Starting over with Mark Levine

[JonnyPac]

This is from an assay on science, a much more rigorous field than any "music theory" (music is subjective, etc). I find employing this kind of attitude very useful...

It's different, of course, for researchers who may stake out an entire career — or at least big chunks thereof — in a certain field. You're obliged to keep abreast of all that's going on of note, which means one's interest is continually renewed. As new data comes in, you try to see how it fits in with the pieces of the puzzle you're already grappling with. Or if something significant emerges from the opposing camp, you may instinctively seek out the weak spots, trying to see how those guys messed up this time.
It's possible, of course, that a day may come when, try as you might, you can't find the weak spots in the other guy's story. After many attempts and an equal number of setbacks, you may ultimately have to accede to the view of an intellectual, if not personal, rival. Not that you want to but rather because you can't see any way around it. On the one hand, you might chalk it up as a defeat, something that will hopefully build character down the road. But in the grand scheme of things, it's more of a victory — a sign that sometimes our adversarial system of science actually works. ~Steve Nadis

Responses | 2008 Annual Question | Edge

[baguette]

I've got to say I find a lot of the Mark Levine bashing on this forum just a little over the top - I've used his book for years, and find it a highly useful approach for me. Not the be-all and end-all certainly, and there are other useful ways of looking at things too, but still... He is a nice player too, there is quite a lot of his playing on YouTube - I don't think he could have reached this standard if his approach was without value.

Well, this sound passable to my ears.
The rythm is totally off many times.
Sure, it doesn't sound like there are terribly wrong notes, but many lines are directionless, disconnected, without purpose.
I would put that on a tendency to rely a bit to much on theoritical technics that can help get way playing without hearing everything you play, and imho chordscale have a tendency to lead us into that.

[Billnc]

I prefer +4 ascending and 4 descending. I haven't seen this addressed in the thread at all.

If I'm playing an 11th degree chord it is always +11 but I must have played an 11th using quartal stuff at one time or another.

[Billnc]

In jazz, since there are so many borrowed chords and drastic tonal changes subbing a C with Am or Em makes almost no dent, whereas in pop/rock C Am Em might actually be the progression and reversing the process into four measures of C would ruin it... no progression! It's important to choose the appropriate amount of harmonic motion for the given performance/song.

The connections are there (Tertian stackings make big polychords and pentatonic subsets are also poly-chordal), but sometimes we need to be a little reserved in our subs. Am and C are not the same chord until you get Am7 and C6 (pentatonic chords also Am7add11 and C6/9). C without G and A in its place is no longer a solid C chord (without it's P5, it turns towards the A + E combo making A the king).

A G triad over a string C pedal implies Cmaj9 more than a V subbing for I, etc. You gotta hear who is boss in the context; sometimes the bass note rules, sometimes the core triad, sometimes you get some hybrid like C/D which gets mislabeled as D7sus too often.

Point being, be very skeptical of chords with essential tones missing altogether (not in bass, chord voicings, or on the strong beats of the melodic lines,/riffs). There might be a simpler answer looking you in the face!

Food for thought...

I agree. By the way I think David Gilmour is brilliant in his little chord bits (the fills before "all in all") filling in Another Brick in the Wall part 2, pretty rare I think in a rock context.

[Reg]

Wow... this thread was very enlightening ...

[JonnyPac]

There's a great quote attributed to Einstein:
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

On that note:

Einstein's Blade in Ockham's Razor

Essay by Kai Krause

In 1971, when I was a teenager, my father died in a big airplane crash. Somehow I began to turn 'serious', trying to understand the world around me and my place in it, looking for meaning and sense, beginning to realize: everything was very different than I had previously assumed in the innocence of childhood.

It was the beginning of my own "building a cognitive toolset" and I remember the pure joy of discovery, reading voraciously and — quite out of sync with friends and school — I devoured encyclopedias, philosophy, biographies and... science fiction.

One such story stayed with me and one paragraph within it especially:
"We need to make use of Thargola's Sword! The principle of Parsimony.
First put forth by the medieval philosopher Thargola14, who said,
'We must drive a sword through any hypothesis that is not strictly necessary"

That really made me think — and rethink again...
Finding out who this man might have been took quite a while, but it was also another beginning: a love affair with libraries, large tomes, dusty bindings... surfing knowledge, as it were.

