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You walk into Smalls Jazz Club in Greenwich Village and hand the bouncer a 20$ and a 5$, both bills crinkled from marinating in your pocket. You hear the alto player near the stage (or more appropriately, the stage area- it’s all leveled the same) call out “Giant Steps!” over his shoulder, the rhythm section responding with a nod, affirming his daunting call. You see the horn players to the side of the room widen their eyes as the alto player snaps off a fast, nearly anxious beat, shouting “one, two, ah-one, ah-two, a-one, two, three, four!”. He hastily puts the mouthpiece of his horn to his mouth, blaring the first four bars of the tune with a rich, open tone to kick off the melody. You find yourself oddly entranced with the sound of the tune, each phrase almost seeming like a question and answer, though allocating the listener only a single instance in real-time to think about what the fast, blocked chords make them feel.
This tune is none other than the infamous “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane, arguably one of Coltrane’s most innovative tunes for its time, feared by many jazz musicians just for its sheer difficulty. Simultaneously recognized for its genius.
“Giant Steps” by John Coltrane is an uptempo tune that characterizes John Coltrane’s contribution to jazz harmony within a 16-bar form, jam-packed with inklings of Coltrane’s erudition. The tune functions in a set of changes known as “Coltrane Changes” or the “Coltrane Matrix”, based off of an interchanging set of “tonal centers” each being a major third apart from one another. In “Giant Steps”, Coltrane switches through using Bmaj7, D#maj7, and F##maj7 (Bmaj7, Ebmaj7, and Gmaj7, written enharmonically for music theory purposes). The tune, much like Tin Pan Alley harmony (jazz harmony, most notable in Broadway music that’s centered around the progression ii-V7-I) features many V7-I and ii-V7-I progressions to their respective keys. However, this tune is innovative in what’s known as a “key center” or a “tonal center”- in the place of a single key signature that dictates the key of the tune, “Giant Steps” flows constantly through different key centers, interchanging between each within at most two bars.
This type of progression can also be seen outside of Coltrane’s compositions themselves, seeping even into his playing. Coltrane’s solo on “Limehouse Blues” on Cannonball Adderley’s album, “Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago”, reflects the same tritonal chord progression that Coltrane used in his own works. He fluctuates between playing the chord changes as they are and making his own substitutions, playing “Coltrane Changes” over tiny excerpts of his solo and using the 1-2-3-5 melodic cell that he uses so often in his solo on “Giant Steps”. As for the difficulty of playing over this progression, Coltrane’s outlandish virtuosity is put on full display when he blasts off from the melody, breezing over the chord changes at a blazing speed while still interacting with the rhythm section and keeping the energy of the tune alive. The listener doesn’t hear it at first until they consciously listen to Tommy Flanagan’s solo on the tune, a legendary jazz pianist that played on the full record with Coltrane. Coltrane’s consistent eighth-note lines are immediately contrasted when Flanagan starts his solo, playing little juts of notes here and there, though very clearly not taking this tune as easily as Coltrane did.
So next time you hear a cluster of jazz musicians groan while sitting in, hearing that augmented tonality ring through the tune, you do know what’s going on.
“Dude, why do you think all those guys at the side are rolling their eyes?”
“Because it’s Giant Steps.”
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