Double Bass The Truth About John Coltrane

[logdrum]

had a reed teacher decades ago who was focused on tone production and improvisation as spontaneous invention. He decried Coltrane for being a "biter," someone who supported the reed with his jaw instead of a good soft tissue embouchure, and as a memorized pattern player instead of spontaneous creator. I think he had a couple valid points.

First if all Coltrane had dental problems abscessed teeth and he had to play like that to protect himself, something your old reed teacher should have known and in many ways he was playing a clarinet or even double reed embouchure. Many classical sac players played like that. Yeah he was not very refiend on the soprano saxophone and he probably was not going for that.


Pattern player -- Geez -- people will tell anything to compensate for their own insecurities. John practiced a lot --- but he also had soul and intention when he played out. But let's get to it technically. The pattern playing was from hsi sheets of sounds period, particularly Blue Train and Gian Steps. At that point he was also studying Slomisnky's book on scale patterns, applied to the fast and radical changes of these tunes. Yes he was problem solving at that time but if you listen t there is beauty in it. MxCoy said that John was moving verticall or chordaly and also horzontallyu scalar and melodic,

By the time he did Love Supreme he had moved away from that . Sun Ship - the band was just given sparse directions as per Tyner as little as 2 notes

When I’m transcribing sax guys, I avoid Coltrane because there’s all sorts of weird squeaks and overtone

If you played the sax, many of those things are either multphonic or altissimo and there is a fingering chart for them. Maybe read Rascher's Saxophones Top Tones or ask a capable player to transcribe for you. You can also omit them and treat them as performance blunders and some probably are and some are intentional. Listen to new classical music written for saxophone, many composers include so called advance techniques in their pieces and literally squawks high squeaks . growls . It's part of modern saxophone pedagogy and I am talking classical

All saxophone players practice the overtone series if they want to develop tone and breath control

 

[stringthrough]

OP, I agree with your points. I much more favor melodic sax players such as Stan Getz, Paul Desmond or Lester Young.

 

[winston]

if this was talk sax, you'd be banned

How about this...Jaco Pastorius is maybe my #5 out of bassists who played with Joe Zawinul.
Even when grooving he sounded like he was playing lead bass.

1) Linley Marthe
2) Victor Bailey
3) Alphonso Johnson
4) Miroslav Vitous
5) Jaco
6) Richard Bona - great player, fantastic vocalist and artist, but every version of a song both he and Linley did, I prefer Linley

We all like what we like!
Coltrane had an instantly recognizable sound and was on a lifelong quest.
I'm happy to say I'm in his direct lineage (I played extensively with saxophonist John Tchicai who played on Ascension) -
But I don't really want to play or sound like him, though I hold his discipline, tenacity, and spiritual orientation in the highest regard!

 

[wompwomp]

I imagine like seeing Paganini might have been. Most would have been thrilled, but you know, some people have to complain about something.

lmao careful there buddy you might provoke somebody into poasting 'The Truth About Niccolo Paganini'

 

[brianrost]

does a 14 minute sax solo bookmarked by a few seconds of head on either side seem like a thing that would have broad appeal?

Sure, if it's a great solo. I don't hear people complaining about Sonny Rollin's long solos.

 

[Low Main]

My concerns with Coltrane are:

1) He was the truth to such a degree that way too many tenor players dedicated themselves to sounding like him. He wouldn't have wanted that.

2) When Trane took up the soprano, he was used to muscling the tenor and didn't adequately adjust his power to the needs and potential of the smaller instrument. He often crumpled it in his hands like a beer can which is ok on an individual conceptual basis, but as with 1 above, this inspired a bunch of players to push too much air through the soprano and just run scales on it all through the 70's. You could tell by their intonation and sound that they hadn't spent much time on long tone studies. There was not a lot of musical content in all that. It took players like Steve Lacy and Branford to showcase the more serene and lyrical sides of the horn in all its beauty. If you come from a bigger horn, you need to adjust your approach so you don't overpower it.

