We did one recording, actually at Tom Tedesco’s Studio before it was actually a studio. We played mostly Chris’ music, though Mike contributed one piece and I, two, one of which was Under.

Under was certainly one of my earliest pieces to incorporate a polychord along with extended chords from more exotic modal sources along with slash chords. A polychord is two actual chords, usually triads, one placed on top of the other with a horizontal line between the chord names while a slash chord is a chord name separated from its bass note by a forward slash.

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In Unknown Dust the melody is an extension of the harmony not only linearly but rhythmically, emanating from the arpeggiated accompaniment figure, which in turn flows from the single note bass line.

Note the modal designations in lieu of chord names.

The melody and arpeggiated accompaniment in Upon Us created a distinct yet flowing counterpoint.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Vakma is a jazz waltz and the melody makes use of hemiola to intensify the swing feel.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The A section of Valuka relies on the melody alone to signal the commencement of every measure as the chordal figures roll out at 1&, so the melody is an intrinsic part of the chord.

The juxtaposition of F(add#4) voiced with the adjacent half step of #4 and 5, and the whole step of the 2nd and 3rd of A(add2) and then again the half step of G and Ab in Db(add#4) come from root, F, A and Db that are equidistantly a major 3rd about and form an augmented triad.

The harmony of the B section is primarily defined by modal designations with the full chords in the lower staff.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Varsha’s harmony is essentially extended modal suggesting 5ths and 4ths while its initial melody suggests 12/8 time through triplets in 4/4 and relaxes as the piece progresses.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of UNDER are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Under G

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Upon Us G

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If we look at the first 4 bars…

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

…and remove the bass notes indicated in the chord symbols we are left with these triads: B(sus4)/ B/ D/ D. So while we have a triad that moves up a major 3rd, the bass notes, none of which are in the upper triads, first descend, then ascend.

All the while we hear each combination of triad and bass note as single sonorities with the non-triadic bass lines affecting both the written melody and the improviser’s line.

For the notation of The Churn, a waltz with deceptively simple harmony and some rhythm slash hits, I again indicated the chord changes with chord symbols only. Like Tectus above, much of the piece’s harmony have two characteristics, sophisticated modally derived chords and slash-chords that also contain simple triads with added note bass notes, e.g., Amaj7#5 = a Db major triad with an A, Db’s b6, in the bass (Db/A).

This means both the melody and/or the improvised line can determine the harmonic origin of the chord. Amaj7#5 is the 3rd mode of F# melodic minor, which, besides the chord tones gives us additionally B, D# and F#. I’m sure you noticed that those three notes are a B major triad. So hearing an Amaj7#5 this way we can have both a Db and B triad with the A note.

If we think of Amaj7#5 as a Db major triad with an added b6 (A), then one possible origin is Db harmonic major. Now, besides the chord tones we have Eb, Gb and C, which is a Co triad.

There are many other possibilities as well, evidenced by the myriad linear possibilities implied by this kind of harmony.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

With The New Room, yet another waltz, we have a long tone based melody and 4 bar harmonic rhythm. This type of piece allows the improviser to simultaneously dig deep and soar over the static harmonies.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

While is it again a piece notated with only melody and chord symbols, perhaps the most interesting features of The Obedient Earth are the enigmatic connections and symbiosis between seemingly unrelated chords.

This may be attributed to common tones but there is also something mysterious going on, as if there are hidden harmonic systems at work that can’t be explained conventionally, though they can be intuited.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The Only Real Customer’s melody, which consists of rapid phrases followed by much space is contrasted by a repeating minimalist figure in the bottom staff in alternating measures of 7/8 and 6/8.

The seven 8th notes from the first measure are repeated in the second minus the last 8th note. These two bars are now repeated until only a slight change of the first pitch of each measure three times in the B section until settling on the opening figure of A section that is repeated in the last 4 bars.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The Shepherd is particularly unusual in that it has a quick harmonic rhythm with frequent time signature changes, yet it is notated with only melody and chord symbol rather than notated harmonic accompaniment figures to help navigate the time changes.

Though more challenging to perform, it frees the chordal players into to create they’re own rhythmic patterns and voicings for the chords .

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Two Banners is a piece with a single line, although there are chord changes. At bar 14 it becomes harmonized. It’s written in both trebel and bass clef on separate charts.

and

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of TECTUS are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Tectus

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The New Room

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The Shepherd

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The melody of Sakronakari weaves through the syncopated counterpoint of the bass and shifting triads that appear in the midst of it all.

While the triads together with the bass notes create larger structures including slash chords, it’s interesting to investigate the triads themselves. In the cases of slash chords the triads are named. Ab/D is an Ab major triad over a D bass note and Ab(add2)/C is an Ab(sus2) over a C bass. Because the C happens to be the 3rd of Ab, it changes the suspended 2nd into an added 2nd.

It is less clear what the triad is in a chord like Cmaj7#5. With maj7#5 chords, the root, in this case C, can be viewed as the b6 of the inherent triad, so Cmaj7#5 = E/C. The hiddened triad is and E major triad with a C in the bass.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Saturned is an example of a piece with a somewhat simple melody in 5/8 over modal arpeggios and which for the first 9 measure begin with a low D, implying a pedal tone.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The chordal figures in Sharada have a long harmonic rhythm. The first two harmonies, Amaj7(#11)/C# and Cmaj7#5 last 8 bars each.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

From measure 42 - 57 the rhythm morphs into polyrhythmic arpeggios of 5:4.

The melody throughout Sharada emphasizes the modal origin of the harmony.

I remember writing Shoots in the apartment on the corner of Mott St. and Prince St. in NYC, where I lived in 1987. I wrote with pencil in thin, blank manuscript with light brown cardboard covers I’d get, I think for $1.99, at a stationary store on Canal St.

I composed Shoots with just melody and chord changes (chord names only) but for the version here I fleshed out some of the chords in notation while putting only a notated bass note under the chord name for others.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The occasional wide intervallic jumps of Sikali’s melody mirror the shapes of the accompanying arpeggios. With some upper triad movement similar to Sakronakari , the harmony also contains some chords, like Bmaj7(#11) and Abmaj7(#11), which were derived as tertian structures but could also be seen as quartal chords, depending on voicing.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of Shoots are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

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In all cases with the dominant seventh chords (C7, etc.) the upper voices are b9,#9,#11(or b5) and 13. The diminished seventh chords (Dbo7, etc.) have a particularly interesting structure: R,2,b3,4,b5,b6,bb7 and maj7.

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While this can provide excellent melodic material for improvising over the standard jazz repertoire, but for new compositions there is a wealth of harmonic possibilities inherent in the patterns that emerge. A source for these possibilities is the same source that master improvisor John Coltrane was directed to by his teacher John Sandole, Nicolas Slonimsky’s book, Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns.



In the chapter that Slomonsky calls Sesquitone Progression/ Equal Division of One Octave into Four Parts, he shows via melodic patterns that we can have, among other things, multiple chord qualities from the same root. This is an enormously helpful work for seeing what sonic shapes are inherent in scales and patterns. Slominsky uses intervallic variation to create a myriad of patterns, we can arrange the material so we have it at our disposal.

From C Half Step/Whole Step the triads are:

Besides added notes, sevenths and upper voices, each triad can have any note from the scale as a bass note, creating a slash chord.

An Application of the Bartók Pole Theory
“Every art has a right to strike it’s roots in the art of a previous age; it not only has a right but must stem from it.” - Bela Bartók

Ernő Lendvai, in his book Bela Bartók - An Anaysis of His Music, describes Bartok’s Axis System. We will look at this in detail in relation to composing for improvisors in the future, but for now will look at the part that puts the symmetrical diminished scale in perspective so that its possibilities don’t seem so unwieldy. This is the Pole Theory.

According to Bartók, the Tonic Axis creates two poles that cross each other at a 90º angle. Imagine this as a clock face. The root of the scale or chord resides at 12:00, we will use C. At its polar opposite, 6:00, is F#. This is the primary pole. The secondary pole goes from 9:00 to 3:00 and vice versa. At 3:00 is Eb and at 9:00 is A.

What this means is that at equidistant points in the scale we have parallel identical chord types. Tritone substitutions are common for improvisors, which is the primary pole but now we see that the addition of the secondary pole gives us a circle of chords a distance of a minor third, a tritone and a major sixth from each other that are substitutable for each other.

This also explains why there are only two modes from an eight-tone scale. The exact pattern repeats every minor third.

