"Rhythm" Changes

[The Jazz Aficionado]

The Great African-American Classical Art-Form     

"Rhythm" Changes [Playlist]  47 Tracks 4 Hours 28 min 
https://open.spotify.com/user/121809214/playlist/7vnVcemiLwjRljOCk9men0
 
The term “Rhythm changes” refers to a chord progression that derives from George Gershwin’s song “I Got Rhythm” (1930). The composition became quite popular, and within a few years, jazz musicians began to borrow its chord structure for some of their own compositions. However, it should be noted that “Rhythm changes” evolved into a chord progression that was not exactly Gershwin’s. As was often the case with other compositions, jazz musicians streamlined the progression, reducing it to a simpler, more improv-friendly harmonic framework.

Compositions employing Rhythm changes became a common staple at jam sessions and are today still an essential part of jazz repertoire. The chord progression is a “must-know” for any aspiring jazz artist.

Rhythm changes are almost always played in the key of Bb, variations
as with blues changes, musicians often apply certain standard variations to the basic chord progression, either by previous arrangement or on the spur of the moment. This playlist is compiled of sessions  using "Rhythm" Changes.

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[JSngry]

To the best of my knowledge, nobody's every done a systematic appraisal of all the different bridge structures (the "B" in the "AABA" from) used on Rhythm Changes tunes. The III7-VI7-II7-V7, what Gershwin used in his own song, is still the most common (to the extent that creative - as opposed to reproductive -  African-American Classical Art-Form practitioners still engage with this structure), but there's an interesting subset of historical works that have either extrapolated from that basic math or replaced it altogether.

Probably not coincidentally, the more "advanced" the musicians became in dealing with more than basic diatonic harmony, the more types of movement began to be inserted in those 8 bars, just as the musicians became more flexible in moving around the A-sections, changing it from a series of repetitive standing in place kind of mannequin revolving on a turntable in a display window into a fully mobile means of navigating in and out and up and down and around and through a landscape that keeps coming back to the same place, the realization being made that you might have to get back to the same place, but you don't have to take the same route every time.

And then, the decision being made that maybe that cycle was not really as useful as it once was, and as long as we're creating new avenues, let's build them in the service of creating a different destination.

[fasstrack]

On 22/08/2016 at 7:14 PM, The Jazz Aficionado said:

  However, it should be noted that “Rhythm changes” evolved into a chord progression that was not exactly Gershwin’s. As was often the case with other compositions, jazz musicians streamlined the progression, reducing it to a simpler, more improv-friendly harmonic framework.

 

Nobody plays Gershwin's tag. I think I heard Barry Harris do it once, with his singers, but only at the very end...

[Gheorghe]

oh yeah, as a bop lover I´ve played all those rhythm changes tunes so many times. But I also like tunes with the rhythm changes only in the A section with a different bridge, or in other keys than the usual B-flat.

Love to play them in D-flat, A-flat, E-flat, but have difficulties to play them in strange keys like A natural, B-natural, D-natural.

[Teasing the Korean]

I have often wondered what it was about this tune that made it become such an uber-standard of the bebop era. I imagine an alternate universe in which a different tune by either the Gershwins, or Jerome Kern, or Rodgers and Hart was endlessly improvised over by Bird, Diz, Bud, etc.  I imagine what cliched riffs may have emerged that are lost to time, and wonder if casting a different tune in that role could have somehow pushed jazz in a different direction. 

[fasstrack]

6 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I have often wondered what it was about this tune that made it become such an uber-standard of the bebop era.  

It's because it's so easy...

[Teasing the Korean]

8 hours ago, fasstrack said:

It's because it's so easy...

But so are a lot of those other tunes.  That in itself doesn't explain why it has attained that status.  

I have nothing against the song or changes per se, but for me the most dreaded aspect of the gig was when someone called "Rhythm Changes."  It suggested either a lack of ideas, or a desperate attempt to ensure that the proceedings were indeed "jazz."    

[fasstrack]

7 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

  That in itself doesn't explain why it has attained that status.  

