Music GCSE - Davis: All Blues

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Davis: All Blues

 

            All Blues comes from the album Kind of Blue released in 1959. The band on this album is a sextet.

            This piece was recorded with almost no rehearsal and no score. The musicians we given basic information – the overall structure, the basic chord sequence, the main melodic idea and which mode or scale to improvise on.

            In this piece there is the frontline instruments and the rhythm section. In the frontline, Miles Davis play the trumpet, Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley plays alto sax and John Coltrane plays tenor sax. In the rhythm section, Bill Evans plays piano, Paul Chambers plays bass and Jimmy Cobb plays drums.

It is based on a 12-bar blues progression and the head, the main melody, is played by a muted trumpet, lasts for 12 bars and can be heard towards the start and the end of the piece. To separate each section there is a simple 4-bar riff in parallel 3rds. The piece is broken down into 5 sections, the introduction, head 1, solos, head 2 and coda and this is known as a head arrangement. The introduction is played by the rhythm section, head1

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