Improvisation and Arrangement

I asked my good friend, former bandmate and wicked clarinetist Chris Broderick if he'd like to do a guest post, and he was kind enough to do so:

Thanks to Tim for the opportunity to post. Here goes.



Admittedly, this is a generalization, but jazz is a music that uses composition as a framework for improvisation. In the most traditional post-bebop jazz settings, the band will play the melody of a song, AKA the head, and then instrumentalists will solo over the chord changes that are implied by or composed over the melody. In the case of many recordings, including the one above ("You're My Everything," from the album Relaxin' with The Miles Davis Quartet), the sense of arrangement often comes not in something predetermined, but on the fly, a result of impulsive choices or reactions to choices by the other musicians.

This recording is a perfect example. It begins with the musicians warming up, Miles shushing them before he cues pianist Red Garland to start the song. Garland begins with some bebop piano runs before Miles whistles and cuts him off. "Block chords," he says, and the process begins again, with Garland playing a simpler melody backed by lush block chords. And the stage is set for an elegant walk through a lovely tune, with crystalline solos by Davis and John Coltrane, backed up by bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones.

This record was one of a series of four (Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin') that were the product of only two days of recording, in May and October of 1956. During that time, the band played dozens of shows, at least, and had developed a pretty strong sense of mutual rapport. That sense of understanding, and knowledge of the material, allows them to take a song in a number of different directions on any given performance.

Maybe that idea is better seen in this performance, by another Miles Davis Quartet, with Wayne Shorter on tenor sax, Ron Carter on bass, Herbie Hancock on piano, and Tony Williams on drums. They're performing a tune called "Agitation", composed by Miles, though there's maybe 20 seconds of composition for nearly seven minutes of improvisation.



What gives this seven minutes of music a sense of shape is the band's willingness to change the rhythmic structure of the song on the fly, jumping from blisteringly fast bebop shuffling to loping swing at the drop of a hat. Williams pays close attention to the rhythms that the soloist creates, and changes his drum patterns to reflect that. The rest of the band follows suit. That may not be precisely the order of operations as it happened on the bandstand, and in a way, what makes this ensemble truly remarkable is how quickly they collectively intuit and respond to these changes, which makes it difficult to see who is the catalyst for any given change.

Which is all to say that, yes, Tim, I agree that arrangement is an important part of jazz, but as often as not, that arrangement is not a matter of notes on paper, but is, instead, arrangement on the fly, or in other words, improvisation.