 

Sure it does. Everyone wants something they can latch on to easily. And a lot of musicians are just lazy...

[JSngry]

The song itself is essential one big set of turnarounds. It's diatonic paradise, you start to move and then you come back, you start to move and then you come back, oh, here's the bridge, it's an 8 bar turnaround, you start to move, looks like you will move, and then you come back.

When you start extrapolating things out of the harmonies, you do move, and in and to any different number of ways and places. But you always come back. It's comfortably and popularly "American" in that regard, noises and great chatterings about movement and progress, then it always comes back. And then you do it all over again.

Keep in mind that people were already questioning the wisdom and the potential ongoing viability of this form of cyclic inevitability more than a half century ago. Decisions have long since been reached and acted on too.

Also note that the notion of "the one" in actual RHYTHM music very much supports the notion of travel and return within micro and macro structures. But that music deals with time, and pop songs of the Gershwin ilk deal with measurement. Still, the impulse to start someplace, leave it, and then get back to - in some form or fashion -  it is pretty much one of the, if hot the most, defining factor of evolutionary behavior of all living things.

 

[Mark Stryker]

On ‎8‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 8:42 AM, JSngry said:

To the best of my knowledge, nobody's every done a systematic appraisal of all the different bridge structures (the "B" in the "AABA" from) used on Rhythm Changes tunes. The III7-VI7-II7-V7, what Gershwin used in his own song, is still the most common (to the extent that creative - as opposed to reproductive -  African-American Classical Art-Form practitioners still engage with this structure), but there's an interesting subset of historical works that have either extrapolated from that basic math or replaced it altogether.

 

It is impossible for me to believe that some jazz studies major or graduate student hasn't written a paper on the many variations to the bridge of Rhythm changes. On another front, I'm almost positive that David Baker in one or another of his books created a vertical bar chart that listed many substitute changes for I Got Rhythm, both the A sections and the bridge. I remember seeing a similar chart done for the 12-bar blues. Not at home at the moment, but I'll check my own books when I have a chance to see if I can located it.

Coda: Many times that I've heard the Vanguard band play "Little Pixie" (rhythm in A-flat), somebody seems to use the changes that Gary Smulyan does here starting at 7:28. I checked in with Michael Weiss to double check what exactly what was going on -- major 7th chords descending by minor thirds in the first half of the A section (A-flat/F/D/B) and dominant 7ths ascending by half steps in the bridge starting with C7 (D-flat 7/D7/E-flat 7). Nice all the way around.  

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

Reminiscent of, what, "Beyond All Limits", maybe? Not exactly, but in gist?

[The Jazz Aficionado]

Bird, did it with Ko Ko,! 

example 

 

https://youtu.be/ILgwmki6IiE

[JSngry]

 

 

[Quasimado]

2 hours ago, The Jazz Aficionado said:

Bird, did it with Ko Ko,! 

example 

 

https://youtu.be/ILgwmki6IiE

Ko Ko is based on "Rhythm" changes?  Q.

 

[The Jazz Aficionado]

yes

[jeffcrom]

"Ko Ko" is based on the changes to "Cherokee."

[The Jazz Aficionado]

yup!

 

The Great African-American Classical Art-Form  

 

The Story of Charlie Parker's 'Ko Ko'  

http://www.npr.org/series/100920965/music-articles/

 

 

 

 

Charlie Parker was born Aug. 29, 1920. On his birthday, we remember the jazz legend with a report that aired on Weekend Edition in August 2000.

 

The man people called "Bird" was a brilliant improviser on the alto saxophone and a pioneer of the post-war style known as bebop. One his early masterpieces was the tune "Ko Ko." The two-minute and 53-second record has a simple structure. It begins with the alto saxophone and trumpet playing in unison, followed by Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie trading eight-bar melodic phrases, then another quick unison bridge.

 

"And then bang — and there literally is a bang, Max Roach plays a bang — and it goes into Charlie Parker's solo," says Gary Giddins, author of Celebrating Bird: The Triumph of Charlie Parker.

