1/15/2019 John Coltrane's Tone Circle

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JOHN COLTRANE'S TONE CIRCLE

Er is een Nederlandse versie beschikbaar op saxwereld.nl

FOREWORD

I do like to mention that I am no "authority" or "expert" when it comes to Coltrane's work, or the music
theory behind it and the compositions themselves. And as sax player, well, I'm still miles away from even
standing in the giant shadow he cast ... not to mention his giant footsteps. Anyway, as admirer of
Coltrane's work I could not resist to write this article. I wrote this article because I am fascinated by his
music and have an interest in the relationship between music and math / geometry.

For an expert opinion on Coltrane you should listen to what musicians who played with him or
extensively studied his work have/had to say about it. 

This blog article is an addition to the article "Music and Geometry" and contains only the information
about the Coltrane Tone Circle and the relationship between some of his music and geometry. Do read
the mentioned article for general information about the relationship between music and geometry.

Thelonious Monk once said "All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians". Musicians like John
Coltrane though have been very much aware of the mathematics of music and consciously applied it to
their works. The "Coltrane Circle" is (to me) proof of it in Coltrane's case ...

SHORT INTRODUCTION ABOUT 12-TONE CIRCLES

A Tone Circle is is a geometrical representation of relationships among the 12 pitch classes (or pitch
intervals) of the chromatic scale in pitch class space (circle). The most common tone circles in Western
music are the "Chromatic Circle" and the "Circle of Fifths/Fourths" (image on the right). 

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In Western music theory there are 13 intervals from Tonic (unison) to Octave. These intervals are
the: Unison, Minor Second, Major Second, Minor Third, Major Third, Fourth, Tritone, Fifth, Minor
Sixth, Major Sixth, Minor Seventh, Major Seventh and Octave. When we look at these intervals (or pitch
classes) and how they relate to one another in the musical tone
circles, some nice geometric shapes appear. 

Note: If you are interested in a more esoteric-

philosophical perspective on the intervals, then read the
article: "The Function of the Intervals" on Roel's World.

COLTRANE'S TONE CIRCLE

An interesting variant to the 'Circle of Fifths/Fourths' is the 'Coltrane Circle', created by saxophonist John
Coltrane (perhaps influenced and based on the Joseph Schillinger System of Musical Composition and/or
Nicolas Slominksy's Thesaurus of scales and musical patterns?) and was used by Yusef Lateef for his
work "Repository of Scales and Melodic Patterns".

What might be good to make note of, is that it isn't clear when exactly Coltrane drew the circle and why.
Did he use it to work out a particular composition? Did he try to find a new approach for his solos in that
period? Perhaps it was during his explorations of Indian music in the 60s? I haven't been able to find any
clear sources that can provide a clear answer to those questions. 

Below on the left you see a scanned copy of an original drawing of the "Coltrane Circle". On the right an
better readable (modified) image by Corey Mwamba from his article "Coltrane's Way Of Seeing":

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In the drawing (on the left) there are a couple of sharps notated, they have been replaced by Corey
Mwamba with their enharmonic equivalents (C = D and F = G ) in his drawings.

The circles above might seem a bit odd, but if we "simplify" the circle things become a lot clearer.

What we see is a circle with two concentric rings.

The outer ring displays the "Hexatonic" (6-Tone) or

"Whole Tone" Scale of C (C – D – E – G – A
– B – C).

The inner ring displays the Hexatonic scale of B 

(B – D – E – F – G - A - B).

When you "zig-zag" clockwise between the tones of

these Hexatonic scales of the concentric rings it
turns out to be the "Circle of Fourths" (and
thus counterclockwise the "Circle of Fifths").: 

C-
F - B  - E  - A  - D  - G  - B - E - A - D - G - C 

WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE TONES IN BETWEEN? 

The smaller spaces (light grey) between the larger

("main") tone spaces (darker grey) of the Hexatonic
scale of C (outer ring): C–D–E–G –A –B –C)
and B (inner ring): B–D –E –F–G-A-B contain 4
tones that - when combined with the "main" tone
spaces (pitch classes) - form 6x the same Hexatonic
scale within the same ring, just each shifting a tone.

What is also interesting, is that the Hexatonic scales

formed with the tones in the smaller spaces progress
in opposite direction as the Hexatonic scales from the
larger tone spaces of the rings do. The Hexatonic

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Scale from C going clockwise is C-D-E-G -A -B -C. If you start from C and go counterclockwise
you get the same scale in "reverse": C-B -A -G -E-D-C.

