This post accompanies my latest video.
There is a persistent myth that John Coltrane’s fluency simply arrived. It did not. Behind the cascading lines of his late 1950s playing sits a single, famously difficult book, and a practice habit that bordered on obsession.
The book Coltrane practised from
That book is Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns, published in 1947, a highly systematic compendium of templates for composition and improvisation. Slonimsky built it by taking an idea most musicians never think to question, the octave itself, and dividing it into equal parts in every conceivable way, then filling those divisions with melodic patterns. Since its publication, musicians and composers from Arnold Schoenberg to Coltrane and Freddie Hubbard have sworn by it.
Coltrane did not stumble on it alone. According to accounts of his studies, it was his theory teacher Dennis Sandole who pointed him towards the Slonimsky Thesaurus. From there it became central to his practice. Coltrane, more than anyone, popularised the book as a practice tool among jazz musicians, and the pianist McCoy Tyner recalled that Coltrane would head out on the road with the quartet carrying little more than his horn and the Slonimsky book. Andy Jaffe Coltrane Symposium Lecture at NEC 2/27/17: +2
How the Thesaurus shaped Giant Steps
The clearest fingerprint is on Coltrane’s most studied composition. The Thesaurus organises its patterns by how the octave is split, and one of those splits, the division of the octave into three equal parts, gives you movement in major thirds. That symmetry is the exact harmonic engine of the cycle now known as the Coltrane changes. Carolyn Nussbaum Music Company
Recorded in 1959 and released in 1960, “Giant Steps” is built on that cyclic, major-thirds pattern. Lewis Porter, whose biography John Coltrane: His Life and Music remains the standard work, hears the tune less as a song than as a workout. He calls it “effectively an étude … of third-related chord movement.” This is telling, because analysis of Coltrane’s recorded solo shows he had worked out his melodic patterns over the changes in advance, then deployed them in the moment. Scholars including Keith Waters and David Demsey have since traced the source of the Giant Steps pattern directly back to Slonimsky’s 1947 Thesaurus. Giant Steps (composition) +3
It did not stop at Giant Steps
Treating the Thesaurus as a Giant Steps story alone undersells it. Analysts have identified specific numbered patterns from the book surfacing throughout Coltrane’s later vocabulary, in pieces such as “One Down, One Up” and his 1965 recordings of “Nature Boy.” The book was not a one-off trick he used and discarded. It became a permanent part of how he heard and built lines. Scottlernermusic
Why most players open the Thesaurus and give up
Here is the honest problem. The Thesaurus is a reference work, not a method. It was written for every instrument and none, so there are no saxophone fingerings, no breathing or articulation guidance, and no order in which to work. Its patterns are catalogued under names borrowed from Greek music theory, ditone, sesquitone, quadritone, which tell you very little about how to actually practise them. Open it cold and you are faced with hundreds of dense pages and no way in. Most saxophonists buy it, admire it, and shelve it.
How I took the complexity out
That gap, between the treasure in the book and a usable practice routine, is exactly what I built The Coltrane Approachto close.
Instead of leaving you to decode a reference manual, it does the translation for you: the specific patterns Coltrane actually drew on, written out for saxophone with fingerings, grouped into a sensible order, and applied to real chord changes so you can hear where they go. You get the payoff of Coltrane’s method without the months of frustration reverse engineering a 1947 textbook.
If the video sparked something, this is where you turn it into playing.
Start with The Coltrane Approach at sax.coach.
Frequently asked questions
What book did John Coltrane practise from?
Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns (1947), a catalogue of scales and melodic patterns built by dividing the octave into equal parts.
Did Coltrane use Slonimsky to write Giant Steps?
The major-thirds symmetry behind Giant Steps matches Slonimsky’s division of the octave into three, and scholars have traced the pattern’s source to the Thesaurus. Coltrane’s teacher Dennis Sandole had pointed him to the book.
Is the Slonimsky Thesaurus worth buying?
As a reference, yes. As a practice method, it is famously hard to use on its own, because it has no fingerings, no order, and no instrument-specific guidance. That is the gap The Coltrane Approach fills.
How do I start using these patterns on saxophone?
Begin with a single pattern in one key, at a slow tempo, and apply it to a familiar ii V I before spreading it round the cycle. The Coltrane Approach lays out that path step by step.