Jumping into the discussion about incorporating/creating dissonance in jazz improvisation in Café Saxophone forum, I quickly dug into my bags of improvisational goodies to see what's still in my sleepy head. It's going to be a short rambling, I promise. It's Sunday afternoon and I am relaxing in a local coffee house (lovely Amélie movie soundtrack filling the space!)... so I am determined to press the "stop" button after one cup of creamy espresso. No more. No less.
Anyway, dissonance can be quite beautiful. There are of course countless ways to introduce dissonance into jazz improvisation. As mentioned in the forum post, we might try to use symmetrical scales to spice up our Bebop line, such as integrating the "Slonimsky motive" derived from the diminished scale (Example 1). In addition to scalar treatments, symmetrical scales such as the octatonic scale, aka the diminished scale, also offer some flavorsome opportunities to pepper up our Bebop lines with sequential patterns. Nicolas Slonimsky's classic Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns is a really nice "add-on" if we are interested in exploring patterns derived from symmetrical scale and beyond. The French composer Olivier Messiaen's "Modes of Limited Transposition", while some of them share the same linear construction with the whole-tone scale and octatonic scale, do offer few more peppery linear idea for us to season our improvisations. Synthetic scales, such as the cool "Prometheus scale", are also excellent linear spices for any cooking jazz improvisers to consider. The degree of dissonance of using these more exotic linear building blocks, and any other improvisational devices, really depends on how we use them. So be warned!
Of course I have used dissonance in my time, but there has been too much dissonance. Bach used dissonance as good salt for his music. Others applied pepper, seasoned the dishes more and more highly, till all healthy appetites were sick and until the music was nothing but pepper.
---Sergei Prokofiev
Example 1. Using symmetrical scale to create dissonance in the classic Bebop style.
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What if those exotic scales aren't spicy enough? Well, we can also try to incorporate harmonic superimposition to generate some guided dissonances. Superimposing "Coltrane Change" or "Confirmation Change" against the ii-V-I harmonic unit are superb ways to season our improvisation while maintaining harmonic direction (Example 2). In the example, we use classic "digital patterns", as demonstrated in Coltrane's various takes of Giant Steps, to clearly outline the superimposed harmonic progression. This approach is of course optional. One can spice up jazz lines by employing more contemporary-sounding methods.
Example 2. Superimposing Coltrane Change in ii-V-I jazz line.
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Coltrane Change is really spicy! Its cyclic construction provides few interesting methods in approaching the dissonances in jazz improvisation. For example, we can easily create long improvisation lines by cycling through the Coltrane Change twice when showcasing our fabulous techniques in double-time ii-V-I situation (Example 3). Expanding upon Coltrane Change's "three-tonic" system, we can also employ the "four-tonic" (tonics are three semitones apart) or the "five-tonic" (whole-tone apart) system to generate more spicy superimposition options.
Example 3. Superimposing two cycles of Coltrane Change in ii-V-I jazz line.
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Using pentatonic scales in our improvisations is also a great way to create some "outside" sound (Example 4). There is no possible way that we can explain this method in few sentences. But, inadequately put, the essence of this approach is to differentiate the degree of consonance and dissonance of each pentatonic scale to effectively color our improvisation by sliding in and out between consonant and dissonant unit.
Example 4. Using pentatonic scales to "slide out" in ii-V-I jazz line.
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Incorporating twelve-tone row in jazz to generate some dissonances has been practiced by jazz greats such as saxophonist John Coltrane (or Eric Dolphy...as the authorship of Miles' Mode, also known as Red Planet, is subject to debate) and pianist Bill Evans (for his T.T.T.). By using some classic tone-rows, we can easily create interesting dissonances with connection to Western classic music (Example 5). Expanding on this approach, some of the ultra-modern improvisers have adopted pitch-class set (oh, wow! I can hear Combinatoriality in your improvisations!-----sorry, can't help it....bad music theory nut joke) to further spice up their improvised music.
Example 5. Incorporating the twelve-tone row from Arnold Schoenberg's op. 33 in ii-V-I jazz line.
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