Understanding Ornette

Don't forget your public library. I recently checked out a wonderful biography "Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life" by John Litweiler. Here's a link to a review by Kelly Bucheger. The book is more about the struggles of the artist rather than the underpinnings of his harmolodic concept, but I managed to single out what I think are some significant insights. This may be a misunderstanding, but it's something to think about.

For one, Ornette mentioned that when he started playing, he knew music used the first 7 letters of the alphabet, so he always thought of it as "starting with A." Later in the book he says all you need to understand his approach are three chords: C major 7 (C-E-G-B), Eb minor 7 (Eb-Gb-Bb-Db) and D half-diminished (D-F-Ab-A#).

I saw and heard Ornette at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1967, and he played a "shaheen" on one extended number. He presented the tonic as a low "blat" and then arched out into a series of very logical and exciting solo excursions. When he exhausted the idea he would circle back and come in for a landing on that aggravating low tone, but you knew he was back! In the book, he mentioned that one of the beauties of the harmolodic approach is that one doesn't have to return to the original tonic, and the ending note of any phrase can become a new tonic.

Another tenet of his approach is to improvise on the mood, the feel created by the whole song, not the chord changes. This allowed Ornette to create new forms in the course of his solo, not to be "free from form" but free to create new forms spontaneously.

Taking the 12 tones created by CM7, Ebm7 and Ornette's Dm7b5 (add #5), I came up with a chart based on A as the tonic. But since we are using this to organize our outbound excursion, there is no A in the 12 tones! If the 3 chords are used (partly) as a mnemonic device, we have a handy way to organize 12 notes, including a variable "A#" which could be a "quarter tone around the drone." Then couple our traditional understanding of substitute chords and extended scales developed from the 4 tone chords, add the "final note of a phrase as a possible new tonic" idea and the 3 chords become a springboard to infinite creativity!