Coltrane's Tone Circle: Decoding the Geometry Behind 'Giant Steps'
John Coltrane once sketched a diagram for Yusef Lateef: the chromatic scale arranged in circles, with lines tracing harmonic relationships. This post rebuilds that diagram as an interactive widget and decodes its secrets. It reveals how Coltrane changes, tritone substitution, and the 2-5-1 progression all emerge from the circle's symmetric shapes—squares, triangles, and hexagons—that divide the octave into equal parts.
The result is a tune that feels like it's constantly arriving and never settling, which is a big part of why it's such a gauntlet among jazzers.
- _eznj
Here I made this for you cool cats: https://eznj.github.io/coltrane
- tniemi
Here's an explanation of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."
- asimpletune
Giant steps is a triangle, Central Park west is a square