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Transcript of 050 Part V
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Part V
A Kit Of LEGOBricks To BuildSongs With
The Story So Far
The Way LEGO Bricks Build Songs
A Note About Reading Changes
Cadences: The Basic Building Block
Turnarounds: The Other Main Building Block
Putting the Pieces Together: the Glossary ofJoins
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A Ki t Of LEGO Br icks to Bu i ld Songs Wi th
Part V A Kit Of LEGO Bricks To Build
Songs With
The Story So Farn Part I What To Listen For in Jazz , using the Companion Recordings as directed listening , we got a
comprehensive overview of song structures, and noted and classified many similarities between songs.
And even though we were, a lot of the time, only using one LEGO brick, we saw that you could ‘map’
songs as a set of LEGO bricks joined together.
What we do now is to introduce a complete kit of LEGO bricks, and show you how all the joins between
them work. Each brick comes with at least one recommended listening track, so that all the time you are
being sent back to the music itself, not to a theory about it.
The bricks in this chapter are classified into the two basic kinds we have already met, Cadences and
Turnarounds. This is of immense practical benefit. If you can see that something apparently complicated
is just a fancy version of something simple, you are much less likely to be thrown by it, and you will have
less difficulty remembering it.
The immediate payoff for seeing a song in terms of LEGO bricks is that without your doing anything else,
or learning anything else, your improvising will be more convincing because you will know you are
playing a LEGO brick with its own internal story, and not an arbitrary set of changes which go by one at a
time in an unconnected fashion.
Your task is to internalise all these bricks, so that you can play them without a second thought. Most of
them are four measures long, though some of them are eight measures. That covers a lot of territory. In a
song with repeated sections, just a few bricks is all you will need. So when you remember the changes to asong, you only need remember consciously which bricks and which joins the song uses. The bricks
themselves will be a known quantity and won’t rely on your memory – no matter what key you are
playing in. On the other hand, just because you have internalised them, you could always, if asked, spell
out each individual change.
The Way LEGO Bricks Build Songs
Songs have their own individual character. Yet at the same time you have seen that they use a shared ‘kit’
of sections and smaller components. Just like the chapters in a book have their own shape and make their
own point, but share a common vocabulary and grammar as components for the expression of their
individuality. You can look around the repertoire, and reckon you know something about it.
Most books about playing jazz start the other way around. They teach you the musical equivalent of being
able to i) mix green paint, then ii) to paint a single blade of grass. They imply that by knowing this you
will be able to paint a picture of a whole field. This book recognises the shared goal of painting a field, but
what it insists on time and again is that if you don’t have your own idea of a field as the starting point, then
no amount of skill with the colours and the rendering of the shapes of individual blades of grass is going to
be of any use at all.
Nevertheless the basic techniques are not irrelevant, and the aspiring jazz player as much as the aspiring
painter can learn specific things which are of use - so long as it is always within the context of a perceived
need to know. And that context continues to operate throughout, as will become apparent when we get
further into the issue of scales and note-choice.
With that as a sort of caveat , we can now take stock of what has been learned from the study of songs so
far. If you think of yourself as a researcher (and you should: remember Lester Bowie has describedhimself as ‘strictly a research trumpet player’), you will want to establish a reference resource of relevant
data, capable of being drawn upon in a variety of different contexts.
I
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So this chapter is a sort of inventory. An attempt to see and classify where we are and what we have got.
From it you will not only get the equivalent of a researcher’s card index, but also an idea of how to go
about adding your own discoveries to it.
The analogy here though is not index cards, but LEGO bricks: a kit with which you can build what youwant.
Following on from the recognition that parts (‘components’) are often shared between songs comes the
notion that it is possible to describe the musical events that occur within components, and that some of
these are shared in common at the basic level, even when the larger components don’t have anything else in
common. With your real LEGO bricks kit, you might build a mausoleum or a tramcar: two things with
little in common as objects, but built using exactly the same kinds of brick .
So this chapter is about your basic LEGO bricks kit of harmonic parts. It doesn’t introduce any new ideas,
it simply disassembles some songs, most of which we have already looked at, and classifies the resulting
bits (LEGO bricks) into an organisable form. You can then recognise them wherever and whenever they
appear in chord sequences you encounter.
You’ll find that the kit of LEGO bricks that you need is actually quite small. There is a lot of apparentvariety, but most of it is derived from adding ‘bells and whistles’ to the basic bricks.
Putting the pieces together
Once you are familiar with the LEGO bricks themselves, you will see that they join together in surprisingly
simple ways to produce real songs. Your effort in remembering a chord sequence consists at most in
remembering the bricks and the joins. Never the individual chords, because you will already know them
thoroughly as LEGO bricks.
This is often almost trivially easy. As we saw in the Case Study, the bridge of Cherokee for instance has
one kind of brick (a straight cadence). There are four of them in the bridge, but there is the same join (a
new horizon) between each of them, so that is all you need to remember. By following that, you get a
sixteen measure sequence which takes you through four keys! But the key you happen to be playing inmakes no difference at all to what you have to remember!
A Note About Reading Changes
In this section you come face to face with what the LEGO bricks look like on the page. We start by saying
a couple of things about the way chords are presented (The Grigson Grid ) and the occasions when what is
really one chord might be written as two, and vice versa ( A Word About My Changes). Then we go on to
the changes themselves.
The Grigson Grid and the layout of chord sequences
Chord sequences are laid out on a grid. Each ‘cell’ in the grid represents one measure, and you read the toprow of cells from left to right. Where the grid has more than one line of cells, you go down the grid, a row
at a time, reading each from left to right.
In just one respect, the new computer-set version of Grigson has lost something. Lionel used to divide up
his grids by putting a heavier bar line after the first four measures on a row, and by using a heavier
horizontal line to mark off the sections, like between the two halves of the ABAC song I Thought About
You, or on either side of the bridge of Invitation.
I regret that the new edition has not retained this, because the use of those thicker lines helped to get across
the structure of the song. Accordingly, this book continues to delineate sections of songs by means of
heavier lines.
A word about my changes
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Each set of changes for the bricks is in one key only. You should, as with every set of changes you ever
look at, see them first as bricks, and only incidentally as ‘mapped’ to a specific set of roots. Think cycle all
the time too, and you won’t find it difficult. If you need help, then consult Part IX The Harmony with
LEGO Bricks Playalong , where it is suggested that looking at the (all-key) changes there for the bricks
will get you ‘de-spooked’ quickly.
