Modal jazz
Modal jazz organizes improvisation around scales or modes, often sustaining one tonal center for extended passages instead of changing chords rapidly.
Musical mode: A pattern of pitches and intervals that defines a scale and its characteristic tonal center. Modal jazz draws its harmonic framework from modes rather than frequent chord changes.
Bebop: A jazz style that developed in the 1940s, marked by fast tempos, intricate melodies, and complex harmonies. Modal jazz developed partly as an alternative to bebop's rapidly changing chords.
Bill Evans: An American jazz pianist known for lyrical playing, subtle voicings, and influential work in small groups. Evans's piano playing and harmonies helped shape the sound of Kind of Blue.
Flamenco Sketches: A Miles Davis composition in which soloists improvise through a sequence of five modes. Its changing modal areas contrast with the single-mode structure of So What.
Hard bop: A jazz style that developed in the 1950s, combining bebop with blues, gospel, and rhythm-and-blues influences. Hard bop often retains stronger chord movement and blues forms than modal jazz.
Tonal center: The pitch perceived as the central point of stability in a passage of music. Extended modal passages often maintain one tonal center while melodies explore its mode.
George Russell: An American composer, pianist, and theorist who developed the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization. Russell's modal theory shaped musicians who sought alternatives to chord-based improvisation.
John Coltrane: An American saxophonist and composer whose work transformed modern jazz improvisation. Coltrane developed increasingly expansive modal improvisation in his own groups.
Impressions: A John Coltrane composition built on two alternating modal sections. Coltrane uses a simple modal form as a base for long, intense improvisation.
Free jazz: A jazz approach that loosens or abandons fixed chord progressions, forms, and meters. Free jazz removes more structural constraints than modal jazz, which still uses defined modes.