Coltrane's intonation
Tom Walls
that I recall that when he was playing with Miles, he was receiving
criticism for his intonation. I had presumed that the critics were
really having trouble with his timbre(IIRC Sonny Rollins came in for
similar criticism). He doesn't strike me as having intonation problems,
excepting in the case of his soprano -- a problem that he shares with
nearly everyone. Anyone have thoughts on this?
--
Tom Walls
the guy at the Temple of Zeus
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/zeus/
Skip Elliott Bowman
intonation. Personally, I have never heard example of it.
The nature of a wind or non-fretted stringed instrument means that perfectly
tempered intonation is unattainable, but for the most part, and certainly
among world-class players, the variance of a few cents sharp of flat is
negligible to all but those with perfect pitch, and those folks like a
pain-filled life anyway :)
"Tom Walls" <tw...@REMOVEcornell.edu> wrote in message
news:MPG.1731deb25...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu...
news
> "Tom Walls" <tw...@REMOVEcornell.edu> wrote in message
> news:MPG.1731deb25...@newsstand.cit.cornell.edu...
> > A recent thread alluded to Coltrane playing out of tune. It seems to me
> > that I recall that when he was playing with Miles, he was receiving
> > criticism for his intonation. I had presumed that the critics were
> > really having trouble with his timbre(IIRC Sonny Rollins came in for
> > similar criticism). He doesn't strike me as having intonation problems,
> > excepting in the case of his soprano -- a problem that he shares with
> > nearly everyone. Anyone have thoughts on this?
> > --
> > Tom Walls
> > the guy at the Temple of Zeus
> > http://www.arts.cornell.edu/zeus/
> >
Skip Elliott Bowman <skip...@teleport.com> wrote in message
news:zMVx8.3900$8p3.3...@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net...
> It was a popular refrain in the 1960s, assailing Coltrane's alleged lack
of
> intonation. Personally, I have never heard example of it.
>
> The nature of a wind or non-fretted stringed instrument means that
perfectly
> tempered intonation is unattainable, but for the most part, and certainly
> among world-class players, the variance of a few cents sharp of flat is
> negligible to all but those with perfect pitch, and those folks like a
> pain-filled life anyway :)
due to the nature of the instrument, nobody has ever played a soprano sax in
tune. the exception to this rule is kenny g who sucks a lollipop for an
hour before playing his soprano sax. (sucking the lollipop is his warmup).
it is also suspected that his rag mop has a defusing affect which enables
him to produce more rounded pure tones (read: bland uninteresting tones). I
hope that helps
Phil Smith
>
> A recent thread alluded to Coltrane playing out of tune. It seems to me
> that I recall that when he was playing with Miles, he was receiving
> criticism for his intonation. I had presumed that the critics were
> really having trouble with his timbre(IIRC Sonny Rollins came in for
> similar criticism). He doesn't strike me as having intonation problems,
> excepting in the case of his soprano -- a problem that he shares with
> nearly everyone. Anyone have thoughts on this?
Listen to "I'm Old Fashioned" from "Blue Trane". He's so sharp at times
it's almost painful. But his tone is *so* beautiful. I think it's
related. On that tune I think he tunes sharp so he can lip down to get a
more open tone. This gets harder to do in the upper register, so he goes
increasingly sharp. I see further evidence in pictures where he uses
paper on the neck cork, which suggests he often pushes way in (tuning
sharp) which compresses the cork.
Larry Teal's book "The Art of Saxophone Playing" has an interesting
chart of the average variance in pitch (in cents) for each note for alto
and tenor saxes. He surveyed professional players for this, but doesn't
say how many. IIRC, the only note right on the money was the tuning note.
Many saxophonists use(d) vibrato to cover up intonation problems.
Coltrane in that period was using little vibrato, or a "teardrop"
vibrato - gradually bringing it in to end the note. Using no vibrato
makes intonation problems easy to hear. With the tone production,
including new (for saxophone) ways of using vibrato, at times he does
indeed go pretty far sharp. It's a compromise, as indeed is the
saxophone, a conical bore single reed instrument. Only a real stickler
(or someone with perfect pitch) would give that as a reason for
dismissing the transcendant genius and groundbreaking musicality which
was Coltrane's. IMHO.
Oh, and modern sopranos are much better. Those old Mark VI's were tough
to play in tune.
--
- Phil
To reply by email, don't use "nospam" as the recipient.
