Contrafact

Contrafact:

A musical work based on prior work. The term comes from classical music and has only since the 1940s been applied to jazz.”

In Jazz, a contrafact is a musical composition consisting of a new melody overlaid on a familiar harmonic structure. Contrafact can also be explained as the use of borrowed chord progressions”

…It was of particular importance in the 1940s development of bop, since it allowed jazz musicians to create new pieces for performance and recording on which they could immediately improvise, without having to seek permission or pay publisher fees for copyrighted materials (while melodies can be copyrighted, the underlying harmonic structure cannot be).

Examples:

Charlie Parker/Miles Davis Bop tune, Donna Lee- uses chord changes to Back Home Again in Indiana

Thelonious Monk’s, Evidence Uses chord progression from Just you, Just me

Gershwin’s, I got Rhythm is often used for “contrafactual recompositions”

(from Wikipedia: Contrafact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrafact )

Rhythm Changes:

Rhythm Changes are a common 32 bar chord progression in jazz, originating as the chord progression for George Gershwin’s, I Got Rhythm

The progression is in AABA form, with each A section based on repetitions based on the ubiquitous I-vi-ii-V sequence (or variants of it), and the B section using a circle of fifths sequence based on III7-VI7-II7-V7…

This pattern… was popular with sing-era and bebop musicians…. it is the basis of Shoeshine Boy (Lester Young’s 1936 breakout recording with Count Basie) and Duke Ellington’s Cotton Tail , as well as Charlie Christian’s , Seven Come Eleven, Dizzy Gillespie’s Salt Peanuts, and Thelonious Monk’s, Rhythm-a-Ning.

The earliest known use of rhythm changes was by Sidney Bechet in his Sept 15, 1932 recording of Shag with his New Orleans Feetwarmers group.

History:

-extensive use by early bebop musicians

-Chord changes began to be used in the 1930s, became more common in the 1940s-50s

Additional Examples:

-Anthropology (Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie)

-Cotton Tail (Duke Ellington)

-Crazeology (Benny Harris)

-The Eternal Triangle (Sonny Stitt)

-Fingers (Thad Jones)

-Five Guys Named Moe

-Meet the Flintstones (Hoyt Curtin)

-Oleo (Sonny Rollins)

-Passport (Charlie Parker)

-Straighten Up and Fly Right (Nat King Cole)

-Tiptoe (Thad Jones)

(From Wikipedia: Rhythm Changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_changes)