 

This was Parker's first record as a leader — his first opportunity to step out front and state his own case for the high-speed melodic inventiveness and off-beat playing that characterized the new style called bebop.

 

"This is played at supersonic velocity, where there are no predictable beats," says Giddins. "It's like a ping-pong ball being blown by a fan in a very small room, where he changes the accents on every measure, on every phrase. Some of the phrases are extremely long; some are just short — they're little riffs like 'Do-be-dap, a-do-be-dap' that sound like it's a knife blade going through the music. Then he'll do something like — he quotes at the beginning of the second chorus, he plays the old piccolo obbligato from 'High Society,' a very traditional New Orleans lick, which Parker takes and he makes it fit. And I swear, the first time you hear it it's like somebody dumped a bucket of ice water over your head, because it's not like anything that preceded it."

 

In a rare 1951 interview conducted by saxophonist Paul Desmond and DJ John McLelland, Parker was asked how his playing managed to break so violently with the alto styles of the day, those of Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter. Parker answered that he just played like he always had.

 

"Ever since I've ever heard music, I thought it should be very clean, very precise — as clean as possible, anyway, and more or less tuned to people. Something they could understand, something that was beautiful, you know? Because definitely there are stories and stories and stories that can be told."

 

I swear, the first time you hear it it's like somebody dumped a bucket of ice water over your head.

Gary Giddins

The story Parker set out to tell in "Ko Ko" was actually not new. Parker wanted to record his version of "Cherokee," a popular dance tune by Ray Noble that was a huge hit for Charlie Barnet in 1939. It was recorded that same year by Parker's idol, tenor player Lester Young, with the Count Basie band.

 

The difficult chord changes in "Cherokee" provided the template for Parker's new style. He learned how to play bebop improvising on "Cherokee." But when Parker went into the studio to record his version, he ran into a problem, says jazz historian Phil Schaap.

 

Schaap remastered the original "Ko Ko" tapes for reissue on CD. He says Savoy Records producer Teddy Reig was not about to pay royalties, so we wouldn't let his musicians cover other people's songs, something that Parker and his group didn't know when they launched into their first take of "Cherokee."

 

"On the outtake, they play the very same arrangement that is 'Ko Ko,' and then they jump into the melody of 'Cherokee' and Teddy would go [whistles], 'Hold it! Hold it! You can't play' — and it cuts like that," says Schaap. "'[Reig's] boss, Herman Lubinsky of Savoy Records, he's making a fortune by using chord structures of pre-existing tunes and placing new melodies on them, or even if there's no melody, calling it a new tune.' That's his gig. That's his scene. And, of course, that is the device of bebop composition, most divinely for Charlie Parker when playing the ambitious changes of Ray Noble's 'Cherokee.'"

 

So on the next take, Parker played the same arrangement without the "Cherokee" melody, and he called it "Ko Ko." But there were other improvisations on that November day. First, Dizzy Gillespie was never supposed to play on the record.

 

"Diz was a spectator by initial intent," says Schaap. "The Savoy ledgers state that when this record date was assembled, it was going to be Charlie Parker's first record date as a leader, to distance him from Dizzy and the fact that Dizzy, by the way, had signed with the Musicraft-Guild family of labels, so Dizzy's not going to be there. And Parker wisely had already made his decision to get a more spare style as a foil for the other horn, if it was going to be a bebop quintet. And so he hires Miles Davis — all of 19 [years old] — but he couldn't master playing that intricate arrangement of 'Ko Ko.'"

 

And then there was the problem with the piano player. Parker had hoped to use Bud Powell, his colleague in pioneering the new bebop style during the war years. But Powell had been arrested after defending Thelonious Monk in a fistfight with the police, and nobody knew where he was. At the last minute, Parker brought along a piano player from Minnesota named Sadik Hakim, who, like Parker, lived in the Dewey Square Hotel.

 

I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true. In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, when we were living out west. They said I was driving them crazy with the horn.

