Back in the late '50s, jazz musicians were looking for a different way to play. As hard bop dominated the smoky frenetic jazz clubs, players looked to incorporate different sounds and moods, and in the wake of Miles Davis’ classical-tinged LP *Birth Of The Cool*, an alternative to hard bop’s blistering chord sequences was considered. After George Russell’s book *Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Total Organization*, musicians began to experiment more with themes on a musical mode, and modal experiments came thick and fast from John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Yusef Lateef, Roland Kirk, Freddie Hubbard, The Heath Brothers, Eric Dolphy and many others. Characterized by drawn-out chords, inverted drones and pedal points, it gave soloists more freedom to explore between chord changes.