Tom Walls
snip
> Many saxophonists use(d) vibrato to cover up intonation problems.
> Coltrane in that period was using little vibrato, or a "teardrop"
> vibrato - gradually bringing it in to end the note. Using no vibrato
> makes intonation problems easy to hear. With the tone production,
> including new (for saxophone) ways of using vibrato, at times he does
> indeed go pretty far sharp.
This rings true. As I recall at that time critics regularly faulted
Trane's vibrato -- Newk's too.
It's a compromise, as indeed is the
> saxophone, a conical bore single reed instrument. Only a real stickler
> (or someone with perfect pitch) would give that as a reason for
> dismissing the transcendant genius and groundbreaking musicality which
> was Coltrane's. IMHO.
>
> Oh, and modern sopranos are much better. Those old Mark VI's were tough
> to play in tune.
>
>
Thanks, Phil, that was enlightening. IMHO, in the jazz world, intonation
doesn't relate to perfect pitch so much as it does to a player's ability
to intonate his instrument appropriately to the ensemble. OTOH we've all
heard guys who couldn't play a note in tune to save their life, but this
generally doesn't apply to players with recognizable names.
Mike O'Sullivan
"news" <em...@ddress.com> wrote in message
news:631y8.50050$o66.1...@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>
> due to the nature of the instrument, nobody has ever played a
soprano sax in
> tune.
I never heard Sidney Bechet play it out-of-tune!
Phil Smith
Sidney Bechet used so much vibrato you could never tell.
Luke Kaven
> that I recall that when he was playing with Miles, he was receiving
> criticism for his intonation. I had presumed that the critics were
> really having trouble with his timbre(IIRC Sonny Rollins came in for
> similar criticism). He doesn't strike me as having intonation problems,
> excepting in the case of his soprano -- a problem that he shares with
> nearly everyone. Anyone have thoughts on this?
One thought is that this thread picked up from the critique of a
novice reviewer in an adjacent thread, underscoring that reviewer's
apparent ability to introduce a theme into the broader discourse.
I don't know if intonation means pitch or not here. Zero-cents
deviation never seemed like anything other than a mathematical ideal,
which is not to say that there aren't occasions to nail a pitch right
on the money. Like you, I probably worry more about expressive weight
and character than anything else. I like a lot of players whose pitch
and intonation are ragged, but who still epitomize musicality. I
notice there has always been a "sports fan" dimension to jazz fandom,
and it inevitably seems to result in discussions about "how the
players are performing this season", and so on, as an idle pursuit in
itself. But that always seems to be at a level of remove from
actually participating in the music.
Luke
Greg O'Rear
(http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc02/trans03.html):
"...it's out of tune with itself, so you have to make it in tune with your
lips. Many of the notes are out of tune. You have to sort of goose them a
little bit."
To my ears, on some (many? most?) songs, Coltrane does not demonstrate this
ability convincingly. (My example was "Diane" from "Steamin'", and how he
is so far out of tune on the last note that I can hear the note beating
against everyone else. Another example that comes to mind is "Say It (Over
and Over Again)". And those are on tenor.) You can like him all you want,
but you can't claim he's in tune.
Carnak
This quote refers to Trane's playing after he was with
Miles, but I found it interesting:
"...the music that was developed in the 1960's by John
Coltrane in his exploration of modes as a tool for
improvisation. The idea of using modes in jazz was first
used and written about by composer George Russell when he
wrote a piece for Dizzy Gillespie's band called "Cubana
Be" in 1947 as well as the book he wrote about his
'Lydian Chromatic' concept a few years later. Of course
it was Miles Davis who first popularized the idea of
using modes with his "Kind Of Blue" album in 1959. But
"Kind Of Blue" was not very 'out there' at all as
everyone on the album (Bill Evans, Cannonball, Coltrane
etc.) pretty much played within the keys that the chord
changes called for. It was Coltrane who really developed
the idea to it's extreme over the next half dozen years
or so. Coltrane discovered that he could use Ornette's
idea of playing in any key at any time when improvising
over chord changes as well. This idea worked great using
modes as the basis for creating his lines and of course
this worked best when playing compositions with only a
few chord changes that would often last for 8 or 16 bars
at a time. So the chords would remain static and Coltrane
would play modes in many different keys over these static
chords. Some of the keys would be more related to the
chords sounding more consonant and others would be very
unrelated and of course be very dissonant."
by Peter Madsen
Luke Kaven
I think there are several ways to reflect on this.
