Modal Jazz

Modal jazz
Stylistic origins	Jazz cool jazz Indian music medieval music
Cultural origins	Late 1950s
Typical instruments	Piano saxophone trumpet double bass drums

Modal jazz is jazz that uses musical modes rather than chord progressions as a harmonic framework. Originating in the late 1950s and 1960s, modal jazz is epitomized by Miles Davis's 1958 composition "Milestones", 1959 album Kind of Blue, and John Coltrane's classic quartet from 1960–64. Other important performers include Woody Shaw, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Larry Young, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Henderson, Chick Corea and Bobby Hutcherson. Though the term comes from the use of the pitches of particular modes (or scales) in the creation of solos, modal jazz compositions or accompaniments may only or additionally make use of the following techniques:

An understanding of modal jazz requires knowledge of musical modes. In bebop as well as in hard bop, musicians use chords to provide the background for solos. A song starts out with a theme that introduces the chords for the solos. These chords repeat throughout the whole song, while the soloists play new, improvised themes over the repeated chord progression. By the 1950s, improvising over chords had become such a dominant part of jazz, that sidemen at recording dates were sometimes given nothing more than a list of chords to play from.

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