Finding the intricacies of music theory a little baffling? Is ‘every green bus drives fast’ a concept that’s just too hard to grasp? Or are you simply at a loss as to which note to play next? No problem, turns out that jazz legend John Coltrane has got you covered.
Or rather, jazz legend John Coltrane had his own unique interpretation of music theory that – as you might expect from one of the pioneers of ‘free jazz’ – is as off-the-wall and unconventional as it is illuminating and actionable.
Coltrane was believed to have drawn his legendary ‘Coltrane Circle’ while studying Indian music in and around 1967, while seeking further influence and inspiration for his already ground-breaking work reshaping jazz.
Similarly at that time another radical free thinker – physicist and genius Albert Einstein – was coming up with his own take on his particular specialist field – the business of what makes the universe – releasing both The Meaning of Relativity and The Evolution of Physics in that same year.
It’s not much of a leap therefore to suggest that Coltrane was influenced by Einstein’s pragmatic and mathmatic way of looking at the universe and began to incorporate some of Einstein's theories into what had – up until that point – been all about the groove, man.
At its heart Coltrane’s Circle resembles the familiar circle of fifths, a scheme used by guitarists and keyboard players to suggest what chord might sound good next. It’s a scheme that always works, always sounds logical and is the underpinning influence between songs as diverse as Frank Sinatra's Fly Me To The Moon and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive to modern hits like Love You Like A Love Song by Selena Gomez & The Scene.
If you’re jamming with your band and can’t come up with an idea, knock-em-dead by strumming the circle of fifths.
However, ever the free-thinker, Coltrane was keen to add some alternatives to such a rigid structure and penned his own circle, featuring additions and suggestions that were all his own. He presented his drawing – now one of jazz’s most discussed and debated scribbles – to his colleague and tutor, Yusef Lateef in 1967, who found Coltrane’s take on what was musically possible and ‘correct’ fascinating.
Lateef would go on to include it in his Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns and writing in his autobiography would describe Coltrane’s music as a “spiritual journey” that “embraced the concerns of a rich tradition of autophysiopsychic music.”
And Dartmouth professor and astrophysicist Stephon Alexander, as a saxophonist himself, has been able to take the Coltrane/Einstein connection even further. In his TED talk below Alexander observes “the mysterious way that quantum particles move, according to the rules of quantum mechanics,” and that they “will actually traverse all possible paths.”
Alexander suggests that this is the same as how jazz musicians will improvise, journeying along all the possible notes in a scale and Coltrane’s mysterious circle reveals the path that that journey might take.
So what’s the magic?
The circle of fifths clearly shows the relationship between the 12 possible semitones that every musician (in the modern age) has taken on board to allow us all to play each other’s tunes and for musical instruments to ‘make sense’. Oboe, piano, synth – they’ve all got the same ‘notes’.
Thus Coltrane’s circle shows those same 12 semitones and their notations (flat or sharp). The outer ring portrays the hexatonic or whole-tone scale of the note Do, and the inner ring portrays the hexatonic scale of Si. The series of terms and structures is easily understood by those who’ve studied musical theory.
Juxtaposing notes and positions therefore follow conventional rules and all obey basic pitch ‘maths’ – doubling the number of Hz of a tone produces the same note one octave higher – but Coltrane’s circle shows alternative notes, again, driven by maths, that musicians might not have thought appropriate but – to Coltrane and his followers – sound just great.
It’s a fascinating and inspirational scheme, inviting musicians to come up with their own meanings and – thus – original results. Next time you're stuck give Coltrane’s Circle a spin.