And I did discover: there had been a monk named Guillelmi, from a hamlet surrounded by oaks, apocryphally called 'William of Ockham'. He crossed my path again years later when lecturing in Munich near Occam Street, realizing he had spent the last 20 years of his life there, under King Ludwig IV in the mid 1300s.

Isaac Asimov had pilfered, or let's say homaged, good old Guillelmi for what is now known in many variants as "Ockham's razor", such as
"Plurality should not be posited without necessity."
"Entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity"
or more general and colloquial and a bit less transliterated from Latin:
A simpler explanation invoking fewer hypothetical constructs is preferable.

And there it was, the dancing interplay between Simplex and Complex, which has fascinated me in so many forms ever since. For me, it is very near the center of "understanding the world", as our question posited.

Could it really be true, that the innocent sounding 'keep it simple' is really such an optimal strategy for dealing with questions large and small, scientific as well as personal? Surely, trying to eliminate superfluous assumptions can be a useful tenet, and can be found from Sagan to Hawking as part of their approach to thinking in science. But something never quite felt right to me — intuitively it was clear that sometimes things are just not simple — and that merely "the simplest" of all explanations cannot be taken as truth or proof.

Any detective story would pride itself in not using the most obvious explanation who did it or how it happened.
Designing a car to 'have the optimal feel going into a curve at high speed' will require hugely complex systems to finally arrive at "simply good".
Water running downhill will take a meandering path instead of the straight line.

Both are examples for a domain shift: the non-simple solution is still "the easiest" seen from another viewpoint: for the water the least energy used going down the shallowest slope is more important than taking the straightest line from A to B.

And that is one of the issues with Ockham:
The definition of what "simple" is — can already be anything but simple.
And what "simpler" is — well, it just doesn't get any simpler there.

There is that big difference between simple and simplistic.
And seen more abstractly, the principle of simple things leading to complexity dances in parallel and involved me deeply throughout my life.

In the early seventies I also began tinkering with the first large scale modular synthesizers, finding quickly how hard it is to recreate seemingly 'simple sounds'.
There was unexpected complexity in a single note struck on a piano that eluded even dozens of oscillators and filters, by magnitudes.

Lately one of many projects has been to revisit the aesthetic space of scientific visualizations, and another, which is the epitomy of mathematics made tangible: Fractals — which I had done almost 20 years ago with virtuoso coder Ben Weiss, now enjoying them via realtime flythroughs on a handheld little smartphone.
Here was the most extreme example: a tiny formula, barely one line on paper, used recursively iterated it yields worlds of complex images of amazing beauty.
(Ben had the distinct pleasure of showing Benoit Mandelbrot an alpha version at the last TED just months before his death)

My hesitation towards overuse of parsimony was expressed perfectly in the quote by Albert Einstein, arguably the counterpart "blade" to Ockham's razor:
"Things should be made as simple as possible — but not simpler"

And there we have the perfect application of its truth, used recursively on itself: Neither Einstein nor Ockham actually used the exact words as quoted!

After I sifted through dozens of books, his collected works and letters in German, the Einstein archives: nowhere there, nor in Britannica, Wikipedia or Wikiquote was anyone able to substantiate exact sources, and the same applies to Ockham. If anything can be found, it is earlier precedences...

Surely one can amass retweeted, reblogged and regurgitated instances for both very quickly — they have become memes, of course. One could also take the standpoint that in each case they certainly 'might' have said it 'just like that', since each used several expressions quite similar in form and spirit.
But just to attribute the exact words because they are kind of close would be, well..another case of: it is not that simple!

And there is a huge difference between additional and redundant information.
(Or else one could lose the second redundant "ein" in "Einstein" ?)

Linguistic jesting aside: Nonetheless, the Razor and the Blade constitute a very useful combination of approaching analytical thinking.
Shaving away non-essential conjectures is a good thing, a worthy inclusion in "everybody's toolkit" — and so is the corollary: not to overdo it!

And my own bottom line: There is nothing more complex than simplicity.

From Responses | 2011 Annual Question | Edge

[JonR]

Nice article, but I have a few comments...

On that note:

Einstein's Blade in Ockham's Razor

Essay by Kai Krause

Trivial point, but it's normally spelled "Occam" - for some strange reason, as the original spelling seems to be Ockham or Okham (I've never seen it spelled either of those ways until now).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

Surely, trying to eliminate superfluous assumptions can be a useful tenet,
and can be found from Sagan to Hawking as part of their approach to thinking in science

Yes - "in science" being the critical point. Or in any sphere where we seek understanding.

