysis in the thesis. I’m planning to do a video.

[JazzPadd]

Thanks, I don’t know if I’m a post bop nerd, but it was an interesting read. Some of it was over my head theoretically. The network charts sort of resemble mind maps that writers use. Examples 3, 5 and 9 showing the implied chord scales for the three tunes under study were most interesting since they provide an analytical overview of what WS seemed to be basing his ad-lib upon. That kind of thing is potentially useful, since it gets at the general flow of the solo to apply to my own playing. However, it’s not likely I’d play ESP, Juju nor Iris, since they rarely if ever get called at jam sessions in my neck of the woods. Still utilitarian value is not the only value of scholarship and I appreciate the effort that the author put into this article.

[princeplanet]

Downloaded the paper
Thanks
will check it out later and let you know what I think.
‘What are your thoughts?

Personally, I have reserved any judgement, I'm not in an informed enough position to agree or disagree with the analyses. Whilst (like many of you here) I may scoff at the idea that CST can be used to help analyse, say, Charlie Parker solos, my feeling is that it definitely applies to Shorter's approach to a large degree.
BTW, the author does admit that he thinks Shorter was mixing this usage with other idioms (blues, bop, pentatonics etc).

Dunno, did Wayne ever discuss his "system" for both composition and improvisation?

[Christian Miller]

Wayne generally discussed his approach in extremely "right brain" terms.

From the Wayne I've transcribed I don't think he was really playing CST concepts in those solos that much. Not those chord scales in the thesis in any case.

Herbie ABSOLUTELY. Not Wayne.

I think we stereotype postbop. Luckily we have the records to check out instead, and that frankly is a better use of our time than wading through hundreds of pages of this stuff.

Have a guess at the first thing Wayne plays on the E7+9 chord in his solo .. go on guess!

[Christian Miller]

BTW, the author does admit that he thinks Shorter was mixing this usage with other idioms (blues, bop, pentatonics etc).

Why doesn't he write his paper about those elements then?

I'm sorry I don't have a very high opinion of postgrad level work in music scholarship.

The marking criteria for work more like - 'is this a well written and well referenced piece of academic work?' not 'what does this tell us about Wayne Shorter's music and how borne out by the evidence is it?'.

Bear in mind this is the sort of work that may well be marked by someone who is completely ignorant of jazz improvisation (such as a classical musicologist), let alone the ouvre of Wayne Shorter. This is why he introduces the chord scale theory in the paper (as necessary background) and then decides to call the Lydian Dominant scale the Acoustic scale precisely BECAUSE this term is more familiar to scholars of contemporary classical music.

Therefore in terms of Wayne's music itself, he's free to write what he likes, no-one is going to check or know any better, and so long as the author jumps through the necessary hoops in terms of style, reading, and so on they'll get their PhD. The actual content of the thesis is not held to any standard of proof most likely.

This is a reason why I find music theory extremely hard to take seriously intellectually. I think it lapses over into pseudoscience.

[Reg]

yea... it's another model for traditional so called nonfunctional harmony.... to function, at least on paper...

I'm joking, but here is an older vid I made for this forum late one night after a shitty funky jazz gig... the vid sucks... but is still another version of ESP that will repeat and can be developed... or what can happen when you play too many shitty gigs...

https://youtu.be/PCNPUmRTQEQ?si=9qPJlm9u1eVIvRkG

[Reg]

https://youtu.be/PCNPUmRTQEQ?si=ka8fNe8Jc5K7hHYe

[Christian Miller]

Wayne plays a B major scale on E7alt as an opening gesture.

It sounds brilliant.

Analyse that!

Anyway, I did do an analysis on the composition of ESP. I'll pop it up at some point.

[Christian Miller]

Absolutely right, Christian.

Personally, I've always been open-minded about CST. It's far less strict and multi-optional than it's given credit for. But the idea that one can simply apply it to what Wayne Shorter does is a complete bummer from the get-go. It's practically an act of desperation.

You can totally play Wayne's tunes using some sort of CST concept. Herbie does something very like that and he's on may of those original recordings.

But if you actually take the time to listen to what Wayne plays on those tunes, it doesn't seem to be how he's playing them. It therefore seems likely that that his not his logic behind their composition. What exactly the logic is hard to pick up on. Maybe there is none.

[pamosmusic]

You can totally play Wayne's tunes using some sort of CST concept. Herbie does something very like that and he's on may of those original recordings.