For ease of comparison, most examples are in, or begin with, the key of C.
Watch out for Breakdown
Just before we start, a warning. What follows are the basic changes you need for your LEGO bricks kit.
Be aware though that in looking at published changes, dominants may be given straight, or broken down
into a minor-to-dominant pair . This is a trivial difference, which you should get used to just noticing
instantly, and taking on board. They are cosmetic differences, not new bricks!
For instance, in this section I choose to give the Night and Day cadence first two measures as:
Ab! G7
Grigson gives
Ab! D- G7
These are really both the same. Whenever you see a minor-to-dominant pair like that, you can tell what it
‘really’ is by reading the dominant. For instance in Part VII A LEGO Bricks Approach to Some Core
Repertoire, I give Groovin High as starting:
Eb! % A- D7 Eb! % G- C7
This is effectively the same as:
Eb! % D7 % Eb! % C7 %
The breakdown to a minor-to-dominant pair is to take off any potential for blandness, that is all. It doesn’t
imply a different kind of movement. So on a song like Lover , where you know that the harmony is
simply going down in half steps, don’t be surprised to see the changes given ‘unsmoothly’ like this:F- Bb7 E- A7 Eb- Ab7 D- G7
etc.
when you might have expected to see:
Bb7 % A7 % Ab7 % G7 %
Just one final point about minor-to-dominant pairs. For clarity, where they involve F#/Gb, both chords in
the pair should be ‘sharp’ or both ‘flat’. It doesn’t help clarity of thought to have:
Gb- B7
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..when you could have:
F#- B7
You still get some ‘conflicts’ between sharps and flats however, and you should write out the changes you
use in the way you prefer. I stick to the principle that the minor-to-dominant pair should always be
consistent. I don’t mind changing from flats to sharps on the way to a cadence, although I do sometimes
write G#- to C#7 in a long cadence (for an explanation of what this is see below in Bells and Whistles:
Basic Variations on Cadences) to E.
So, to quote William Carlos Williams: Go now. I think you are ready.
Cadences: The Basic Building Block
A cadence is a cadence is a cadence. There is no difference internally between four-square and offset ones.
But by pointing up the contrast in context, it is possible to see better what they are about. Equally,although only a few of the cadences examined explicitly have been ‘compact’, that is, they generally only
take two measures instead of four, they have the same internal dynamics, and you should not think of them
as any different in essence. Check some out. Gone with the Wind spends the whole of its A section with
cadences of this kind. There are two different cadences, each one repeated, so that in the eight measures
there are four compact cadences. And For Heaven’s Sake starts with a repeat of just one compact cadence.
Four-square straight cadences
Most songs are composed of four-measure units , and when a song includes a cadence which sits within
one of these, it settles into it four square. For instance, here are just a few of the many songs which start
with four-square straight cadences of four bars each. At Sundown, Autumn Leaves, Baubles Bangles and
Beads, But Not for Me, I Get a Kick Out of You, It’s You or No-One, Laura. Let’s listen to a beautifully
clear example, Bill Evans’s version of Alice in Wonderland . The A section starts with a four-squarestraight cadence.
LISTEN NOW . Alice in Wonderland . Bill Evans (1).
Four-square sad cadences
You find these in Autumn Leaves and What Is This Thing Called Love, for instance. But I can’t think of a
better example than to have Bill Evans play a song we have already referred to twice, Beautiful Love. The
A section starts with a four square sad cadence.
LISTEN NOW . Beautiful Love . Bill Evans (1).
Example:
The four-square part means that the complete cadence sits either on the left, or on the right of a line in a
Grigson Grid. It doesn’t matter what is on the other side. If it is four square, it doesn’t straddle the middle.
Here is a straight cadence on the left hand side of the Grid, and a sad one on the right hand side, just for
illustration.
D- G7 C! %
Dø G7+9 C-! %
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Offset cadences
We already defined these. Here are some songs which use them. Afternoon in Paris , Cherokee , Day by
Day, Easy to Love, Groovin High, Half Nelson, How High the Moon, Weaver of Dreams. Listen to How
High the Moon, and hear the two offset straight cadences, each starting at the end of the first two fourmeasure sections. Note that they are compact cadences,.
LISTEN NOW . How High the Moon. Sonny Stitt (2).
Weaver of Dreams is a good example of an offset sad cadence. The song starts resolved ‘You’re a weaver
of dreams’, but after two measures, ‘you and your...’ begins a full-length but offset sad cadence.
LISTEN NOW . Weaver of Dreams. Carmen McRae (1).
Example:
An offset cadence straddles the middle of a line on a Grigson Grid. Here we have a line that starts with two
measures of Db, followed by an offset straight cadence to Bb. So the offset cadence is in measures three,
four, five and six.
Db! % C- F7 Bb! % A- %
Launchers - quick cadences
Songs need launchers if one of their sections gets to a remote place when the logic of the structure says it
should actually be somewhere else. Launchers consist of the approach chords from a cadence to where
the song has to be next. They are abruptly jumped to, and they fit into the available space. Often this is
one measure, sometimes only half a measure, so that each approach chord only gets one beat. We saw
before that Confirmation’s two cadence bridge gets to a remote place, and uses the last measure of the
bridge as a launcher back to the reprise of the front.
LISTEN NOW . Confirmation. Charlie Parker (2).
The bridge of Body and Soul starts with a total change of air. And it has to be a compact, half measure
launcher too, because the song takes until the last measure of the front before it resolves! The last two
beats before the bridge launch us to pastures new.
LISTEN NOW . Body and Soul. Coleman Hawkins (1).
Example:
In this example I am only showing the place where the launcher happens, and have put the launcher in bold
type. It is from the last measure before the bridge, and the first measure of the bridge of Body and Soul ,hence the thick bar line. Be aware that Db which is the first chord is correct. Due to a printing error, the
new Grigson has this wrongly as D! The front has resolved to the Db! chord, which in many songs would
stay there for the whole measure. But the bridge needs to start on D!, which is pretty remote in cycle
terms. The solution is to use the last two beats of the measure as the approach chords to a cadence to D!.
So the bridge is launched. The interval between the resolution and the beginning of the launcher is the
same as the entry to the bridge of Cherokee. (The playalong track Rhythm Turnarounds, SPOTs and POTs
uses cherokee launchers at the end of each line).