Any detective story would pride itself in not using the most obvious explanation who did it or how it happened.

Aesthetics, not science. I doubt Einstein would argue that cultural artefacts need to be "as simple as possible" (although many artists, at least the minimalists, might say so).

The principle of simplicity would still apply, in any case, in terms of removing superfluous filler. A detective story can still be highly intricate, weaving in many subplots or red herrings, without any unnecessary "fat". IOW, as simple as possible "but no simpler". We mustn't forget those last 3 critical words!
IOW, there's no virtue in simplicity itself; the virtue is in removing anything that is not totally necessary. In a detective story, what is necessary is for it it be entertaining, even gripping. So certain levels of complexity may be necessary for that. More levels of complexity are not! (and will only detract from the overall effect)

Designing a car to 'have the optimal feel going into a curve at high speed'
will require hugely complex systems to finally arrive at "simply good".

But only as complex as necessary. Racing car design is very much about stripping away what is not necessary, what gets in the way of optimum performance.
IOW, this is supporting the principle, not countering it.

Water running downhill will take a meandering path instead of the straight line.

It takes the line of least resistance. It only meanders when that is the simplest path to take, given all the forces acting on it.
It will certainly take a straight line if the hill is steep! Any deviation will represent the simplest path around or over obstacles.

for the water the least energy used going down the shallowest slope is more important than taking the straightest line from A to B.

Exactly. To suggest anything different is to misunderstand the nature of "simplicity" in this context. A straight line may look "simple" to us; but if it takes more energy to take that route, then we are missing some underlying complexity, which is greater than that involved in the meandering route.
After all, a meander can represent a very simple shape, smooth oscillations from side to side. (We can draw a meander more easily than we can draw an exact straight line . Drawing an exact straight line requires much more control; more energy.)

IOW, this is not an "issue with Ockham" at all. The principle is not just about "simplicity", about absolute reductionism for its own sake. "As simple as possible, but no simpler." The word "possible" is just as important as the last 3 words. "Possible" has to imply a context and a purpose - whether we're talking scientific enquiry, artistic ventures, or engineering projects.
When we talk about designing a car to be "as simple as possible", we take for granted that the point of it is to run as smooth and fast and as economical as possible. That's the goal; so we don't simplify it beyond that point.

There was unexpected complexity in a single note struck on a piano that eluded even dozens of oscillators and filters, by magnitudes.

Right! A single piano note is only apparently simple. It's simple conceptually, and simple to play. It's relatively simple to produce too, in terms of the engineering of the piano. (And we can produce an equally complex sound just by twanging a guitar string.)

So there are levels of simplicity, depending on how deeply we examine something. In terms of a musical note, we hear it as simple because of the predominance of the fundamental, the "first harmonic". We are unaware of the higher harmonics, until we make an examination of the sound spectrum - or until we attempt to recreate the sound by building it up artificially.

nowhere there, nor in Britannica, Wikipedia or Wikiquote was anyone able to substantiate exact sources, and the same applies to Ockham. If anything can be found, it is earlier precedences...

No surprise there. A lot of famous quotes were probably not originated by the person they have become associated with. IOW, they are apocryphal. In terms of the topic of simplicity, we preserve those associations, because they're simpler to remember. Einstein was a famous clever person. That's a clever saying. So it makes enough sense that he said it - even if he only just might have said it. The probable truth - that it was said much longer ago by someone else, or is a mish-mash of previous sayings - is an unnecessarily complex thought. So we apply Occam's razor and slash away the inconvenient truths to arrive at a useful simplicity. Ie, the truth in this case (who invented the saying) is not an important aspect of the quote.

they have become memes, of course

Right. Like old wives tales, or other folk sayings. An evolutionary process means they survive if they seem truthful in themselves, at some level. They don't have to be entirely accurate, or scientifically provable - and it certainly doesn't matter who said them first. If they work - as aids to understanding or imagination -they survive.