All Hexatonic scales within the same ring use exactly the same 6 tones but any of these tones could be
used as the tonic of a hexatonic scale. See the table below: 

THE 6 HEXATONIC (6-TONE) SCALES OF THE OUTER RING

C D E G A B C                                              

          B C D E G A B                                    

                    A B C D E G A                          

                              G A B C D E G                

                                        E G A B C D E      

C D                                               D E G A B

THE 6 HEXATONIC (6-TONE) SCALES OF THE INNER RING

B D E F G A B                                              

          A B D E F G A                                    

                    G A B D E F G                          

                              F G A B D E F                

                                        E F G A B D E      

B D                                               D E F G A

WHY HAVE TONES BEEN CIRCLED?

It's not completely clear why Coltrane circled those tones, he never made note of it. The tones that have
been circled are the Minor 2nd or "Supertonic" and the Major 7th or "Leading Tone".

Perhaps Coltrane wanted to visualize how chromatic neighbor tones move in Fourths/Fifths to adjacent
neighbor tones? All tones are centers that move to other centers.

DIMINISHED SCALES

Perhaps the circled tones outline the relationship

between Diminished 7th Chords within the
Diminished Scale? An example:

The C Diminished 7th Chord is C - E - G - A.

To turn this into a Diminished scale, you need to add
another Diminished 7th Chord a semitone higher:
D - E - G - B or lower: B - D - F - A . Results: 

C - D  - E  - E - G  - G  - A  - B  - C 

& 
C - D - E  - F - G  - A  - A - B - C

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It is commonly known that Coltrane did like using the Diminished Scale (or "Double Diminished" as it
was called because it is build from two Diminished 7th Chords). An example of that is his solo
in “Moment’s Notice” (in measure 74 where he plays a Bb7 diminished scale pattern). Another example
is his solo in "Epistrophy" during the live perfomance at Carnegie Hall with Thelonious Monk.

ALTERED DOMINANT (ALT DOM) CHORDS

Jazz guitarist, composer and music theorist Mark Rossi shared another way of looking at the circled
tones. 

An Alt Dom chord is a dominant chord (centered around the 5th of the key) but with a minor 7th on top
(hereby creating a Dominant 7th) and the 5th and 9th of the chord either lowered or raised by one half
step. This in turn gives us either a b5 or a #5 instead of a natural 5 as well as a b9 and #9.

When you add the 3 Diminished 7th Chords to a table you get the following result:

                       

G Ab A Bb B C Db D Eb E F Gb

Bb B C Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A

Db D Eb E F Gb G Ab A Bb B C

E F Gb G Ab A Bb B C Db D Eb

5 ← b6 or 7 → 8   3 ← 4 or 2 → b3

Bb ← B → C   Bb ← B → C

Db ← D → Eb   Db ← D → Eb

E ← F → Gb   E ← F → Gb

G ← Ab → A   G ← Ab → A

NATABHAIRAVI-CHARUKESI (NATURAL MINOR + MELODIC

MAJOR) "COMPOUND" SCALE

Corey Mwamba shared an alternative interpretation about the meaning of the circled tones, he thinks
they might form what he calls a "compound scale". This compound scale is formed my combining the
"Natural Minor" (Natabhairavi) and the "Melodic Major" (Charukesi) scales, characteristic for North
Indian music (something Coltrane developed an interest for in the 60s (see "John Coltrane and the
integration of Indian concepts in Jazz improvisation" by Carl Clements).

Corey writes: "We can see that the two scales have two enharmonic points; one at the third degree of
each scale, and one at the sixth. If we transliterate Natabhairavi to d  and combine it with Charukesi
mapped from c, we can see an intersection that contains e and a . Natabhairavi is the top line, circled
in blue; Charukesi is circled in red."

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He continues: "Arranged in chromatic order, the first, fourth and seventh degrees of Natabhairavi are
aligned with the degrees from Charukesi in a way that matches the segment 3–4 on the original
diagram." With the "original diagram" Corey referes to the Coltrane Circle with the Pentagram drawn
into it. In that version the Circle the 5 segments are numbered.

For additional information and images, read Corey's article "Way of Seeing Coltrane (IV)".

THE NUMBERS

It is not completely clear if the lines and numbers drawn in the Coltrane Circle version below on the
left were drawn by Coltrane himself. If he drew the lines or not will be impossible to check, but we could
compare the numbers drawn in the Coltrane Circle with those from copies of his scores. For this
comparison I have used the score of Love Supreme and several scores displayed at recordmecca.com

A Pentagram & Pentagon

appear when you draw
lines between the same
tones in the Coltrane
Circle" (in the example
with the tone C).

<- Click on the Coltrane

drawing to enlarge it.
 

