Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical The most misunderstood words in Jazz

Great article here about how certain words are used to describe "jazz":

http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/jazzblog/archive/2009/11/05/bad-words.aspx


Scroll down especially to the part about "Voice".

A spot-on description on what "finding one's voice" really is about. It's finding your "confidence!"

I like the question on "Modern". What's Modern Jazz?

Is it Bebop?
Is it Bill Evans?
Is it Miles Davis?
Is it the newer players, the likes of Brad Mehldau, Geoffrey Keezer, Alan Pasqua, Kenny Werner -- to name a few?

Chick sounds plenty modern and so does Herbie and they've been around a long time.

Jazz - basically random notes played by musicians beyond their ability trying to impress themselves and audience that they can screw up nice melody nobody can recognize anymore.
The result is usually - too many notes...

They said Oscar and Art played too many notes...

tremens, again, let's hear your playing, unless you are a beginner in which case best to zip your mouth and start listening to the masters, no not Yanni.

In reading a Dizzy Gillespie biography and in some Jazz histories "Bebop" was considered Modern Jazz! That is what Diz and those guys considered what they were doing, Bebop being a name that got attached to it. The article was good, and I have to agree that people writing about Jazz, particularly people that are not into Jazz, can really abuse terms. Yet the terms are confusing, example "modern" above. It is probably better to relate to specific musicians. Mentioned in the article are Bebop and Modal jazz which because of Jazz pedagogy are relatively well defined. West Coast Jazz is a term that I have seen argued by musicians that were labeled that way (in interviews in Downbeat or JazzTimes). One guy quoted in the article made the best sense, Jazz just is not a popular music. It is out there but people just don't warm up to it enmasse! Hey, lots of people drink coffe but not everybody drinks espresso! Same with music....

tremens,delirium are you real? Such a blanket statement seems ill informed ... Certainly there are musicians that play a lot of notes perhaps unnecessarily. But there are others that truly pick there notes. As a student of Jazz I find myself trying to put out too many notes. The experienced musicians constantly tell me that is a sign of my relative juvenile state in Jazz.

Well again, it depends on what the notes are, how they are arranged and how the melody is embellished to their sequences. But of course Bach and Chopin pieces also have many notes composed in the etudes and WTC. Bach was noted as being a very great improviser as well as Mozart.

Some players say a great deal in their playing as minimalists, others communicate their ideas with many notes. If you slow down solos by Charlie Parker, you will hear many notes being played, but you will also hear many melodic motifs and sequences that are quite beautiful.

I have several solo albums by Art Tatum and there were times when I felt he could have left out some of his predictable signature licks, but then again, that is the style that made Tatum so great. I have slowed those passages down and have filtered into my own style, but modified to my ears. They ain't easy to master either.

Musicians also have to train their ears to hear very 'busy" or active improvisations. Musicians that are the stars and influences in jazz can play many notes or just a few, but communicate their music to the listener and capture the passion and emotion of the work.

But then listen to a simpler, more sparse comp such as Erik Satie's The Gymnopédies, and the emotion those pieces convey to the listener will floor them every time and may even create a tearful deja vu experience.

I dig Coltrane to about the "Giant Steps" era but as he moved forward to more explosive, dissonance motifs in his comps like "Love Supreme" I started loosing interest. On the other hand, critics thought that period was Coltrane's most creative and successful period. Depends on who is listening I guess.

Personally I tend to like jazz piano players who can play a lot of notes in their solos, as long as there is an interesting beginning and end to a successful journey. I am always listening and transcribing jazz musicians solos, piano player, guitar, horns, Pat Martino, Miles D, Coltrane, Bird, Bill Evans, Keith J, Oscar P and many other influences.

katt

Miles could take 1 note and make it the most beautiful thing you've ever heard.


hey nitekatt what's your musical background? Sounds like you are a jazzer as well!

Hi Oz, yep a jazz piano player, playing gigs and still constantly studying, transcribing, reading music going out to hear other live jazz groups. On Miles Kind of Blue, Miles D plays with few notes at times and still delivers the passion and then he can play way up with many notes with Coltrane or Bird and lay down that frenetic energy in the sound. I know exactly what you mean when Miles could outline a solo with just few, but the perfect notes that really grab the listener. Flamenco Sketches is a good example of Miles playing very few notes, but each note works into a beautiful motif or phrase.

I had lessons years ago with a great teacher who told me, if you play a tune and don't establish the melody, don't waste time blowing on it because the approach is totally invalid.