Does it matter if Charlie Parker actually said: "Learn all your scales; then forget 'em all and just play"? He probably said something like it; but he won't have been the first, or the last. It doesn't matter; what matters is that it's a good saying. (Of course it helps if we can attach an authority like Charlie Parker to it - like attaching Einstein to the "simple" quote. It gives it more weight. But actually the saying has enough weight in itself. It rings true and is memorable enough.)

And there is a huge difference between additional and redundant
information.
(Or else one could lose the second redundant "ein" in
"Einstein" ?)

Exactly - because the second "ein" is not redundant. It belongs to "stein", meaning stone. We wouldn't say that the second "one" in "one stone" is redundant.

(IOW, I think I'm agreeing, in the end, with what the guy is saying - he just seems to take a long time getting there, through some slightly vague arguments. Ie, all he is really saying is summed up in the (supposed) Einstein quote anyway! This article - and my response to it - is really ignoring the whole principle of "as simple as possible, but not simpler"! We've made it unnecessarily complicated... )

Naturally - of course - the principle applies in music. We shouldn't just say "less is more". It is, but only up to a point. Miles Davis was famously minimal as a soloist. But he did actually play some notes! He just reduced it to the few that he thought did the job, with no waste. (Because there is always a job to do...)
As simple as possible, but no simpler.

[Reg]

Sorry... doesn't make much since in jazz. There's more to voice leading than the most efficient choice. These analogies are silly...sorry function is not the goal... One of the reasons many great musicians... can only sound like they can play jazz. Getting back to Mark's jazz theory...

As with most concepts... the more pieces you become aware of, the better your understanding becomes. You don't need to know every thing to know anything... but with reference to Mark's theory book... you do need to understand basic music theory and harmony and also get through the book to understand his views of jazz theory.

Get over the BS with dealing with simplistic music 101 issues and try and pick up his approaches to playing in a jazz style...
He can cover very well.

I'm not trying to stir up too much... but I do see and hear a lot of the members on this forum never getting to concepts because of getting caught up with details over applications.
Jazz doesn't fit into music 101 boxes... it is not the simple choice. Don't think because you can cover some basic jazz tunes and think you understand what your playing... that your a jazz musician...and to even begin to believe your qualified to teach jazz...
I haven't read or heard anyone on this forum who couldn't learn a lot about Jazz from Mark's book. There is a difference between reciting and understanding...and of course playing.
If I offended anyone ... sorry... Reg

[pantz]

I found the Levine book pretty useful. It's not the be-all end-all, and I have different ways of thinking about some things than he does, but it doesn't hurt to read his materials and get what I can out of them.

[Billnc]

I'm not trying to stir up too much... but I do see and hear a lot of the members on this forum never getting to concepts because of getting caught up with details over applications.

A very good point.

[JonR]

... with reference to Mark's theory book... you do need to understand basic music theory and harmony and also get through the book to understand his views of jazz theory.
...
I haven't read or heard anyone on this forum who couldn't learn a lot about Jazz from Mark's book.

Very true. There's really nothing wrong with the book, except its title: "The Jazz Theory Book". It can make the less experienced player think "hey, this is THE jazz theory book - it's gonna tell me everything!" Wrong...

To use it profitably - and there's years of study in it, maybe decades - you need a good grounding in conventional theory. You need to understand how major and minor keys work, how functional harmony works. You need to appreciate the evolution of jazz harmony from simple functional sequences in the beginning, through to altered chords and substitutions, and the expansion into modal concepts.

Levine's book is coming in towards the end of this process. It should maybe be renamed "A Jazz Theory Book", or "An Advanced Jazz Theory Book", or "A Contemporary Jazz Theory Book" even "The Modal Jazz Theory Book" (although it deals with a lot else besides modes, it doesn't deal much with pre-modal jazz).

I do think it's valid to criticize the book (esp given its title - probably the publisher's idea, not Levine's) for what it omits. But that doesn't detract from the tremendous amount of information, inspiring tips and revelations it contains.

[randalljazz]

when it was written it was "the" jazz theory book, as in there wasn't anything else out there except some early coker efforts and ricigliano's seminal text, early david baker...and, of course, the lydian chromatic concept. so critique it on the merits, if you must, but not on the title...

and if you don't buy that, how about it's a bit tongue in cheek, eh? haven't you read enough of it to know that levine has a sense of humor, and doesn't at all mind poking a little fun at himself? irony?