Db! E-A7 D
etc.
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Slow launchers: conventional take-off
Slow launchers are the name we give to something we have noticed a lot. They occur most often at the
ends of the B section on ABAC songs, or at the ends of bridges, and often take a whole four measures. The
beginning of the next four measures (the start of the final reprise of the front) is usually a resolved chord,so slow launchers are truly a variant of a the ‘approach’ chords of a cadence; they simply progress through
it differently.
A four measure slow launcher would have two measures on the same root note that you would expect a
cadence to begin with, but the tension is different, it has the floatier feel of the ‘nearly there’, no urgency at
all. It thinks it has got all day! The third measure has the same root again but has now become what we
expected, the driving ‘further away’ feeling, leading to the ‘real’ nearly there in the fourth measure. So it
finishes with the approach part of an offset cadence.
What sets it apart is the ‘lying in a hammock’ feeling of the first half of the launcher. Below, musicians
will see that it is the simple change of one note in the ‘lazy’ chord to the note next door to it which gets the
lazybones to go to work. In the example, changing F# to F as the chord becomes D- instead of D7 is all it
takes.
We’ll check out one each from AABA and ABAC songs. First Take the ‘A’ Train, which has a perfect
slow launcher occupying the second half of the bridge, after the tension-building hover in the first half.
LISTEN NOW . Take the ‘A’ Train. Clifford Brown (1).
All of Me has a beauty too, at the end of its B section.
LISTEN NOW . All of Me. Lennie Tristano (1).
Example:
this example shows an extract from an ABAC song in C. The slow launcher is in the last four measures of
the B section.
D7 % D- G7
Bells and Whistles 1: Basic Variations on cadences
Pullbacks
We already met pullbacks. Just to remind you, check out the second eight of the A section of I’ll
Remember April which is nothing but a pullback. The recommended version, unusually, is played as a
ballad.
LISTEN NOW . I’ll Remember April. Sonny Clark (1).
You can also add a pullback to the end of any song and you have doubtless heard singers and
instrumentalists do it, to generate a climax. Supposing the song is Tangerine, of which the last phrase is
‘My heart belongs to Tangerine’. How many times have you heard somebody sing the equivalent of ‘My
heart belongs to Tanger..., heart belongs to Tanger..., heart belongs to Tangerine’. In order to drum up a
little excitement at the end, the final cadence has been stretched into a pullback. Dexter Gordon plays so
many pullbacks at the end of Heartaches that it becomes like a whole section of the track to itself. And
Miles Davis, in songs like If I Were a Bell , used to have all the soloists play an extended sequence of
pullbacks at the end of their regular choruses.
Example:
this example shows how a cadence to C is pulled back, so that the entire sequence takes eight measures
instead of four.
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D- G7 E- A7 D- G7 C! %
Overruns
An overrun is a normal cadence except that instead of two measures on the resolution, what would have
been the second measure is another resolved chord which feels just a bit further on. In fact, you overrun to
one step further around the cycle than the resolution. With my analogy of a cadence resolution as the
moment when you turn into your drive and are home, I liken the overrun to rolling a bit further forward
than usual. Measure four of Here’s that Rainy Day overruns beautifully from measure three. Measure four
of Autumn Leaves does the same. In vocal versions it’s where the second time ‘the autumn’ is sung.
LISTEN NOW . Autumn Leaves. Booker Ervin (5).
Example:
this is a straight cadence to C, which overruns.
D- G7 C! F!
Two goes and more
two goes and more is about repeating the approach chords in a cadence at least once before resolving. Like
a battering ram crashing against a wall before it breaks it down. The bridge of I Can’t Get Started , as we
noted in What to Listen for in Jazz , is two cadences, a Woody and a New Horizon, but the progress of the
cadence is not smooth from ‘further away’ via ‘nearly there’ to ‘there’. Instead each of the first two
measures contains within itself a ‘further away’ and a ‘nearly there’, so two goes at the approach chords
before we hit the resolution.
LISTEN NOW . I Can’t Get Started. Curtis Counce (1)
The bridge of Woody ‘n’ You is also two cadences, a Bootstrap and a Woody, and it starts each of them
with the two goes device of ‘further away’ and ‘nearly there’ in each measure, but does it three times
(hence the ‘and more’ in ‘two goes and more’). So there is only one measure for the resolution.
LISTEN NOW . Woody ‘n’ You. Al Cohn (1).
Sometimes you don’t get a resolution at all in a two goes. Where it was supposed to be, you ‘move on’
and get another two goes instead. In Lover Man, for example, these two sets of two goes take up the whole
of the first four measures the flow is interrupted by moving on and repeating another approach movement,
with the resolution coming only after that, at the point of the heavy blue note on the word ‘never’ we saw before. So the harmony reflects the frustration in the lyrics! The recommended version is a feature for
Jackie McLean.
LISTEN NOW . Lover Man. Kenny Dorham (1).
Example:
The first example is a cadence to C which really has two goes, like in the bridge to I Can’t Get Started .
D- G7 D- G7 C! etc.
The second is a ‘three goes’ like in the bridge to Woody ‘n’ You.
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D- G7 D- G7 D- G7 C!
Lover Man only gets to its resolution in measure five!
D- G7 D- G7 G- C7 G-C7 F7+9 etc.
Extended cadences
An extended cadence uses three approach chords instead of two. This leaves only the fourth section of the
cadence for the resolution. Most notable is the first four measures of each of the first two eights of All The
Things You Are. The ‘extra’ approach chord starts further back, and has a ‘further away’ feel, so we get
two of that feeling before we are ‘nearly there’.
LISTEN NOW . All The Things You Are . Booker Ervin (3).
Example:
A- D- G7 C!
Long cadences
These are like a condensed version of the Lover Man style two goes. Instead of having two goes at each
minor to dominant (‘further away/nearly there’) pair, it has one go at each. So the effect is not frustrating,
but more like a leisurely amble towards home. (Even where, as in the start of the front of Daahoud , the
tempo is not leisurely at all). The recommended track gives you lots of time to dig it.
LISTEN NOW . Manhattan. Art Farmer (1).
Example:
E- A7 D- G7 C! %
Rainy cadences
These are very like long cadences, but they take a ‘short cut’ instead of the first dominant (‘nearly there’).
