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Miles Smiles
''Miles Smiles'' is an album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released on February 16, 1967 on Columbia Records. It was recorded by Davis and his second quintet at Columbia 30th Street Studio in New York City on October 24 and October 25, 1966. It is the second of six albums recorded by Davis' second great quintet, which featured tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams. Music ''Miles Smiles'' showcases Davis' deeper exploration of modal performance with looser forms, tempos, and meters. Although the album did not follow the conventions of bop, neither did it follow the formlessness of free jazz. According to musicologist Jeremy Yudkin, ''Miles Smiles'' falls under the post-bop subgenre, which he defines as "an approach that is abstract and intense in the extreme, with space created for rhythmic and coloristic independence of the drummer—an approach that incorporated modal and chordal harmonies, flexible form, stru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contrac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Jazz
Modal jazz is jazz that makes use of musical modes, often modulating among them to accompany the chords instead of relying on one tonal center used across the piece. Although precedents exist, modal jazz was crystallized as a theory by composer George Russell in his 1953 book ''Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization''. Though exerting influence to the present, modal jazz was most popular in the 1950s and 1960s, as evidenced by the success of Miles Davis's 1958 composition " Milestones" and 1959 album '' Kind of Blue'', and John Coltrane's quartet from 1960 to 1965;Henry Martin, Keith Waters (2008). ''Essential Jazz: The First 100 Years'', pp. 178-79. . both artists were directly inspired by Russell. Other performers of 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 as well as in hard bop, musicians use chords to provide the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cross Rhythm
In music, a cross-beat or cross-rhythm is a specific form of polyrhythm. The term ''cross rhythm '' was introduced in 1934 by the musicologist Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980). It refers to when the rhythmic conflict found in polyrhythms is the basis of an entire musical piece. Etymology The term "cross rhythm" was introduced in 1934 by the musicologist Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980), who, with Klaus Wachsmann, took-up extended residence in Zambia and Uganda, respectively, as missionaries, educators, musicologists, and museologists. African music One main system African cross-rhythm is most prevalent within the greater Niger-Congo linguistic group, which dominates the continent south of the Sahara Desert. (Kubik, p. 58) Cross-rhythm was first identified as the basis of sub-Saharan rhythm by A.M. Jones. Later, the concept was more fully explained in the lectures of Ewe master drummer and scholar C.K. Ladzekpo, and in the writings of David Locke. Jones observ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam's Apple (album)
''Adam's Apple'' is the tenth album by post-bop jazz artist Wayne Shorter. Recorded in 1966 and released in 1967, it included the first recording of his composition "Footprints", later recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet for the album ''Miles Smiles'' (1967). Shorter is featured with pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Joe Chambers. The CD release includes the Hancock composition "The Collector" (also known as " Teo's Bag") as a bonus track. Reception Writing in Jazz Journal, Mark Gardner urged readers, "For goodness sake don’t miss this one." Gardner called the record "a tour de force for Shorter the soloist as distinct from Shorter the composer." '' |
Eddie Harris
Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 – November 5, 1996) was an American jazz musician, best known for playing tenor saxophone and for introducing the electrically amplified saxophone. He was also fluent on the electric piano and organ. His best-known compositions are "Freedom Jazz Dance", popularized by Miles Davis in 1966, and "Listen Here". Biography Harris was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois, United States. His father was from Cuba and his mother from Mississippi. He studied music under Walter Dyett at DuSable High School, as had many other successful Chicago musicians (such as Nat King Cole, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Julian Priester, and others). He later studied music at Roosevelt University, by which time he was proficient on piano, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. While in college, he performed professionally with Gene Ammons. After college, Harris was military draft, drafted into the United States Army and while serving in Europe, he was accepte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys (small levers) that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings. It was invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700. Description The word "piano" is a shortened form of ''pianoforte'', the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from ''clavicembalo col piano e forte'' (key cimbalom with quiet and loud)Pollens (1995, 238) and '' fortepiano''. The Italian musical terms ''piano'' and ''forte'' indicate "soft" and "loud" respectively, in this context referring to the variations in volume (i.e., loudness) produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Theory
Music theory is the study of the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory". The first is the " rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built." Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. Because of the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes music, a more inclusive definition could be the consideration of any sonic phenomena, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Improvisation
Free improvisation or free music is improvised music without any rules beyond the logic or inclination of the musician(s) involved. The term can refer to both a technique (employed by any musician in any genre) and as a recognizable genre in its own right. Free improvisation, as a genre of music, developed in the U.S. and Europe in the mid to late 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of free jazz and modern classical musics. Exponents of free improvised music include saxophonists Evan Parker, Anthony Braxton, Peter Brötzmann, and John Zorn, composer Pauline Oliveros, drummer Christian Lillinger, trombonist George E. Lewis, guitarists Derek Bailey, Henry Kaiser and Fred Frith and the improvising groups Spontaneous Music Ensemble, The Music Improvisation Company, Iskra 1903, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and AMM. Characteristics In an atonal context, free improvisation refers to where the focus shifts from harmony to other dimensions of music: timbre, melodic intervals, rhy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variation (music)
In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve melody, rhythm, harmony, counterpoint, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these. Variation techniques Mozart's Twelve Variations on "Ah vous dirai-je, Maman" (1785), known in the English-speaking world as " Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" exemplifies a number of common variation techniques. Here are the first eight bars of the theme: Melodic variation Mozart's first variation decorates and elaborates the plain melodic line: Rhythmic variation The fifth variation breaks up the steady pulse and creates syncopated off-beats: Harmonic variation The seventh variation introduces powerful new chords, which replace the simple harmonies originally implied by the theme with a prolongational series of descending fifths: Minor mode In the elaborate eighth variation, Mozart changes from the major to the parallel minor mode, while combining three techniques: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-bop
Post-bop is a genre of small-combo jazz that evolved in the early to mid 1960s in the United States. Pioneers of the genre, such as Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, John Coltrane and Jackie McLean, crafted syntheses of hard bop with contemporaneous developments in avant-garde jazz, modal jazz and free jazz that resulted in music with a complex and experimental flavor though still rooted in bop tradition, featuring less of the blues and soul leanings predominant in hard bop. The movement had a significant impact on subsequent generations of both acoustic jazz and fusion musicians. Definition Post-bop refers to a body of music that emerged in the late 1950s and 60s that combined principles of bebop, hard bop, modal jazz, avant-garde and free jazz, but also departed from earlier traditions in jazz. Post-bop can refer to a variety of Jazz music that is post-bebop chronologically but in the common understanding post-bop music reflects these influences: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musicology
Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus (psychological, sociological, acoustical, neurological, computational). Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist. Musicology traditionally is divided in three main branches: historical musicology, systematic musicology and ethnomusicology. Historical musicologists mostly study the history of the western classical music tradition, though the study of music history need not be limited to that. Ethnomusicologists draw from anthropology (particularly field research) to understand how and why people make music. Systematic musicology includes music theory, aes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Free Jazz
Free jazz is an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop, hard bop, and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting. They became preoccupied with creating something new and exploring new directions. The term "free jazz" has often been combined with or substituted for the term "avant-garde jazz". Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music". The ambiguity of free jazz presents problems of definition. Although it is usually played by small groups or individuals, free jazz big bands have existed. Although musicians and critics claim it is innovative and forward-looking, it draws on early styles of jazz and has been described as an attempt to return to primitive, often ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
