Jon Snydal
Marti Hearst
ABSTRACT
ImproViz is a visualization technique for diagramming music that brings to light the signature patterns of a jazz musician's improvisational style. ImproViz consists of two parts: (1) melodic landscapes show the general contours of musical phrasing; and (2) harmonic palettes represent the musician's tendency to use a particular combination of notes in a given part of the song. Viewing the jazz standard All Blues through the lens of ImproViz illustrates the contrasting melodic and harmonic styles of three musicians. This analysis uncovers some surprises, such as how Miles Davis played musical ideas that contradicted his own composition. ImproViz offers jazz students a new way to study jazz theory and can also serve as a real-time improvisational aid, allowing a student to borrow the harmonic vocabulary of jazz masters.
- Davis, Miles. "All Blues." Rec. 22 April 1959. Kind of Blue. Sony, 1997.Google Scholar
- Kahn, Ashley. Kind of Blue: the Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000.Google Scholar
- Malinowski, Stephen. Music Animation Machine. <http://www.well.com/user/smalin/mam.html>.Google Scholar
- Miles Davis: Kind of Blue. Transcribed by Rob DuBoff et al. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2001.Google Scholar
- Wattenberg, Martin. Arc Diagrams: Visualizing Structure in Strings, Proceedings of IEEE InfoVis '02. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wattenberg, Martin. The Shape of Song. <http://www.turbulence.org/Works/song/>.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- ImproViz: visual explorations of jazz improvisations
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Reviews
Pierre Jouvelot
Jazz improvisation is one of the most difficult arts to teach, given the fleeting nature of its one-of-kind realizations, exemplified by the musical intuitions of geniuses such as John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk. Studying such masters' musical recordings is one of the best ways to get acquainted with the subtle techniques of real-time innovative melodies and harmonic "standards" blending, which is required to become a proficient jazzman. ImproViz is a computer-based tool that seeks to make this confrontation with jazz masters more illuminating to apprentices. When the tool is fully implemented (the paper presents a prototype specification, with screen shots created using Adobe Illustrator), users will be able to compare the melodic landscapes and harmonic palettes of the improvisations of a given jazz standard by multiple artists. Displaying the pitches of a given improvised melody as a continuous line of varying height corresponds to a melodic landscape, while gathering all notes of the harmonic bass used during one music bar is a harmonic palette. Based on these ideas, the paper compares Miles Davis', Julian Adderley's and John Coltrane's realizations of the All Blues standard. This easy-to-read paper provides an interesting yet admittedly quite simple idea to help musicians grasp the stylistic differences of jazz improvisation players. It could be used, once implemented, as a useful educational tool by music teachers. Online Computing Reviews Service
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