Jazz: Miles Davis and ModalityWriten by Ed Byrne
To learn what Miles Davis thought of his music from his modal period (circa 1958-63), the best source is Davis' autobiography, Miles: The Autobiography, in which he states that he was prompted into this style of improvising on fewer chords by Gil Evans' arrangements of George Gershwins Porgy and Bess. He also states that George Russell recommended pianist Bill Evans (no relation) to Davis around the same time period (1958) for his LP Kind of Blue on the strength of Evans' knowledge of the music of French Impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Davis subsequently became infatuated with Revels Concerto for the Left Hand, and spent roughly the next 13 years incorporating the latter composer's devices from that particular piece into a distinctive Davis style of what some historians (Winthrop Sargeant, for example) termed Impressionist Jazz: unresolved melodic tensions, quartal harmony, non-functional chord successions (as opposed to progressions), extended pedal points, bi-tonality, and other salient early Twentieth century characteristics.
Having said all of this, however, I must point out that jazz is not modal, including Davis' music of the period in question. Jazz scholar Barry Kernfeld, for example, calls this music Davis' Vamp Style, explaining that this style does not fulfill the musical characteristics which scholars attribute to modal music. Check out the New Groves Dictionary of Music and the New Groves Dictionary of Jazz. In brief, modality is a medieval style based on melody--not chords, unlike Mozart's music, whose melodies are guided by and outline chord progressions which move forward through the circle of fifths towards cadences in tonal keys. True modal music is a melodic rather than a harmonic concept. Even when harmony is introduced to modality, it does not guide its behavior. Moreover, the mere absence of chord progressions--or the presence of pedal points--does not constitute modality.
Since Davis' music was beautiful by most standards, it is beside the point that he misunderstood the term modal. While it has no impact upon the success of his musical statements that he thought of it as such, it nonetheless can be asserted that regardless of the fact that he thought of his music as modal, it doesn't make it so.
This misunderstanding of modality has had a profound effect on jazz improvisation pedagogy. The prevailing approach in modern times is to arbitrarily assign modes to each chord in a tonal progression that was designed to accompany a tonal melody. The larger problem with this approach, however, is that it fails to address the primary stuff of the composition on which one should improvise: melody, guide tone lines, root progression, and melodic rhythms. Moreover, to assign three different Greek mode names to a tonal ii7 V7 IMA7 (D Dorian, G Mixolydian, C Ionian) cadence, for example, is tedious and misleading. That progression is in the key of C Major, and if you combine the three modes, you come up with the obvious: a C Major scale; and in this context it is also less restricting to think globally through the key, rather than locally from chord to chord.
From 1958 on, Davis was searching for a way to play more motivically and to be less constricted to running chord changes while improvising. In the process, he became captivated by Ravel's various devices. While he thought that this constituted modality, he was in reality incorporating early Twentieth century Impressionist devices into jazz. Frankly, in all of my lifetime in African American music I have never heard a single modal jazz performance.
Typically, in these modal (vampor pedal point) pieces, the piano part will specify a chord symbol such as Dm7, or Dm7/G, etc. and it will specify for how many measures: ----PLAY 8----. Or it may just specify the mode: D Dorian ----Play 8----. There also may or may not be a specific, written ostinato bass line supplied, as in Maiden Voyage or Equinox. Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea prefer such symbols as CMA7/D, which is how Herbie notated the D13sus4 for the first eight measures of Maiden Voyage. In this way they can specify a type of voicing as well as a chord.
While Berklee College does also teach guide tone line and root progression technique--and a great many other things (I taught there for over three years--full time), their primary focus is on modes and translating chords into scales as a primary means of improvisational technique. Now--even at Berklee itself--there is a gigantic philosophical battle raging over this very issue. The question is does this mindset serve your best interests?
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