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How John Coltrane Influenced Jazz

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The alto saxophonist, John Coltrane, was one of the most cultural-ethical leaders of avant-garde jazz, in the 1960’s. He was an innovative composer and artist who pushed the boundaries of contemporary jazz. Avant-gardism liberated artists from the traditional form of jazz and pushed them to question and change the whole idea of jazz itself. Coltrane was the type of musician who believed that he could always be better than he already was. It was not unusual for someone to see him always practicing his music, he would practice for hours and hours a day. Coltrane mastered a lot of the different styles of jazz, because of this he went on to learn different types of music from different backgrounds so that he could use it to improvise his music. From all the jazz artist we have learned this semester, so far, Coltrane seems to be the one who had the greatest passion for jazz. For this, I admire his hard work and passion he had for jazz. Even though he had already learned just about everything he could about jazz, he still kept trying to learn new …show more content…

Charlie Parker was a big inspiration to him, so much that Coltrane’s sound of jazz was quite similar to Parker’s even though he did not play the same exact thing like other musician’s would do with Parker’s music. Coltrane’s music involved the use of scales, pedal points, multiphonics, free improvisation, and shifting rhythms. He was obsessed with scales, he would practice them whenever he could. He would also try to practice playing every note in every chord he could. In fact, “Kind of Blue,” is one of his most influential pieces, it is considered a test pattern for music students attempting to master fast moving harmonies. He was an inspiration to many upcoming jazz musicians, instead of sticking to the classics, he tried to teach upcoming musicians to think outside the box and think of fresh ideas that had not been done

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