This is why all tones in the symmetrical diminished scale can be seen as aspects of the root. If the root is C, then an A major triad is the 13th,b9 and 5 of C. An F# triad is #11,b7 and b9 of C and an Eb triad is #9(or b3),5 and b7 of C and so on.

So when a more traditional C7 chord may be used it is possible, depending on context, to instead use A/D# or F#/A, etc.

Copyright © 1993-2026 Jack DeSalvo

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Altering one note changes the color, character and meaning of the scale and the modes that emanate from it. In C, the triad is major, C, the seventh chord is Cmaj7 and the upper voices are 9,11&13. The structure of the Harmonic Major scale is R,2,3,4,5,b6,7.

The triad and seventh chord remain the same as in Major but the b6 gives us a b13 in the upper voices and the interval of an augmented second/minor third between the sixth and seventh degrees of the mode. This produces a profoundly different color and affects the entire character of a composition.

Juxtaposing Major and Lydian modes from the same root reveals a subtle yet distinct color difference. Let’s stretch these modes into extended arpeggios by placing the notes in ascending thirds:
Major: R,3,5,7,9,11,13 Lydian: R,3,5,7,9,#11,13

To really hear this distinction it’s best to play a major triad or a maj7 chord and then improvise a short melody using the major scale and then do it again but use the lydian mode. The mood itself is different. Note that the word mode is related to the word mood, from the Proto-Germanic root moda and related to the Sanskrit mod.

The Altered Scale

In an effort to have melodic linear sources that provided even more upper voice coloration, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and their colleagues and followers, used heptatonic modes enharmonically to provide more than one altered ninth on a dominant seventh chord.

The extended arpeggio for the Super Locrian mode looks like this: R,b3,b5,b7,b9,b11,b13
If viewed enharmonically the b3 becomes #9, the b11 becomes 3, b5 can be #11 or b5 and the b13 can be either #5 or b13. The result is referred to as the Altered Scale, R,3,b5(or #11),#5(or b13),b7,b9 and #9 with the symbol C7alt used if taken from the Db Melodic Minor system.

Symmetrical Scales

Evidence of symmetrical scales and patterns in improvisation began appearing with the infusion of the mixture of intellect and rhythm that is referred to as BeBop. These same improvisors found that the symmetrical scales used by some early 20th century European classical composers, including Bartok, Ravel and Debussy, provided even more variation on upper voices over certain chords.

A symmetrical scale with intervals of alternating half-steps and whole steps adds not only additional colors, but the resolving tendency of this intervalic pattern pushes the melodic possibilities in non-heptatonic directions.

The Chromatic Scale, the ultimate Symmetrical Scale, 12 equal-tempered tones with a half-step in between each tone started appearing in small ways in the late baroque and then in a big way with Bach. It is, however, the other Symmetrical Scales that produce unique color combinations over conventional chords as well as providing harmonies not found in the heptatonic landscapes.

Here we see how the Half Step/Whole Step Symmetrical Diminished scale affects a dominant seventh chord with G as root: Mode: R,b2,#2,3,#4,5,6 and b7

As an extended arpeggio: R,3,5,7,b9,#9,#11,13 (G13b9,#9,#11)

So this scale can apply to any variations of a G7 with those specific voices: G7, G7(b9), G7(#9), G7(#11), G13, etc.

Perhaps the most distinctive feature about the Half Step/Whole Step Symmetrical Diminished scale is that it identical in the tones it produces as:

• A Whole Step/Half Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a half step higher.

• A Half Step/Whole Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a minor third above, A Whole Step/Half Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a half step higher than that.

• A Half Step/Whole Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a tritone (two minor thirds above), A Whole Step/Half Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a half step higher than that.

• A Half Step/Whole Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a minor third below the original scale (three minor thirds above it). A Whole Step/Half Step Symmetrical Diminished scale starting a half step higher than that.

So these would be its modes. Another way to see it is that the symmetrical diminished scales are two diminished seventh chords a half-step apart. Like diminished seventh chords in which the same four notes appear every minor 3rd, with the symmetrical diminished scale and its modes, the same eight notes appear every minor 3rd.

The Whole Tone Scale and the Symmetrical Augmented Scale

Two important scales that are both symmetrical and hexatonic are the Whole Tone Scale and the Symmetrical Augmented Scale. They are both centered on the augmented triad, and add additional voices to the triads contained within. In fact, the Symmetrical Augmented Scale produces an extraordinary amount of chord qualities from its six notes.

The Whole Tone Scale

The Whole Tone Scale is simply every other note from the Chromatic Scale. Its modes start on every whole step. It produces an augmented triad, [+], an augmented seventh chord, [7#5] and [9#5] and [9#5(#11)]. Because it is all whole steps it produces the same quality chords on every scale tone. If spread into thirds you have an augmented triad on the root and an augmented triad built on the b7.

The Symmetrical Augmented Scale

The unique structure of this hexatonic scale linearly is minor 3rd/half-step/minor 3rd/half-step/minor 3rd/half-step. This repeats every major third. The first mode then is half-step/minor 3rd/half-step/minor 3rd/half-step/minor 3rd. This also repeats every major third.

What we find is two augmented triads a half step apart. To get the full six note chord and arpeggio you can place a B+ triad on top of a C+ triad.

OK, what is with this double-sharp 11? While you do see it in some very exotic heptatonic scales we realize that Fx, (F double-sharp) is enharmonically the same as G, the fifths. We also see that there is already a #5 present, so we have the possibility of two different 5ths. Or a 5th and a flat 13. It's necessary to view this scale enharmonically to see all its possibilities.

This way we can view the #5 alternately as a b13 (b6), the #9 (#2) as a b3 and the x11 as a natural 5. Triad-wise we then have a C ,C+ and Cm! For seventh chords there are Cmaj7, Cmaj7#5 and Cm(maj7), and even Cm(maj7)#5 if you want.

Possible chords with upper voices can be Cmaj7(#9,b13), Cmaj7#5(#9) and all of these chords repeat with a new root every major 3rd, E, E+, Em, Ab, Ab+, Abm, etc. Starting on the other three notes, D#/Eb, Fx/G and B will give you inversions of the already mentioned chords.

For the very same reason that heptatonic modal names are used, other scalar designations can be applied to define moving harmonies. Below we have Symmetrical Scales and their Modal Symbols.

These are listed as:

Mode: Half Step/Whole Step Modal Symbol: C h/w sym dim

Symmetrical Diminished Scale
Half Step/Whole Step: C h/w sym dim
Whole step/Half Step: Db w/h sym dim

Whole Tone Scale
Whole Tone: C w/t

Symmetrical Augmented Scale
Minor Third/Half Step Symmetrical Augmented: C sym aug
Half Step/Minor Third Symmetrical Augmented: Eb h/min3 sym aug

It's an ancient premise that you can't actually teach someone to truly compose music or write poetry or create in any of the arts. The reason being that humans already have access to this knowledge. This brings to mind Plato's dialogue Meno. In it, Socrates coaxes a young boy to give the correct answer to a complex mathematical problems, specifically the Pythagorean theorem.

Raphael's The School of Athens

Then why then should anyone bother to write about composing music and especially music for improvisers?

First there's the aforementioned coaxing. And for thousands of years we have been acculturated to view only things occurring in three dimensional space as real or valuable and to see things that occur, or at least originate, in other dimensions, spheres, the unseen, as fantasy.

Examining the process of artistic creation can help to show that it is indeed possible to bring information from unseen sources and what some of the possibilities are.

The quest, then, is to find the essential area of ourselves where this knowledge is.

Clearly, it doesn’t exist in the ego or personality where we have easy access. It is rarer than rare when it reveals itself full blown as with Mozart. It can appear in snippets when one works in earnest. It then becomes crucial to be aware when this happens. When you recognize your true voice it appears more often.

This is the Dutch alchemist translating mediaeval Arab texts and encountering a moment of illumination. This is Bach coming upon the exquisite architecture of his ideas, later to be notated, while improvising on the organ. This is John Coltrane finding a spiral of infinite melodic shapes through his relentless search.

The improvising musician, composer or serious listener who is following an improvised solo by listening through its contours can distinguish what is coming from the player’s own voice and what are patterns, however well crafted, taken from recorded or transcribed performances of other musicians.

After monumental artists like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane opened doors to worlds of possibilities, untold numbers of players mimicked the results without inhabiting those worlds in a way that the music could enfold through their own voices. This results is a degradation of apparent possibilities.

