Coltrane Changes
Coltrane Changes are essentially a series of V-I or II-V-I chains. The ‘I’ chords are symmetrically related by either a minor third or a Major third.
Difficulty = Demanding
Minor Third Architecture
We begin with Coltrane’s 1964 tune ‘Central Park West’. It is clear from Example 1 that the head is a series of II-V-I changes. We call these “Segmented Chains” because the ‘I’ chords are temporary resting places (Link). The ’I’ chords, highlighted in the example, are related to each other by a minor third. Here’s how:
As we discussed on our page called ‘Intervals’ (Link), a stack of two minor thirds yields a Tritone and a stack of three gives us a diminished seventh chord. They are symmetrical. Example 2 shows us the diminished triad that ‘Central Park West’ is based on. Remember: ‘g sharp’ and ‘a flat’ are enharmonic equivalents.
We discussed “Traceable Movement” and “Traceable Units” on our ‘Aural Logic’ page (Link). Think of the Architectural ’I’ chords as being the larger Traceable Movement and the II-V-I progressions as the smaller Traceable Units.
Major Third Architecture
Next we will focus on two heads from the 1959 album “Giant Steps”: ‘Countdown’ and ‘Giant Steps’. As we discussed on our ‘Intervals’ page (Link) – A stack of Major thirds gives us a three note set before repeating (c-e-g#-c). The stack forms an augmented triad (Example 3). The Aug Triad is symmetrical; each inversion of the chord makes a “different” augmented triad.
Countdown
We can think of Countdown as having three levels of Traceable Logic from largest to smallest: Architecture 1, Architecture 2 and Traceable Units.
Architecture 1: The first level of traceable architecture (Example 4) is borrowed from the Miles Davis head ‘Tune Up’. It moves in half steps and represents the longest resting points of this Segment Chain.
Architecture 2: The next level is the minor third architecture. Section 1 and 3 in example 5 are built on one augmented triad and section 2 uses another (Example 6).
Traceable Units: The traceable units are the glue that holds the piece together. In this case they are primarily V-I setups to Architecture 2.
Giant Steps
We will analyze ‘Giant Steps’ as we did ‘Countdown’, beginning with the the top level architecture:
Architecture 1: The first level of Traceable Movement uses an Eb augmented chord; so all the chords are a Major third apart. Coltrane makes brilliant use of common tones to help create Traceable Movement (Example 8): The melody sounds the 7th degree of the previous chord every time!
For example – in the second bar of Example 8 the chord is an EbMaj7. The melody starts the bar with a Bb, the Maj7 of the BMaj7 of bar 1. This is repeated right through the whole piece.
Remember, the piece is played very fast (double time) so these seemingly distant connections can be heard (or felt?) quite clearly.
Architecture 2: The next level of Traceable Movement uses the same Eb aug chord. This level also divides into three sections. Each section begins with a different note of the Eb Aug chord. This level is very obvious when you hear the piece.
Traceable Units: Again this level holds everything together. This construction is important if we ever hope to try our hand at improvising over the changes.
The first and second sections are a series of V-I. The sections are separated by a II-V-I. The third section is a segmented chain of four II-V-I units. The final II-V takes us back to the top.
This level of architecture certainly justifies a name of its own. Understanding Coltrane’s depth of musical knowledge makes me listen more carefully to his later more adventurous excursions.