> If you have never listened to jazz before, Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue is a great place to start. The heart of the album is its first track, “So What.”

> “So What” is famous for being one of the first modal jazz tunes. This just means that it doesn’t have a lot of chord changes compared to the fast harmonic rhythms of bebop. The A sections use the D Dorian mode. This scale is especially easy to play on the piano; just play the white keys. The B section is up a half step, on E-flat Dorian. If you play the black keys on the piano, you get five of the seven notes in this scale. I had a complete beginner pianist improvise a solo over “So What” in class. I called out when she needed to switch between the white and black keys. It worked!

> “So What” occupies a similar place in jazz pedagogy to the blues: it’s simple enough for beginners to play, but you can devote a lifetime to practicing and never get to the bottom of it. If you want to learn how to improvise jazz, you should definitely learn Miles’ solo.

> Black American music uses lots of call and response as a structuring element. “So What” has many call-and-response pairs at different scales. Here are all the layers I can detect, ranging from micro to macro … (7)

> I would bet that this fractal-like self-similarity across different levels is a major reason for the tune’s appeal. Any tune this immediately catchy yet also structurally deep is going to attract a lot of imitation.

> Anybody who’s been to music school can write complex and abstruse jazz tunes, and blow complicated solos over them. Not many musicians can write memorable hooks. And only the most profound artists can write a hook that conceals as much depth and possibility as “So What.” I wonder if that level of creativity is teachable, or learnable?

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_about_music_is_like_da...