But if you actually take the time to listen to what Wayne plays on those tunes, it doesn't seem to be how he's playing them. It therefore seems likely that that his not his logic behind their composition. What exactly the logic is hard to pick up on. Maybe there is none.

Never transcribed ESP in particular but I’ve done a couple. Lots of triads and pentatonics … not sure what he’s thinking either (didn’t work hard enough on them, because I was in college and a goober) but they would both sort of lend themselves to the kind of blues vocabulary you’re talking about. But also easy to manipulate harmonically.

Smart cat, that Shorter.

[James W]

As for what Wayne actually PLAYS in his solo - that’s something else altogether, and quite defiant of the CST analysis in the thesis.

... if you had read as far as page 29 onwards, this is precisely what the author of the article says!

As for it being 'pseudoscience' or:

The marking criteria for work more like - 'is this a well written and well referenced piece of academic work?' not 'what does this tell us about Wayne Shorter's music and how borne out by the evidence is it?'.

... is contradicted by the transcriptions of Wayne's solos the article contains.

I haven't read that much of the article, and skimmed much, but I get the impression it's at the decent end of musical analyses that I've seen. Even if you don't like CST the author does deal with the actual recorded solos.

[pamosmusic]

... if you had read as far as page 29 onwards, this is precisely what the author of the article says!

As for it being 'pseudoscience' or:



... is contradicted by the transcriptions of Wayne's solos the article contains.

I haven't read that much of the article, and skimmed much, but I get the impression it's at the decent end of musical analyses that I've seen. Even if you don't like CST the author does deal with the actual recorded solos.

I think probably part of the issue is that something can be analyzed in terms of CST** and not really be an accurate representation of what’s going on. In that single specific context, it wouldn’t matter much, but when you try to use the knowledge to extrapolate outward, it might turn out to be less useful.

** I honestly think in chord scale terms a lot of the time and think mostly the bad rep is from students who don’t really understand and teachers who think it’s a skeleton key or something. Anyway. Nothing against CST personally. But I get the gripe in loaaaaads of contexts.

[James W]

I think probably part of the issue is that something can be analyzed in terms of CST** and not really be an accurate representation of what’s going on. In that single specific context, it wouldn’t matter much, but when you try to use the knowledge to extrapolate outward, it might turn out to be less useful.

** I honestly think in chord scale terms a lot of the time and think mostly the bad rep is from students who don’t really understand and teachers who think it’s a skeleton key or something. Anyway. Nothing against CST personally. But I get the gripe in loaaaaads of contexts.

Whenever in Wayne's solos he deviates from playing stuff that can't be analysed in terms of scales, the author points this out, e.g. -

Almost every time Shorter moves through the next four bars of the tune’s form, he relieson chromaticism and half-step motivic transposition instead of scalar content. In mm. 8–10, he performs a rhythmically unpredictable chromatic ascent that arrives on C5 with FM7 in m. 12. Given that m. 12 contains two chords, there is not much time for Shorter to express any particular scales, and he tends to continue his general chromatic focus in this bar each time it returns.

(page 33).

[pamosmusic]

Whenever in Wayne's solos he deviates from playing stuff that can't be analysed in terms of scales, the author points this out.

Thats not quite what I mean.

If you see a C F and A in a solo and call it a triad, then you’re going to start inverting it and transposing it and getting other triads.

If you call it intervals from a scale, you might start changing intervals and getting things like C G and B or C D and F.

If you call it a pentatonic fragment you might get things like D G C, and F A D etc.

If you call it a set of chromatic intervals from a scale tone, you’d end up with things like E B and D# or A D and F#.

Some of those approaches would be more or less useful depending on what the improviser is actually trying to do. Or on what you’re trying to do with the what the improviser is doing.

If I’m analyzing a Louis Armstrong solo, the latter in particular seems a bit goofy.

So something that analyzes things in a way that might be at odds with what’s under the surface might be of limited utility.

Theres also a history of the blues gestures in music being ignored in favor of more traditional theory. Part of it is certainly that the latter fits more neatly into an academic setting, but there are other reasons too.

[James W]

Thats not quite what I mean.

If you see a C F and A in a solo and call it a triad, then you’re going to start inverting it and transposing it and getting other triads.

If you call it intervals from a scale, you might start changing intervals and getting things like C G and B or C D and F.

If you call it a pentatonic fragment you might get things like D G C, and F A D etc.

