Reading Comprehension

PT104 · S2 · P1 · Q5 Miles Davis

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The career of trumpeter Miles Davis was one of the most astonishingly productive that jazz music has ever seen.

Topic

Miles Davis's career

Frameworks

Theme / Example, Highlight Something Noteworthy

Main Point

Davis's career was incredibly productive and under-appreciated, both due in part to how many stylistic evolutions Davis went through over the years.

P1 - Thesis

We might have alternatively thought of this passage with a "Theme / Example" framework, since this first paragraph really lays out the overarching theme that the rest of the paragraphs unpack: a lot of zigzags.

P2 - First Stylistic Zigzag

Davis starts as bebop but then develops "cool jazz" (slower tempos and less soloing).

P3 - Second Stylistic Zigzag

Davis breaks free from chord patterns and seeks a more open, unified sound like that of orchestral pieces. Soloists have less constraints.

P4 - Third Stylistic Zigzag

Davis starts taking on more conventions of rock music -- electrified instruments and a cut-and-paste recording process that's a violation of the norms of jazz. He takes some heat from the critics.

P5 - Author's Causal Explanation

Here the author tries to explain why Davis was frequently maligned by contemporary critics and thus has not received his proper due as the genius he was -- critics are afraid when artists broaden possibilities or defy genre categorization (as apparently they rely on those things to do their jobs).

5.

Which one of the following creative processes is most similar to Miles Davis's typical studio procedure of the late 1960s, as described in the fourth paragraph of the passage?

  1. The producer of a television

    Partial Match

    This works for the first part of the process, providing the musicians with a base script of material is sort of like providing the setting / topic for a troupe of comedians and then letting them improvise the particular details. But this doesn't have the key part that Davis did, which is go back at the end, find the best parts, and stitch them together.

    26% picked this

  2. An actor digresses from the

    Bad Match Word Trap: improvise

    Davis's recordings were not unedited live performances, where a musician would improvise to provide spontaneity. He had many recordings of them improvising, and then he would combine together the best excerpts from those improvisations. A lot of trap answers on Analogy / Parallel tasks will either repeat the same topic or repeat a similar word in order to bait us in. Here, they're trying to get us with "improvise". This answer choice would match up better with recordings make in the classic jazz lovers style ... the musicians have a base script (the core song) to play, but then they have a passage of improvisation that lends spontaneity to the performance.

    21% picked this

  3. A conductor rehearses each section

    Weak Match

    This does sound like it captures the "combine various parts together" aspect of Davis's process. However, Davis wasn't recording the drummer, then recording the pianist, then recording the sax player. It sounds more like he would record the whole ensemble doing Improv 1. Then he would record them doing Improv 2, 3, and 4. Then he would pick the parts of each he wanted at assemble them together to create the final recording. This answer has more of the feel of "separate instrumentalists are recorded, and then brought together for a group recording", but Davis's process was "do a bunch of group recording, and then stitch together the best excerpts of those group recordings".

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    An artist has several photographers

    Why this is right

    have musicians improvise from a base script of material matches with have photographers take pics pertaining to a certain assigned theme assemble them into a pictorial collage matches with build finished pieces out of tape This answer is still somewhat different because the individual photographers are improvising by themselves, whereas the musicians were improvising together, but this is still our best available match.

    Skill tested: Analogy · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    47% picked this

  5. A teacher has each student

    Partial Match

    The first half of this ("here, students, improvise on this assigned topic") matches with the idea of having musicians improvise off a base script of material. But there's no match for "build finished pieces out of tape", by combining pieces together.

    2% picked this

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