Seems to be quite a few other jazz pros and student here on the forum. Glad to see it. How about your influences Oz?

katt

yeah, there's a good mix of jazz enthusiasts here, and the odd nut or 2. (Gyro) I played classical as a child and picked up the jazz bug while in university. Studied on and off for a while as music isn't my profession, but the last year have really practiced hard.

I love Jarrett for his ballads, Herbie for modal, straight ahead, pretty much everything... Kenny Kirkland...some players from Europe, Esbjorn Svennson, Marcin Wasilewski, Bobo Stenson. Wayne Shorter's tunes are amazing. Miles' stuff with Bill Evans was great. Nguyen Le, a guitarist who mixes Asian sounds with jazz, Eric Johnson, rock guitar virtuoso, smoothest tone i've ever heard.

There are lots of great musicians everywhere, you just gotta look hard enough.

Hey, whereabouts are you at? I'm in the West Coast of Canada.

That was a great book wasn't it? Tells you a lot when those masters would jam in the early morning and talk about how they're creating that sound. The origins of our current Jazz theory. Before I read that book, I thought it was all just good ears. Then I realized that to play at 200 miles an hour on Bebop means you need to understand harmony fully.

Did you read the Bill Evans biographies?

When I first started learning Jazz, of course it all seemed like a blur when stuff is coming at you fast. But now that I know Jazz, I seek out that "many notes" sounds and I can pick out what's being played so it all sounds good to me. And that's just the speed of playing. What's the reaction when you play 'outside'?

If one's ears aren't that level, I can understand that it's all mumbo jumbo.

But then again, I play Jazz for myself. I don't have to convince anyone else to like it. So they say Jazz is the 'Musician's Music'. I have no problem with that.

At least it's not Rap (with NO NOTES).

Branford Marsalis had an interesting story when talking to an old lady who couldn't understand jazz.
He asked her how many children she had. She said 3 sons. He said, so when the first son calls and talks, do you think it's the 2nd or 3rd? She says, no of course not, I can hear and recognize that it's the first.

So he said to her, it's the same with jazz music, you need to listen to the music enough times before you get it.

I dont think too many notes is ever a problem..Mozart wrote many pieces that are flashy/had a lot of notes too.

What makes jazz less popular now is the fact that jazz has become more of a abstract-art music than popular music, compared to how it was in the beginning.. it has a lot to do with pop music too. It's the same thing with classical music, there are a lot of great stuff out there right now.

And I agree with other people about bebop.. Bird and Diz went through the same kind of criticism(playing too many notes, not playing melodic) when they first came into the scene.

bottom line is that you need to have sense aesthetics to appreciate high art.. it's not as accessible as popular art, but when you get it it's much more rewarding. And it's about keeping an open ear, I can listen to Messiaen, Bard Mehldau, Stevie Wonder.. and enjoy it for what they are, as long as I don't put my prejudice about what good music 'should' sound like.



If you follow tremens delirium's logic, Kenny G would be the best jazz sax player...over brecker, liebman, garzone.. that's a scary thought.

Yep - how many times have I heard this? "I love Jazz, especially Kenny G".

Lord -- please give me more notes than what Kenny G plays

I know a Juilliard graduate who said that about Rachmaninoff. (She didn't mean they were too hard to play, she meant they were unnecessary.) I'm not sure why she thought that they were unnecessary.

I had the misfortune to hear KennyG play once (whilst waiting for some real musicians to play) and he played a real lot of notes, all of them horrible.

Even Jarrett said that Art Tatum played too many notes, but I think that is just sour grapes as Tatum is probably is the only pianist ever who has played something that Keith can't match on a technical level. I love Tatum but often just because I am so amazed by what he plays, not by the emotional depth of the music. A lot of jazz is pure virtuosity but there is nothing wrong with that.

There are people like Oscar Peterson who can play busy on a fast tune and play very simple on a ballad. It's not like you can't do one and not the other, most of them can do all.

Btw its funny how someone here posts clips from Amadeus as an example of what they are talking about.. the film is very inaccurate..I read that director based Mozart's characterization mostly from the personal letters he wrote to his sister, which is full of toilet humor, but I read that he was actually a very serious person in public.

I think movies based on musicians are great, but a lot of times it gives the wrong impression/stereotype about being a musician. It's highly idealized in some respect, like Round Midnight, Bird... but most of all, they don't really show the thousands of hours people practice to become who they are.

who is Kenny G? looks like you guys like him a lot...

p.s.
this is proper amount of notes (true for each in the band)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UtSvkltyFI