They go straight downwards at that point, as if the first ‘nearly there’ had collapsed under its own weight.
You can usually hear the bassist going down with this chromatic ‘collapse’, and continuing down, arriving
at the second ‘further away’, after which everything reverts to normal. We look a little more at this ‘short
cut’ later. We have already met a rainy cadence in the second half of the front to Robbins Nest , where the
tune follows the contours of the chords very closely. And many performances of Autumn Leaves, instead
of playing the resolution of the penultimate sad cadence, substitute the approach chords of a rainy cadence.
It’s obviously called a rainy cadence because of Here’s that Rainy Day. But be aware that the published
music, including playalongs, doesn’t start with a rainy cadence at all, it starts resolved! Even Grigson
gives that as his ‘norm’. The alternative he gives, the rainy cadence, sounds so much better, and makes the
song sound more like itself.
LISTEN NOW . Here’s that Rainy Day. Paul Desmond (1).
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Example:
E- Eb° D- G7 C! %
Starlight cadences
Starlight cadences were one of our big building blocks for songs. Let’s just remind ourselves what they
sound like. The starlight is the D section of this ABCD song.
LISTEN NOW . Stella by Starlight. Hampton Hawes (1).
Example:
The example shows a starlight taking a full eight measures, as it does in Woody’n’ You, or Stella by
Starlight . When you get to the Playalong track for starlights, you will find they are compacted into four
measures, like at the start of the B section of Little Willie Leaps.
F#- B7 E- A7 D- G7 C! %
A common variant is to use a half diminished chord instead of a minor seventh for the first chord.
Surprise endings for cadences
We normally expect a cadence to end on a resolved chord which is consistent with the mood established
by the approach chords. One of the joys of jazz is that we sometimes don’t get what we were expecting!
Sometimes we ‘expect’ a surprise at places where we always get them, like at the end of a bridge, wherethere is tension instead of resolution. Sometimes they are just one of the pleasures of listening to and
playing a particular song. The surprises can come either from a change of mood relative to the approach
chords, or from not being ‘at rest’ when the resolution arrives.
simple tension endings
This is most often the ‘end of the bridge’ situation. Listen to Cherokee, whose bridge is four straight
cadences, each ending normally except the last, where instead of resolution we get tension, which leads
logically to the reprise of the front. Logically, that is, in that the flow goes straight on naturally, without
the need for a launcher, as in Confirmation .
LISTEN NOW . Cherokee. Lee Konitz (4).
Example:
The example is given in the normal form you meet it, but note that the last two measures are just a broken
down version of two whole measures of C7. i.e. the cadence has a normal shape, but the ending is a
dominant seventh instead of a major.
D- G7 G- C7
supertension endings
‘Supertension’ is like a combination of ‘nearly there’ and ‘there’, piled on top of each other. I sometimes
think that you have not only turned into your drive and stopped, you ran into the garage door. Then you
stopped! It has just the tiniest wish to move on, but relishes its (rather gorgeous) sound. If you have Chet
Baker’s Diane album, you hear the first track ( If I Should Lose You) start with Paul Bley playing a rich
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supertension chord, and leaving it hanging in space, to imply the eventual arrival of Baker to begin the
melody. If you used the recommended I’ll Remember April for the pullback illustration above you will
have heard Sonny Clark using a supertension, in place of continuing the opening hover, in measures three
and four. The sound is built into the first two sections of Invitation. Each of these starts with a hover, then
new horizons into a cadence, whose ‘resolution’ is supertension. The second section, ‘moves on’ fromthe first, taking that little bit of tension as a cue to move one step around the cycle.
LISTEN NOW . Invitation. John Coltrane (1).
Example:
D- G7 C7+4 %
surprise sad endings
We can re-use Invitation to illustrate surprise sad endings as well as supertension ones. The bridge starts
with three cadences. They each begin as straight cadences, but their resolutions are sad! No wonder it plunges into ‘nowhere’ after doing that three times!
LISTEN NOW AGAIN . Invitation. John Coltrane (1).
Example:
D- G7 C-! %
surprise straight endings
Everybody loves a happy ending, and sometimes they happen in songs, more often, it seems, than they do
in life. The opening to For Heaven’s Sake, ‘for heaven’s sake’ has sad approach chords, but ‘lets fall in
love’ has a happy ending, because the resolution is straight. And the version of the starlight cadencewhich Stella by Starlight and Woody ‘n’ You employ is sad all through but straight at the resolution. In
What’s New, the final phrase of each section, the place where in the first section the lyrics say ‘gee but it’s
nice to see you again’, the approach is sad, as it would be given the song, but the skies clear and the sun
comes out with the words ‘see you again’ as the resolution is straight. (Some versions keep the ending of
the bridge all sad, to give more effect to becoming straight at the end of the reprise of the front).
LISTEN NOW . What’s New. Jackie McLean (1).
Example:
Dø G7+9 C! %
Fancy colours in cadences
We noticed one of these in the rainy cadence above. Our ears get used to the steady flow from ‘further
away’ to ‘nearly there’ to ‘there’, minor seventh to dominant seventh to tonic. We accept it as the norm.
The fancy colours vary the hue, but they don’t vary the direction - we still know where we are going - and
they very often preserve the underlying ‘further away’ and ‘nearly there’ feelings intact. One of the ironies
for players, as you may recall from Part III Just Do it , is that most of these fancy colours are easier to get
than the plain ‘vanilla’ ones. They go via the very next note downwards to get to their destinations, so you
play a Db as a root between the D and the C in a cadence to C). As if the man reading the meter barged
through the fence to the next door house rather than go back down the drive to the street, and then up next
door’s drive.
Fancy ‘nearly theres’
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Leaving aside the rainy cadence, these can crop up more or less where the player wishes, and may be used
on some choruses of a solo and not others. There are some that most everybody plays all of the time
though. For instance Body and Soul , at the beginning. The second and third measures are a compact
straight cadence. But the ‘nearly there’ part is usually ‘coloured’. In the recommended version, where
Eddie Jefferson is singing his own lyrics to Coleman Hawkins’s tenor solo, the place where this happens is‘yes indeed he’ with ‘was’ as the resolution.
LISTEN NOW . Body and Soul. Eddie Jefferson (2).
