Music Supreme

From Miles (with a brief detour to blues), I have moved on this morning to John Coltrane.

This hour, I enjoyed listening to full tracks from his amazing album, A Love Supreme at Last.fm.

But what's the point of listening to music, as I always do, without understanding why it is famous in a technical sense. So, since I have some free time and I do not understand anything about music, I tried to read up about Coltrane and understand more about his prowess as a composer and sax player. However, with no music training or understanding of what these terms mean, I have absolutely no idea what the following sentences, from the wiki link for Coltrane's 'sheets of sounds' style of playing, mean:

Coltrane employed extremely dense improvisational yet patterned lines consisting of high speed arpeggios and scale patterns played in rapid succession: hundreds of notes running from the lowest to highest registers. The lines are often faster than sixteenth notes, consisting of quintuplets, septuplets, etc., and can sound like glissandos. Coltrane used the "sheets of sound" lines to emphasize chords, modes, and such harmony. The music of Miles Davis gave Coltrane the freedom to apply harmonic ideas to stacked chords and substitutions. Further, this open approach allowed Coltrane to arpeggiate three chords simultaneously, a style Monk initially taught Coltrane. The "three-on-one chord approach" gave the music a fluid, sweeping sound that was harmonically vertical. Concepts of vertical (chordal) versus horizontal (melody) are key ideas in the work of George Russell, whom Coltrane had recorded with in September 1958. This approach reflected Coltrane's fascination with third relations. Sometimes he used diminished chords, other times he used augmented chords. At times, Coltrane might use scales or licks in the passing keys instead of arpeggios. Coltrane employed these harmonic ideas during his "sheets of sound" stage in 1958. At other times, he would simply play rapid patterns of diminished-scales.

Another great Coltrane album, which also features his 'sheets of sound' playing along with a new harmonic concept later to be known as 'Coltrane changes', is Giant Steps, which has two of his most famous pieces - Giant Steps & Naima (links to youtube videos of the tracks.) I, especially love, Naima, which apparently was a tribute to his then-wife, Juanita Naima Grubb.

You can also listen, via last.fm, to 3 tracks from another one of his great albums, Blue Train.

Leave you with a video of Coltrane playing his ever-popular, My Favorite Things



[Somehow, maybe due to too much familiarity with the tune, this does not do it for me like Naima or some of the pieces in Love Supreme do.]