First, as regards accuracy. If he were really far out of tune, you
wouldn't hear his note beating against the other notes. He's probably
less than 10 cents out for the beat to be audible. And out relative
to what, the trumpet note? The bass note? The piano? Whose pitch
have you measured and with what tools?
There are a lot of factors that contribute to minute changes in
tuning. The instrument itself is always a compromise. Every note
(save for a couple) must be fudged in a different way. During the
course of a tune, the mouthpiece moves, the reed moves, the horn
expands from the heat of the players' breath.
One more thing you might find interesting. Jazz players typically
gravitate towards the older horns, such as the Selmer Mark VI, the
older Selmer Balanced Action, the Conn, the Martin, the King, the
Beuscher. If you want to play in tune, these are all the wrong horns
to get. A classical player, for example, would almost never play one
of these horns. A classical player would pick one of the contemporary
designs with the refinements for tuning; these horns are much easier
to play in tune. But jazz players reject the contemporary horns en
masse. [In fact, Selmer has gone back to making recreations of its
earlier designs, responding to popular demand and lack of interest in
its new designs.]
To understand why jazz players would choose these older horns,
consider the following. One does not really *want* to play exactly in
tune, except for when the occasion calls for it. One often wants
quarter-tones. That is part of the tradition of the Blues. Monk
would often play two adjacent piano keys together (a minor second
apart), which beat together at the quarter-tone pitch. Billie Holiday
of course ranged all over in pitch. But I don't think you should
criticize her for that. At some point, one has to reckon with the
notion that jazz is, at least in part, a microtonal music. So then
the pitch-purist is left with a more difficult job explaining the
norms of practice. Do you see what I mean?
Finally, I am somewhat surprised that after listening to Coltrane, you
decided to write at length only about his intonation. I happen to
like his sound in 1958 a bit more, so I am not oblivious to what you
are saying. But I think you give it a disproportionate amount of
attention with respect to the number of things that make his
performances brilliant.
Luke
Luke Kaven
[...]
I found this piece to be a bit naive. I don't think Ornette Coleman
had that much to do with the developing notion of bitonality. It was
a common topic of conversation in jazz circles ever since the early
40s (earlier really, but not so common until the 40s). Coltrane, in
all his modal explorations, used classical notions about
embellishment, no matter what keys he was working in. There are
classical ways to justify these kinds of superimpositions. So I think
the author is wrong to use the term "unrelated", or to focus on "keys"
per-se. Variously differing explanations (such as via Barry Harris,
or Roland Wiggins, or George Russell, or Lennie Tristano, or Monk, or
Tadd Dameron) have made the rounds over the years, and are still
passed on. There is good reason to think that Coltrane was well
acquainted with all of these concepts.
Luke
Tom Walls
jg...@bellsouth.net says...
> Stan Getz had this to say about saxophone tuning
> (http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc02/trans03.html):
>
> "...it's out of tune with itself, so you have to make it in tune with your
> lips. Many of the notes are out of tune. You have to sort of goose them a
> little bit."
>
> To my ears, on some (many? most?) songs, Coltrane does not demonstrate this
> ability convincingly. (My example was "Diane" from "Steamin'", and how he
> is so far out of tune on the last note that I can hear the note beating
> against everyone else.
I hear it beating against Miles, but not against the bass or piano. Well,
maybe the piano.
Another example that comes to mind is "Say It (Over
> and Over Again)". And those are on tenor.) You can like him all you want,
> but you can't claim he's in tune.
Here's where listening experience comes into play: if you continue to
listen to jazz, you're going to hear many, many more examples of
intonation that are as far or further from concert pitch as this. From
the earliest recorded examples to whomever is playing down the street
tonight. This is generally not regarded as the be-all-and-end-all of
concerns in consideration of a player's virtue.
That being said, it's certainly a legitimate issue and a player's sense
of intonation is something of a matter of taste; sometimes their taste
will not match yours. When you end consideration of someone widely
considered to be a major contributor to jazz, based on a few examples of
questionable intonation, it's likely to be accompanied by a chorus of
sighs and groans, and the rolling of eyes.
Christopher Norman
You're gonna flip when you hear Jackie McLean.
