Ignorance...

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gets you a job as a music writer:

'Miles Davis's Kind of Blue had come out a couple of months earlier, just a few months after John Coltrane's Giant Steps, each disdaining chord changes in favor of solemn inquiries into chords and modes. Davis's "So What" coolly navigated between a couple of minor Mixolydian modes; Coltrane's "Giant Steps" circled the circle of fifths.'

Aargh! Going around the circle of fifths is going through a sequence of chord changes, and anyway Coltrane's innovation was to go around a circle of major thirds instead of fifths.

Comments

  1. Anonymous11:41 AM

    Yeah, but were they aware of it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. gcallah8:59 AM

    Um, was who aware of what?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous3:26 PM

    The musicians. Of their musical around thirds constructions. Take a guess.

    ReplyDelete
  4. gcallah3:28 PM

    Well, Coltrane was, perhaps, hyper-aware of it -- he was a master of theory, and, if anything, he might be criticized for being too theoretical, but certainly not for being some idiot savant who was unaware of the musical theory behind what he was doing.

    ReplyDelete

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