John Coltrane's Impressions

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John Coltrane, born 23 September 1926 in a small town in North Carolina, was a dedicated and talented jazz musician. Apart from playing musical instruments and composing new tunes, John served his country by performing in the U. S. Navy Band during WWII. After the war, he became a popular tenor saxophonist. It was his involvement with Jimmy Heath when his passion for experimentation grew, which then lead to performances with Miles Davis, which, in his opinion, was the time when he evolved the most. In 1967, at the age of 41, he was diagnosed with a liver disease and died thereof soon after. Impressions, one of John Coltrane’s most popular jazz standards, is modal in its nature and is 32 bars in length. The tune modulates after 16 bars, to the key which is a semitone above, and returns to the initial key after 8 bars. Its modal nature allows for long periods of time with very minimal chord progressions. In this way, I am able to experiment vastly in my improvisation by using a variety of rests, long/held out notes, sequences and patterns. The modal nature simply refers to the scale on which the melody of Impressions is based: the dorian scale. The melody is played in D, repeated in E flat and returns to D with no technical changes. When improvising, I can use the D dorian scale which is the equivalent of a C major scale starting on D and ending on D (D, E, F, G, A, B, C, D). Other scales that could be used during improvisation include the D minor pentatonic scale (D, F, G, A, C) or the D Blues scale (D, F, G, G sharp, A, C, D). What gives the Dorian mode it’s distinct quality, is the 6th degree of the scale. These scales are usually accompanied by minor 7th chords i.e. D min7 (D, F, A, C) and E flat min7 (E flat, G flat, B flat D flat). When the song modulates all chords and scales move a semitone up. (For example, the D min7 chord will become E flat min7; D Dorian
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