CN
Tom Walls
Greg O'Rear
news:97bd222b.02043...@posting.google.com...
> First, as regards accuracy. If he were really far out of tune, you
> wouldn't hear his note beating against the other notes.
Well, yeah, if it was really far off, he'd be playing the next note up.
> And out relative
> to what, the trumpet note? The bass note? The piano? Whose pitch
> have you measured and with what tools?
The rest of the band. This is a bit silly: with what tools? My ears!
> There are a lot of factors that contribute to minute changes in
> tuning. The instrument itself is always a compromise. Every note
> (save for a couple) must be fudged in a different way. During the
> course of a tune, the mouthpiece moves, the reed moves, the horn
> expands from the heat of the players' breath.
Exactly. I'm saying Coltrane does not appear to be very good at doing that
compared to someone like Stan Getz. He didn't seem to have too many pitch
problems. Or Desmond. Or Mulligan. Or Webster. Or Hawkins. Or....
> consider the following. One does not really *want* to play exactly in
> tune, except for when the occasion calls for it.
I know the difference between playing a blue note and being out of tune. On
a song like "Say It", Coltrane is out of tune relative to the piano through
the entire song.
>So then
> the pitch-purist is left with a more difficult job explaining the
> norms of practice. Do you see what I mean?
Well, in my collection, at least, the norm is for the musicians to be
largely in tune with each other. I appreciate the effort it takes for the
musician to do what it takes to play in tune. Certainly on a live
performance there are tuning issues that have to be dealt with immediately
(they do it in rock and roll; I assume jazz musicians know how to tune up on
the fly, too). But in the studio, there's no excuse for being out of tune,
unless (A) you're tone deaf and the others in the band don't care, or (B)
you don't give a rat's ass whether you're in tune or not, or (C) you're on a
budget or constrained for time and just have to live with the mistake.
I had no idea that in the jazz world, musicians who were noticeably far out
of tune were tolerated so readily. I guess it's one of the things I don't
"get, man". Maybe after listening to a bunch of guys playing out of tune
all the time, I'll believe they meant to do that, and try to see the
emperor's clothes.
I realize that loads of people love Coltrane to death, and that's fine. I'm
not saying you shouldn't. I'm just saying you have to admit that,
sometimes, Coltrane is way out of tune with respect to the rest of the band.
That doesn't mean that I would love Coltrane to pieces if it weren't for
that pesky tuning problem; I have other issues with Coltrane than just that.
I am allowed to not like him, after all.
Dennis J. Kosterman
wrote:
> ... But in the studio, there's no excuse for being out of tune,
>unless (A) you're tone deaf and the others in the band don't care, or (B)
>you don't give a rat's ass whether you're in tune or not, or (C) you're on a
>budget or constrained for time and just have to live with the mistake.
(C) is actually pretty common for jazz recordings. In particular, the
tune "Diane" that you mentioned earlier in the thread comes from one
of two marathon recording sessions that the Miles Davis Quintet did to
fulfill their recording contract for Prestige. They recorded 4 albums'
worth of material (Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin', plus a
version of "Round About Midnight" that didn't make it onto any of
these albums) in just two sessions, which were reportedly done much
like a gig. Few or no re-takes -- they just ran through their
repertoire, and if there were a few mistakes, oh well...
In spite of this, and maybe partly because of it, those 4 albums are
among the all-time classics of jazz. The recording format may or may
not have been dictated by time/budget constraints. But a lot of times,
musicians just don't like to do more than one take (Bob Dylan is a
famous example in the rock/pop world). A lot of the value of jazz lies
in spontaneity and improvisation, and some musicians feel that this is
lost by doing multiple takes. In classical music and a lot of rock,
the goal of a recording is to get as close to perfection as possible;
you're building a monument for posterity. But jazz is a much more
"in-the-moment" music, and many feel that spontaneity is more
important than perfection. It's not so much that they're lazy or that
they don't care about the mistakes -- they just feel that they would
lose more than they gain by attempting to fix them all.
Dennis J. Kosterman
den...@tds.net
Marc Sabatella
> I had no idea that in the jazz world, musicians who were noticeably
far out
> of tune were tolerated so readily. I guess it's one of the things I
don't
> "get, man".
It's not a matter of tolerating being out of tune. It's a matter of
realizing there is no one single definition of what it means to be in
tune, and that there is a wide range of "correct" ways of tuning.
