Saxophones are not designed with a lot of alternate fingerings, but the note Bb is an exception - the Bb on the center line, and the Bb above the staff (same fingerings, plus the octave key) have 5 different possibilities. The most useful of these is the "bis" fingering, with the first finger of the left hand holding down both the B key and the little "bis" key directly below it.
I'd always wondered why the bis key had that name. I knew it meant "again" in French, but that didn't completely answer my question. This last summer I had the pleasure of meeting Xavier Sibre, a French sax/clarinet player who was visiting in Silicon Valley for a couple of weeks. He's back in Paris now. It occurred to me that Xavier might be able to give me a good answer to the "bis" etymology question, so I emailed him. Here's his answer:
Actually yes, "bis" means something in French. It means "double" as in the double of something already existing. For example, you would find a house on number 3 of a street and another house on 3 would be called 3bis. So concerning the Bb it means the bis key is like a second option towards the same result ;-) if you see what I mean. Just like a Bb number 2.
As nearly as I can tell, the first saxophones c. 1845 used a Bb fingering with the first two fingers of the LH, plus a RH side key, as on clarinet. According to Fred Hemke's 1975 dissertation "The Early History of the Saxophone," an 1886 patent application described a mechanism that allowed a Bb with LH first finger plus either first, second, or third finger of the RH (as on modern saxophones). In 1887, the bis key is described in a patent granted to Evette and Schaeffer, "allowing the Bb to be fingered with the first finger left hand alone."
In high school, my lessons were mostly on clarinet, from Paul Pone, who was an accomplished classical clarinetist, but not really a sax player, or a jazz guy. In college I signed on with Eddy Flenner, who was both a saxophonist and a jazz player. At my first lesson with Eddy, he asked me to play an F major scale for two octaves. I did, and Eddy asked me, "Why didn't you use the bis key?" I said, "What's that?" I had to spend some practice time learning to use it.
I teach students to use the bis Bb in most situations. Exceptions would be when going chromatically between B and Bb (usually the side fingering is better), and in a few rare situations (usually arpeggios when 1 and 1, 1 and 2, or 1 and 3 offers some advantage). If intonation needs to be adjusted, it's useful to remember that bis Bb is a little sharper than the other fingerings.
Here's a discussion of "bis" etymology from Sax on the Web - but I think Xavier's answer is about as clear as it could be.
Just to not leave the job unfinished, I've looked at the rest of the thumbnails of John Coltrane manuscripts from the jazz auction catalog, mentioned in my last post, to see if there was a clue as to when Coltrane might have started using the "△" symbol to indicate major 7 chords (Yusef Lateef asserted that Coltrane introduced this usage to jazz). The evidence is inconclusive. (Click here for Part 1) The manuscript name and the symbol used for "major seven" chords are shown below. While I was at it, I checked for "minor seven" chord symbols also: A Love Supreme: △ Saida's Song Flute: △, mi, mi7 Like Sonny: maj, maj7 (recorded 1960) Naima: △ I'm a Dreamer: maj, maj7, -7 (This is the chart with chords in concert, melody transposed for Bb. Recorded 1958.) Unidentified (chart for King Kolax): maj7, mi7 Swinging Seventh: m, m7, - Handwritten Chord Progressions: maj7 From Diz to Tadd: maj7, -7 Moody Speaks: ma7, mi7 Apollo: Eb (letter only), maj7, -7 The catalog also showed thumbnails of several Tadd Dameron charts, presumably written out by Dameron, but including a "Lady Bird" chart that I had thought might have been in Coltrane's hand: Tadd's Delight: maj7 Choose Now: maj7 Milt's Delight: ma.7 Smooth as the Wind: maj7 Lady Bird: △ (Byline "signature" similar to Tadd's other charts, but treble clef in a different style; this is the only chart in the Dameron group using the "△" symbol.) The catalog also showed one lead sheet written by Wayne Shorter: Africaine (Wayne Shorter): △7, -7 So, the charts using the "△" symbol were: A Love Supreme (recorded 1964) Saida's Song Flute (recorded 1959, released on the "Giant Steps" record with the misspelling "Syeeda's") Naima (1959, on the "Giant Steps" record) Lady Bird (chart perhaps written out by Coltrane; if by Dameron, it would be the only use of the "△" symbol in the catalog's Dameron group of charts; date impossible to know) Africaine (chart by Shorter; this tune was recorded in 1959 with Art Blakey) I'm not sure we can draw any conclusions here, but FWIW, it looks as though both Coltrane and Shorter were using the symbol by 1959. In Coltrane's case, perhaps not earlier. Wayne used a "△7", Coltrane just a "△". Coltrane was inconsistent in using "mi7" or "-7" symbols. If any readers know of any use of the "△" symbol for major 7 chords pre-1959, please leave a comment. Trivia? Maybe, but it's interesting.