Charlie Parker

"Sadik had a style," says Schaap, "but he didn't have a New York City union affiliation. And the 802 delegate said, 'Well, where's your union card?' So Sadik rolls out a Duluth, Minn., American Federation of Musicians membership card with an attached piece of worn-out paper from '44, early '44, that allowed him to work on a Duluth card in Chicago. They said, 'Well, what's this junk, man? You can't play on the date.' And he stood there, so now they didn't have a piano player."

 

Gillespie ended up playing both the piano and the trumpet parts on "Ko Ko." "He plays the trumpet introduction on Miles' trumpet with his mouthpiece," says Schaap, "puts the horn down, goes over to the piano and in one of the most seamless moments ever, takes over the chording behind Parker's solo."

 

Despite the last-second personnel changes, Parker nailed a flawless solo on "Ko Ko." But critic Gary Giddins says it takes careful listening to appreciate it.

 

"The fabulous thing about 'Ko Ko' and Parker's music is that the second time you listen to it — and the third and the fourth and the fifth — the more you listen to it, as you really get to know it, you realize that it isn't just a bunch of noise," Giddins says. "It isn't just a bunch of incredibly fast notes. It's all melody.

 

"But it's played so fast that you as a listener have to train yourself to be able to listen as fast as Charlie Parker plays. And if you listen at the same velocity of his phrasing, then you begin to hear that it's just nothing more than one melodic rhythmic concept after another. Parker's the most spontaneous of musicians, and yet at the same time, he is always coming up with melodic ideas, always. There's a tremendous core of beauty and logic and coherence in everything he does."

 

The records that came out of the "Ko Ko" sessions introduced Parker to listeners beyond the New York clubs. Soon radio carried him to an even wider audience. Parker became a sensation. Musicians everywhere began to emulate his alto style — and his lifestyle — and jazz began to change from music for dancing to music for listening.

 

In 1947, Parker played "Ko Ko" at Carnegie Hall as a guest soloist with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band. Four years later, when Parker was asked how he developed his extraordinary technique, he told his interviewers how he got to Carnegie Hall.

 

"I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true," Parker said. "In fact, the neighbors threatened to ask my mother to move once, when we were living out west. They said I was driving them crazy with the horn. I used to put in at least from 11 to 15 hours a day.

 

"Definitely, study is absolutely necessary in all forms — it's just like any talent that's born within somebody. It's just like a good pair of shoes when you put a shine on it, you know? Like schooling brings out the polish of any talent. It happens anywhere in the world."

 

Parker's talent was immense, but fleeting. He was only 25 when he recorded "Ko Ko," but he was already addicted to heroin. Ten years later, ravaged by drugs and alcohol, he died in a New York apartment. But with that record on Nov. 26, 1945, Parker assured his immortality.

[Mark Stryker]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

Reminiscent of, what, "Beyond All Limits", maybe? Not exactly, but in gist?

Except the harmonies in the last four of bars of "Beyond All Limits" are dominant 7th sus chords rather than major 7th chords, though the root movement does descend in minor thirds.. I'm not sure what the specific antecedents might be for that root movement and major chords over Rhythm changes; nor do I know enough theory to parse out an explanation of why it works, other than it gets you from tonic to tonic efficiently by way of movement spelling a diminished chord. I think of "Isotope" that has that turnaround moving in descending minor thirds, though those are straight up dominant chords. And I think of the "bridge" section of "Inner Urge" that alternates major chords descending in minor thirds with a half step up movement -- if I remember right it's E/C sharp/D/B/C/A/B-flat 7+11/G

I'll ask Michael where those substitutions on "Little Pixie" come from.

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

Except the harmonies in the last four of bars of "Beyond All Limits" are dominant 7th sus chords rather than major 7th chords, though the root movement does descend in minor thirds.. I'm not sure what the specific antecedents might be for that root movement and major chords over Rhythm changes; nor do I know enough theory to parse out an explanation of why it works, other than it gets you from tonic to tonic efficiently by way of movement spelling a diminished chord...