For instance, the piano is tuned with equal temperament, meaning the
ratio of frequencies of each semitone is the same - something like the
twelfth root of two to one. Whereas brass instruments are by their very
nature tuned to the overtone series, meaning among other things, a
perfect fifth is exactly 3:2, not some multiple of the twelfth root of
two. Even within tunings based on the overtone series, there are
different ratios used. All of these, as well as equal temperament, can
be considered "in tune", yet out of tune with each other. Woodwind
instruments are often tuned to some sort of compromise between different
tuning systems. Furthermore, with both brass and woodwind instruments,
the particular deviations from equal temperament will vary according to
what key one is playing in. Then there is the matter of the overtones
created by a particular note - in some cases, a given note on a
particular instrument may have overtones that are not accurate multiples
of the fundamental, which can cause the note to sound out of tune even
if the fundamental is the correct frequency.
Most people's ears simply accept all this, and don't expect all
instrumentalists to adjust their intonation to emulate equal
temperament, which, after all, is a much more recent invention than
tunings based on the overtone series. It is not a deliberate decision
to tolerate two notes being out of tune with each other; it is that most
people's ears recognize a variety of different frequency ratios as
valid. According to the overtone series, 4:5:6 defines a major chord
(if I recall correctly), but most people are more accustomed to hearing
chords built from the twelfth root of two, and perceive anything within
a few cents of either as being in tune. Unisons seem more
straightforward - either the pitches match or they don't, but then, the
natural vibrato in most musicians' tones and the inexactness of the
overtone masks most of these differences for most people.
> I'm just saying you have to admit that,
> sometimes, Coltrane is way out of tune with respect to the rest of the
band.
I can think of one or two recordings where a few notes are sharp enough
that many people would consider them out of tune. The vast majority of
the time, he is well within the normal range of what is considered to be
in tune, although as with most other post-Bird saxophonists, he usually
tends toward the sharp end of that range. And even the very few times
where the pitch is sharp enough that most people would hear it as out of
range, I consider that of about equal importance as the occassional
squeak or splat in virtually every improvising wind player's sound, and
far, far below such matters as the quality of the improvised line and
the passion with which it is played. Although for what it's worth, I
also think the slight tendency to be on the sharp side of things
contributes to what many hear as the passion in Coltrane's sound.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
Mark Eisenman
To my ears there is "out of tune" that sounds bad, and "out of tune" that
sounds good. The former feels like it's a lack of control issue to me, the
latter has a more intent behind it, and an emotional quality attached to it.
It's kind of like using time. One must create the feeling of knowing the
centre of the beat and then be able to pull back for an emotional effect.
(Wynton Kelly?)
This technique surely can be used with regards to pitch.
Knowing the centre of the pitch and being able to control it is what
Coltrane seems to be doing, at his best.
On the other hand, sometimes it just sounds out of tune!!
So specific instances of "out of tune-ness" should be cited in these
discussions.
Musically Yours
Mark
www.jazzpiano.ca
eise...@yorku.ca
Mark Eisenman
Tom Walls
playing on the beat. There were some specific examples cited, but folks
seemed to respond to them differently. Nothing left to do, but flame
each other and stomp off in a fury. :<)
Richard Tabnik
I have heard that in a DownBeat interview, Mr. Coltrane
cites as his 2 favorite pianists:
Bud Powell and
Lennie Tristano!
anyone know that issue?
ka...@rci.rutgers.edu (Luke Kaven) wrote:
..re: bitonality...Luke writes:
Variously differing explanations (such as via Barry Harris,
>or Roland Wiggins, or George Russell, or Lennie Tristano, or Monk, or
>Tadd Dameron) have made the rounds over the years, and are still
>passed on. There is good reason to think that Coltrane was well
>acquainted with all of these concepts.
>
>Luke
Best Wishes for a Peaceful Life in a Happy World in the New Millennium!
Sincerely,
Richard Tabnik, Jazz Alto Saxophonist
e-mail: <rcta...@inch.com>
WWW: <http://www.inch.com/~rctabnik>
<http://www.newartistsrecords.com>
"Music is the thing of the world that I love most."
Samuel Pepys [1633-1703]
santiag...@gmail.com
That being said...
I always had problems listening to Coltrane, something makes it really hard to me to listen to him, I like his tone. But I do feel something that is wrong to my ear. And not just a note here or there. I don't have that feeling with all horn players.