Transcribing or studying transcriptions or studying by ear alone need not lead to new performances filled with constant quotes from famous solos. but the player who uses primarily fragments of other players’ solos to construct his or her own “style” is contributing to a more and more limited future for improvised music, no matter how well executed the mimicry may be.
Yes, it can be argued that there is a jazz language. If this means exploring, especially by ear, the precise contours of the recorded improvisations of recognized virtuosi from the middle of the twentieth century, like Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, then you are using a process that is literally as old as human culture, albeit with the help of technology.

It is then the province of each improviser and one who composes for improvisers to expand this language. What was considered jazz language in 1960 was very different from what it was in 1930.

Besides this, music, like water, accepts the flowing in of new, foreign, ancient, unfamiliar sounds. So it is just as crucial for the composer and the improviser to allow other languages to penetrate.

The composer/improviser cultivates something as natural and a part of us as our skin or our hair.

We must use cunning and a passionate search for consciousness to provide a vessel for the music and all its aspects to emanate from deep within ourselves rather than from the surface of our intellect or from imitating an outside source.

This is a Free Article for everyone, please consider joining our paid subscriber community for complete access to the Composing for Improvisers archive for a trove of material for both the composer and the improviser.

Post scriptum;

Here is my piece The Other Side. I wrote it thinking of my dear old friend and former college roommate Bruce Davison, a great musician. At that point (and still) I lived in New York and he in Los Angeles, the other side…

Next: The Heritage of Artistic Revelation

Copyright © 1993-2023 DeSalvo

Above is a video of the piece Anantam, below are both PDF versions of the music, free to download.

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Anantam P

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We take a brief break from the alphabetized/chronological of music I’ve written specifically for improvising musician to take look at a few much more recent works. So recent, that most of these have been written in the last few weeks.

I’ve gotten back to writing just about every day. The music is so new that it has not been performed or rehearsed yet except maybe by me on guitar or piano. Maybe not even that. I write pencil to paper and don’t play it until afterwards. Often the first time I hear it other than in my head is after I enter it into Sibelius and play it back.

I won’t say much about this music because it’s too new. I’ll come back to that in the future.

As is always the case, many pieces are marked g or p (Stone Upon Stone g, Stone Upon Stone p) because when there are two staves per system, pieces marked g, as in guitar, notate the bottom staff in treble clef and pieces marked p, as in piano, have the bottom staff in bass clef. Both types can be used as charts for any instrument type, though obviously it’s necessary to transpose the pieces for Bb and Eb, etc. instruments.

So here are a number of very recent pieces, in no particular order in video form, where you can watch the notation while you hear a virtual piano version of it and Free Downloadable PDFs of the pieces.

Suvaya (video)

Suvaya (Free PDF Downloads)

Suvaya G

Suvaya G

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Suvaya P

Suvaya P

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By Paths of His Own (Video)

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By Paths Of His Own G

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Composing for Improvisers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Next time we will continue with our historical view of all of my compositions for improvisors, picking it up in the midst of 1987.

All music in all mediums above are Copyright © 2026 Jack DeSalvo

Anantam (video)

Above is a video of the piece Anantam, below are both PDF versions of the music, free to download.

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We take a brief break from the alphabetized/chronological of music I’ve written specifically for improvising musician to take look at a few much more recent works. So recent, that most of these have been written in the last few weeks.

I’ve gotten back to writing just about every day. The music is so new that it has not been performed or rehearsed yet except maybe by me on guitar or piano. Maybe not even that. I write pencil to paper and don’t play it until afterwards. Often the first time I hear it other than in my head is after I enter it into Sibelius and play it back.

I won’t say much about this music because it’s too new. I’ll come back to that in the future.

As is always the case, many pieces are marked g or p (Stone Upon Stone g, Stone Upon Stone p) because when there are two staves per system, pieces marked g, as in guitar, notate the bottom staff in treble clef and pieces marked p, as in piano, have the bottom staff in bass clef. Both types can be used as charts for any instrument type, though obviously it’s necessary to transpose the pieces for Bb and Eb, etc. instruments.

So here are a number of very recent pieces, in no particular order in video form, where you can watch the notation while you hear a virtual piano version of it and Free Downloadable PDFs of the pieces.

Suvaya (video)

Suvaya (Free PDF Downloads)

Suvaya G

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Suvaya P

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Paths of His Own (Video)

By Paths Of His Own P

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Paths of His Own (Free PDF Downloads)

By Paths Of His Own G

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By Paths Of His Own P

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Stone Upon Stone (Video)

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Next time we will continue with our historical view of all of my compositions for improvisors, picking it up in the midst of 1987.

All music in all mediums above are Copyright © 2026 Jack DeSalvo

In the above video you can hear and follow the piece Psomas. Both PDF sheet music versions (one with second staff in bass clef and the other with both in trebel clef) are free to download.

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The first thing an improviser with likely notice with Psomas is the consistently alternating 5/8 and 4/8 measures. A seamless rhythm is achieved by counting 12312/1212. The initial chord is designated as Eb lydian because the melody suggests the entire lydian environment, though the chord chould be called Eb(add2)#4.

The melody itself has the brightness of a brass fanfare, though it can be expressed through any instrument.

Prince St. Station was probably the closest subway hub to the apartment I had for 15 years in lower Manhattan. I had just moved there and proceeded to paste flyers all around announcing guitar lessons, These flyers were hand made, xeroxed, as we referred to copying then, with little tabs at the bottom with my phone number on them. I was 22.

A 27 year old resident of the Bronx who worked at his family’s greasy spoon in Soho found a flyer at Prince St. Station and called me for jazz guitar lessons. This was Neil Hora, now the late Neil Hora.

A profoundly funny person in the Don Rickles tradition, we became close friends. We stayed, to different degrees, in each others’ lives until his passing in 2018. The stories I could tell, and have told, about Neil would fill volumes.

Besides his own development as a guitarist, Neil always supported my work, including executive producing a number of tracks from my first duo album with the great Tom Cabrera, Tales of Coming Home. Prince St. Station, a solely linear piece with uniqie resolutions, is dedicated to Neil.

Interestingly, Quum also has time signature changes, though not every measure and primarily to accommodate different melodic phrase lengths.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Refuge stays in 5/4 through and features most open voicings, though at times inner voices may be close, like the F# and G half-step placed in the midst of two perfect 5ths in the C(sus2)#4 and the minor 3rd on top of two perfect 5ths in the A(sus2,4).

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

From measures 1-6 and 17-22 in Relicus, you can see how two very different chords and be derived from a common modal origin. In a different context C/F and Dbmaj7(#9) would seem far removed from each other, especially if the #9 wasn’t added.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

While I am not necessarily a exponent of the tarot, I had an uncanny experience at a New Years Eve part on December 31, 1987. Julie Dukas, a jazz flutist who was at the time the partner of my friend and consistent bandstand mate Tony DeCicco, was reading tarot cards for anyone who was interested at the party. With curiosity but with a lighthearted attitude I got my reading.

It was an extremely positive reading covering all of the following year with each generalized prediction panning out in a very specific manner. My life changed dramatically. Naturally the piece I wrote earlier in the evening before leaving for the party was later called The Dukas Tarot.

Composing for Improvisers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of Psoras are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Psomas G

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Psomas P

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Quum G

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Quum P

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Refuge G

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Refuge P

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Relicus G

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Relicus P

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In the above video you can hear and follow the piece Psomas. Both PDF sheet music versions (one with second staff in bass clef and the other with both in trebel clef) are free to download.

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The first thing an improviser will likely notice with Psomas is the consistently alternating 5/8 and 4/8 measures. A seamless rhythm is achieved by counting 12312/1212. The initial chord is designated as Eb lydian because the melody suggests the entire lydian environment, though the chord chould be called Eb(add2)#4.

The melody itself has the brightness of a brass fanfare, though it can be expressed through any instrument.

Prince St. Station was probably the closest subway hub to the apartment I had for 15 years in lower Manhattan. I had just moved there and proceeded to paste flyers all around announcing guitar lessons, These flyers were hand made, xeroxed, as we referred to copying then, with little tabs at the bottom with my phone number on them. I was 22.

A 27 year old resident of the Bronx who worked at his family’s greasy spoon in Soho found a flyer at Prince St. Station and called me for jazz guitar lessons. This was Neil Hora, now the late Neil Hora.