Below you see the numbers found in various scores side by side with the numbers of the Coltrane Circle
image:

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Now, I'm no expert in graphoanalysis, so I will just describe what I noticed:

In all scores as well in the tone circle we see a certain inconsistency in the wring of the numbers. The "1"
is sometimes written as a single line, sometimes with additional horizontal lines. The 7 is sometimes
written with a horizontal line in the center, sometimes without. The "4" is open sometimes and closed at
the top at other times. The "2" has a little "loop" in some cases but others not. It seems though that the
writing in the scores was done quicker, more like scribbling then seems to be the case with the Coltrane
Circle. This is not a surprise though, specially with last minutes arrangements scores often look like
scribbles.

To my eyes though all numbers look somewhat similar and perhaps could have been written by the same
person, I'm not convinced about it though. Perhaps an expert in graphoanalysis might be able to shed
some light on it? Feel free to contact me if graphoanalysis is in your field of expertise and have
something to share about what you see above.

Below links to the used scores to compare with the Coltrane Tone Circle:

WHAT DO THOSE NUMBERS MEAN?

"What do those numbers mean?" is a question I have received via mail several times.

Well, to me it seems that the 5 numbers outside the circle 1-5 are the easiest to explain. They mark the 5
octaves this tone circle covers.

Not per say related or intended, but 5 octaves = 5 x 12 tones = 60 tones. There are 60 seconds in a
minute and 60 minutes in an hour. Perhaps that's why some would refer to this circle as a
"clock". There is nothing in this drawing though that suggests this to be one of the reasons for the
design of this circle.

Inside the circle you notice a sequence of numbers 7-6-5-4-3-2-1-2-3-4-5-6-7 and reversed 1-2-3-4-5-6-
7-6-5-4-3-2-1, apparently showing you the chromatic (semitone) relationship between the tones listed in

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both inner and outer ring when combined in one. The 1's (C) and 7's (F#) are a Tritone (six "spaces"
between the lines) apart from each other. This might suggest a so called "Tritone Substitution".

A Tritone substitution is one of the most common chord substitutions used in Jazz and is the
foundation for more complex substitution patterns like Coltrane changes. Other examples of the
tritone substitution (known in the classical world as an augmented sixth chord) can be found in
classical music since the Renaissance period. The Tritone substitution can be performed by
exchanging a dominant seven chord for another dominant seven chord which is a Tritone away from
it. 

In the Coltrane Circle you see a sequence from 1-7 starting from C (top of the Circle) to F# both
clockwise and counterclockwise. Could that suggest a substitution of C7 by F#7?

If you have another (perhaps better) idea about this sequence, please do contact me.

THE COLTRANE CIRCLE & POLYGONS / POLYGRAMS

The 12 tones of the Circle of Fifths/Fourths are normally placed in one ring instead of two but the result
is same:

6 LINES 4 TRIGONS 3 SQUARES 2 HEXAGONS 1 DODECAGON 1 DODECAGRAM

MAJOR THIRDS MINOR THIRDS WHOLE TONES FOURTHS SEMITONES

TRI-TONES
MINOR SIXTS MAJOR SIXTS MINOR SEVENTHS FIFTHS MAJOR SEVENTHS

For more details about the polygons/polygrams and tone circles do read Roel's World article "Music &
Geometry".

There are two geometric shapes though that can be created with the Coltrane Tone Circle, but that can
not be drawn into the standard Circle of Fifths/Fourths or Chromatic Circle:

To finish this article with I like to share a "music video" of Coltrane's piece "11383" with the Coltrane
Tone Circle used as base/inspiration for the visualization. Note: the visualization of the Coltrane Circle
does not accurately follows the music - as becomes obvious later on in the video - but is nonetheless a
nice 'work of art'.

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John Coltrane - Untitled Original 11383 (Visualizer)

You can watch this video on Facebook as well. 

JOHN COLTRANE'S MUSIC & GEOMETRY

If you find this article interesting, you might like to read the Roel's World article "John Coltrane's
Music & Geometry" as well. In this article I write a bit more about the relationship between Coltrane's
music and it's mathematical / geometrical interpretation. 

REFERENCES MENTIONED IN THIS ARTICLE:

"Coltrane's Way Of Seeing" by Corey Mwamba

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WELCOME AT ROEL'S WORLD

Hi there ... Welcome at Roel's World, thank you for visiting my blog, enjoy your stay!

Thank you for your very thorough report on the Sonic Geometry video! Your pages on t
is so informativ

Eric Rankin (www.sonicgeometry.com)

If you have questions or like to share your opinion, then feel free to send me a message. - Roel

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