Straight, No Chaser

Thelonious Monk wrote a lot of excellent blues tunes. “Straight, No Chaser” is the weirdest and coolest one. Here’s his first recording of it, from 1951:

Here’s another good one, from his 1967 record of the same name:

A live performance:

The iconic Miles Davis recording, in F rather than B-flat:

There’s a documentary named after the tune about Monk’s life, and it’s fascinating, but also sad. Documentaries about iconic jazz musicians usually are.

Anyway. “Straight, No Chaser” is a mind-boggling piece of music. It sounds so friendly, especially the way Monk played it later in his life, but then you try to learn it, and it’s like being inside an Escher drawing. The tune is comprised of eleven short phrases, all of which start on F. Ten of the eleven phrases are variants on the same standard blues riff. It doesn’t have an official name; I call it the ascending diminished blues cliche. (You might also recognize it from “Blue Monk.”)

Here’s my chart of “Straight, No Chaser.” I’ve marked off the eleven phrases. The red notes are rhythmic accents.

All eleven phrases start with a pickup on F in the eighth note before the start of the blues riff. They vary in how they end, and in their metrical placement.

• 1: The basic phrase. The riff starts on beat one, and the accent is on the “and” of two.
• 2: The extended phrase, which adds two extra notes to the end of the basic phrase, E-flat and D-flat. The riff starts on beat four, and the accent is on the “and” of three.
• 3: Basic phrase. The riff starts on beat one, and the accent is on the “and” of three.
• 4: Basic phrase. The riff starts on beat four, and the accent is on the “and” of one.
• 5: The shortened phrase, which omits the D natural at the end. The riff starts on beat three, and the accent is on beat four.
• 6: Extended phrase. The riff starts on beat two, and the accent is on the “and” of four.
• 7: Basic phrase. The riff starts on beat two, and the accent is on the “and” of three.
• 8: Basic phrase. The riff starts on beat one, and the accent is on the “and” of two.
• 9: The semi-extended phrase, with E-flat on the end but no D-flat. The riff starts on beat four. There isn’t really an accent, because this phrase gets cut off by…
• 10: A break in the pattern! There’s no blues riff at all. Instead, there’s a chromatic scale from F up to E-flat.
• 11: Basic phrase. The riff starts on beat one, and the accent is on the “and” of two.

That is an incredible lot of musical complexity for just twelve short bars. The tune is not difficult to play on guitar once you have it internalized, but getting my brain around it took a long time. Monk loves to take a short phrase and repeat it with rhythmic displacements, but this tune is more like putting the phrase into a blender. (A very methodical blender.)

Here’s how the tune looks in MIDI format, as visualized and annotated in Ableton Live. This view shows just how much the phrase boundaries disregard the bar lines.

And here’s the MIDI version wrapped in a circle. You can see the symmetries and asymmetries most clearly this way.

I love to analyze Monk tunes, but there’s a kind of futility to it. All the information you need to make sense of his music is right there in the music itself. Furthermore, Monk’s microtiming and touch are essential to his sound, and those aspects defy systematic analysis. Or maybe we just don’t have the tools yet.

All Monk tunes have a rigorous, Bach-like logic, especially this one, but all that logic is in the service of the groove. You can hear the sweat pouring off of Monk in those recordings. His playing may be intellectual, but he also reminds you that the mind is as much a bodily process as breathing, circulation, or digestion. I think that’s why I love him so much.

Update: Wenatchee the Hatchet wrote a response post in which he points out some more delightful aspects of this tune, check it out!