If you call it a set of chromatic intervals from a scale tone, you’d end up with things like E B and D# or A D and F#.

Some of those approaches would be more or less useful depending on what the improviser is actually trying to do. Or on what you’re trying to do with the what the improviser is doing.

If I’m analyzing a Louis Armstrong solo, the latter in particular seems a bit goofy.

So something that analyzes things in a way that might be at odds with what’s under the surface might be of limited utility.

Theres also a history of the blues gestures in music being ignored in favor of more traditional theory. Part of it is certainly that the latter fits more neatly into an academic setting, but there are other reasons too.

Point taken, but the point you make does not apply to the article whose author discusses the historical background of scales in jazz - on pages 14-15 the author justifies their discussion of CST.

[pamosmusic]

Point taken, but the point you make does not apply to the article whose author discusses the historical background of scales in jazz - on pages 14-15 the author justifies their discussion of CST.

Yeah I saw that. I’m not saying Shorter wasn’t aware of it. And part of that was a concession more than a justification. That contemporary musicians will probably interpret Shorters tunes that way, rather than Shorter himself. Not sure how compelled I am by that argument. Useful? Sure. Insightful … not so sure.

[Reg]

CST is not really a theory... it's just a collection of possibilities from jazz tunes and what Jazz players have used when performing tunes. And the use of traditional functional harmony, modal expansions, scales and blues concepts used to musically organize those possibilities.

It's like vanilla players just playing chord tones with embellishments... it's just a musical tool to help understand possibilities. learning tools.... I tend to hear lots of rag on scale players or pentatonics etc... bottom line, you play whatever your able to.

I did a lot of analysis and transcribing last century, and remember that many of Shorter tunes and his playing were organized in Blocks of sound. Blocks had different possibilities depending on the Reference, what you use from that block to create relationships with and then develop. Which opens the door for more options of what or how to hear and decide in the analysis.....kind of the normal thing.

[JazzPadd]

Perhaps it’s a question of regional terminology, but the item linked by the OP doesn’t appear to be a dissertation in the sense of what one writes to obtain a PhD. It appears to be a 2018 academic journal article, albeit a rather longish one.

The author of the article did write a PhD dissertation in 2013, entitled “Analyzing Musical Interaction in Jazz Improvisations of the 1960s.” As is often the case in academia (especially for new and upcoming scholars) the 2018 article is likely based on the 2013 dissertation. I haven’t read the dissertation, but from the title and abstract it seems to straddle the territory between theory and practice. It’s not unlike how we talk about theory and practice in our quest to learn more about jazz guitar.

As far as I can tell, the author appears to be a professor of musicology at U.Mass focusing on musicianship and music theory, with some interest in pedagogy, and is also a musician with some experience playing jazz trumpet. It’s not uncommon for musicologists, especially those in jazz related studies, to be musicians, too. In my limited experience, these days being a musician to some degree brings a level of validity to being a music scholar, though not necessarily vice versa.

It is true that to publish an academic journal article, one has to be a competent writer and cite the work of other scholars, but it’s not simply about that. The work has to make some sort of novel contribution, however esoteric or insignificant it may seem for us, to the field and the existing literature on the topic.

The author does cite some of the top scholars in jazz studies these days, including Ingrid Monson and Paul Berliner. The latter’s work, beginning with “The Soul of Mbira” and culminating with “Thinking in Jazz,” are both in some sense about theory and practice. I guess that’s what interested me about the article.

There’s quite a large literature on improvisation studies, some of which overlaps the literature on jazz studies. So to make a novel contribution is no small feat for a new scholar. There’s also the matter of peer review, which is the norm in much of academic and scientific research.

While we may rightly disagree with a scholar’s conclusions, that doesn’t mean the work is invalid, much less that it is evidence to indict academia as pointless. It just means that we may not see the point of that particular bit of research or that it’s not to our taste. One can of course also say that about jazz as music or jazz musicians, but it’d seem unfair.

[ccroft]

I'm absolutely a post-bop enthusiast. It's mainly what I've been listening to and playing. But I'm a crappy theoretician. I read a few pages and then gave up on it. A bit too dense to be useful to me.

I believe there are relationships between chords and scales. I also believe in accidentals and chromatics. I'm not sure why we have to find a scale that includes the 'outside' note. It may be a passing tone or a tension... or something. As you can see, I don't really know how to talk about this stuff.

...Dunno, did Wayne ever discuss his "system" for both composition and improvisation?