[Reg]

Good points Randall. I don't really know Mark that well... but have seen him at gigs for years... same circles... I still view his books as great playing sources of theory, quick arrangements and still dig his latin playing and arrangements.

[JonR]

when it was written it was "the" jazz theory book, as in there wasn't anything else out there except some early coker efforts and ricigliano's seminal text, early david baker...and, of course, the lydian chromatic concept. so critique it on the merits, if you must, but not on the title...

Fair point.
Even so, in giving a book such a title, one ought to expect a reasonable summary of functional harmony, as used in the first 50 years of jazz (if not more).
I certainly enjoyed the book myself when I first bought it (about 15 years ago). I very much like the way it's written and designed. The use of transcribed excerpts from recordings is one of its good points. (It's later rival Jazzology falls down seriously on both these points.)
There's a really extraordinary amount of research and work gone into it.
I just never found it any use in practical terms. I didn't mind that, I had no problems improvising jazz, the intellectual challenges in it were enough - and I'm still working through it...

and if you don't buy that, how about it's a bit tongue in cheek, eh? haven't you read enough of it to know that levine has a sense of humor, and doesn't at all mind poking a little fun at himself? irony?

I agree his style is light-hearted, easy to read, accessible - never dry or academic. But I can't say I noticed a lot of what I'd call actual humour. Not regarding the title anyhow. (His intro is good in this respect, implying the breadth of the history, but IMO he doesn't follow it through in the content.)

Just to be clear: I like the book very much. What it does include is excellent, very well explained. But it can still (and should) be criticized on what it leaves out.
I don't expect even "THE" jazz theory book to include absolutely every possible concept. But I do expect it to say something useful about basic functional harmony, before delving into chord-scale theory and modes.

[whatswisdom]

I don't expect even "THE" jazz theory book to include absolutely every possible concept. But I do expect it to say something useful about basic functional harmony, before delving into chord-scale theory and modes.

...drumroll...enter Bert Ligon. 4 books that fill in the holes. Comprehensive Technique; Jazz Theory Resources Vols 1+2; Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony.

[paynow]

It's completely fascinating to me how a conversation about "simplicity" has a higher word count than "War And Peace."

I get such a kick out of this forum.

[whatswisdom]

It's completely fascinating to me how a conversation about "simplicity" has a higher word count than "War And Peace."I get such a kick out of this forum.

paynow: Dude, this is jazz! The heavy metal forum is over there >>>

(Just kidding, of course )

[JonR]

...drumroll...enter Bert Ligon. 4 books that fill in the holes. Comprehensive Technique; Jazz Theory Resources Vols 1+2; Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony.

Yes, I was thinking of that one. Also this one:
Amazon.com: Linear Jazz Improvisation Method Book I (9780578001685): Ed Byrne: Books

Byrne used to be top guru on allaboutjazz.com a few years back, an intelligent and inspiring writer.

[JonR]

It's completely fascinating to me how a conversation about "simplicity" has a higher word count than "War And Peace."

I get such a kick out of this forum.

Well, it began as "starting over with Mark Levine"... hardly a guarantee of a short, snappy thread...

[paynow]

Well, it began as "starting over with Mark Levine"... hardly a guarantee of a short, snappy thread...

Actually Levine's book makes "War And Peace" look like a brochure.

[JonnyPac]

...drumroll...enter Bert Ligon. 4 books that fill in the holes. Comprehensive Technique; Jazz Theory Resources Vols 1+2; Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony.

+1

[jonasfixe]

The most ill-considered New Year's resolution, ever? Let's see.

Try as I may, I can't reconcile Mark Levine's observations with any theory. What is the theory?

[...]
An observation is not a theory. Fifty thousand observations that are one hundred per cent accurate are not a theory. A theory is a logical proposition that explains the observations.

I'm resigned to the fact that this isn't "The" Jazz Theory Book. Now I'm grappling with, is it even "A" Jazz Theory Book at all.

I think you are looking for Schoenberg's Theory of harmony. He starts from the very begining in a logical and perfectly argumented way. Levine is just presenting ideas from others...

PS: I think you can get it from scribd...

[JonR]

An observation is not a theory. Fifty thousand observations that are one hundred per cent accurate are not a theory. A theory is a logical proposition that explains the observations.

I'm resigned to the fact that this isn't "The" Jazz Theory Book. Now I'm grappling with, is it even "A" Jazz Theory Book at all.

