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Jazz Listening: Cool 3

1. Scales
2. Who Am I?
3. Focused Listening: Time Out

Scales

Name the scales/modes used in these melodies. The videos are supposed to start/stop at the right place but if they don’t, pay close attention to the timecodes.

1. Sonny Rollins: ‘St. Thomas’. 0:18–0:54.

   Major scale.

2. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: ‘‘Moanin’. 0:00–0:15.

   Minor pentatonic but there is a slight hint of the #4 in the ornaments in the second and third phrases, so I'll accept blues

   Optional question. What is the interval between the tenor sax and trumpet in the accompaniment phrases?

   6th.

3. Miles Davis: ‘Pan Piper’. 0:00–1:00

   This is hard: listen for a while since the tonic becomes clearer around 0:30.

   Dorian mode. Dorian = 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, b7. Miles uses A dorian here (A, B, C, D, E, F#, G)

Who Am I?

1. I’m an instrument that is ‘comping’.

   Piano, guitar. Banjo if you must.

2. I’m playing ‘bombs’. Be specific.

   (Syncopated, spontaneous, accented interjections on) bass drum and snare drum.

3. I’m a large pitched percussion instrument

   Vibraphone

4. I’m a big electric keyboard instrument in the 1950s that uses a rotating speaker

   Hammond Organ

5. I’m the sixth degree of the scale

   submediant

6. I’m the fourth note in the G blues scale

   C#/Db

7. I’m the fifth mode. I have a flattened seventh and I can be played over dominant chords.

   Mixolydian

8. I’m the piano player on Kind of Blue

   Wynton Kelly plays on one track but Bill Evans on all the others.

Focused Listening: Time Out

On Notebook page set for homework, including the BBC documentary on 1959.