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Ornette Coleman fans?

MattStonewall

MattStonewall

Guest
Jan 7, 2014
374
101
Virginia
#1
Any Ornette Coleman fans here and jazz bassists whether double bass or electric?

I have a weird question; which I know the ultimate answer will be "Whatever sounds good"; but I am curious to some idea's from more experienced players in this realm on here.

So let's say a standard template for jazz bass lines could be if you're playing 4 notes over any chord that the the first note would be a chord tone; the second would be a scale tone; the third note would be another chord tone; and the last note would be a chromatic note a half step from the root of your next chord coming up.

But lets say if you're playing in an odd time and the chord changes are going by quickly? What would you all do for an odd number of notes placed over a chord? Say the count would be 7 or 5 over the chord. Do you guys ever place more scale or chromatic tones over a chord if it is passing by quickly?

I'm a big fan of Ornettes work on Song X with Pat Methany.
 
#3
Given that so few of Ornette's tunes (especially those on Song X) even use chords in any traditional sense, I'm having a hard time figuring out how the OP's question relates to the subject line.

But yes, you can "place more scale or chromatic tones over a chord if it is passing by quickly" ...or fewer, if that works better.
 
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#4
As the chord changes happen quickly I would think you would have two chords per measure in some of those places. Thus each chord could get just two notes each. I'm a root on one guy. So R-5 on one and R-3 on the other --- Here I would not try a walk, but, R-5 on the first one and then R-X on the other. X being the walk note.

My point; on fast changes I do good just keeping up.
 
#7
@ Brother Mister- Yes in a sense I am asking that. I have the "Beginning Jazz Bass" book and it is wonderful and has lots of detailed info but there is nothing about odd time signatures in Jazz. Everything is 4/4 that I know of.

I might be describing this wrong but say instead of having 4 quarter notes over a chord you have 5 or 7 quarter notes? If that might even be just a different "tail" piece at the end of a section to change things up leading into another section of a song. Do you guys still try to maintain more chord tones over something like that verses more scale or chromatic tones?

@ Bob Ross- I would be very interested to see the writing process if any that Ornette Coleman goes through. I always imagined that he might pick out certain chords and then everyone improvises over them but do you think sometimes they just made random music up as they went along take by take?

@ SanDiego Harry- I understand. There are some works of from Coleman I don't care for as much but I do love Art Of The Improvisers, Sound Grammar, and Song X. There is a song on Sound Grammar called "Sleep Talking" that I can't get enough of. It's one of his mellower tunes.

I come from a more rock and heavy metal background so have some patience with me. I only started listening to jazz seriously 2 years ago. I do sincerely appreciate the advice and opinions of everyone.
 
#8
Hey, although I don't play Jazz, I listen to it often. Ornette Colman isn't everyone's cup of tea (see above), sometimes he's not my cup of tea, sometimes he is. Probably the main reason I listen to Ornette is to hear Charlie Haden. I was very fortunate to see Haden play in a trio at a very small (~75 capacity) venue a few years back. I sat there watching him, trying to anticipate where he was going to go in the tune. While I could guess sometimes, he usually just totally surprised me by going off in an unpredictable direction, even on tunes I was familiar with. He was playing stuff that you might say didn't sound correct from a theory standpoint, but his feel was perfect. It was an amazing show, and I don't use the word amazing very often. To be able to play bass with Ornette Coleman, you would have to be able to react to the wildly unpredictable changes that were happening so fast that your brain would probably just get in the way if you tried to use it. Haden could keep up with him, and that's probably why they played together for so long. Obviously I can't speak for him, but I think had you asked Haden your question he might tell you to play what you feel and not what you know. Sad that he is gone. Sorry I wasn't any help in answering your question.
 
#10
MattStonewall said:
I always imagined that he might pick out certain chords and then everyone improvises over them but do you think sometimes they just made random music up as they went along take by take?
Click to expand...

I don't think Ornette's bands ever "just made random music up". Listen closely and you can hear how they're usually improvising motifically; they're using the shapes, interval content, rhythmic density, and dynamic contours of the melody to inform their extemporizations.

And again, per my previous comment -- "Given that so few of Ornette's tunes (especially those on Song X) even use chords in any traditional sense" -- I don't think Ornette would "pick out certain chords and then everyone improvises over them" ...rather, he would hand the band a melody and then everybody improvises using that melody as fodder for motific development.
 
