The Coltrane changes are lovely, but if you slow them down they aren't substantially more difficult than other Jazz changes from that era. What makes Giant Steps so challenging is mainly the tempo.
Tommy Flanagan, the pianist who struggled a bit on the original Coltrane recording, put out a recording of Giant Steps with his own trio in the 1980s. Having had enough time by then to woodshed the changes, his improvs are exquisite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PWynH-CEc
It's also just that they're weird and not terribly melodic. They're great, but it's not like some jazz standard from a musical where you just kind of feel where it's going after hearing it a few times.
The Coltrane Changes pattern of descending through major keys via major thirds is actually used at moderate tempo in the bridge of the Rogers/Hart tune Have You Met Miss Jones? [1] ... which is a standard from a musical haha.
But I acknowledge that in that context, it's an "out there" harmonic adventure which builds tension, to be released when the final section harps on the tonic.
I still think that it's mostly the tempo that makes Giant Steps feel alien. Modulating through major keys by major thirds isn't that exotic, but doing it so quickly that ear just doesn't get a chance to orient itself is.
This makes it a perpetual challenge for me, and I've never mastered it. Doing something sensible on double bass is hard enough without it always having to be at some unmusical tempo.
On more straightforward changes, I can usually internalize the melody and harmonic motion well enough to form a sensible solo, but I've got my limits. Fortunately the era of "Giant Steps" getting called on every gig has more or less passed.
Sure. It's also true that if you speed anything up enough it becomes impossible for anybody to play. But neither of those reductio ad absurdum observations tells us much.
The point is that this Vox presentation and many other articles on the Coltrane changes present them as so revolutionary that improvisers struggle, but on its own that's not true.
There are records which predate Giant Steps which are equally harmonically interesting and challenging and which similarly modulate through many key centers, like Con Alma [1] by Dizzy Gillespie from 1954 or Lush Life [2] by Billy Strayhorn from 1948.
What Coltrane did with Giant Steps was akin to calling for Lush Life at 300 beats per minute.
Maybe this works as review for people who already know it, but it seems like it might be overwhelming for beginners. Learning to recognize 2-5-1 when you hear it in a song might be a better way to start?
Despite taking piano lessons as a kid, I was in college before I learned to recognize 12-bar blues whenever I heard it. That's pretty late, but you're part of the lucky 10,000 whatever day you learn.
This stuff is completely irrelevant if you haven't gotten at least proficient at Bebop and blues. Following the career trajectory of musicians around that era is a good way to build up to those types of music. You start with swing in the 20s and 30, bebop in the 30s and 40s, post-bop and modal jazz in the 50s, then the weird Coltrane changes and free jazz and stuff like that later. I tried really hard to learn those Coltrane patterns when I was first starting off with Jazz but if you don't have much improvisational vocabulary, especially over 251s you will be doing 10x as much work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tIvfP9A2w
Tommy Flanagan, the pianist who struggled a bit on the original Coltrane recording, put out a recording of Giant Steps with his own trio in the 1980s. Having had enough time by then to woodshed the changes, his improvs are exquisite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3PWynH-CEc
But I acknowledge that in that context, it's an "out there" harmonic adventure which builds tension, to be released when the final section harps on the tonic.
I still think that it's mostly the tempo that makes Giant Steps feel alien. Modulating through major keys by major thirds isn't that exotic, but doing it so quickly that ear just doesn't get a chance to orient itself is.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHGFo7fRIqc
On more straightforward changes, I can usually internalize the melody and harmonic motion well enough to form a sensible solo, but I've got my limits. Fortunately the era of "Giant Steps" getting called on every gig has more or less passed.
The point is that this Vox presentation and many other articles on the Coltrane changes present them as so revolutionary that improvisers struggle, but on its own that's not true.
There are records which predate Giant Steps which are equally harmonically interesting and challenging and which similarly modulate through many key centers, like Con Alma [1] by Dizzy Gillespie from 1954 or Lush Life [2] by Billy Strayhorn from 1948.
What Coltrane did with Giant Steps was akin to calling for Lush Life at 300 beats per minute.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLUyVyM626A
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqTDm34vyj0
Despite taking piano lessons as a kid, I was in college before I learned to recognize 12-bar blues whenever I heard it. That's pretty late, but you're part of the lucky 10,000 whatever day you learn.
https://xkcd.com/1053/