My interest was piqued, so I searched out a place called We Are Many dot org, and found a podcast by Martin Smith called
John Coltane: Jazz, racism, and resistance http://wearemany.org/a/2010/06/john-coltane .
Now, I don't think it necessary to know anything about music theory to enjoy jazz, but I do think it necessary to understand a little about music theory before you start giving lectures in music theory.
Smith makes a complete twat of himself (quite apart from the toe-curling trendy vicar endorsement of LSD) by not knowing the first thing about music theory. For example, he talks about Coltrane's period with Monk, saying Monk used his percussive technique to “strike many chords at the same time”. First, Monk was a logician, and a master of precision; that's what Coltrane got from Monk. Monk's percussive playing was about articulation, not about note selection. Secondly, the sentence doesn't really make sense: a number of notes played at once is a chord. Two chords played at once is ... a bigger chord. Monk's chords were derived from his understanding of stride piano, not hitting random notes on a piano. In fact, Monk learned theory by dissecting piano rolls - and sheet music - of the old stride players. John Coltrane did not derive from this a “a system of playing chords on top of one another”, whatever that might mean. (Especially given that saxophone is a single-note-at-a-time instrument).
Smith then goes on to briefly talk nonsense about modal jazz, before saying
Giant Steps was "the first time he [Coltrane] recorded openly in the sheets of sound thing". No it wasn't. "Sheets of sound" was Ira Gitler's description of Coltrane's playing on the song
Russian Lullaby on the
Soultrane album, released in 1958, two years before
Giant Steps, by which time he had pretty much abandoned the style. (Which consisted of a bank of ultra-rehearsed rapid runs).
Giant Steps isn't about "sheets of sound", (nor is it about "playing chords on top of one another"); it's about a very logical sequence of chords following a rapid descending major third step pattern, meaning the key centre changes three times within four bars; Coltrane was exploring the technique needed by soloists to negotiate those "giant steps" (hence the name!). (This chord pattern is known as the Trane Changes, or Coltrane Changes, and could have been explained to Smith by any jazz musician, including Gilad Atzmon, had he but asked).
Non musos take heart: my diatribe is over. If your eyes glazed over, take at least this from it - Martin Smith is a gobshite. His love of jazz is, I have no doubt, sincere, but his understanding of music theory is dire.