A profoundly funny person in the Don Rickles tradition, we became close friends. We stayed, to different degrees, in each others’ lives until his passing in 2018. The stories I could tell, and have told, about Neil would fill volumes.

Besides his own development as a guitarist, Neil always supported my work, including executive producing a number of tracks from my first duo album with the great Tom Cabrera, Tales of Coming Home. Prince St. Station, a solely linear piece with uniqie resolutions, is dedicated to Neil.

Interestingly, Quum also has time signature changes, though not every measure and primarily to accommodate different melodic phrase lengths.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Refuge stays in 5/4 through and features most open voicings, while at times inner voices may be close, like the F# and G half-step placed in the midst of two perfect 5ths in the C(sus2)#4 and the minor 3rd on top of two perfect 5ths in the A(sus2,4).

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

From measures 1-6 and 17-22 in Relicus, you can see how two very different chords and be derived from a common modal origin. In a different context C/F and Dbmaj7(#9) would seem far removed from each other, especially if the #9 wasn’t added.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

While I am not necessarily a exponent of the tarot, I had an uncanny experience at a New Years Eve part on December 31, 1987. Julie Dukas, a jazz flutist who was at the time the partner of my friend and consistent bandstand mate Tony DeCicco, was reading tarot cards for anyone who was interested at the party. With curiosity but with a lighthearted attitude I got my reading.

It was an extremely positive reading covering all of the following year with each generalized prediction panning out in a very specific manner. My life changed dramatically. Naturally the piece I wrote earlier in the evening before leaving for the party was later called The Dukas Tarot.

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of Psoras are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Psomas G

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Psomas P

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Robert Bly (photo:NYTimes)

Where we must look for help

The dove returns; it found no resting place;
It was in flight all night above the shaken seas.
Beneath Ark eaves
The dove shall magnify the tiger’s bed;
Give the dove peace.
The split-tail swallows leave the sill at dawn;
At dusk blue swallows shall return.
On the third day the crow shall fly;
The crow, the crow, the spider-colored crow,
The crow shall find new mud to walk upon.
— Robert Bly, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems]

New Mud was indeed what I was looking for. In 1987 I was writing every single. I never thought,”Oh, now I’ll write a waltz”, or even, “Today it’ll be a 16 bar free-bop piece”, etc. It was always, “I will begin to put pencil to paper”, and whatever came out, came out.

But in the back of my mind I wanted to give a new home to a so-called free-bop piece that might materialize. A bassline that reacts to, yet counters, the melody; a driving swing, with an angular groove that would spill into free solos that would have an inevitability about them.

From this seemingly loose concept, New Mud emerged.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Yes, I’m referring to the Grendel from Beowulf. We must all contend with Many Grendels during our various incarnations. This piece is simply a melody and bassline.

The melody in Mamora is shaped by the syncopated triads, often suspended and added-note chords that shift over different bass notes.

Morning Rust is blues-based line with added larger intervals in a call and response manner. The line develops only slightly, almost imperceptibly. While it’s 12-bars repeated it is not a traditional blues form, but rather AAB with each sort section being 4 bars and a resolution only on the second ending.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The first 8 measures of Nadur investigates what initially seemed to be a C triad with both a 5th and a #5 added. Then I thought that it must be a first inversion Abmaj7#5, which would contain the same pitches, C, E, G and Ab(G#).

When the melodic bursts came to me I realize this was from C harmonic major, So ultimately the chord, or in this case, the arpeggio is C(add b6).

The piece develops with new harmonies entering and a somewhat unusual 5/4 form with a repeated 13-bar A section and 4-bar B section.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Narrowest Road is a somewhat folky, not-quite-ballad that manages to, traditionally speaking, modulate from C to A by way of, many other potential fundamentals in what could be considered a Picardy third of the relative minor of C.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

New Bridge Crossing can be seen somewhat as a precursor to New Mud. The bass part and melody were written first and then harmonized with fast moving dominant 7th chords and a few maj7 and maj7(#11) chords.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

New Room is a fast 3, “1”, if you like with 4-bar harmonic rhythm, long melody tones and chords somewhat in search of resolution but not specifically dominant chords.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

With Now That It Is we have two lines, both syncopated and contrapuntal with an angular, bluesy contour.

Nuvole is an atypical jazz waltz with a mix of (sus2) triads, slash chords and modal chords that tend to reshape each previous chord.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The complete PDF sheet music for NEW MUD

is free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

New Mud

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Marmora P

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Marmora G

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Morning Rust

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Nadur G

33.4KB ∙ PDF file

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Nadur P

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Narrowest Road G

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Narrowest Road P

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New Bridge Crossing

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New Room

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Now That It Is

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Nuvole

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Robert Bly (photo:NYTimes)

Where we must look for help

The dove returns; it found no resting place;
It was in flight all night above the shaken seas.
Beneath Ark eaves
The dove shall magnify the tiger's bed;
Give the dove peace.
The split-tail swallows leave the sill at dawn;
At dusk blue swallows shall return.
On the third day the crow shall fly;
The crow, the crow, the spider-colored crow,
The crow shall find new mud to walk upon.
— Robert Bly, Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems]

New Mud was indeed what I was looking for. In 1987 I was writing every single day. I never thought,”Oh, now I’ll write a waltz”, or even, “Today it’ll be a 16 bar free-bop piece”, etc. It was always, “I will begin to put pencil to paper”, and whatever came out, came out.

But in the back of my mind I wanted to give a new home to a so-called free-bop piece that might materialize. A bassline that reacts to, yet counters, the melody; a driving swing, with an angular groove that would spill into free solos that would have an inevitability about them.

From this seemingly loose concept, New Mud emerged.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Yes, I’m referring to the Grendel from Beowulf. We must all contend with Many Grendels during our various incarnations. This piece is simply a melody and bassline.

The melody in Mamora is shaped by the syncopated triads, often suspended and added-note chords that shift over different bass notes.

Morning Rust is blues-based line with added larger intervals in a call and response manner. The line develops only slightly, almost imperceptibly. While it’s 12-bars repeated it is not a traditional blues form, but rather AAB with each sort section being 4 bars and a resolution only on the second ending.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The first 8 measures of Nadur investigates what initially seemed to be a C triad with both a 5th and a #5 added. Then I thought that it must be a first inversion Abmaj7#5, which would contain the same pitches, C, E, G and Ab(G#).

When the melodic bursts came to me I realize this was from C harmonic major, So ultimately the chord, or in this case, the arpeggio is C(add b6).

The piece develops with new harmonies entering and a somewhat unusual 5/4 form with a repeated 13-bar A section and 4-bar B section.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Narrowest Road is a somewhat folky, not-quite-ballad that manages to, traditionally speaking, modulate from C to A by way of, many other potential fundamentals in what could be considered a Picardy third of the relative minor of C.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

New Bridge Crossing can be seen somewhat as a precursor to New Mud. The bass part and melody were written first and then harmonized with fast moving dominant 7th chords and a few maj7 and maj7(#11) chords.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

New Room is a fast 3, “1”, if you like with 4-bar harmonic rhythm, long melody tones and chords somewhat in search of resolution but not specifically dominant chords.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

With Now That It Is we have two lines, both syncopated and contrapuntal with an angular, bluesy contour.

Nuvole is an atypical jazz waltz with a mix of (sus2) triads, slash chords and modal chords that tend to reshape each previous chord.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The complete PDF sheet music for NEW MUD is free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

New Mud

39.8KB ∙ PDF file

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During the period that I wrote Labyrinth I was focusing much of my listening to Keith Jarrett’s American quartet, with Dewey Redmond, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. I was very familiar with their earlier recordings but at the time it was Eyes of the Heart and Survivor’s Suite, both on the ECM label, that I was thinking about.

It was under this influence that I wrote Labyrinth. Other than a 4 bar interlude, the entire piece is an ostinato bass line and the melody, with cadence and a sort of turn around created solely by the melody while the bass line continues.

The solos are over this bass line but during the solos the bass line can be varied freely by the player to help open up the solos over a 2 bar, 6/4 line suggesting both D aeolian and harmonic minor.

Leaving That Way is a line made up of constantly modulating phrases. It is to played with a swing feel and joins the hundereds of pieces I’ve written in this manner, influenced by Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodic concept with open solos.

Like Those Before initially is long bass tones with a melody that spells out the harmony. As the piece develops the bass line presents a syncopated 16th note phrase that soon seems transferred to the melody, continuing to more choral figures.