3) There was a point at which Trane was the highest paid jazz musician on the planet and this bothered Miles tremendously. (He was also bothered by the huge fees Ornette was trying to charge). Part of the reason is that Bob Thiele was recording Coltrane incessantly and pumping out records in greater numbers than Miles was doing at the time. It's not Coltrane's fault that Miles wanted to get paid more to such a degree that he eventually went electric, but if Miles had remained the king of the hill while Coltrane was alive, his electric evolution might have taken a more thoughtful, considered compositional path rather than rely on Teo cutting and pasting segments of live and studio jams in lieu of embracing a new book of transcendent tunes such as those Wayne Shorter had written for the Second Quintet. When you hear a RMI electric piano on a Miles tune, it can only mean that hasty decisions were being made on the way to the bank.

 

[blastoff]

as a reformed sax player i do have opinions about his tone. he was of course one of the best and most important musicians of our time. now that we've gotten that out of the way...

he went down his whole spiritual journey and his embouchure departed from the dark sultry tones of yore. Ben Webster, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins. Maybe partly the younger generation was trying to carve out a different style, and bright and edgy was the way, but not all followed: Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson.. those guys had lovely dark tone.
It was also partly that as music became louder (the volume wars of the amplified era) the sax, when trying to compete, trends to the brighter side. Otto Link metal mouthpieces were also somewhat brighter than the earlier hard rubber / resin, bakelite mouthpieces.
What ever the myriad reasons, the effect of his incredible talent and influence would mean that many / most of his disciples - Tom Scott, Brecker, Mintzer... adopted the same bright tone.
Add that to the continued volume increase throughout the sixties, seventies and the Sax increasingly having to compete against electric guitars and using effects and whatnot, players completely lost the carefully studied and nuanced embouchures of earlier jazz greats.
then add to THAT: the Rock n Roll lifestyle, drinkin, smokin, life on the road meant that alot of guy's expensive Selmers were falling out of disrepair right around the same time that cheaper Asian imports starting to filter into the market: the Yamaha era. the net effect: blasto, shrill was in and welcome to the 80's. The Lost boys guy, Kenny G, Baker Street....
its kinda like how after Jaco, every single dude gouged a J pickup right next to their Precision bridge and tore their frets out.

 

[ProbablyTooLoud]

Huge fan, wish he'd played more notes cause left far too early.

 

[Swamp_Ronin]

I find people like Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk very difficult to listen to. It isn't 'music' to me. It's just a lot of notes that have zero melody. It's not much of a stretch to say you can pretty much string any notes together and it won't sound out of place there.

I used to think this until I learned how to play some bebop. My ears got way bigger. Nothing about Bill Evans was haphazard.

 

[klyph]

Well, he’s no Earl Bostic, that’s fer sure!

 

[5StringBlues]

Sure, if it's a great solo. I don't hear people complaining about Sonny Rollin's long solos.

Give it time..........

 

[winston]

but if Miles had remained the king of the hill while Coltrane was alive, his electric evolution might have taken a more thoughtful, considered compositional path rather than rely on Teo cutting and pasting segments of live and studio jams in lieu of embracing a new book of transcendent tunes such as those Wayne Shorter had written for the Second Quintet.

I don't see this as a negative, it was a significant influence (along with dub/reggae) on the development of remix culture and using the studio as an instrument.

 

[JazznFunk]

I used to think this until I learned how to play some bebop. My ears got way bigger. Nothing about Bill Evans was haphazard.

Seriously... of all the adjectives I could assign to the mastery Bill Evans possessed, 'haphazard' is not one of them. Everything Bill did was highly intentional... as were the things he didn't do.

 

[JazznFunk]

My concerns with Coltrane are:

1) He was the truth to such a degree that way too many tenor players dedicated themselves to sounding like him. He wouldn't have wanted that.

The same could be said of Jaco.