Modal jazz is a type of jazz that uses musical modes. Instead of relying on one main musical key throughout a piece, it changes between these modes to match the chords.
Although it still influences music today, modal jazz was most popular during the 1950s and 1960s. This is shown by the success of Miles Davis's 1958 song "Milestones" and his 1959 album Kind of Blue, as well as John Coltrane's quartet from 1960 to 1965. Other musicians who played modal jazz include Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, Woody Shaw, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, and Larry Young.
History
In bebop and hard bop, musicians use chords to create the background for solos. A piece begins with a theme that introduces a series of chords for the solos. These chords repeat throughout the entire piece, while soloists play new, made-up melodies over the repeated chord progression. By the 1950s, improvising over chords had become a major part of jazz. Sometimes, other musicians at recording sessions only received a list of chords to use.
Mercer Ellington said that Juan Tizol created the melody for "Caravan" in 1936. This happened because Tizol studied music in Puerto Rico, where teachers turned sheet music upside down after students learned to play it correctly. This "inversion" method influenced Tizol’s work to sound modal.
Sun Ra is reported to have rehearsed a small group in 1950, including Harold Ousley, Vernel Fournier, and Wilbur Ware. They played original songs that used a modal style, where melodies were based on a single chord or repeated pattern. This approach became popular in jazz about ten years later.
Saxophonist Wayne Shorter noted that pianist Bud Powell’s 1953 composition "Glass Enclosure" was one of the earliest jazz pieces to use Lydian chords. These chords are based on the Lydian mode, which was not widely used in jazz until about a decade later. Powell’s 1951 piece "Un Poco Loco" also uses Lydian chords stacked on top of each other, creating a sound called polytonality. Improvisation in this piece alternates between Lydian-like polytonality and an altered dominant chord.
By the late 1950s, musicians began using a modal approach after the experiments of composer and bandleader George Russell. Instead of writing pieces using traditional chord changes, they used modes. Musicians who used this technique included Miles Davis, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter.
Important compositions of modal jazz include "So What" by Miles Davis and "Impressions" by John Coltrane. Both pieces follow the same AABA structure and use the D Dorian mode for the A sections. The B section shifts to E-flat Dorian, which is a half step higher. The Dorian mode is the natural minor scale with a raised sixth. Other compositions include Davis’s "Flamenco Sketches," Bill Evans’s "Peace Piece," and Wayne Shorter’s "Footprints."
Miles Davis recorded one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time using a modal style. "Kind of Blue" explores the possibilities of modal jazz. Although Davis’s use of modal jazz was not constant throughout the 1960s, he included several songs from "Kind of Blue" in the repertoire of his second quintet.
John Coltrane led the way in exploring the limits of modal improvisation and composition with his quartet, which included Elvin Jones (drums), McCoy Tyner (piano), and Reggie Workman and Jimmy Garrison (bass). Several of Coltrane’s albums from this period are examples of modal jazz: Africa/Brass (1961), Live! at the Village Vanguard (1962), Crescent (1964), A Love Supreme (1964), and Meditations (1965). Coltrane’s compositions from this time, such as "India," "Chasin’ the Trane," "Crescent," and "Impressions," have become part of the jazz repertoire. His interpretations of standards like Richard Rodgers’s "My Favorite Things" and the traditional "Greensleeves" are also widely recognized.