Though also consisting of frequently modulating phrases, Loam differs from Leaving That Way in key ways. Rhythmically Loam is meant to be interpreted with an even 8th note feel and the phases themselves, no matter how far they traverse, all lead back to an E fundamental.

Near the southern tip of New Jersey the Delaware Bay is so wide that you can’t see the far shore. There is, or at leaset there was in 1897, a very long pier jutting so far out that on a gray, misty morning it appears to extend into an abyss. This was the atmosphere that inspired Long Pier Over Delaware Bay.

Lonico is characterized by mostly modal designations as chord symbols. On the rare occasion that I want to indicate what is generally known as the half-step/whole step symmetrical diminished scale as well as Messiaen’s second mode of limited transposition and has a number of other names. So why not just called it sym dim, as in symmetrical diminished? Because it alternates with its mode whole step/half-step symmetrical diminished scale.

I have seen dom dim used, standing for dominant diminished, and this makes sense to me since the half/whole version is used primarily to generate dominant 7th chords.

Looking For the Center has two distinct ostinato basslines, one in 5/4 and the other, in the next section, in 6/4. The melody os generated by the fundamental, C, but with phrases from parallel modes superimposed.

Lunatu, not to be confused with Lonico, has modally derived harmonic phrases in successive groups of 3/4, 5/8 and 5/8 fit into two measures of 4/4 with melody matching or nearly matching the modal sources.

The complete PDF sheet music for LABYRINTH is free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to download for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music, as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Labyrinth

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During the period that I wrote Labyrinth I was focusing much of my listening to Keith Jarrett’s American quartet, with Dewey Redmond, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. I was very familiar with their earlier recordings but at the time it was Eyes of the Heart and Survivor’s Suite, both on the ECM label, that I was thinking about.

It was under this influence that I wrote Labyrinth. Other than a 4 bar interlude, the entire piece is an ostinato bass line and the melody, with cadence and a sort of turn around created solely by the melody while the bass line continues.

The solos are over this bass line but during the solos the bass line can be varied freely by the player to help open up the solos over a 2 bar, 6/4 line suggesting both D aeolian and harmonic minor.

Leaving That Way is a line made up of constantly modulating phrases. It is to played with a swing feel and joins the hundereds of pieces I’ve written in this manner, influenced by Ornette Coleman’s Harmolodic concept with open solos.

Like Those Before initially is long bass tones with a melody that spells out the harmony. As the piece develops the bass line presents a syncopated 16th note phrase that soon seems transferred to the melody, continuing to more choral figures.

Though also consisting of frequently modulating phrases, Loam differs from Leaving That Way in key ways. Rhythmically Loam is meant to be interpreted with an even 8th note feel and the phases themselves, no matter how far they traverse, all lead back to an E fundamental.

Near the southern tip of New Jersey the Delaware Bay is so wide that you can’t see the far shore. There is, or at leaset there was in 1897, a very long pier jutting so far out that on a gray, misty morning it appears to extend into an abyss. This was the atmosphere that inspired Long Pier Over Delaware Bay.

Lonico is characterized by mostly modal designations as chord symbols. On the rare occasion that I want to indicate what is generally known as the half-step/whole step symmetrical diminished scale as well as Messiaen’s second mode of limited transposition and has a number of other names. So why not just called it sym dim, as in symmetrical diminished? Because it alternates with its mode whole step/half-step symmetrical diminished scale.

I have seen dom dim used, standing for dominant diminished, and this makes sense to me since the half/whole version is used primarily to generate dominant 7th chords.

Looking For the Center has two distinct ostinato basslines, one in 5/4 and the other, in the next section, in 6/4. The melody os generated by the fundamental, C, but with phrases from parallel modes superimposed.

Lunatu, not to be confused with Lonico, has modally derived harmonic phrases in successive groups of 3/4, 5/8 and 5/8 fit into two measures of 4/4 with melody matching or nearly matching the modal sources.

The complete PDF sheet music for LABYRINTH is free to download below. Look for the rest of the sheet music discussed above in a few days and join our paid community to access them as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive

Labyrinth

47.5KB ∙ PDF file

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9th C. Musician and Mystic Jakob Lorber

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Traditionally suspended chords, where the 3rd is raised to a 4th or lowered to a 2nd, have been placed in front of a dominant chord or even the tonic chord with the same chord tones except the suspended note (the 4th or the 2nd) is resolved to the 3rd.

In jazz in the 1960s, pianist McCoy Tyner used chords built in the interval of a fourth, mostly three or four note chords, to harmonize shifting pentatonic patterns played by John Coltrane. often the voicing may be something like C, F, Bb, this could be defined as a C7(sus4) with the 5th omitted.

Jazz musicians began using these chords both in their original compositions and in arrangements of standard repertoire as well as comping behind soloists. It became so ubiquitous that the chord symbols began appearing simply as C7(sus) or even C(sus) when C7(sus4) was meant.

What’s unfortunate about that is that any other suspended note other than the 4th is negated and assumed not useful for the improviser, composer of so-called jazz language. A suspended note can be 4, 2, #4 or b2.

With Hio we have a chord that emphasizes both sus2 and sus4.

In the lower staff above we see a D(sus2,4) chord. One of the interesting aspects of this chord is that without the 3rd present, its modal origin has numerous possibilities. From the modes of the major scale alone it could be from major, dorian, mixolydian or aeolian. The melody in Hio takes advantage of the various possibilities, even venturing outside with the appearance of G#.

If you’ve followed Composing for Improvisers for a while you’d know I emphasize knowledge of the myriad modal possibilities, heptatonic or otherwise. This is so one has the materials necessary for composing and improvising music. Certain styles of music, however, require the addition of other elements or even a different approach.

To play authentically in certain styles of music, jazz in particular, it is important to note that current styles of music were initially a combination of older folk music and popular music that was contemporary with the origin of what is now a current style.

While now containing many elements, Jazz, for instance, was initially a combination of the blues and popular music of the 20th century. The earliest jazz improvisers applied blues phrasing, melodic material and other elements of African-American folk music as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th century to popular song. This was elevated to sophisticated large ensemble treatment by Duke Ellington.

The Bebop style of jazz that appeared in the 1940s, besides the blues elements, added phrases adapted from the extended harmonies of the French Impressionist composers that would appear in the chord changes of the then popular songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter and others.

The sound of an authentic jazz phrase is best exemplified in a melodic line from a dominant chord resolving to a tonic chord with the resolution point being enclosed melodically by at least one tone from the blues scale inserted into the line.

By doing this the improviser or composer is technically superimposing one scale on top of another. In practice, these combined lines become the learned features of what is considered straight-ahead jazz playing often learned by transcribing and imitating previously recorded performances.

I thought it necessary to mention all that because in Høsttanker (Autumn Thoughts in Norwegian) is a 12 bar line that links jazz blues phrases and resolves them in unexpected places. This not only stems from Charlie Parker and Bebop but also from Ornette Coleman in the 50s and Paul Bley later on where these lines could expand in directions not necessarily dictated by popular songs from the first half of the 20th century.

How It’s Enough features drips of related melody over rhythmic modal figures, using modal designations for chord symbols, e.g., A aeol and Eb lyd/A.

How It’s Enough Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Jagarana also uses modal designations but without specifying a voicing. This means the improvisor who is comping chords can choose any combination of tones from that mode using the written bass tone in the bass. This way the distinct color of the mode is always present but the individual cluster, open voicing or even triad from within the specific mode as well as the rhythmic gestures are chosen by the player.

From bar 17 to the end there are chord symbols with slash added-note and suspended triads.

Jagarana Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Jakob Lorber was a 19th century Austrian violinist who for a period studied with Niccolò Paganini. Not long after a performance at La Scala in Milan he bagan a form of automatic writing, presaging the channeling phenomenon more the 100 years later. He lived most of his life at Graz in Austria.

Jakob Lorber Stayed at Graz has an initial melody in A harmonic major over ascending and descending arpeggios of an A major triad with a 4th added. It continues with similar figures with new harmonies and melodic lines emanating from those harmonies.

Jalasar is a piece in 5/8 with a harmonic rhythm with figures of dotted quarter notes and quarter notes alternating with figures of quarter notes and dotted quarter notes.

In jazz most pieces in 3/4 are referred to as waltzes and Justa certainly fits that definition with a melodic hemiola in the first measure and phrases, those occasionally syncopated, flow over a large collection of chord types, including slash chords, suspended triads with a different note in the bass, m7(b13) chords, etc.

