CULTURE

Watch Animated Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation”


Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, peri­od. So I take it very seri­ous­ly. But when I see the ani­mat­ed sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts car­toons, and their Vince Guaral­di com­po­si­tions. I mean no offense to Miles. His modal jazz swings, and it’s fun, as fun to lis­ten to as it is to watch in ris­ing and falling arpeg­gios. The YouTube uploader, Dan Cohen, gives us this on his chan­nel Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music, with apolo­gies to Jim­my Cobb for the lack of drum nota­tion.

Also from Cohen’s chan­nel, we have Char­lie Parker’s music ani­mat­ed. Nev­er one to keep up with his admin, Park­er left his estate unable to recu­per­ate roy­al­ties from com­po­si­tions like “Con­fir­ma­tion” (above).

Nonethe­less, every­one knows it’s Bird’s tune, and to see it ani­mat­ed above is to see Park­er dance a very dif­fer­ent step than Miles’ post-bop cool, one filled with com­plex melod­ic para­graphs instead of chordal phras­es.

And above, we have John Coltrane’s mas­sive “Giant Steps,” with its rapid-fire bursts of quar­ter notes, inter­rupt­ed by half-note asides. Coltrane’s icon­ic 1960 com­po­si­tion dis­plays what Ira Gitler called in a 1958 Down­beat piece, “sheets of sound.” Gitler has said the image he had in his head was of “bolts of cloth undu­lat­ing as they unfurled,” but he might just as well have thought of sheets of rain, so mul­ti­tudi­nous and heavy is Coltrane’s melod­ic attack.

See Cohen’s Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music chan­nel for two more Char­lie Park­er pieces, “Au Pri­vave” and “Bloom­di­do.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in the Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Behold John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in the Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness





Source link

MarylandDigitalNews.com