Example:
The example is in fact a written out version of the first keyboard cadence given in this book. (See Just Do
It above). The Db7 is a tritone substitution for G7, that’s all. (And easier).
D- Db7 C! %
gds cadences
This is an attractive variant on what we just saw. It works by having the bass play a ‘pedal’ of the place
where the resolution is going to be, but play it insistently under the approach chords too. This gives a very
powerful pull, which means that the ‘further away’ and the fancy ‘nearly there’ can have a hovering,
suspended, quality, by being themselves coloured ‘there’. GDS is On Green Dolphin Street of course.
LISTEN NOW . On Green Dolphin Street. Eric Dolphy (1).
Example:
D!
-------
C Pedal
Db!
------
C Pedal
C! %
night and day cadences
With a coloured dominant (‘nearly there’) you can often hear the bass go directly down from the normal
‘further away’ to the ‘nearly there’ and from there, directly down again to the ‘there’. Night and Day
cadences, used in that song as well as pieces like Sam Rivers’s Fuchsia Swing Song , have the ‘normal’
movement from ‘nearly there’ to ‘there’, but have their ‘further away’ immediately above the ‘nearly
there’. With the fancy ‘nearly theres’, the fact of the ‘further away’ being normal means you know at the
outset where you are going. With Night and Day cadences, the outset is no help at all. It is not until the
small step downwards onto the conventional ‘nearly there’ that you know what is going to happen. Oftentoo, the opening sound is a resolved one, not a ‘further away’, just to confuse you. It’s great to listen to and
play over. The recommended version has the late great bassist Red Mitchell playing piano in a way that
really tells you what’s happening.
LISTEN NOW . Night and Day. Lee Konitz (7).
Example:
Ab! G7 C! %
Stablemates cadences
When you hear songs which use cadences with these approach chords, you will know why they aresometimes called zig-zag cadences. You have four approach chords instead of two, but they don’t have the
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smooth flow of the four in the long cadence. Instead you get a zig zag. Within each of the first two
measures you have a normal minor to dominant (‘further away/nearly there’) pair, but where are they?
Nevertheless the Stablemates cadence is just a worked-over version of the Night and Day one. All that has
happened is that the place where, in the first measure the night and day sat still has been ‘broken down’
into a ‘further away/nearly there’ pair, where the ‘nearly there’ is the original place. In itself, this sort of breakdown is enormously widespread within jazz, and is, for example, the whole of the difference between
an I Got Rhythm bridge as played by Django (not broken down) and Bird (broken down). The same has
happened to the ‘nearly there’. This doesn’t produce any surprises because breaking down this chord gives
us the conventional approach chords to a (compact) cadence. Put the two side by side, and they sound like
a zig-zag. Let’s take a couple of examples. First Stablemates...
LISTEN NOW . Stablemates. Jackie McLean (1).
...Then Our Delight .
LISTEN NOW . Our Delight. George Wallington (1).
Example:
Eb- Ab7 D- G7 C! %
Bells and Whistles 2: oblique routes to resolutions
These cadences use alternatives for the approach chords, that is, different ones from both the plain and the
fancy ones we have looked at so far. They still make ‘sense’ though, and they still turn up in lots of songs.
So they are not ‘exotic’ or obscure in any way. For players, the means of producing them are totally simple
and absolutely straightforward, so they can be learnt at the outset, and you don’t have to undergo an
advanced theory course to make them happen.
Yardbird cadences
In a Yardbird Cadence, the 'dominant' used to arrive at the resolution is one of the Bartok substitutions
discussed under Substitution in Part IV The Transition from Listening to Playing . People too often say
'substitution' when they really mean specifically 'tritone substitution', implying that Db is the only sub for
G. Remember Bartok showed that a sub could be anything from the diminished arpeggio of the 'real' note.
Yardbird cadences use the bIII, so Bb for G. The 'straight' form of the cadence breaks down the dominant
seventh into a minor to dominant pair, F- to Bb7.
When Monk wrote Monk’s Mood , it was originally called That’s the Way I Feel Now (as was the Hal
Willner memorial concept album). The opening phrase of the melody can be sung to those words: ‘that’s
the way I feel now’. It’s a straight cadence to ‘now’, but the approach chords are not the regular ‘further
away/nearly there’ pair. Until you get to ‘now’, or are used to the song, you think you are goingsomewhere else.
The crucial moment is that move from the ‘nearly there’ (ending on the word ‘feel’) to the ‘there’. Let’s
start with a situation where this happens in a simple form, i.e. not broken down. In Speak Low, the bridge
is a straight cadence, lasting all eight measures, so the component parts of the cadence are twice as long as
normal. This gives us plenty of time to relish the effect. Instead of the expected ‘nearly there’ at the point
where the lyrics say ‘love so brief’, we plunge off the cliff into a ‘nowhere’, which manages, all the same
to end up where we had been expecting to go in the first place. (The chords are spelt out in the upcoming
example below).
LISTEN NOW . Speak Low. Booker Ervin (4).
Another song which uses the same notion is Stella by Starlight . It has an eight measure extended cadence
in its C section (starting ‘a great symphonic theme...’, which trundles through amiably until the word‘starlight’, which has done the ‘nowhere’ like in Speak Low. All comes right with the word ‘dream’.
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Yardbird Suite, (once called What Price Love), starts resolved, appears to move away, but turns out to be
on a homecoming path via a Yardbird cadence, this time complete with the full ‘further away/nearly there’
pair. On Eddie Jefferson’s vocal version the words for the approach chords are ‘musical topic of’ and the
resolution is ‘today...’.
LISTEN NOW . Yardbird Suite. Eddie Jefferson (3).
Time to check out an undoubted masterpiece using this device. Monk’s Mood itself.
LISTEN NOW . Monk’s Mood. Thelonious Monk (1).
Example:
The basic form of yardbird cadence looks like this:
F- Bb7 C %
The relevant part of the bridge of Speak Low, written as if for alto saxophone, thus making it a cadence to
C is:
D- % Bb7 % C
% etc.
The C section of Stella by Starlight , written as if for tenor saxophone, thus making it a cadence to C is:
A7+9 % D- % Bb7 % C %
Coltrane cadences
John Coltrane’s idea of travelling towards the resolution of a cadence produces an effect which Russell
Davies calls ‘crabwise’ motion. It’s like going sideways. If you are a musician, you will see later that this
is easily the best way to picture it in your head. Coltrane didn’t invent it of course (is anything entirely
new?) but he did systematise it, and apply it to lots of standard songs, some of which we considered in New
Bottle, Old Wine.
