The Coltrane changes are lovely, but if you slow them down they aren't substantially more difficult than other Jazz changes from that era. What makes Giant Steps so challenging is mainly the tempo.
Tommy Flanagan, the pianist who struggled a bit on the original Coltrane recording, put out a recording of Giant Steps with his own trio in the 1980s. Having had enough time by then to woodshed the changes, his improvs are exquisite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PWynH-CEc
Maybe this works as review for people who already know it, but it seems like it might be overwhelming for beginners. Learning to recognize 2-5-1 when you hear it in a song might be a better way to start?
Despite taking piano lessons as a kid, I was in college before I learned to recognize 12-bar blues whenever I heard it. That's pretty late, but you're part of the lucky 10,000 whatever day you learn.
This stuff is completely irrelevant if you haven't gotten at least proficient at Bebop and blues. Following the career trajectory of musicians around that era is a good way to build up to those types of music. You start with swing in the 20s and 30, bebop in the 30s and 40s, post-bop and modal jazz in the 50s, then the weird Coltrane changes and free jazz and stuff like that later. I tried really hard to learn those Coltrane patterns when I was first starting off with Jazz but if you don't have much improvisational vocabulary, especially over 251s you will be doing 10x as much work
Giant steps is a triangle, Central Park west is a square
Here's an explanation of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w
The Coltrane changes are lovely, but if you slow them down they aren't substantially more difficult than other Jazz changes from that era. What makes Giant Steps so challenging is mainly the tempo.
Tommy Flanagan, the pianist who struggled a bit on the original Coltrane recording, put out a recording of Giant Steps with his own trio in the 1980s. Having had enough time by then to woodshed the changes, his improvs are exquisite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PWynH-CEc
If you slow down a song enough you will make it easy enough for anyone ha the tempo is part of the challenge!
Maybe this works as review for people who already know it, but it seems like it might be overwhelming for beginners. Learning to recognize 2-5-1 when you hear it in a song might be a better way to start?
Despite taking piano lessons as a kid, I was in college before I learned to recognize 12-bar blues whenever I heard it. That's pretty late, but you're part of the lucky 10,000 whatever day you learn.
https://xkcd.com/1053/
This stuff is completely irrelevant if you haven't gotten at least proficient at Bebop and blues. Following the career trajectory of musicians around that era is a good way to build up to those types of music. You start with swing in the 20s and 30, bebop in the 30s and 40s, post-bop and modal jazz in the 50s, then the weird Coltrane changes and free jazz and stuff like that later. I tried really hard to learn those Coltrane patterns when I was first starting off with Jazz but if you don't have much improvisational vocabulary, especially over 251s you will be doing 10x as much work
Cool, but I was expecting it to make sound.
Me too, especially after I got the notification to play drm media. It was just for an apple music embed though...