And that's exactly why it works, you have a stated starting point, an expected ending point, and a symmetry that gets you there in the allotted space. Same reason why you can put (and Trane did put) "Trane changes" into seemingly any standard song form. The math works, you have four "landing points" and eight bars. And there's the whole thing about diminished chords (and scales) theoretically having multiple possible key centers because of the lack of a clear-cut Tonic/Dominant relationship. A basic tritone interval, without context, could, in basic diatonic harmony, have one of two key centers (cf "Blue Seven" for an overt exploitation of this ambiguity, I know you've read Schuller's breakdown of the maths about that) ). A diminished chord, consisting of two tritone intervals at once, then has double the possible key centers, four. So if you keep that symmetry, four possible key centers, eight bars, smooth.

This movement, C7/Db7/D7/Eb7 substitutes for the traditional (in Ab) movement of C7/F7/Bb7/Eb7, only the middle two chords are changed.

There's a symmetry there, too, because replacing the F7 with a Db7 is based on substituting down a major 3rd and substituting Bb7 with D7 is based on substituting up a major third. Cosmic, right? Or not....

But now you gotta ask is any form that is 32 bars in length and spends the a-sections moving around back into itself and then goes to the III7 chord for an 8-bar bridge before coming back in on itself to repeat the final A is in fact "rhythm changes"? I suppose it is, but if then the thing I wonder about is at what point does the symmetry become a reflex and/or "crutch" rather than a "natural"  creative occurrence. I don't know, I'm not qualified to have an answer to that one, not really sure if I'm qualified to ask it...but it does get asked.

Final thing - once you get away from "circle of fourths" type thinking (and American Pop composers would occasionally do it, my rule of thumb for faking a standard with that everything was going to be essentially diatonic to the key, and if you heard anything that sounded "surprising", it was the key center changing a 3rd, and I learned the once-frightening "Ipanema" bridge to actually be easy once you learned the math/symmetry/formula, whatever, any key, it sounds a lot more "difficult" than it really is, it's math, the changes, anyway, math is not music, but harmony itself sure as hell is math) the same sort of thing happens as when you start getting away from triadic harmony - more spaces open up, getting from one point to another no longer is as automatic a route as it once was, there is definitely more "freedom" available, but as with all freedoms, the mandate is not to destroy logics but to discover them. I'm not going to say which "European Classical Composers" were the first to actively discover the "upsetting the applecart" quality of moving roots in thirds rather than fourths, the earliest name that comes to mind is Beethoven, but I don't know that world deep enough to make that a claim...I do know that the guy who was really getting into the formal maths, literally and figuratively, of different intervallic/scalar things was Bartok, and pretty much everybody we're talking about in terms of fundamental harmonic reconfigurations was into Bartok, and I don't think it's any coincidence that Bartok drew so heavily from "folkloric" sources, or that Bartok's math didn't calcify, it kept flowing, people still go to Bartok to get switches flipped on. There's a truth there that cannot be revoked, it's one of those things that if you can't hold on to the handoff, it's all on you, not him.

 

[Teasing the Korean]

22 hours ago, JSngry said:

The song itself is essential one big set of turnarounds...it is pretty much one of the, if hot the most, defining factor of evolutionary behavior of all living things.

Couldn't you say this about many/most/virtually all songs of the "Great American Songbook?"

[Mark Stryker]

10 hours ago, JSngry said:

And that's exactly why it works, you have a stated starting point, an expected ending point, and a symmetry that gets you there in the allotted space. Same reason why you can put (and Trane did put) "Trane changes" into seemingly any standard song form. The math works, you have four "landing points" and eight bars. And there's the whole thing about diminished chords (and scales) theoretically having multiple possible key centers because of the lack of a clear-cut Tonic/Dominant relationship. A basic tritone interval, without context, could, in basic diatonic harmony, have one of two key centers (cf "Blue Seven" for an overt exploitation of this ambiguity, I know you've read Schuller's breakdown of the maths about that) ). A diminished chord, consisting of two tritone intervals at once, then has double the possible key centers, four. So if you keep that symmetry, four possible key centers, eight bars, smooth.