The best known popular song which moves, Coltrane style, crabwise, is Irving Berlin’s Have You Met Miss
Jones. The bridge starts resolved (‘and all at once’), then proceeds through three compact cadences,
perfectly conventional in themselves, but which move downwards to arrive on resolutions a ‘giant step’
apart. In these, the last three beats of each measure containing the approach chords has the words 'and all
at', and every resolution is reached with the word 'once'. This repetition in the lyric helps to point up the
giant steps feel as you stride downwards. The final giant step goes back upwards, and the approach chord
lyric here is 'earth and', with the resolution 'sky'. (What is really interesting is that Giant Steps itself does
exactly this taking two steps down and one back up form the starting point!)
Now perhaps you will believe me when I say Giant Steps is a Doddle, in Part VIII More Things to Think
About !
LISTEN NOW . Have you Met Miss Jones. Rita Reys (2).
Let’s consider this applied to But Not For Me . This normally starts with an ordinary straight cadence with
a retake. Coltrane starts out where he means to finish, then takes three giant steps, using simple compact
cadences, the third of which gets back to where he started. Crabwise it may be, but there is never far to go.
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If you keep going in the same direction, your giant steps will always come back to where they started in
this way.
LISTEN NOW . But Not For Me. John Coltrane (2).
Example:
Later on (in Part VIII More Things to Think About ) we show how Coltrane’s resolutions can be
diagrammatically shown as being at right angles to the direction of normal cycle movement, making up a
grid which I call the ‘Giant Steps Board Game’. Here it is enough to say that the giant steps are a major
third apart, and in a Coltrane cadence, are usually preceded just by their dominants, not by a minor-to-
dominant pair.
The Coltrane cadence such as that used in Countdown, starts with a conventional II-, to set its direction,
but then starts a sequence where each measure starts with a major chord, going down in giant steps to the
resolution in the final one.
D- Eb7 Ab
B7 E
G7 C
To play this, start normally, then start the dominant/major sequence a half step up, and after that a bIII up
for the other two times.
But Not For Me and the bridge of Have You Met Miss Jones both do it the Giant Steps way, starting
resolved, and moving from step to step. Here is the latter, with the resting points in bold.
C Eb7 Ab B7 E Bb- Eb7 Ab etc.
Rainbow cadences
These are a really beautiful way of arriving at a resolution. They occur a lot in old songs like The World is
Waiting For the Sunrise, (the dominant (‘nearly there’) is where the lyrics say ‘ sunrise’ ), and we have
already heard an example in I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter , (the dominant is where
the lyrics say ‘came from’ ). At slow tempo, a rainbow cadence is ravishing. In Over the Rainbow, it is
where the lyrics say ‘over the rainbow’, with ‘way’ being the resolution. On the Lee Konitz/Red Mitchell
album I Concentrate on You, they use one in the beginning of the last section of the title song, where the
words say ‘(and so when) wise men’ with the resolution on ‘say to me’.
For me, one of the most effective uses of the device is on Benny Golson’s I Remember Clifford . It is the
opening phrase of the chorus. If you have Rita Reys’s wonderful vocal version, so much the better. Itstarts resolved, on the place where a dominant would normally be (‘(the) warmth...’). Then it steps up to a
proper dominant sound, (‘of his’) and then move up again by the smallest of notches, a half step to arrive at
a true resolution (‘sound’). When you get to the companion to the Harmony with LEGO Bricks playalong, you will see what effect playing this had on our musicians.
LISTEN NOW . I Remember Clifford. Rita Reys (1).
Example:
The basic form of a rainbow cadence to C has a root movement of G B C. Depending on the song, the B
can be a minor seventh or a dominant seventh. In its basic form, Over the Rainbow uses a minor seventh:
G! B- C! %
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On the other hand the beginning of the chorus of I Remember Clifford uses a dominant seventh:
G! B7 C! etc.
Amen cadences
When you hear a gospel choir, or a soul band play an ‘amen’ you know it is a ‘nearly there’ followed by a
‘there’. But it is not the ‘comfortable’ (dominant VII) one we have become used to. It is more austere, so
perhaps more fitting to an ‘amen’. It is still a cadence within the meaning of the act because it goes from
somewhere else towards a resting place, then stops. In Moanin’ , every phrase of the melody of the front is
answered by ‘amen’.
LISTEN NOW . Moanin’. Art Blakey (1).
Most blues, from bebop onwards at least, use a conventional straight cadence for their last line. To get amore ‘down home’ feel, this is replaced by an extended amen cadence. It starts on what would have been a
conventional ‘nearly there’, but instead of resolving straight away, moves down to the first half of an
‘amen’, and resolves with the second half. This was illustrated at the end of the Substitution section of Part
IV The Transition from Listening to Playing .
LISTEN NOW . Mama Too Tight. Archie Shepp (2).
Example:
The basic form of the Amen cadence is simply:
F! C!
The voicings for an Amen 'response' must be simple I III V triad notes, otherwise the hymn-like effect will
be lost. You usually find the melody notes for each syllable to be both C’s, or an F over the F!, and an E
over the C!.
Turnarounds: The Other Main Building BlockWe have already met lots of turnarounds. Here we simply list the ones we know explicitly, and examine a
few others which have, in fact, already cropped up in the songs reviewed to date.
Plain Old Turnarounds: POTs
You can’t keep saying ‘plain old turnaround’ any more than you can keep on singing ‘dah dah dah dah’ to
tell people what you mean. So let’s make a TLA (three letter acronym) of it, and call it a POT.
Straight POTs
Songs which feature straight POTs include I Can’t Get Started , These Foolish Things, Waltz for Debby, the
bridge of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea , the bridge of Easy Living , and the bridge of Bernie’s
Tune. Here’s another. Kurt Weill’s My Ship, which opens with a gem of a POT.
LISTEN NOW . My Ship. Bud Shank (1).
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Example:
Here is the POT which takes us across the first two measures of My Ship and into the third. You will notice
that it is a sequence which goes I VI- II- V7 and back to I. So it starts resolved, and then plays an extended
cadence to get back to the place it first thought of.
C! A- D- G7 C! etc.
