Instead, he trips and stumbles and staggers through the meter, yet somehow he always lands precisely where he intends to. Monk uses a lot of circle of fifths progressions, and often alternates the yin and yang scales over them, but he never plays predictable patterns. If you just take a whole tone riff and alternate it up and down chromatically, listeners will intuit that you’re mindlessly executing a formula, and they will lose interest fast. You play the yin scale on F#7, the yang scale on B7, the yin scale on E7, the yang scale on A7, the yin scale on D7, the yang scale on G7, and so on, simply alternating back and forth. In the recording at the top of this post, remember how Monk starts his solo with that crazy substitute progression that starts on F#7 and then cycles back home to Bb? It’s not as difficult to play as it sounds. You can improvise over any string of dominant chords going around the circle of fifths by just alternating the yin and yang scales. On F7: Play the yang scale for an implied F9(b5 #5) sound.On C7: Play the yin scale for an implied C9(b5 #5) sound.On G7: Play the yang scale for an implied G9(b5 #5) sound.On D7: Play the yin scale for an implied D9(b5 #5) sound.The duality of the yin and yang scales makes them especially useful for playing the rhythm changes bridge: two bars each of D7, G7, C7, and F7. In jazz, you mostly use the whole tone scale on dominant seventh chords. A little logic shows that the yin and yang scales are the only two possible whole tone scales. The grey notes in the diagram form six other whole tone scales: B, C-sharp, D-sharp, F, G and A. I call this collection of pitches the yin scale. These same six pitches also comprise five other whole tone scales: C, D, E, G-flat, and A-flat. In the meantime, here are the notes in the B-flat whole tone scale–click the image to play it on the aQWERTYon. But Monk deploys those harmonies over very different rhythms. Debussy used a lot of whole tone scale too, and there are some overlaps between his harmonic approach and Monk’s. The B section of “Rhythm-a-Ning” is based on the whole tone scale, which Monk used more often and more creatively than any other jazz artist. You can hear similar ideas in “Blue Monk,” “Ba-lue Bolivar Ba-lues-are,” “Criss-Cross,” “Four In One,” “Epistrophy,” “In Walked Bud,” “Played Twice,” “Well You Needn’t,” and uncountably many of his improvised solos. This kind of displacement is a classic Monk-ism. Then, in measures six and seven, he plays the riff again, but he shifts it two beats later, so the accents fall differently. In measures four and five, he plays a repeated three-note riff: F, G, A-flat, F, G, A-flat. Monk follows the opening arpeggio riff with a nifty bit of rhythmic displacement. Here are the B section and final A section in polar coordinates: Here’s the A section as visualized in Ableton Live, run through the GIMP polar coordinates filter. Here’s a chart that draws heavily on the one in the superb Thelonious Monk Fake Book. Wenatchee the Hatchet points out that Blue’s Clues also quotes this riff: Mary Lou Williams used it in her 1936 arrangement of “Walking and Swinging.” Listen at 1:13.Īl Haig used the riff for “Opus Caprice.”Īnd Sonny Stitt used it for “Symphony Hall Swing.” The arpeggio riff from the first four bars was apparently common property among jazz musicians before Monk wrote his tune around it. Here’s another alternative version with Gerry Mulligan that I don’t especially like. Monk also recorded this strange alternative version with the Jazz Messengers. Monk’s comping behind Charlie Rouse is even crazier. The effect is like stepping out a window, but then drifting gently down to a safe landing on the sidewalk. He then chases quickly around the circle of fifths through B7, E7, A7, D7, G7, C7 and F7 to finally land back home on Bb four bars later. Rather than starting on Bb like he’s supposed to, he leaps unexpectedly out to F#7. Listen to his comping behind Charlie Rouse’s tenor sax solo no one else plays like that.Īlso, listen to the beginning of Monk’s solo at 2:02. But this is only “sedate” by Monk standards. My favorite recording is the relatively sedate version that Monk did in 1963. The name “Rhythm-a-Ning” is probably a playful mispronunciation of “rhythm-ing”, and that deliberate stumble sums up the tune’s aesthetic. The melodies are catchy enough to whistle in the proverbial bathtub, but when you dig in intellectually, they reveal endless weirdness. Monk’s take on the ubiquitous “ I Got Rhythm” chord progression has a lot in common with “Straight, No Chaser.” They both use the most generic materials possible to produce something that still sounds fresh seventy years after they were composed. After doing “ Straight, No Chaser,” I’m now diving into another one of Monk’s greatest hits, “Rhythm-a-Ning,” at the request of Christian Gentry.
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