Seeing as we're coming full circle back to the OP...

To defend Levine somewhat:

"Music theory" - for any kind of music - is not like scientific theory. It's more like the grammar of a language. As such it doesn't explain anything. It's not about logic. It doesn't tell you why musicians choose to play what they do. It doesn't tell you why some sounds are "good" and some "bad". It really is little more than a list of observations of what most musicians do, most of the time, in the genre of music you happen to be examining. A lot of is concerned with simply inventing words and phrases to label the sounds with, so you can identify the patterns more easily.

The classical era is called the "common practice period" - which simply means the theory we've developed from it comes from the common practices of composers. Of course they didn't invent it all: they built on the common practices handed down from previous periods.

But it begins with sounds that musicians in general happen to like, on the patterns that they come back to time and again. Music theory is not interested in why they do that; only in labelling and describing what it is they do. (In order to make the learning process easier for the next generation.)

So Levine's "mere observations" are (at least) where jazz theory has to begin. And he's clearly listened to a huge amount of jazz, so one would think he has a broad enough outlook to pronounce on the basics. (In that sense, scientifically, he's more like a statistician, taking a large enough sample to be sure what the real trends are. As a music theorist, he has no need to go beneath the statistics to explain what is driving the trends; that's the province of the cultural anthropologist, the music historian, or the sociologist or psychologist.)

However, he can still be criticized because - despite the breathtaking body of recordings he's referenced - his "sample" is still largely from the 1960s and 70s, with a few things from the 1950s, and practically nothing from before that - apart from several admiring mentions of Duke Ellington, usually in the role of a man ahead of his time: ie supporting Levine's apparent assumption that jazz of the 1920s and 30s is generally not worth discussing.
(Eg, as I've said before, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt - whom one might consider to be hugely influential figures, and not just on guitarists - are not mentioned once in the book: conclusion? You'll learn nothing from listening to them. That's despite the 100s of recommended later recordings, some by musicians you probably haven't even heard of.)

There's no problem with this bias - as long as it's made clear from the outset, and of course it isn't.

I guess there is an argument (quite a good one) that what is missing from Levine's book is the kind of theory one can learn from any conventional (classical) theory book. As if Levine's perspective is that jazz began - in its first half century - following harmonic practices inherited from classical music (at least as filtered down through the popular songwriters of the 1920s and 30s). It's only in the last 50 years - according to this hypothetical argument - that jazz has begun to emancipate itself from that tradition. Where in the past jazz musicians just borrowed popular songs and messed around with them - a kind of "reactive" process - in "modern jazz" (beginning with bebop but only really flowering in the 1950s and 60s) jazz musicians moved into the driving seat and began writing their own compositions. And that naturally led to a questioning attitude towards old-fashioned harmony and a critique of its shortcomings. In particular, Miles Davis's modal experiments can be seen as an attempt to break out of the straitjacket of functional harmony, to free jazz from its "white European" heritage and create a truly (African-)American cultural form. (Even though his partner Bill Evans drew on the ideas of later Europeans like Debussy or Ravel.)
From that angle, "chord-scale theory" can be seen as "real jazz theory", deliberately distinct from functional (dusty old major-minor key chord progression) theory.

Personally I don't quite buy this (modern jazz musicians still quite enjoy functional harmony and often talk in those terms), but it's an interesting way of looking at it.

[Reg]

Hey Jon... be careful...your eyes are beginning to maybe see more... ears to follow.

Yes...of course we enjoy functional harmony etc...how could one not...it is one of the tonal systems always employed as reference...

Chord-scale theory is really just a method to become aware, see and understand possible tonal systems... I personally don't think of as harmonic system... or theory of... simply a method of visualization and verbalizing... about any complete vertical collection of implied notes at any given moment.

We still need to be aware of relationships of those tones... or tonality. And which tones determine that tonality... Modality.

I think Mark's bias is made fairly clear in his introduction... I quote

"There is no one single, all inclusive "jazz theory". In fact , that's why the subject is called jazz theory rather than jazz truth. The only truth is the music itself. Theory is the little intellectual dance we do around the music, attempting to come up with rules so we can understand why Charlie Parker and John Coltrane sounded the way they did. There are almost as many "jazz theories" as there are jazz musicians."

I dig your description of jazz theory development...or as Mark called... the common thread of development... Mark does say " most of what I learned is from the masters themselves, by transcribing directly from recordings."