Sometimes you will find the VI- played as a VI7. This makes no difference really, except to allow the
bassist to move up chromatically from C to D via the C# of an A7.
Sad POTS
You also get a few sad POTs. Jerome Kern’s Yesterdays opens with one, played twice. The recommended
example here is George Shearing’s Lullaby of Birdland , whose front opens with one.
LISTEN NOW . Lullaby of Birdland. Urbie Green (1).
Example:
The Sad POT just uses sad chords all the way through a normal POT.
C-! Aø Dø G7+9
Suspended Plain Old Turnarounds: SPOTs
SPOT is a nice acronym too isn’t it? SPOTS are most often used where simply repeating a POT would
seem to be too boring. It postpones (suspends) coming back to the starting place. Between the Devil and
the Deep Blue Sea has a front which starts with a POT followed by a SPOT. And you already know it as
the standard way of not resolving at the end of the first A of AABA songs. (Refer back to Booker Ervin’s
version of I Can’t Get Started ).
Example:
The only difference between a POT and a SPOT is that instead of starting resolved, with a I, they start with
a III-. This makes them look perfectly logical, just like the approach chords to a long cadence.
E- A7 D- G7
Here is the first four and a bit measures of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, showing a POT
followed by a SPOT.
F! D- G- C7 A- D7 G- C7 F! etc.
LISTEN NOW . Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea. Dicky Wells (1).
Rhythm Turnarounds
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While I Got Rhythm originally shared the same front as Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, quite
quickly the first POT was replaced by one where the underlying movement, exemplified by what the bass
player was doing, kept going upwards, with two beats on each note. It then met the expected SPOT at the
beginning of the third measure. This ascending movement is in a lot of songs, so let’s listen to some.
‘SWonderful’s front strain is almost a long slow rhythm turnaround. You can hear the upward movementstart, because there are two measures on each of the first two chords. It does go up one more notch, but this
turns out to be just a straight cadence back home. Better for our purposes is On a Slow Boat to China
which does the whole thing with four beats on each chord, at the start of its A section. It makes it very easy
to see.
LISTEN NOW . On a Slow Boat to China. Sonny Rollins (1).
Imagination is a ballad that also starts with a (regulation two measure length) rhythm turnaround. The
recommended version is a feature for Art Pepper.
LISTEN NOW . Imagination. Sonny Stitt (4).
Time to see the rhythm turnaround at home, in its usual length and usual place. I recommend Sonny
Rollins’s rhythm changes paraphrase Oleo.
LISTEN NOW . Oleo. Miles Davis (1).
Example:
C! C#° D- Eb°
IV ‘n’ Back
This should strictly be called ‘to the IV ‘n’ back’ because, like all non-suspended turnarounds it starts at
home and ends up back home. It is the third turnaround in a rhythm changes front. The lyrics say ‘I got
my gal...’. On Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea , the lyrics say ‘you’ve got me in between...’.
Don’t worry about why its name is spelled with the Roman Numerals for ‘four’. ‘Four’ is easy to say, andthis turnaround is great to remember. It starts resolved, applies some tension and moves up to another
place. That place is the same as the first syllable of an ‘amen’ cadence. It doesn’t get back via an amen
though. As we have seen, an amen just goes straight back down: a-men.
You can hear the outline of what it does in Louis Armstrong’s solo on Chimes Blues.
• After playing a recognisable on and an off, he repeats the on. This ‘on’ is the beginning of a IV ‘n’
back.
• You then hear him play an ascending chromatic phrase. This is the tension to power the climb.
• He then plays the ‘on’ phrase higher. He has arrived at the IV.
• He then plays the phrase a notch higher still. This is the transition from IV to back .
• Then he plays the ‘on’ phrase again. He is back .
LISTEN NOW . Chimes Blues. King Oliver (1).
However, although the motions Louis goes through conform to those of a IV ‘n’ Back, they are not there as
a turnaround. In the blues, as we have seen, each ‘line’ ends up back at base. And each starts with
something different. It so happens that the second line starts at the place called IV, and has to get back to
base.
So let’s look at a song where it is a turnaround. I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over is great for this,
because we get a IV ‘n’ Back in slow motion, four measures instead of two, and a vocal version like Helen
Merrill’s shows how it works. It goes like this:
• (start) ‘I’m afraid the’
• (climb) ‘masquerade is’
• (up at the IV) ‘over’
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• (transition) a gap in the lyrics and then ‘and so is’
• (back) ‘love’
You have probably noticed that the transition has the same upward feeling relative to the IV that the second
part of a Rhythm Changes Turnaround has to its first part.
You can’t get enough of this song (why isn’t it in Grigson?), so try Helen Merrill.
LISTEN NOW . I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over. Helen Merrill (1).
Then Sonny Stitt.
LISTEN NOW . I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over. Sonny Stitt (3).
And finally Milt Jackson.
LISTEN NOW . I’m Afraid the Masquerade is Over. Milt Jackson (1).
Example:
The usual way to get a IV’n’Back is like this example, which is written out ‘Masquerade’ style, over four
measures instead of two:
C! G- C7 F! F#° C! etc.
Grigson puts some suggested bass notes under the changes (on those occasions when the bassist might not
choose to start with the root), which if played, emphasise the power of this turnaround, as here where the
bassist might play D under the Bb7 and F when the sequence gets back to Bb:
Bb! Bb7
------
D
Eb! E° Bb!
-----
F
etc.
Note that the #IV diminished chord is not the result of any exotic theory. Just as with the #I diminished in
the rhythm turnaround, the diminished triad is reached by simply raising the root of the preceding chord a
half step, but leaving the other two notes of the triad alone. So F A C becomes F# A C. Louis uses both
sets of notes in his solo to emphasise the upward movement, and what's more, you can hear Bud Scott's
banjo go with him!
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea uses a Yardbird Cadence for the ‘back’. Here we have the
example from the song, given earlier, showing a POT plus a SPOT extended to show a IV’n’Back in
measures four, five, and the first beat of six. Note the breakdown of F7 in measure five into a minor-to-dominant pair:
F! D- G- C7 A- D7 G- C7 C- F7 Bb! Eb7 F! etc.
