John Coltrane - 1961
The first recording of John Coltrane’s ‘Impressions’ was made live at the Village Vanguard in 1961 and released on an album with the same title in 1963. The song uses the same harmonic structure as ‘So What’ by Miles Davis (Link).
At the Village Vanguard in 1961 McCoy Tyner did not backup Coltrane’s solo nor did he solo himself. On the page “Introduction to Modal Jazz” (Link) we talked about how the structure of these songs was intended to get out of the way of the soloists. You can’t “get out of the way” more than not playing at all!
In 1963 Tyner did take a solo. This is a few bars of the improvisation. Look closely how he creates a very open sound by using chords built on 4ths and the largely diatonic and arpeggiated right hand. Gone are most of the Parker like enclosures and turns (Link).
“It’s not just a pile of fourths. I play a lot of fifths in my left hand, you know, and they do the same thing as fourths: They open up the sound. I don’t close my sound in, and that allows me to play other things superimposed on the chord, since there is a lot of space between the intervals. But there are thirds, seconds, octaves, and clusters there too.” McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner did employ a wide variety of chord voicings when playing “modal jazz”. What is conspicuous by its absence though is root-seven or three-seven-nine type chords so popular with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver…
In light of Tyner’s quote above it is interesting to look at Example 2. It takes the first eight bars of his solo (above) and blocks off his right hand lines into chord groups. There is, in fact, a real mix of broken triads, clusters and fourths.
The triads in Example 2 are interesting: (1) They are in direct contrast to the chords-built-on-fourths Tyner is playing with his left hand. (2) There is a conspicuous lack of added 7ths making the sound very triadic. (3) Tyner outlines chords built on every degree of the scale except III. In bar one he outlines a IV chord then it’s sister chord II; bar two has a VII chord, sister of V and so on.
‘Note: there is more on “Sister Chords” here: (Link).
