The term “modal jazz” was coined by the jazz theoretician and composer George Russell, who used it to describe the scale-based jazz of the early 1960s. Pioneered by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, modal jazz also paved the way for the development of free jazz and jazz rock.
Modal jazz was largely a reaction to the bebop jazz style, which demanded rapid, complex chord changes that felt constricting to many players. Dispensing with these constantly shifting chord changes, the new style was based on a modal scale (a sequence of ascending or descending notes separated by a fixed set of intervals). When improvising using a modal scale, the soloist could abandon chord-based pyrotechnics in order to concentrate on more melodic inspirations.
Miles Davis, although a pioneer of both the bebop and cool jazz styles, was also one of the first musicians to realise their limitations. During the late 1950s, his quintets and sextets featured the saxophonist John Coltrane, who became the perfect foil to Davis’s spare, introspective improvisations. Together they pushed the sound of cool beyond its boundaries, moving away from conventional jazz rhythms toward a more flowing pulse, abandoning chords in favour of modal improvisation, and opening the door for the new sound that was modal jazz. Other jazz musicians of the period were also looking for looser structures. “Hard bop,” emphasising simpler, gospel and blues harmonic progressions and a heavier beat, was one. Sonny ROLLINS, meanwhile, experimented with improvisations in which a short melodic phrase, a “motive,” was the basis of his improvisations. Modal playing, hard bop, and motivic improvising cross-fertilised each other during an exciting decade from 1958 to 1968.
The first widely known modal jazz piece is the title track to Milestones, the revolutionary album recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet in 1958. The title track is based on a modal scale pattern, which is repeated by pianist Red Garland throughout the piece. In his solos Davis also adheres to the notes of the scale, while Coltrane and Cannonball ADDERLEY on saxophone provide freer improvisation. Also in 1958, Davis recorded his groundbreaking version of “I Love You Porgy,” on the album Porgy and Bess, arranged by Gil Evans. Speaking about the piece, Davis later said: “He only wrote a scale for me to play. No chords. This gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things.”
Milestones was followed in 1959 by the haunting, trance-like Kind of Blue. Perhaps the most influential album in jazz history, Kind of Blue was the record that liberated jazz soloists from the constraints of standard chord progressions. The track “Flamenco Sketches” consists of improvisations on a series of five scales.
In 1960, Coltrane formed his own quintet in order to pursue his increasing interest in modal improvisation. His 1960 recording of “My Favorite Things,” featured on the album of the same name and performed using his new soprano saxophone, made him an international star. Coltrane’s 13-minute solo on this track does not adhere to the tune’s chord progressions, but instead follows a repeated modal sequence. The piece contributed to the popularisation of modal techniques in jazz, and has been much imitated. The title track to Coltrane’s Impressions (1961) also employs two modes—the same two as on Miles Davis’s “So What.”
Miles Davis formed a new quintet in the early 1960s, drawing together gifted young musicians such as pianist Herbie HANCOCK, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony WILLIAMS, and sax player Wayne SHORTER. Taking conventional blues as their starting point, they interpreted modal pieces, blues, and ballads in such a radical, abstract way that musical structure seemed to be on the verge of disintegration. Hancock said of these sessions: “Sometimes we got lost out there, I mean really lost. But any time you got lost, Miles always knew it. He’d come in and play a few notes and bring it all back to the centre.” But by 1968 Davis had moved away from this style.
Davis and Coltrane moved in different directions through the 1960s. While Davis began to combine jazz with the influences of funk and rock music, Coltrane moved to the forefront of jazz experiment, helping to pave the way for what became known as free jazz. Coltrane’s pieces such as “Ascension” and “Meditation” (both 1965) demonstrate a new, more spiritual direction and an interest in Eastern and African music. When Coltrane died in 1967, his contribution to modern jazz was indisputable; among his many innovations were his reintroduction of the soprano sax to jazz, and his experiments with world music. But perhaps his greatest achievement, through his promotion of modal jazz, was to liberate music from hackneyed chord progressions and conventional rhythms and beats.
Other musicians took this new liberation to its extreme, freeing their improvisations from any structural length or harmonic themes. Alto saxophonist Ornette COLEMAN was one of the most influential of these free jazz musicians. Early in his career he was routinely booed off stage, but after his 1960 recording, Free Jazz, audiences began to take him seriously. Although harmonically abstract, Coleman’s music was based in the blues; indeed the atonality of free jazz had precedents in the shouts or field hollers of the early blues worksongs.
Free jazz and modal jazz are closely related. The lack of a defined harmonic structure in modal jazz can be difficult to distinguish from the completely free tonality or atonality of free jazz. But the latter is further defined by a disintegration of the beat and meter, an emphasis on intensity, and the incorporation of world music. The sound it created was spontaneous and often shocking. As it relinquished rhythm and form, it pushed music into the realms of noise, and an almost religious intensity replaced the passion of conventional jazz. To some it was liberating, to others chaotic, but few escaped its influence. Although modal jazz involved simplifying bebop chord progressions, it did not mean that chords themselves became less important. Pianists such as Bill EVANS (who appeared on Kind of Blue) and Herbie Hancock used the broader awareness of space that modal jazz allowed them to construct chords that were beautifully expressionist. The introspective piano brio of Bill Evans was just as influenced by the modal jazz revolution as were the wilder shores of free jazz.
During this time, Miles Davis was moving from conventional tunes to explore longer, improvised pieces. He also began to change the instrumentation of his sound. By the late 1960s, influenced by contemporary popular musicians such as Jimi HENDRIX, Davis had added electric keyboards and guitars to his group. He also began to experiment with rock rhythms and attracted new members to his band, such as the keyboard players Chick COREA, Keith JARRETT and Joe Zawinul; electric guitarist John McLAUGHLIN; bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Jack DeJohnette. By 1970 Davis had recorded several key albums that fused rock music with modal jazz. Among them were the 1969 classics Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. These launched jazz in a new direction.
Essentially the “mode” that jazz rock used was a dorian mode, which is the same as a basic blues scale, and initially many jazz musicians decried rock as being primitive, unsubtle, and commercial. What they didn’t see was how much rock had borrowed from and owed to jazz. The regular beat, the gospel phrases, the blues form and tone all had their origins in early blues and jazz. Perceptive musicians such as Davis were soon learning from rock musicians, and by the early 1970s three key elements of rock music were routinely employed in jazz: the use of electric instruments, the importance of rhythm, and an emphasis on tight composition and arrangement. The combination of jazz and rock created by Davis and his peers was known as “fusion” or “jazz rock.”
Jazz rock tended to build on the collective improvisations of the free jazz movement. By the mid-1970s, however, this was met with a counter-trend toward unaccompanied solos. At the same time, jazz-rock musicians began to turn back toward “acoustic” or nonelectrical music. This dual shift is epitomised by Keith Jarrett’s The Koln Goncert in 1975.
During the 1980s and 1990s, jazz incorporated elements from world music, and there was a revival of earlier jazz styles. But nothing can undermine the achievements of Coltrane and Davis in the 1950s, whose modal techniques paved the way for the development of jazz through the century.
Joseph Goldberg
SEE ALSO:
BEBOP; FREE JAZZ; FUNK; HARD BOP; JAZZ; JAZZ ROCK.
Gridley, Mark C. Jazz Styles: History and Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1985); Litweiler, John. The Freedom Principle: Jazz after 1958 (Poole: Blandford, 1985).
John Coltrane: Giant Steps, My Favorite Things; Miles Davis: Kind of Blue; Milestones; John McLaughlin: Fuse One.