A friend sent me a copy of Yusef Lateef's Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns
a few months ago (thanks, Bill!). I've been having some fun with it, playing through some cool patterns, just splashing around on the surface of this obviously very deep book. I'll get around to reviewing it at some point (it's been around since 1981, but it's new to me). But this post takes off from just one brief sentence in the book:
"DELTA (△) SYMBOL. Introduced into music notation to symbolize a major seventh chord by the late John Coltrane."
Really? John Coltrane invented the delta symbol for major seven chords? Well, Yusef was as fallible as any of us, but then again, he was a friend of Coltrane's. Yusef was one of the greats, and had been around jazz for a long time (b. 1920), so maybe he knew what he was talking about.
Then I remembered that I had a copy of the catalog for the 2005 Guernsey's Jazz Auction, with thumbnails of a number of Coltrane manuscripts that were up for bidding. Below is a chart for "Lady Bird," possibly in Coltrane's hand, showing the delta symbol (I commented on this chart in a previous post, in connection with the turnaround). This chart was not advertised as being in Coltrane's hand, and was grouped in the catalog with some Tadd Dameron charts that had been owned by Coltrane. However, the manuscript style looks similar to other charts that are definitely in Coltrane's hand (see below), and looks not at all like the other Dameron charts. Click to enlarge.
This chart for "Naima," also from the auction catalog, is definitely Coltrane's. The catalog leads us to believe it is in his hand, and it came to the auction from the family of Juanita Coltrane (John's first wife; Naima was her middle name). Coltrane recorded "Naima" in May 1959. If you have ever wondered about the correct changes to this song, this chart should help.
But then, this chart for "I'm a Dreamer! Aren't We All?" uses "maj 7" rather than the delta symbol. Coltrane recorded "I'm a Dreamer" in 1958. The coda to "Dreamer" seems to be an arranged addition, and matches the end of Coltrane's 1958 recording. (Interestingly, the melody in the "Dreamer" chart is transposed to tenor key, while the changes appear in concert pitch. Why?)
Some observations about these charts:
1) The treble clefs in "Naima" and "Dreamer" are the same. "Lady Bird" clefs are a little different. See my "Lady Bird" post.
2) In "Naima" and "Dreamer," Coltrane mostly doesn't bother with bar lines at the left- and right-hand sides of the page. In "Lady Bird," bar lines appear at the beginning and end of each line.
3) Coltrane recorded "Half Nelson" (changes based on "Lady Bird") in 1956, "Dreamer" in 1958, "Naima" in 1959.
I thought for a moment that the chronology of the charts might help us figure out when Coltrane started using the delta symbol (1959?), but it's not that easy.
1) The "Dreamer" chart seems to be from around 1958, judging from the coda "arrangement" and the date of the recording, but might be earlier.
2) The "Naima" chart might date from 1959, the date of the recording, but could be earlier. Coltrane and Juanita were married in 1955.
