Thelonious Monk, one of the greatest jazz pianists ever was born 100 years ago today.
What are your favorite, recordings, albums, compositions, or solos by Monk?
Please don't tell me Sup Forums cares more about the meme Japanese jazz piano man than about one of the most innovative, original, influential, and forward thinking artists of the 20th century.
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
youtu.be
youtube.com
youtube.com
youtube.com
[email protected]
twitter.com
Monk's Dream
Plays Ellington
ruby my dear
This board is pathetic.
Man, I love that record that was released a decade back with Monk and Trane playing @ Carnegie Hall. Nutty and Bye-Ya and Monk’s Mood and all that are just gr8.
I was listening to this live set of Steve Lacy and Mal Waldron doing a duo thing together and MAN, the two versions of Round Midnight they do are astounding.
>Man,
>MAN,
dude
here’s a link
Love this weirdo and everything he did for music. Wish Monk's Dream had become a more popular standard, it's probably my favorite tune of his.
How has JTG never reviewed a single Monk album?
Theme for this week.
this, I couldn't stand this song when I first dropped the needle on side two of Monks Greatest Hits, but at some point I realized I loved it
Well you needn't is probably my favorite song of his
Monk alone in San Francisco
locomotive from straight no chaser
raise four
between the devil and the deep blue sea
there is no better pianist, he was a genius. i still can't find jazz music that can compare to monk's sense of rhythm, depth, improvisational and sheer emotional quality
>plays random notes
>jazz fags: "he's so innovative xD"
Solo Monk
>random notes
As with a lot of Monk tunes the first problem is figuring out what key it's in. I would venture C major although the tune never actually resolves to C major. At the end of the 2nd time bar when we might expect a V-I cadence, Monk resolves a semi-tone up to Db major. Obviously this is a common enough substitution for the I chord (Neapolitan 6th anyone?), so I think we can assume the I chord would be C major.
The very first progression (after the 4 bar intro) is Fmin7 - Bb7(b5) - Cmajor 7. This is what is sometimes referred to as a 'back-door' cadence. It can be analysed according to axis system theory with the Fmin7 chord being an axis substitution for the Dmin7 chord and the Bb7 chord acting as an axis substitution for the G7 (for an explanation of the axis system see my blog post 'Some Applications of the Axis System). The progression then resolves up a tone to Cmaj7. So in effect the first four bars are simply a substitute progression for a II-V-I in C major. Next we have Dmin7b5 - G7b5 - Dbmajor7. This is a min II-V cadence resolving not to the I chord but to the bII.
The next two bars are basically a repeated III7 - VI7 progression with tritone substitutions. So we get: |Bb7 / A7 /| E7 / Eb7 /| this then leads to an unusual progression: |D11 / E11 / | D11 / Bb7 /|
What's happening here? I think Monk may be thinking of a VI min - II7 progression but with different bass notes. So the first chord is basically Amin with a D in the bass (making D11) and the next chord a D chord with an E in the bass (making an E11). The progression then moves back to D11 which I think functions here as a kind of II chord followed by a bVII7 chord. This is an axis substitution for G7 and also sets up the move back to the Fmin chord at the start of the sequence. It really feels as if Monk is playing with the idea of the C major/ Eb major axis and deliberately moving between them.
The A section then repeats until we get to the 2nd time bar were Monk plays |Ab7 / G7 /|
Db maj7| This is a pretty standard tritone sub, again resolving to the bII chord rather than the I. It's interesting to note the way Monk voices the Ab7 chord, putting the b5 interval in the left hand between the root and the 7th, (this is a very characteristic Monk effect).
The first 2 bars of the bridge feature a kind of pedal. The sequence goes: |C11 / C7b9 /| C11 / F#min7 /| I see this as a substitute for |Gmin7 / C7 /| Gmin / C7| with the F#min chord working as a transformed tritone sub for C7. Monk then makes this chord the first chord in a II-V-I progression to E major.
The next part of the bridge is | Amin7b5 Ab7 G11 Abdim | Amin7b5 / F7 / |. This is a II V I into Gmin (including a tritone sub on the chord V), the Gmin chord being transformed into a G11. The Amin7b5 in the next bar could be seen as an axis substitution for Cmin7 leading to the F7. The diminished chord could also be seen as a kind of substitute for a G7b9 which would lead to the Cmin7 chord. So this whole little sequence without the substitutions (de-Monkified?) could be written as: |Amin7b5 D7alt Gmin7 G7b9| Cmin7 / F7 / |
The next progression is written as: |Fmin7 / Ebmin7 / | D11 / Bb7 | leading us back to the A section. In the actual chord voicings however Monk plays a Bb in the bass of the 'Ebmin7' chord making it more like a Bbmin7b13. Again, in the last bar he uses an axis substitution for what is in effect an Fmin7 chord leading to a Bb7 chord.
It's interesting that although Monk's music is often thought of as unconventional and strange, the basic building blocks of his tunes are pretty standard functional progressions, which he then filters through his unique system of substitutions and transformations. I'm pretty convinced that Monk had an understanding of the axis relationships, and used them as part of his way of constructing chord progressions.
It's not difficult to see how he could have discovered this relationship. For example if he played a Dmin7b5 voicing in the right hand and moved his left hand from D up to F (in effect a first inversion) he would have got an Fmin6 voicing. If he did the same with the G7b9 voicing (Abdim over G) and moved the bass note up a min 3rd he would have arrived at Bb7b9.
So his understanding may have been practical (or aural) rather than theoretical, although with Monk it's quite hard to know how much theory he knew, as he never wrote about, and hardly even spoke about his music, except for a few gnomic utterances.In a similar way he seemed to intuitively grasp the nature of sonority and resonance, especially in relation to the piano.
bump
his live rendition of pannonica is god
Alone in SF. Great rendition of Everything Happens to Me.
youtube.com
I don't skip any of the tunes on this album.
Your last point makes me wonder though, surely he would let on how much formal music theory he knew via interactions with bandmates and whatnot. He played with a decent number of people who were formally trained.
Monk didn't talk much in general
i love you , monk!
fuck this shithole.
roll me some nichols
youtube.com
xo
the 28 club
...
get your ass back to kpop you litler shuit cunt lickzer
>more people on Sup Forums have heard the Japanese meme piano album than have heard a Thelonious Monk album
dont waste time bemoaning the mediocrity which attempts to dissolve you.
post glorious music
[email protected]
Nice. Saved
its no mystery
like frusciante's niandre
Ok. Just saving it for the next time someone makes a post about jazz being random
Probably Brilliant Corners. I'm a huge sucker fot tenor sax and Sonny Rollins is great on this record.
interesting thought.
niandra is like pure pop music somehow bent