Juxta Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Knee Deep is a short piece with dramatic chord changes including, as below, triads with the b2 in the bass.

Composing for Improvisers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of HIO are free to download below. All the rest of the music discussed above is available to downloads for our paid community as PDF Sheet Music.

Hio P

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Hio G

35.9KB ∙ PDF file

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19th C. Musician and Mystic Jakob Lorber

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Traditionally suspended chords, where the 3rd is raised to a 4th or lowered to a 2nd, have been placed in front of a dominant chord or even the tonic chord with the same chord tones except the suspended note (the 4th or the 2nd) is resolved to the 3rd.

In jazz in the 1960s, pianist McCoy Tyner used chords built in the interval of a fourth, mostly three or four note chords, to harmonize shifting pentatonic patterns played by John Coltrane. often the voicing may be something like C, F, Bb, this could be defined as a C7(sus4) with the 5th omitted.

Jazz musicians began using these chords both in their original compositions and in arrangements of standard repertoire as well as comping behind soloists. It became so ubiquitous that the chord symbols began appearing simply as C7(sus) or even C(sus) when C7(sus4) was meant.

What’s unfortunate about that is that any other suspended note other than the 4th is negated and assumed not useful for the improviser, composer of so-called jazz language. A suspended note can be 4, 2, #4 or b2.

With Hio we have a chord that emphasizes both sus2 and sus4.

In the lower staff above we see a D(sus2,4) chord. One of the interesting aspects of this chord is that without the 3rd present, its modal origin has numerous possibilities. From the modes of the major scale alone it could be from major, dorian, mixolydian or aeolian. The melody in Hio takes advantage of the various possibilities, even venturing outside with the appearance of G#.

If you’ve followed Composing for Improvisers for a while you’d know I emphasize knowledge of the myriad modal possibilities, heptatonic or otherwise. This is so one has the materials necessary for composing and improvising music. Certain styles of music, however, require the addition of other elements or even a different approach.

To play authentically in certain styles of music, jazz in particular, it is important to note that current styles of music were initially a combination of older folk music and popular music that was contemporary with the origin of what is now a current style.

While now containing many elements, Jazz, for instance, was initially a combination of the blues and popular music of the 20th century. The earliest jazz improvisers applied blues phrasing, melodic material and other elements of African-American folk music as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th century to popular song. This was elevated to sophisticated large ensemble treatment by Duke Ellington.

The Bebop style of jazz that appeared in the 1940s, besides the blues elements, added phrases adapted from the extended harmonies of the French Impressionist composers that would appear in the chord changes of the then popular songs of George Gershwin, Cole Porter and others.

The sound of an authentic jazz phrase is best exemplified in a melodic line from a dominant chord resolving to a tonic chord with the resolution point being enclosed melodically by at least one tone from the blues scale inserted into the line.

By doing this the improviser or composer is technically superimposing one scale on top of another. In practice, these combined lines become the learned features of what is considered straight-ahead jazz playing often learned by transcribing and imitating previously recorded performances.

I thought it necessary to mention all that because in Høsttanker (Autumn Thoughts in Norwegian) is a 12 bar line that links jazz blues phrases and resolves them in unexpected places. This not only stems from Charlie Parker and Bebop but also from Ornette Coleman in the 50s and Paul Bley later on where these lines could expand in directions not necessarily dictated by popular songs from the first half of the 20th century.

How It’s Enough features drips of related melody over rhythmic modal figures, using modal designations for chord symbols, e.g., A aeol and Eb lyd/A.

How It’s Enough Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Jagarana also uses modal designations but without specifying a voicing. This means the improvisor who is comping chords can choose any combination of tones from that mode using the written bass tone in the bass. This way the distinct color of the mode is always present but the individual cluster, open voicing or even triad from within the specific mode as well as the rhythmic gestures are chosen by the player.

From bar 17 to the end there are chord symbols with slash added-note and suspended triads.

Jagarana Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Jakob Lorber was a 19th century Austrian violinist who for a period studied with Niccolò Paganini. Not long after a performance at La Scala in Milan he bagan a form of automatic writing, presaging the channeling phenomenon more the 100 years later. He lived most of his life at Graz in Austria.

Jakob Lorber Stayed at Graz has an initial melody in A harmonic major over ascending and descending arpeggios of an A major triad with a 4th added. It continues with similar figures with new harmonies and melodic lines emanating from those harmonies.

Jalasar is a piece in 5/8 with a harmonic rhythm with figures of dotted quarter notes and quarter notes alternating with figures of quarter notes and dotted quarter notes.

In jazz most pieces in 3/4 are referred to as waltzes and Justa certainly fits that definition with a melodic hemiola in the first measure and phrases, those occasionally syncopated, flow over a large collection of chord types, including slash chords, suspended triads with a different note in the bass, m7(b13) chords, etc.

Juxta Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Knee Deep is a short piece with dramatic chord changes including, as below, triads with the b2 in the bass.

The complete PDF sheet music for both versions of HIO are free to download below. Look for the rest of the sheet music discussed above in a few days and join our paid community to access them as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Hio G

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Hio P

37.5KB ∙ PDF file

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Jack DeSalvo - guitar, Phil Sirois - double-bass, Tom Cabrera - drums

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While most literary critics interpret Pablo Neruda’s poem Enigma Con Una Flor, as the gentle flowering of a victory late in life, I see it as more of a revelation of deep observation, of honing one’s perceptions for transcendence, among the real rewards of an artistic life.

Enigma Con Una Flor Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Similarly to voice-leading chords, when I improvise over a series of harmonies I look for common tones so that the trajectory of the improvised line reflects not only the differences of each chord change but also their commonalities.

Elgafar Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

In Elgafar, the excerpt of which we see above, the C(sus2) comes from a C lydian source, confirmed by the F# in the melody followed by Bbmaj7(#11). So even though these two chords are a whole step away from each others and their modal sources are two 4ths removed from each other they share 5 notes in common with each other.

Those five notes constitute the A minor/C major pentatonic scale and can act as connecting tissue between the chords. In fact it could work for the entire four bar bars and there’s nothing in the melody to preclude it. This would mean you are interpreting D(add2)/F# as emanating from D mixolydian and then assuming the E/G# is headed to an A minor chord.

In the piece the next chord is a B/C, but that doesn’t matter, the improviser, for that short moment, makes it sound like it’s going to A minor.

In Elica the entire piece is anchored by the rhythmic figure on the bottom staff. The only indication of possible harmony is the sparce melody and its relationship to the bass line,

Elica Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Elta features harmonies where simple triads are transformed by added notes either in the bass or by appearing in chords with different roots. Here we have C to C# or Db to G. The D in the bass of C/D make the chord sound like a D9(sus4), the C# with its b6 in the bass becomes an Amaj7#5 and the G/Ab can have either a dominant function or be heard as an Abm(maj7)#11.

Depending on what instrument plays it, the bottom staff of Entrusted can be thought of as either a wide version of a slowly changing arpeggio or an ostinato bass line.

Entrusted Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Originally written as a duo piece for vibraphonist Arthur Lipner and myself, Eye Lands has also been performed by the group Quintrepid. As you go through the fabric of the harmony of the piece you will see that each chord is constructed around various inversions of triads of two perfect fourths which initially is both a second inversion sus4 triad and a first inversion sus2 triad.

In the excerpt below you can see that Db(sus2)/G tells you what the triad is over the the G bass note. A Cm11 voiced like this is both a Bb(sus4)/C and an Eb(sus2)/C. The Dbmaj7(#11) voiced like this is both a C(sus4)/Db and an F(sus2)/Db while the G(sus2)/C# is evident.

Fango is a shorter variation of another piece written in 1987 called New Mud. Contrapuntally syncopated in both staves of varied descending half-steps in the meoldy and two 4 bar counter melodies in the bass.

Februum features flowing eighth note modal/arpeggiated phrases underneath simultaneously longer and quicker phrases.

Februum Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Finch is a short Harmolodic-related piece with a swing feel. I say Harmolodic-related because it is influenced by my listening to and transcription of, Ornette Coleman’s late 1950s - early 60s compositions before I encountered Harmolodic music on the bandstand when I performed with Ronald Shannon Jackson.

Fishes has a melody that flows out of mostly 12 bar phrases with a mix of more conventional jazz chords like Dbmajj7 and Amaj7, slash chords like F/G and Abmaj7(#11)/G and chords from the harmonic minor heptatonic system like Emaj7#5.