Since this post appeared I've spent a good bit of time trying to find such a discussion. Lot's of talk about Miles, science fiction and spirituality, but couldn't find anything from Wayne about how Wayne makes music. Maybe it was decades of experimentation. Maybe he didn't really have a system?

Whatever he did I love it, and I continue to try to find ways to play it.

[Christian Miller]

Perhaps it’s a question of regional terminology, but the item linked by the OP doesn’t appear to be a dissertation in the sense of what one writes to obtain a PhD. It appears to be a 2018 academic journal article, albeit a rather longish one.

The author of the article did write a PhD dissertation in 2013, entitled “Analyzing Musical Interaction in Jazz Improvisations of the 1960s.” As is often the case in academia (especially for new and upcoming scholars) the 2018 article is likely based on the 2013 dissertation. I haven’t read the dissertation, but from the title and abstract it seems to straddle the territory between theory and practice. It’s not unlike how we talk about theory and practice in our quest to learn more about jazz guitar.

As far as I can tell, the author appears to be a professor of musicology at U.Mass focusing on musicianship and music theory, with some interest in pedagogy, and is also a musician with some experience playing jazz trumpet. It’s not uncommon for musicologists, especially those in jazz related studies, to be musicians, too. In my limited experience, these days being a musician to some degree brings a level of validity to being a music scholar, though not necessarily vice versa.

It is true that to publish an academic journal article, one has to be a competent writer and cite the work of other scholars, but it’s not simply about that. The work has to make some sort of novel contribution, however esoteric or insignificant it may seem for us, to the field and the existing literature on the topic.

The author does cite some of the top scholars in jazz studies these days, including Ingrid Monson and Paul Berliner. The latter’s work, beginning with “The Soul of Mbira” and culminating with “Thinking in Jazz,” are both in some sense about theory and practice. I guess that’s what interested me about the article.

There’s quite a large literature on improvisation studies, some of which overlaps the literature on jazz studies. So to make a novel contribution is no small feat for a new scholar. There’s also the matter of peer review, which is the norm in much of academic and scientific research.

While we may rightly disagree with a scholar’s conclusions, that doesn’t mean the work is invalid, much less that it is evidence to indict academia as pointless. It just means that we may not see the point of that particular bit of research or that it’s not to our taste. One can of course also say that about jazz as music or jazz musicians, but it’d seem unfair.

On a positive note Paul Berliners musicology is a shining example of how it should be done. The combination with ethnography is inspired and inspiring.

(I also like Gerard Kubik)

However - if you are going to present something as in some way objective or mathematical - this very Austro-German influenced approach (post Reimann, Schenker etc) I think you can absolutely critique it on the same terms. If you are going to adopt the surface aspects of a science, you need to walk at least some of the walk, or we have entered the realm of scientism.

I actually regard that as taking their project seriously, though I doubt they would see it that way haha …

But on a more basic level, I don’t actually know what the point of any of this is

I think Wayne’s music deserves better. Or closer attention paid to the music itself rather than taking some jazz theory book idea of it and running off into high level abstractions off the back of it.

meh I guess it does no harm…

[Christian Miller]

Yeah I saw that. I’m not saying Shorter wasn’t aware of it. And part of that was a concession more than a justification. That contemporary musicians will probably interpret Shorters tunes that way, rather than Shorter himself. Not sure how compelled I am by that argument. Useful? Sure. Insightful … not so sure.

im quite interested in the paths less travelled by. There’s a lot of interesting corners in that period of music. It was certainly a lot more diverse than the bop era for instance.

[James W]

However - if you are going to present something as in some way objective or mathematical - this very Austro-German influenced approach (post Reimann, Schenker etc) I think you can absolutely critique it on the same terms. If you are going to adopt the surface aspects of a science, you need to walk the walk, or we have entered the realm of abject scientism.

Perhaps because I don't know anything about science I therefore can't see any surface similarities between the analyses and science. But I'd be interested in hearing your objective and mathematical critique of those methods of analysis. From what I know of them they are ways of depicting what an analyst hears, and they both are appropriate for different kinds of music and for depicting particular aspects of that music. Are you able to understand those Riemannian network charts? Me neither, but I don't see them as damning evidence of 'scientism'.

I think Wayne’s music deserves better.

As I've already stated, I think the article is pretty good. It contains quite a bit of theory, but he has transcribed Wayne's music and analysed it, which is what anyone should want from these kinds of articles.