What is Jazz? It is solos.

source: https://unsplash.com/@rylomedia

I was very pleased with the response to my initial article (What is Jazz?), because it means that you love what I love. I don't often get that level of alignment, so I will go one layer deeper into the song I referenced called All Blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-488UORrfJ0

Feel free to play it as your read my thoughts on the solo section.

PURPOSE OF A SOLO

You may wonder why so many popular songs are missing a solo section, or why jazz lovers are obsessed with solos. Well let's start with defining a solo. I love Chic Corea's definition, which is tricky because he says that all humans improvise when we communicate. We take what we know to describe what we don't know. In the context of a corporate meeting, there is less freedom. If you are sitting at a lake with a friend, there is more freedom, emotion, and color. Often some of the best stories are when something unexpected happens.

https://youtu.be/yfoxdFHG7Cw

This tension between freedom and structure is something a soloist has to face when it is his or her turn to solo.

In All Blues, we have a very beautiful juxtaposition of world class artists all soloing after each other, and each person with something beautiful to say. It is beautiful because listening to these moments, you get a preview of the style they bring whenever they are recorded with their instrument. Past, present, and future all collapse into one place.

Miles Davis

Davis is an expert at soloing in the fast paced bebop style, but Kind of Blue is Davis' foray into modalism. Modalism is a challenge to make the most out of very few chord changes. It is a rebellion against what Bebop was about with its break-neck speeds and complex changes.

Davis is providing a meta-layer experience because he composed many of the tracks on the album, sometimes walking up to a musician and asking them to write an entire song based on two chords.

In the album where Davis is restricting chord changes he is simultaneously giving each soloist more freedom.

Imagine driving down a highway and instead of having the road hug a mountain side where you can't see oncoming traffic, you are instead driving down a road that is as straight as an arrow with visibility for the next 100 miles. This is the drastic change Davis is bringing to the Jazz world. But soloist don't just control the road in this example, they control the cloud patterns, time of day, foliage, flora, fauna, and everything that can be felt.

Add to this shift, a solo where Miles is giving more of a highway that rolls through cornfields vibe, he chooses notes from chords that are coming in the future. This gives a feeling of traveling to the future and feeling out of place until the changes catch up to you.

Cannonball Adderly

Adderly has a very full and fat sound with a sweetness that keeps coming back... well it feels more like a reincarnation because it is slightly different each time it returns. It involves him hitting the flat third, third, then the root. He does it at least four times in unique ways. Typically a flat third means a darker minor sound. But he grazes it on the way to a delicious sweetness. The flat third against the third to the root is a very bittersweet progression that he uses as a period to his melodic ideas.

John Coltrane

Coltrane is a speedy soloist, yet he starts his solo with holding one note. This creates a suspenseful feeling because his reputation is going as fast as a lambo in his solos. He eventually gives in and blurs through a series of notes that are very difficult to hear, and overwhelm the logical side of the brain. He goes on in the future to share his take on Modalism in A Love Supreme.

Bill Evans

Evans is known for being a master at holding musical phrases through many changes and contorting over multiple measures. In this solo, however, he is more of a chef in the kitchen working on a rich melodic layer cake. A lot of what he plays requires both hands and is a dense stacking of music that goes beyond the minimalist chord changes.