This movement, C7/Db7/D7/Eb7 substitutes for the traditional (in Ab) movement of C7/F7/Bb7/Eb7, only the middle two chords are changed.

There's a symmetry there, too, because replacing the F7 with a Db7 is based on substituting down a major 3rd and substituting Bb7 with D7 is based on substituting up a major third. Cosmic, right? Or not....

But now you gotta ask is any form that is 32 bars in length and spends the a-sections moving around back into itself and then goes to the III7 chord for an 8-bar bridge before coming back in on itself to repeat the final A is in fact "rhythm changes"? I suppose it is, but if then the thing I wonder about is at what point does the symmetry become a reflex and/or "crutch" rather than a "natural"  creative occurrence. I don't know, I'm not qualified to have an answer to that one, not really sure if I'm qualified to ask it...but it does get asked.

Final thing - once you get away from "circle of fourths" type thinking (and American Pop composers would occasionally do it, my rule of thumb for faking a standard with that everything was going to be essentially diatonic to the key, and if you heard anything that sounded "surprising", it was the key center changing a 3rd, and I learned the once-frightening "Ipanema" bridge to actually be easy once you learned the math/symmetry/formula, whatever, any key, it sounds a lot more "difficult" than it really is, it's math, the changes, anyway, math is not music, but harmony itself sure as hell is math) the same sort of thing happens as when you start getting away from triadic harmony - more spaces open up, getting from one point to another no longer is as automatic a route as it once was, there is definitely more "freedom" available, but as with all freedoms, the mandate is not to destroy logics but to discover them. I'm not going to say which "European Classical Composers" were the first to actively discover the "upsetting the applecart" quality of moving roots in thirds rather than fourths, the earliest name that comes to mind is Beethoven, but I don't know that world deep enough to make that a claim...I do know that the guy who was really getting into the formal maths, literally and figuratively, of different intervallic/scalar things was Bartok, and pretty much everybody we're talking about in terms of fundamental harmonic reconfigurations was into Bartok, and I don't think it's any coincidence that Bartok drew so heavily from "folkloric" sources, or that Bartok's math didn't calcify, it kept flowing, people still go to Bartok to get switches flipped on. There's a truth there that cannot be revoked, it's one of those things that if you can't hold on to the handoff, it's all on you, not him.

 

 

Yep -- I knew/know all of this. I still wonder if there is some theoretical "justification" specifically for the major 7th chord types (as opposed to dominant)  in these Rhythm changes substitutions -- or if it just boils down to the fact that it doesn't matter what the hell you've got going at te top of the chord as long as the root movement down at the bottom makes fundamental sense.

 

That, come to thik of it, is a pretty good metaphor for how to live your life: Don't worry about what you're doing on top of your "thing," just make sure the baselines fundamentals are cool.

FWIW, those major chords in the A section sound like something George Coleman would play.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2016 by Mark Stryker

[JSngry]

The way I had it taught to me was that you could take any note from an original chord, and then use that as a root for any other quality chord. You just needed a note (or a tritone sub of a note) from the original chord.

Davids Baker  and Liebman both taught this. Baker talked about George Russell's theory of note gravity, or whatever it was called, how every note has some kind of gravitational pull towards every other note, Liebman basically name-checked Bartok and let it go at that, but in both cases the gist of the matter was that anything can follow anything, notes or chords, so it's on you to provide the logic. If the logic is using major 7th chords as your "color" and you put your color into a symmetry that fits the space, then you have essentially chosen the color for the room, if you know what I mean.

[Stefan Wood]

 

[JSngry]

Gershwin don't even know his own changes!

 

 

[Gheorghe]

on faster rhythm tunes in Bb (Wee, Anthropology, Rhythm a Ning, Shaw Nuff etc) sometimes the movement Gb B (natural)/  E  A / D G/ C F/ , thats nice on solos, the first 4 bars of the A section.....