Analytical Blog
1-46 John Coltrane
After digesting 46 pages of legendary jazz musician, John Coltrane early life, I am struck by quite a few things. John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina and moved to High Point, NC when he as about a year old. Growing up in High Point, NC, gave Coltrane a huge grasp on blues and gospel music. This leads me to the essential question of how does the location of a musician through their early life effect the music that they play later on in their career? This essential question I am going to answer with this blog as well as the next analytical blog that I post. From what I know of John Coltrane, he is a modal jazz player who makes the blues sound far from what the blues should sound like. (I will put two examples below so you can see what I mean) To define modal jazz, it is best to compare Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Coltrane. Every Stevie Ray tune is in one key specific to the tune. The key does not change. However, with modal jazz, the key of the song changes frequently, giving the listener a large change in texture. However, some of the songs that he has covered like My Favorite Things are not exactly hard modal jazz tunes. These songs have some roots in blues and gospel which show the background of Coltrane.
It is interesting to look at the differences between Coltrane and Vaughan for a few different reasons. The first and the largest of these reasons is how they both grew up surrounded by blues and gospel. They also both played instruments that had some ties to that genre. What I would like to find out is, what got Coltrane into the jazzier side of things while Vaughan went head first into the blues and never looked the other way. This is why I would like to use two blogs to analyze this question while I get further into Coltrane's life. From what I know about Stevie after reading about his life is that he was not only surrounded by the blues in his town, but he was also influenced by the blues from his brother and the music that was played in his house. Being a guitar player, he listened to guitar player music which largely consisted of blues and rock musicians in that time of history. However, in the 20s, the saxophone had little ties to the blues and more ties to people like Charlie Parker, a jazz musician. I wonder if the instrument is what dictated the direction of these two musicians playing.
As far as how I got into music is concerned, in the beginning, it was all the guitar that influenced who I listened too. I picked all of the popular guitarists of today to listen too. This is because I was more interested in the guitar than I was interested in music. Due to this, I grew up as a musician listening to metal, rock and blues. As I have gotten older as a musician, my love for music has grown and I have slowly branched out and found interest in different genres like jazz, funk, soul and more. This is because I got exposed to it later on. However, I still root deeply in rock and blues music. Which may explain why John Coltrane has some blues influence in his song choices.
After digesting 46 pages of legendary jazz musician, John Coltrane early life, I am struck by quite a few things. John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina and moved to High Point, NC when he as about a year old. Growing up in High Point, NC, gave Coltrane a huge grasp on blues and gospel music. This leads me to the essential question of how does the location of a musician through their early life effect the music that they play later on in their career? This essential question I am going to answer with this blog as well as the next analytical blog that I post. From what I know of John Coltrane, he is a modal jazz player who makes the blues sound far from what the blues should sound like. (I will put two examples below so you can see what I mean) To define modal jazz, it is best to compare Stevie Ray Vaughan and John Coltrane. Every Stevie Ray tune is in one key specific to the tune. The key does not change. However, with modal jazz, the key of the song changes frequently, giving the listener a large change in texture. However, some of the songs that he has covered like My Favorite Things are not exactly hard modal jazz tunes. These songs have some roots in blues and gospel which show the background of Coltrane.
It is interesting to look at the differences between Coltrane and Vaughan for a few different reasons. The first and the largest of these reasons is how they both grew up surrounded by blues and gospel. They also both played instruments that had some ties to that genre. What I would like to find out is, what got Coltrane into the jazzier side of things while Vaughan went head first into the blues and never looked the other way. This is why I would like to use two blogs to analyze this question while I get further into Coltrane's life. From what I know about Stevie after reading about his life is that he was not only surrounded by the blues in his town, but he was also influenced by the blues from his brother and the music that was played in his house. Being a guitar player, he listened to guitar player music which largely consisted of blues and rock musicians in that time of history. However, in the 20s, the saxophone had little ties to the blues and more ties to people like Charlie Parker, a jazz musician. I wonder if the instrument is what dictated the direction of these two musicians playing.
As far as how I got into music is concerned, in the beginning, it was all the guitar that influenced who I listened too. I picked all of the popular guitarists of today to listen too. This is because I was more interested in the guitar than I was interested in music. Due to this, I grew up as a musician listening to metal, rock and blues. As I have gotten older as a musician, my love for music has grown and I have slowly branched out and found interest in different genres like jazz, funk, soul and more. This is because I got exposed to it later on. However, I still root deeply in rock and blues music. Which may explain why John Coltrane has some blues influence in his song choices.
So you were a little kid who just wanted a guitar? Without anyone influencing you toward it?
ReplyDeleteI should have mentioned a lot of my musical influence came from my dad! He listens to a lot of rock.
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