If you compare this recording to the various Footprints on the recently-released 1967 Bootlegs, it’s clear that Tony Williams is holding it back a little in the studio, particularly in the lower end of his kit (which is also relatively lower in the mix than the ride). In either case, it’s a demonstration of how to generate a sense of direction in quartal voicings. I don’t know whether this was a pre-conceived idea, or genuine spur-of-the-moment conception. The third chord smacks of the phrygian V (the tense, brooding dominant sound at the beginning of Coltrane’s Crescent, for example, or throughout many of Kenny Wheeler’s compositions). Even without my ‘imaginary’ notes, the second chord has some of the resonance of either a D half-diminished or a D7#9 (using the diminished scale). I think you can hear the dynamics of a tonal progression here.

Here they are with imaginary i – II – V – I bass notes underneath (plus a couple of extras): There’s a real sense of resolution to the phrase, and I think it’s because the chords actually have some tonal implications. The first and last chords are entirely within the mode, the second chord contains one note from outside, and the third chord two. The top notes, which really transfor m the colour of the chords, seem to mirror the melody of bar 9 in Footprints, almost glueing together the horn parts and the rhythm section. The lower three notes of these chords are chromatically descending fourths, landing on G, the fifth note of the chord-scale of C Dorian. Herbie is the master of slinky, chromatically rich quartal (fourths) voicings. What I’ve begun to think, though, is that if you take a step back and listen to the whole group, the power of this phrase is quite revealing about the musical impulses of the rest of the group, and Tony Williams in particular. In this instance the end product is just four brief chords, but the musical impulse is pure, distilled Herbie Hancock at his best. I’ve written before about how I see transcription as being just as much about understanding someone’s musical impulses as it is about imitating their “end-product”. Trouble is, there’s something about this phrase that just eats me up – the deep music al logic, its communicative power, the subtlety in the way Herbie delivers it, its placement in the group sound as he repeats it, develops it, breaks it up…. This is such a perfect, elegant little phrase, and it would be pretty good just to shoe-horn it in the next time a few bars of minor modal harmony are left unattended somewhere. If you need to listen to it, but don’t have Miles Smiles…(I’d encourage you to change that situation) Just 4 chords, from the hands of Herbie Hancock, taken from Footprints on Miles Smiles, 0’25’’:

Blackbird brad mehldau chords