Fishes Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The figures in Geese and Early Snow are sonorities of an ambiguous nature with most of the arpeggiated harmonies having more than one possible name. The F(sus2)/E could be Em(add b2, b6), C(add4)/E or G&(sus4)/E. While the Db(add4)/E could be a Dbm(add4) I conceived it as

Geese and Early Snow Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Beginning with complex harmonic figures that continue when the melody finally enters at measure 17, the sheet music for Grabontzi is free of chord symbols. This is to facilitate the improvisers response to the color of the sonorities rather than the name. Each harmony is present long enough for this, which is much more difficult with a quick harmonic rhythm.

Grabontzi Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Seldom programmatic, the music I write is more likely to reflect emotional or psychological states. Grey Sea is a case in point. The harmonic and melodic color of this piece is described metaphorically by the title and the spelling of the title is an attempt to point away from an actual gray sea.

Grey Sea Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

All of the downloadable compositions below are those discussed above. The full PDF sheet music of ENIGMA CON UNA FLOR is free to download. The rest of the downloads below are accessible to our paid community.

Enigma Con Una Flor

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Jack DeSalvo - guitar, Phil Sirois - double-bass, Tom Cabrera - drums

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While most literary critics interpret Pablo Neruda’s poem Enigma Con Una Flor, as the gentle flowering of a victory late in life, I see it as more of a revelation of deep observation, of honing one’s perceptions for transcendence, among the real rewards of an artistic life.

Enigma Con Una Flor Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Similarly to voice-leading chords, when I improvise over a series of harmonies I look for common tones so that the trajectory of the improvised line reflects not only the differences of each chord change but also their commonalities.

Elgafar Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

In Elgafar, the excerpt of which we see above, the C(sus2) comes from a C lydian source, confirmed by the F# in the melody followed by Bbmaj7(#11). So even though these two chords are a whole step away from each others and their modal sources are two 4ths removed from each other they share 5 notes in common with each other.

Those five notes constitute the A minor/C major pentatonic scale and can act as connecting tissue between the chords. In fact it could work for the entire four bar bars and there’s nothing in the melody to preclude it. This would mean you are interpreting D(add2)/F# as emanating from D mixolydian and then assuming the E/G# is headed to an A minor chord.

In the piece the next chord is a B/C, but that doesn’t matter, the improviser, for that short moment, makes it sound like it’s going to A minor.

In Elica the entire piece is anchored by the rhythmic figure on the bottom staff. The only indication of possible harmony is the sparce melody and its relationship to the bass line,

Elica Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Elta features harmonies where simple triads are transformed by added notes either in the bass or by appearing in chords with different roots. Here we have C to C# or Db to G. The D in the bass of C/D make the chord sound like a D9(sus4), the C# with its b6 in the bass becomes an Amaj7#5 and the G/Ab can have either a dominant function or be heard as an Abm(maj7)#11.

Depending on what instrument plays it, the bottom staff of Entrusted can be thought of as either a wide version of a slowly changing arpeggio or an ostinato bass line.

Entrusted Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Originally written as a duo piece for vibraphonist Arthur Lipner and myself, Eye Lands has also been performed by the group Quintrepid. As you go through the fabric of the harmony of the piece you will see that each chord is constructed around various inversions of triads of two perfect fourths which initially is both a second inversion sus4 triad and a first inversion sus2 triad.

In the excerpt below you can see that Db(sus2)/G tells you what the triad is over the the G bass note. A Cm11 voiced like this is both a Bb(sus4)/C and an Eb(sus2)/C. The Dbmaj7(#11) voiced like this is both a C(sus4)/Db and an F(sus2)/Db while the G(sus2)/C# is evident.

Fango is a shorter variation of another piece written in 1987 called New Mud. Contrapuntally syncopated in both staves of varied descending half-steps in the meoldy and two 4 bar counter melodies in the bass.

Februum features flowing eighth note modal/arpeggiated phrases underneath simultaneously longer and quicker phrases.

Februum Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Finch is a short Harmolodic-related piece with a swing feel. I say Harmolodic-related because it is influenced by my listening to and transcription of, Ornette Coleman’s late 1950s - early 60s compositions before I encountered Harmolodic music on the bandstand when I performed with Ronald Shannon Jackson.

Fishes has a melody that flows out of mostly 12 bar phrases with a mix of more conventional jazz chords like Dbmajj7 and Amaj7, slash chords like F/G and Abmaj7(#11)/G and chords from the harmonic minor heptatonic system like Emaj7#5.

Fishes Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The figures in Geese and Early Snow are sonorities of an ambiguous nature with most of the arpeggiated harmonies having more than one possible name. The F(sus2)/E could be Em(add b2, b6), C(add4)/E or G&(sus4)/E. While the Db(add4)/E could be a Dbm(add4) I conceived it as

Geese and Early Snow Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Beginning with complex harmonic figures that continue when the melody finally enters at measure 17, the sheet music for Grabontzi is free of chord symbols. This is to facilitate the improvisers response to the color of the sonorities rather than the name. Each harmony is present long enough for this, which is much more difficult with a quick harmonic rhythm.

Grabontzi Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

Seldom programmatic, the music I write is more likely to reflect emotional or psychological states. Grey Sea is a case in point. The harmonic and melodic color of this piece is described metaphorically by the title and the spelling of the title is an attempt to point away from an actual gray sea.

Grey Sea Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The complete PDF sheet music version of ENIGMA CON UNA FLOR is free to download below. Look for the rest of the sheet music discussed above in a few days and join our paid community to access them as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Enigma Con Una Flor

27.8KB ∙ PDF file

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Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

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Improvisers tend to approach maj7#5 chords from one of four directions.

1. As the ♭III chord in melodic minor or occasionally harmonic minor

2. As one of the three co-tonic maj7#5 chords in symmetrical augmented, along with the two other maj7#5s in a circle of major thirds, e.g., Dmaj7#5, F#maj7#5 and Bbmaj7#5.

3. A maj7#5 chord can also be considered a major triad with its b6 in the bass, so if it is Dmaj7#5 it would also be F#/D and can emerge from F# harmonic major.

4. Simply adding a #5 to the major scale, creating what some call the major bebop scale.

While I usually find the first two possibility most useful, it is always crucial to look at the melody to see if there are any additional tones that could indicate in what context the composer sees the chord as well as the additional context created by the surrounding chords suggests.

Considering the Dmaj7#5 above in the piece Beams, we see that there are only chord tones in the melody so that leave all previously mentioned possibilities open. Looking at the surrounding chords, the Dmaj7#5 is the first chord of the piece, so it fits comfortably in lydian augmented (the ♭III mode of B melodic minor).

It is followed by a C# Aeolian chord, C#m7(b13), so the Dmaj7#5 can act as a sort of dominant chord coming from two directions. The F# triad that is in the Dmaj7#5 resolves to the C# minor in C#m7(b13) and the D in the bass resolves upward to the C# root of the following chord.

A dominant mode that gives us an F# major triad and a D as a b6 is the Harmonic Mixolydian mode, the V mode of B Melodic Minor, the same source that gives us D Lydian Augmented, so we are brought right back to the first possibility.

Before The Flood is also rich with maj7#5 chords.

While we have three different maj7#5 chords (F#maj7#5, Emaj7#5 and Amaj7#5) in the 3 bar, 5 chord progression above, none of them fall into a circle of minor 3rds with each other. Also there are two slash chords in their midst, C/F# and F#/G, and they tend to make the maj7#5 chords sound like slash chords themselves. F#maj7#5= Bb/Gb, Emaj7#5=Ab/E and Amaj7#5=Db/A.

So above the bass notes we see the triads Bb moving to C, F# (or Gb) moving to Ab which resolves to Db. The bass line is ascending to A but goes to A’s 5th, E and then resolves to A. Conceptually we have a bitonal progression with both parts separately resolving to different parts of the final chord.

The progression, however is not presented as bitonal but rather as chords, each emanating from their own modal source. This means the improviser does not need to think bitonally when playing over these changes.

F#maj7 can come from F# lydian augmented, C/F# from C lydian or C lydian b7. F#/G can come from F# dominant diminished (½/whole symmetrical diminished) or F# phrygian dominant, the V mode of B harmonic minor. Emaj7#5 and be from E lydian augmented or even G# phrygian dominant as G#/E which moves nicely into Amaj7#5 which will happily welcome A lydian augmented, A major augmented (the ♭III mode of F# harmonic minor) or even A symmetrical augmented.