3) The "Lady Bird" chart could be from any time at all. I'd assume that Coltrane knew the tune well enough to not need a chart. "Lady Bird" goes back to at least 1947.
The discrepancies in the treble clefs, bar lines, and in "△" vs. "maj7" can be explained by plain old personal inconsistency. Speaking for myself, I'm sometimes inconsistent when handwriting chord symbols - for example, m7 vs. -7, m7b5 vs. ΓΈ, and △ or △7 vs. maj7.
So while it's an interesting exercise to try to figure out when Coltrane started using the "delta" symbol, I don't think these charts really give us an answer, except to say that he was using it in 1959 for sure, and maybe earlier.
If any readers know of any pre-1958 examples of the use of the delta symbol, by Coltrane or anyone else, please send in a comment!
For your listening pleasure, here is the Coltrane recording of "I'm a Dreamer! Aren't We All?" using the ending from the chart above. Coltrane just burns.
And here's "I'm a Dreamer" in its original setting:
Update 10/8/15 - I looked at some more charts in the auction catalog - Click here for Part 2 of this post.
"Estrada do sol" is a beautiful Jobim tune, written in 1958. It's been recorded by a long list of artists; here's a nice, definitive solo piano version from Jobim's album "Terra Brasilis" (1980).
The other night, picking up after dinner, we had "Classic Arts Showcase" playing on the TV, and a video came up with Aaron Copland's "Laurie's Song," from his opera The Tender Land (premiered 1954). There's a phrase with a similarity to "Estrada do sol" that's hard to miss, right at the beginning, in the instrumental introduction.
I think it's quite possible that Jobim consciously borrowed that melodic phrase from Copland; there are a number other instances of his borrowing musical ideas (from both classical and American popular sources) and using them in his own way.
Besides the melodic phrase, the pieces have a bit of harmonic similarity. In "Laurie's Song," the harmony seems (to me) to start with repeated Bm to C chords, creating a temporary B phrygian feel, eventually resolving to G major. "Estrada do sol" begins with a Dm7 G7 vamp, giving a temporary D dorian feel, resolving after 8 bars to C major.
This device - beginning in minor (in "Estrada do sol," D dorian), dwelling on it long enough to establish the minor key as tonic, then resolving it to the "relative major" (here, C) - shows up in some well-known tunes that predate both the Jobim and the Copland. Bronislaw Kaper's "Invitation" (1950) does this, as does Ary Barroso's "Na baixa do sapateiro" (1938).
Here's a Toquinho version of "Na baixa" that starts with the vamp in question:
You can find the music to "Estrada do sol" on jobim.org (click here), along with a wealth of other Jobim resources.
It seems pretty clear that in early blues (say, pre-1920), musicians did not much employ the b5 as a blue note. By the mid-1920s, we have recordings with b5 licks used as part of the blues/jazz vocabulary. At some later point, the concept of a "blues scale" was conceived. I've been trying to get some historical perspective on all this (see my previous post, Early Blues, Blue Notes, and Blues Scales).
In his autobiography, referring to pre-1914 Southern folk music, W. C. Handy wrote:
[Black Southern folk musicians were] sure to bear down on the third and seventh tones of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton fields of the Delta or on the levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same...
Handy speaks of the flat third and seventh, but does not mention the flat fifth.
Looking at the earliest blues (by Handy and others) that appeared as sheet music pre-1915, I don't see any "blue note" use of the b5 (see the books on early published blues by Peter Muir and Vic Hobson, reviewed here earlier).
Listening to Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (1924), I don't hear any blues use of the b5. Gershwin was not a blues musician, but as a bright young music industry insider, he would have been quite aware of blues usage in his time, at least the commercial and big-city type (Gershwin was born in 1898; the "blues craze" in popular music began c.1914). If the b5 had been part of what constituted "blues" for him in 1924, he surely would have exploited it in "Rhapsody in Blue."