Pennies Turnaround
If you have the Benny Carter version of Crazy Rhythm recommended above you will have heard the
‘walking’ bass line used by Jimmy Garrison. The three first notes, doh re mi, two beats for each note,
articulate as well as anything else I know what the Pennies Turnaround is about at its start. The lyrics forthat part are ‘every time it rains’. After that, the Pennies Turnaround goes down a notch for two more
beats, along with the repeat of the words ‘it rains’. That leads it logically to a conventional pair of
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approach chords, which lead back to the starting point. The A section of Pennies from Heaven is just two
Pennies Turnarounds, one after another. To illustrate it, I suggest Hi Beck , a pennies paraphrase by Lee
Konitz, featuring, on this version, Miles Davis.
LISTEN NOW . Hi Beck. Miles Davis (1).
Example:
C! D- E- Eb° D- G7 C! etc.
Fancy Colours in Turnarounds
The fancy colours here are mostly the same variety we found in cadences. A different coloured sound to
the exact one we were expecting, but which doesn’t stop us going where we are going.
Foggy turnarounds
One of the few songs I regularly hear differently from Grigson is A Foggy Day. It had been on my
discussion list for our next meeting, but his tragic death intervened. Jamey Aebersold, however, obviously
agrees with me. It is simply that the song sounds more like itself if you colour up the second chord in the
POT it starts with. Effectively, it does a ‘nowhere’, and then resumes as normal.
LISTEN NOW . A Foggy Day. Lester Young (3).
Example:
As you can see, the colour consists of just using a tritone substitution for the expected D- or D7, if it were aconventional POT:
F! Ab7 G- C7
Ladybird turnarounds
These put fancy colours on all except the first chord of a POT. In Ladybird it is the last two measures of
the chorus. If your version includes, as my recommendation does, the alternative tune Half Nelson, you
can hear the tricky line negotiating the turnaround.
LISTEN NOW . Ladybird. Barney Wilen (1).
Example:
As you can see, every root, except the I has a tritone substitution. (And there is a nod to Giant Steps in
having the first chord in the second bar resolved!)
C! Eb7 Ab! Db7
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Multi-subbed turnarounds
We can’t miss this LEGO brick out. Dizzy Gillespie started using it on I Can’t Get Started , and if you
have heard any good versions of the song, you already know what it sounds like. It comes after the first
POT, where the lyrics say ‘revolutions in Spain’. It breaks down each of the normal two beats on each place into a ‘further away/nearly there’ pair, where each one of the pair lasts for only one beat. So for two
measures we get a new chord every beat. It really adds character to the song. And there is a wonderful
inevitability to it too, because each pair starts one notch lower than the previous one. When we get through
the turnaround, going that extra one notch lower gets us back to the song’s starting place. The Mingus
version recommended, featuring John Handy, is extraordinarily clear.
LISTEN NOW . I Can’t Get Started. Charles Mingus (1)
Example:
This is really very simple, although there is one chord per beat. Underneath it all is a SPOT.
E- A7 D- G7
Then the two dominants have been replaced by their tritones, giving as you would expect, descending half
steps:
E- Eb7 D- Db7
Then the chord on each root is broken down into a minor-to-dominant pair. (And you can improvise over
each pair, if you want to visit all the nooks and crannies):
B-E7 Bb-Eb7 A-D7 Ab- Db7
In published changes, where all the chords for a measure have to fit into the same sized box on the Grigson
Grid, these sometimes appear one under another like this:
B- E7
Bb- Eb7
A-D7
Ab- Db7
Doo wop turnarounds
There are other fancy colours too, such as the doo wop turnaround much used in pop music. This is just a
POT with a coloured third chord. Check out, say, Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You if you want.
Example:
As you can see, this is just a POT, with one of the ‘Bartok’ subs for the expected D-:
C! A- F- G7 C! etc.
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Passacaglias
These are where the bass line descends over and over, and have been much used in WEAM since at least
Bach’s day. Two beats each on each of the root notes below. They amount to fancy colours for the second
and the third chords, but only get their effect if the bass line descends relentlessly. The whole basis forMonk’s Friday the Thirteenth is a repeated passacaglia.
LISTEN NOW . Friday the Thirteenth. Roswell Rudd (1).
Among other places you can hear one is the bridge to Bobby Timmons’s Moanin’ .
LISTEN NOW . Moanin’. Art Blakey (1).
Example:
C! Bb7 Ab7 G7
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Putting the Pieces Together: the Glossary of Joins
Classified List of Joins
In Part I What to Listen For in Jazz we met All the Joins There Are, and learned to recognise them as
distinct entities, Magic Moments in our music. So you should by now be familiar with what they all sound
like, and be able to recognise them when you hear them. What follows is a classified list of all the joins to
show you how to make them happen. The ‘resolves to’ column assumes that the join is to the beginning of
a regular straight cadence. In Part IX The Harmony with LEGO Bricks Playalong , straight cadences are
used to demonstrate every join in every key. The order of presentation here is ascending chromatic, and
the degrees of the scale are indicated in Roman Numerals. (There appear to be thirteen not twelve joins,
but this is because we differentiate between Homers and Retakes, which are really both identical, but occur
in slightly different contexts).
Join Name Starting Note Resolves to
New Horizon I (the same place) bVII
Downwinder bII (half step up) VII (half step down)
Retake II (following a VI in the
previous measure)
I (back home again)
Homer II I (back home again)
Cherokee bIII bII (half step up)
Woody III II
Highjump IV (one step forward around
the cycle)
bIII
Bauble #IV III
Bootstrap V (one step back around the
cycle)
IV (one step forward around
the cycle)
Stella bVI bV
Backslider VI V (one step backward
around the cycle)
Half Nelson bVII bVI
Sidewinder VII (half step down) VI
If it helps you to see more patterns, here is the way Part IX The Harmony with LEGO Bricks Playalong
groups the joins if you play them consecutively.
Joins which go through all keys.
" Bootstrap (forwards around the cycle)
" Backslider (backwards around the cycle)
" Cherokee (up in half steps)
" Downwinder (down in half steps)
7/25/2019 050 Part V
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/050-part-v 24/24
A Ki t Of LEGO Br icks to Bu i ld Songs Wi th
Joins which move in Whole Tones
" Woody (up)
" New horizon (down)
Joins which move in Flat Thirds
" Highjump (up)
" Sidewinder (down)
Joins which move in Major Thirds
" Bauble (up)
" Half Nelson (down)
The Join which moves in Flat Fifths
" Stella
The Join which isn’t moving anywhere
" Homer/Retake