Chord-Scale Networks in the Music and Improvisations of Wayne Shorter

Abstract

ayne Shorter's tune "E.S.P.," first recorded on Miles Davis's 1965 album of the same name, presents a number of fascinating challenges to harmonic analysis.Example 1 gives the tune's lead sheet, which shows its melody and chord changes.In the first eight-bar phrase, the harmony moves at a slow, two-bar pace, sliding between chords with roots on E, F, and E beneath a repeating fourths-based melody that contracts to an A 4 -F 4 major third in the last two bars.Shorter's melody quite often emphasizes diatonic and chromatic ninths, elevenths, and thirteenths against the passing harmonies, thereby underscoring the importance of those extensions to the chords.For example, the first two pitches, C 5 and G 4 , would conflict quite pointedly with a basic E7 chord.As a result, authors of lead sheets typically notate this harmony as E7alt, a chord symbol that implies all possible dominant-chord alterations that may be voiced by a performer: 9, 9, 11 (5), and 13 (5).Many of the chord symbols in "E.S.P." include chromatic alterations of some or all of their upper extensions.The harmonic rhythm of the next three bars accelerates to one chord per bar, then to two chords in m. 12, and the chord roots chromatically ascend from D back to F. In contrast to these chromatic root motions, Shorter employs functional ii7-V7 progressions in the first and second endings, though often colored by chromaticism, such as in mm.16, 17, and 19."E.S.P." thus exhibits an interesting tension between two different musical languages, one chromatic and ambiguous and the other functional and tonally directed.W

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