To me, "blue note" usage of the flat five consists of either scooping the note in the same way and to the same extent that the third was traditionally scooped and bent, or incorporating the b5 into this sort of lick. This is from the opening of the melody in Tadd Dameron's The Squirrel (1947):
This kind of usage doesn't seem to have been there, in the earliest days of blues.
So when did musicians begin to use the b5 as a blue note? The earliest recorded example I could find was this 1925 Bessie Smith recording of "St. Louis Blues," featuring Louis Armstrong:
In the minor-key section, Bessie bends the fifth, and also embellishes the melody with a lick that's very close to the b5 4 b3 1 shape shown above. (Incidentally, check Louis in the second 12-bar strain of the tune, suggesting a IVm chord in bar 6 - pretty harmonically aware for 1925!)
There are a quite a few similar b5 licks in Louis' 1928 recording of "St. James Infirmary":
The b5 licks here are used liberally - in Louis' vocals and cornet solo, and in the clarinet and piano parts as well (Earl Hines was the pianist). The trombone contributes a b5-5 scoop.
You can hear similar b5 licks in later jazz standards like Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing" (1931) and "In a Sentimental Mood" (1935), and in Matt Dennis' "Angel Eyes" (1946).
Interestingly, the b5 licks in these Bessie Smith, Armstrong, Ellington, and Matt Dennis examples all occur in a minor-key context. This might seem to suggest that b5 blues usage started in the mid-1920s, in minor-key tunes.
On the other hand, the mid-20s time frame only reflects minor-key examples that I could find recordings for. "St. James Infirmary," for example, is a very old tune (see this Wikipedia entry). Perhaps Louis was just playing it the way New Orleans players had played it decades earlier, before recordings.
By the 1940s, b5 licks were commonplace in major-key blues as well. (Note: blues usage of the b5 by the bebop players was a different phenomenon than their use of the b5 for harmonic color.)
Some years ago, I researched blues scales for a college course. Surveying books and articles, I found no less than ten different "blues scales." The earliest proposal of a "blues scale" that I could find was by Winthrop Sargeant, in his 1938 book "Jazz - Hot and Hybrid." Here's Sargeant's diagram, as reproduced in Gunther Schuller's "Early Jazz":
The arrows indicate prevalent melodic motion. Sargeant stated that this diagram related more to early or traditional blues (from a 1938 perspective).
If this scale is based on C as tonic, it is our present-day "major blues scale" with an added b7, and does not include the b5.
I'm not sure when our present-day "minor blues scale" (1 b3 4 b5 5 b7 1) came into the picture. If a blues scale involving the b5 had become commonly known by the 1940s, could it have influenced b5 usage? It's an interesting thought, but I have a feeling that it didn't happen that way.
I emailed this question to a few jazz musicians who who had learned their stuff in the late 1930s or early 1940s: When you were learning to play, were you aware of any concept of a "blues scale?" I heard back from two of them. One well-known NY pianist had this to say:
When I was learning to play, in the 30's and 40's, there was no "jazz education" to formalize matters, but there were soloists such as Lionel Hampton, Pete Brown, Lester Young, Harry Edison, Buck Clayton, Charlie Christian, and the boogie-woogie pianists (Ammons, Lewis, James P. Johnson) who employed the blues scale in their solos and their pieces, and we followed what they did without labeling it systematically as "the blues scale."
Maurice "Dr. Bugs" Bower's answer was, "Never heard of it."
"Este seu olhar" is our latest addition to the list of classic Jobim tunes that use a harmonic template similar to an American "golden age" standard - in this case, Rodgers and Hart's "Bewitched."
A recent recording by Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Marcus Valle, and Joao Donato runs these tunes simultaneously, along with "So em teus bracos," another Jobim tune with similar changes (but not quite as exact a match). No one has posted this track or this album on Youtube yet, but here's a link to the album on iTunes; play the short sample of "Bewitched" and you'll get the idea.
