One of the biggest sounds in the industry in the 50’s was Jazz! Although Jazz is a very popular sound, a lot of developments happened in the 50’s so the Jazz we know and love today, is actually significantly different from when Jazz first began!
Miles Davis was a Jazz legend! He created the album “Kind Of Blue”, which entails 5 songs and lasting 45 minutes. This album has collaboration’s with some of the most talented musicians so it’s a masterpiece. However, in all it’s perfection, each song actually only took 1 take so there was no retakes and the first one you took, goes on the album!
“Kind Of Blue” allowed such a significant development in the genre of Jazz. Miles Davis got a little tired of Jazz solely working around chords because it restricted him a lot and so once he’d already become extremely comfortable within the sound, he wanted to push it. He and George Russell started working on the theory of modes. Modes are basically using scales and just changing the root note, for example, the C major scale is C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C but if you root E then it’ll be E,F,G,A,B,C,E. Modes allowed more freedom in their improvising whereas in scales, there’s a lot of boundaries so you just have to work around the chords, which can be very restricting.
There are 7 different types of modes which all allow different sound. They are:
Ionian – Which creates a bright sound.
Dorian – Which creates a heavy sound.
Phrygian – Which creates a dark sound.
Lydian – Which creates an ethereal sound.
Mixolodyan – Which creates an exotic sound.
Aeolian – Which creates a sad sound.
Locrian – Which creates a foreboding sound.
The song “So What” was so revolutionary because they were so new, they actually invented a new chord! This song goes across 2 different modes, D Dorian and Eb Dorian, so it created a very abstract sound.
The 12 bar blues which is basically using chords from 1-7. In a scale, there are 7 notes and each note has a chord i.e. C (1) is CEG so that would be the 1st chord. This pattern normally goes 1,4,5 and is used in a lot of music. An example of the 12 bar blues being used is “Johnny B Goode” by Chuck Berry.
“Kind of blue” featured John Coltrane, a tenor saxophonist, Julian Adderley, an alto saxophonist, Bill Evan, a pianist, Paul Chambers, a bassist, Wynton Kelly, a pianist, Jimmy Cobb, a drummer, and of course, the trumpeter legend himself, Miles Davis.
Overall, Miles created a whole new concept of Modes which allowed a totally free and new way of creating music, in a way that nobody else had thought of. The 12 bar blues also influenced other genres!