If your really into music theory... and like jazz theory, Mark's book is just one of many. It usually take about 10 years of study and a lot more than a set of Groves to begin to understand... What's nice about Marks book is how it relates to playing jazz.

As someone was saying before ... who cares...

Reg

[JonR]

Hey Jon... be careful...your eyes are beginning to maybe see more... ears to follow.

I'm always optimistic about that

Yes...of course we enjoy functional harmony etc...how could one not...it is one of the tonal systems always employed as reference...

Chord-scale theory is really just a method to become aware, see and understand possible tonal systems... I personally don't think of as harmonic system... or theory of... simply a method of visualization and verbalizing... about any complete vertical collection of implied notes at any given moment.

We still need to be aware of relationships of those tones... or tonality. And which tones determine that tonality... Modality.

Right. Unfortunately, I see a lot of evidence that the balance tips away from the latter towards the former. A lot of people (mostly beginners who've just discovered the concept, to be fair) think the "vertical" approach is either the most important aspect, or the only aspect. As if CST "explains" everything that wasn't explained before.

I think Mark's bias is made fairly clear in his introduction... I quote

"There is no one single, all inclusive "jazz theory". In fact , that's why the subject is called jazz theory rather than jazz truth. The only truth is the music itself. Theory is the little intellectual dance we do around the music, attempting to come up with rules so we can understand why Charlie Parker and John Coltrane sounded the way they did. There are almost as many "jazz theories" as there are jazz musicians."

But that doesn't make his bias clear. (OK he presumably likes both Parker and Coltrane, but that's as far as it goes in terms of evidence of the extent of what he considers important. At least Bird was pre-modal... )

And my criticism is that while most of his book might well help us "understand why... Coltrane sounded the way he did", very little of it helps us with Bird. You can't understand Bird's solos by applying CST. They may be largely based on arpeggios, but they're essentually linear.

I dig your description of jazz theory development...or as Mark called... the common thread of development... Mark does say " most of what I learned is from the masters themselves, by transcribing directly from recordings."

Of course. And that's the big selling point of the book for me. The transcribed quotes were what gave it an unassailable authority for me. "Look, this is what so-and-so actually played. So Levine must be right..."
However, the more I've read the book, the more I've realised that a lot of the phrases can be interpreted in other ways, and they are often not good evidence for the points he's trying to make. He doesn't allow for interpretations other than "so-and-so is using such and such a scale here". Maybe he was; but maybe that's just coincidence that those notes happen to spell that scale. Or, presuming the player was well aware of the scale he was using, maybe that was not the point of the phrase.
Eg, "see, that guy over there is driving a Cadillac" "Yeah sure, but where is he going?? and why?"

If your really into music theory... and like jazz theory, Mark's book is just one of many. It usually take about 10 years of study and a lot more than a set of Groves to begin to understand...

Absolutely. (Well, I don't have a set of Groves and I have no trouble understanding him; but the years of study is right.)

What's nice about Marks book is how it relates to playing jazz.

Well YMMV, but that's exactly where I disagree. It hasn't helped me one bit in my jazz playing. That may well be my problem, of course .
I guess the truth is, I don't like the kind of playing that his theory seems to promote. I don't like Coltrane, for example (I mean in general, I don't dislike everything he did). I like linear melodic players - who may well be "applying chord-scales", but that's only where it starts.
And I find I can get to that point more effectively by a different route: by thinking in a linear way to begin with. Chord tones and extensions, sure; but linked through voice-leading and chromaticism. And rhythm and phrasing of course.

To be fair, Levine's book is not a "jazz method" one - like most of Jerry Coker's for example. It's more of an intellectual examination of what jazz players from a certain period do, seen in the light (mostly) of chord-scale theory. As such, it's often revealing and thought-provoking. And IMO the later sections on rehamonization are excellent - lots of real work there.

When I first read the book, I was very struck by the inspiring notion that a chord was just a frozen scale, and a scale just a strung-out chord; I liked the way that notion seemed to dissolve the distinction and open things up. But it never quite made sense with jazz as I heard it and played it. For a certain kind of sound, yes it worked. For archetypal modal jazz, that is. Most of the time I don't want that sound, and the concept doesn't help in other kinds of jazz. And even in "modal" jazz, you don't really need it.