Thread

1. Slow_Hand · 1790543847 · focus · HN ↗

   Career musician here. My dirty secret is that Coltrane doesn’t resonate with me at all. Not one iota; despite me being a huge jazz fan.

   For my taste, his harmonic language tips over the threshold where it goes from being viscerally enjoyable to a more heady, academic exercise. It all feels like a blur to me. Maximal in it’s vocabulary, and yet flat in it’s overall effect. It’s often so dense that it ends up feeling “same-y” and grey to me. Like Schoenberg’s serial music.

   Maybe my impression here comes from the fact that by the time I began listening to him in the mid 2000’s an entire school of derivative jazz players had long since developed upon and retroactively made his innovations feel far more common (to no fault of his own). It’s that flavor of jazz where you get the impression that the players are enjoying this way more than the audience. It’s not for me.

   1. madaxe_again · 1790547667 · focus · HN ↗

      Not a career musician - just a musician, pianist.

      I love Coltrane - I find the complexity lyrical, like Art Tatum or Django Reinhardt in their respective disciplines - or if you throw back, Liszt, Chopin, the other bloody show-offs who could sing with an instrument. I dunno. It talks to me, but I guess at the end of the day it’s all just taste.

      1. na1026 · 1790547811 · focus · HN ↗

         I'm not a saxophonist but I believe that a lot of Coltrane's rapid scale traversal approach comes from transcribing or appropriating Art Tatum pieces for the saxophone.

         1. madaxe_again · 1790701325 · focus · HN ↗

            Oh totally - but if you listen closely to Tatum you find Rachmaninov hiding in there, occasionally a little Chopin riff - it’s turtles all the way down.

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