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#11
Standard jazz template is not a phrase that belongs near Ornette; as far as the bass is concerned a lot of the playing in his earlier groups (and occasional later revisiting of acoustic jazz) has a straightforward jazz rhythmic feel but it does not at all have the harmonic approach, since there generally are no chords to outline in the functional way that you may be used to.

What I would do (and I do have a fair amount of experience in this) is play whatever sounds like it makes the most melodic sense and feels good. It's like New Orleans jazz in that there are multiple interactive single note parts happening. Just listen, feel the tune, know what type of mood it is trying to convey, and try to pick up on the melodic sense of the lead voice and complement it.

You notice that Ornette doesn't play vast numbers of notes, doesn't systematically arpeggiate chords, and as an improviser tends to avoid long lines in favor of undeniably musical short melody, and the rest of the band responded accordingly, it's not like Haden or Izenzon would play more notes than Ornette, or much longer lines.

The main thing is to be "in the moment" looking for what is uniquely right just then rather than repeating something that worked before.

I consider myself pretty open minded about music - and other musicians, if anything, consider me to be pretty out there - but I have to say it took me about 10 years of fairly steady exposure to get Ornette. Up until then, I liked parts of it but in a different way.

It might not have taken that much time, if I hadn't had so many preconceived notions about music that I needed to learn to set aside. But once I got it, I never heard music the same way again, even stuff I thought I knew very well and that had no more secrets. You really do have to learn to divide your attention and hear everything at once, both separately and together. Something about doing that, at first ties up your conscious mind with that concentration in such a way that it leaves your emotional side undefended, and the music hits you in a completely different place. It's hard to describe but you'll know it when you hear/feel it. It's an example of how what you learn when you are exposed to something that is new to you, is never quite what you thought you were going to learn when you first decided to make the effort.

IMO Ornette's playing has a sense of joy that is the equal of Louis Armstrong and Thelonious Monk, and I'm not sure I would put anyone else in jazz into that category. There are many other greats and many other ways they can be great, but don't be so analytical that you don't feel this.
 
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#12
Here's what I think is going on with Coleman: He music is like a painting I saw at the French museum of modern art in Paris - a huge white canvas with a single black stripe. Folks were standing around, chins in hand nodding and contemplating the deep and profound meaning of such an important piece of art... And what I saw was A HUGE WHITE CANVAS WITH A BLACK STRIPE!!! - Now, I'm no kid and I *am* fairly educated about art, art history as well as Jazz and Jazz history - and I do believe I know a con job when I see one. That painting was a con job. Ornette Coleman bleating and blatting some notes with no harmonic relevance and declaring it to be jazz *does not make it so*, no matter how many folks listen and nod and contemplate the how deep and profound it is. Some music can challenge the listener, as can some visual art, but sometimes it's just a lie. The trick is how well the liar sells the lie. To my mind, Mr. Coleman was a world-class liar.
 
#16
SanDiegoHarry said:
Now, I'm no kid and I *am* fairly educated about art, art history as well as Jazz and Jazz history - ... To my mind, Mr. Coleman was a world-class liar.
Click to expand...
Maybe you should communicate your "fairly educated" opinion to Sonny Rollins, he seems to be confused.
 
#17
MattStonewall - I know it's a popular approach, but the approach you outline isn't really what folks like Oscar Pettiford or Scott Colley and everybody in between and after is doing. It's formulaic and it sounds formulaic. The notes you play should be a melodic response to the music you're hearing. There are exercises that can help you work on this approach.

I never heard Ornette live, but I did get the chance to hear the other people in that California group - Don Cherry, Ed Blackwell, Charlie Haden - and also got to spend three weeks studying with Charlie at an artist in residence thing down in Florida. And if you talk to those guys about Ornette's harmolodic theory, you'd get three different answers. Charlie's take on it was that, unlike most traditional straight ahead jazz, it wasn't just the soloist that provided the direction that a particular performance was going, everybody in the band could. And rather than improvising over a fairly static harmonic structure, if a band member wanted to extend or shorten part of a form, it was no holds barred. It was up to that person to musically communicate what they were doing and up to each other band member to be able to hear and interact with it.

I can't remember (damn jazzheimer's) what his TB name is, but Tim Givens did a session with Ornette some years back and has a great story about that. The gist is - they've been playing for a few hours and in between Ornette's been talking about his concept and then suddenly, Tim says, "all of a sudden it just made sense to me" and describes having a kind of awe-struck/dumbfounded look on his face and Ornette says "Yeah, I know what I'm talking about..."
 
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