Miles Vs. Trane: Computational and Statistical Comparison of the Improvisatory Styles of Miles Davis and John Coltrane

ABSTRACT Much has been written about John Coltrane and Miles Davis, from autobiographical works to detailed musicological analyses and cultural/sociological accounts of their lives, work, and legacy. Fewer publications are concerned with a direct comparison of both artists' approach to improvisation. I introduce a new analytical perspective, developed in the context of the Jazzomat Research Project, by using computational and statistical methods. Based on a large set of solo transcriptions taken from the Weimar Jazz Database spanning different stylistic phases for both artists (20 solos by Coltrane and 19 solos by Davis), I identify common and differing stylistic traits. This approach utilizes a set of 143 musical features extracted from the solos. Results indicate that both players differ in quite many aspects. Clichés of the “extroverted” style of Coltrane and the “introverted” style of Davis are evidenced by vastly different note densities and overall spacing of phrases. Some surprising and subtle differences also showed up. For instance, Davis has a tendency to avoid the third of the underlying chord and also major and minor third intervals, whereas Coltrane has a preference for playing out chords. Furthermore, both players seem to have no large overlap in their respective pattern vocabularies.