Betweens is a completely different type of piece, with the slightly angular swing melody harmonized entirely by dominant 7th chords. This is in hoping that the improviser approaches this entirely from a linear perspective. The melody gives the impression of a sort of free bebop line, though none of phrases go too far outside the parameters of the simple dominant 7th harmonization.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

In Clay no chord symbols are used since the entire piece is made up of sonorities from the C=E=Ab symmetrical augmented harmony.

The C (or E or Ab) symmetrical augmented scale:

From the piece Clay:

Climb Into The Boat started as a piano piece but seemed any development was better served by improvising over the changes, so it became a 27 bar form with irregular phrase lengths. Harmonically its a mix of added-note and slash chords and more modal chords like Bbmaj7#5 from Bb lydian augmented and Cmaj7(#11) from C Lydian.

I lived for 15 years on the corner of Mott St. and Prince St. in Manhattan, which is near the Bowery. At that time in the 80s, there were innumerable people who lived either on the streets or in the various transient hotels and many seemed to be in varying states of deep psychological suffering that was either brought on by, or was the cause of, their condition,

There was a man, appearing middle-aged but probably younger, who would stand at the corner of Mott and Prince, in front of Old St. Patrick’s Wall and call out, in a British accent, proclamations mostly sounding religious, though they were mostly indecipherable. He is the Corner Caller.

Corner Caller, though a 32-bar, AABA tune, is made up of wide intervallic phrases that hint at a resolution trajectory and somehow resolve elsewhere.

Don’t Answer starts and ends at Dm but veers far as it makes it way through 16 bars. Here is another case where triads are moving in one direction with different bass notes on their own connected, but separate journey.

For the first 5 bars you have Dm, G, C, A, A+ with bass movement of D, Eb, D, Bb, Db. This runs in an maj7(#11) and a 7(#9) and then back into similar movement. For the improviser, all this multidirectional activity is compressed into single chord names.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The melody in the 4 bars immediately above emphasizes larger leaps, major 7th, minor and major 6ths and while each chord has a different modal origins there are many notes in common. For example, there is only a two note difference between D Aeolian [for Dm7(b13)] and Eb lydian augmented [for Ebmaj7#5] D aeolian’s Bb and E become B and Eb in Eb lydian augmented.

All of the downloadable compositions below are those discussed above. The full PDF sheet music of both versions of BEAMS are

free to download. The rest of the titles are accessible to our paid community below.

Beams G

33.8KB ∙ PDF file

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Beam P

34.5KB ∙ PDF file

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Before The Flood G

37.3KB ∙ PDF file

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Before The Flood P

36.8KB ∙ PDF file

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Betweens

36.8KB ∙ PDF file

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Clay G

28.4KB ∙ PDF file

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Clay P

28.6KB ∙ PDF file

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Climb In The Boat G

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Climb In The Boat P

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Don't Answer

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Corner Caller

28.7KB ∙ PDF file

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Jack DeSalvo on Bandcamp

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

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Improvisers tend to approach maj7#5 chords from one of four directions.

1. As the ♭III chord in melodic minor or occasionally harmonic minor

2. As one of the three co-tonic maj7#5 chords in symmetrical augmented, along with the two other maj7#5s in a circle of major thirds, e.g., Dmaj7#5, F#maj7#5 and Bbmaj7#5.

3. A maj7#5 chord can also be considered a major triad with its b6 in the bass, so if it is Dmaj7#5 it would also be F#/D and can emerge from F# harmonic major.

4. Simply adding a #5 to the major scale, creating what some call the major bebop scale.

While I usually find the first two possibility most useful, it is always crucial to look at the melody to see if there are any additional tones that could indicate in what context the composer sees the chord as well as the additional context created by the surrounding chords suggests.

Considering the Dmaj7#5 above in the piece Beams, we see that there are only chord tones in the melody so that leave all previously mentioned possibilities open. Looking at the surrounding chords, the Dmaj7#5 is the first chord of the piece, so it fits comfortably in lydian augmented (the ♭III mode of B melodic minor).

It is followed by a C# Aeolian chord, C#m7(b13), so the Dmaj7#5 can act as a sort of dominant chord coming from two directions. The F# triad that is in the Dmaj7#5 resolves to the C# minor in C#m7(b13) and the D in the bass resolves upward to the C# root of the following chord.

A dominant mode that gives us an F# major triad and a D as a b6 is the Harmonic Mixolydian mode, the V mode of B Melodic Minor, the same source that gives us D Lydian Augmented, so we are brought right back to the first possibility.

Before The Flood is also rich with maj7#5 chords.

While we have three different maj7#5 chords (F#maj7#5, Emaj7#5 and Amaj7#5) in the 3 bar, 5 chord progression above, none of them fall into a circle of minor 3rds with each other. Also there are two slash chords in their midst, C/F# and F#/G, and they tend to make the maj7#5 chords sound like slash chords themselves. F#maj7#5= Bb/Gb, Emaj7#5=Ab/E and Amaj7#5=Db/A.

So above the bass notes we see the triads Bb moving to C, F# (or Gb) moving to Ab which resolves to Db. The bass line is ascending to A but goes to A’s 5th, E and then resolves to A. Conceptually we have a bitonal progression with both parts separately resolving to different parts of the final chord.

The progression, however is not presented as bitonal but rather as chords, each emanating from their own modal source. This means the improviser does not need to think bitonally when playing over these changes.

F#maj7 can come from F# lydian augmented, C/F# from C lydian or C lydian b7. F#/G can come from F# dominant diminished (½/whole symmetrical diminished) or F# phrygian dominant, the V mode of B harmonic minor. Emaj7#5 and be from E lydian augmented or even G# phrygian dominant as G#/E which moves nicely into Amaj7#5 which will happily welcome A lydian augmented, A major augmented (the ♭III mode of F# harmonic minor) or even A symmetrical augmented.

Betweens is a completely different type of piece, with the slightly angular swing melody harmonized entirely by dominant 7th chords. This is in hoping that the improviser approaches this entirely from a linear perspective. The melody gives the impression of a sort of free bebop line, though none of phrases go too far outside the parameters of the simple dominant 7th harmonization.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

In Clay no chord symbols are used since the entire piece is made up of sonorities from the C=E=Ab symmetrical augmented harmony.

The C (or E or Ab) symmetrical augmented scale:

From the piece Clay:

Climb Into The Boat started as a piano piece but seemed any development was better served by improvising over the changes, so it became a 27 bar form with irregular phrase lengths. Harmonically its a mix of added-note and slash chords and more modal chords like Bbmaj7#5 from Bb lydian augmented and Cmaj7(#11) from C Lydian.

I lived for 15 years on the corner of Mott St. and Prince St. in Manhattan, which is near the Bowery. At that time in the 80s, there were innumerable people who lived either on the streets or in the various transient hotels and many seemed to be in varying states of deep psychological suffering that was either brought on by, or was the cause of, their condition,

There was a man, appearing middle-aged but probably younger, who would stand at the corner of Mott and Prince, in front of Old St. Patrick’s Wall and call out, in a British accent, proclamations mostly sounding religious, though they were mostly indecipherable. He is the Corner Caller.

Corner Caller, though a 32-bar, AABA tune, is made up of wide intervallic phrases that hint at a resolution trajectory and somehow resolve elsewhere.

Don’t Answer starts and ends at Dm but veers far as it makes it way through 16 bars. Here is another case where triads are moving in one direction with different bass notes on their own connected, but separate journey.

For the first 5 bars you have Dm, G, C, A, A+ with bass movement of D, Eb, D, Bb, Db. This runs in an maj7(#11) and a 7(#9) and then back into similar movement. For the improviser, all this multidirectional activity is compressed into single chord names.

Copyright © 1987 Jack DeSalvo

The melody in the 4 bars immediately above emphasizes larger leaps, major 7th, minor and major 6ths and while each chord has a different modal origins there are many notes in common. For example, there is only a two note difference between D Aeolian [for Dm7(b13)] and Eb lydian augmented [for Ebmaj7#5] D aeolian’s Bb and E become B and Eb in Eb lydian augmented.

Both PDF versions of BEAMS are free to download below. Look for the rest of the sheet music discussed above in a few days and join our paid community to access them as well as the entire Composing for Improvisers Archive.

Beam G

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Beam P

34.5KB ∙ PDF file

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