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1. It's considered rude, aggressive, belligerent behavior to enter a thread and talk about another participant in the third person.
Originally Posted by PaulW10
You can have the debate and even get heated, but you actually have the debate. You talk to the person about the topic. That's basic forum etiquette almost anywhere. You entered and talked about Dutch to someone else and in a pretty rude way.
These threads are called "conversations" for a reason. Paul, I feel reasonably confident that in the real world you would never walk up between two people having a conversation and start talking to one of the parties about the other one, in front of both of them , in the middle of their conversation, as if they weren't there. You did the same thing about me in your last post.
The rudeness of this action doesn't really have anything to do with your playing ability. Rude is rude , whether you're Joe Pass, or Wes or whomever.
2. It's also basic etiquette on most forums to actually follow the polite request to introduce yourself before you just start posting, especially really opinionated obnoxious posts.
I'm pretty sure you received an email upon joining the forum at suggested you go to the introductions area and introduce yourself. Say something about you are in proof that you're not just here taking pot shots at real jazz guitar fans.
In most places people who don't bother to introduce themselves, prove that they're actually a participant in whatever activity or interest forum is about, and immediately start attacking others are seen as just trolling for sport.
I'm sure that that's not the case with you, and you'll do some things to prove that you actually are sincerely interested in talking to other people in a respectful civil conversation. But honestly, it's on you at this point.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 11-19-2014 at 09:54 AM.
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11-19-2014 09:51 AM
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I'm with you Artcore. My true love for the guitar lies in taking standards and pop songs with beautiful melodies and developing my own arrangements. These are basic skeletons I create that I try and play differently and improve on each time. I'm not all that interested in going off on intense improv and varying the tunes that much because I don't enjoy it that much when I hear other players do that. It's just personal taste. Is it jazz guitar? I guess not to a lot of people here, but this chord melody page does appear in the jazz guitar forum. Maybe it needs it's own category outside this forum? In any event I got defensive when I felt my true passion was being dumped on. This is where I enjoy turning to hear it being shared by others who love it as well. Originally Posted by artcore
My apologies to everyone here for turning negative.
Paul
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Why do you assume the improv is noodling? Originally Posted by PaulW10
Why is there this push to discredit what jazz actually is?
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Hey Jeff. I didn't go on the improvisation page and diss improvising. I was responding to someone dissing chord melody, my passion, on the chord melody page. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I don't care how you want to define jazz. Maybe what I do isn't jazz. It's just my personal opinion that I don't care for off the page improv in a solo guitar context. So maybe I don't care for jazz in your opinion. I've never even opened the improvisation page so I may not be a true purist. I'll keep reading this page though.
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I wasn't responding just to you...there's been a lot of posts recently from folks who seem determined to debunk the idea that jazz players are actually improvising.
I would say yes, we have different opinions on what jazz is, if you think improvisation isn't important.
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11-19-2014, 12:06 PM #56Dutchbopper Guest
I wasn't dissing chord melody as a style. That's the first and crucial misunderstanding. Sad really. I love Joe Pass'solo guitar work as much as anybody. But Joe is not playing prefab chord melodies from sheet music. Though he probably has some preconceived notion about what he will play, the man improvises lots of his chordal work on the spot. That's jazz to me. Improvisation. Playing a chord melody arrangement from sheet music in classical style is not IMO because it is missing out on THE most important and determining aspect of jazz, namely improvisation.
Here's a complete and fantastic private concert I wrote one of my Blog entries about:
DBLast edited by Dutchbopper; 11-19-2014 at 12:18 PM.
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I know you are a big Joe Pass fan, so I'll pass on some stories I heard from my teacher (he was a very close friend of Joe's and a pall bearer at his funeral; Joe's two first cousins lived in Chicago and when Joe would come through town, the four of them would always get together. He and Joe were like brothers) . Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
So, he would set up clinics for Joe when he would come into town. Invariably, at these clinics, Joe would talk about the major and minor scale. Finally, my teacher took Joe aside and set, "look, everyone who comes here already knows about major and minor scales; they want to know how you construct a chord SOLO". So, then Joe, according to my teacher's words, would show the attendees how to build a chord solo from, for example, Satin Doll. But he would re-harmonize it on the spot and play it completely differently every time, leaving the students somewhat confused. I think the words were, "he would play a chord solo 50 different ways".
Thus, he had no set way to build a chord solo, he could improvise anything on the spot.
Finally, there was a time when my teacher lent Joe one of his 7 strings. Because of the way Joe played (finger style) he felt that he would really take to the 7 string (perhaps a la v. Eps). But it didn't happen. I surmise that Joe would have had to re-learn his personal approach to the instrument in a significant way, and he didn't want to change it up. So, Joe returned the 7 string.
Finally, Joe had a great appreciation and wonderment for classical guitar. (i.e., prearranged solo playing) Every time he and my teacher would get together, Joe always demanded he bring his classical guitar and Joe would just sit back and listen in wonderment.
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Thanks for posting the Joe pass concert DB. I can't wait to sit down and watch it.
I guess I improv to a certain degree because, although I have the tune under my fingers (so I'm not looking at sheet music), I do try and play it differently each time. And the more I play each tune the easier it becomes. So I think I agree with what you're saying. I think where we may start to part however is on the degree of improvisation going on. I love Joe Pass. However, when he started going into improv overload, it would drive me crazy. I wondered is he playing this for himself, or to show off on how fast he can play a run? Is it just for the guitar players in the room? Because, I know this term may sound insulting to some, some of his playing indeed sounded like noodling to me when he went there. I can't believe the general audience member was all that thrilled. I'm sure a lot of people will vehemently disagree with me, but I guess everyone has different musical tastes
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11-19-2014, 12:49 PM #59Dutchbopper Guest
Nothing wrong with classical guitar playing. I love that too. A lovely and highly demanding art. But it's an entirely different trade and has little to do with the essence of jazz. Still, there are similarities of course. Many classical players improvised too during concerts and I think Bach is very bebop
DB
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No. African-american rhythm is the soul of jazz. Why do I do I bother making this distinction? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
While it's hard to imagine a jazz musician who really couldn't improvise (although I can identify players who are to one extent or another, more composers than improvisors in the Sonny Rollins sense) improvisation is not necessary for a jazz performance.
Take a piece like by Ellington - tightly arranged and composed, very little or no improvisation even in the solo. The practice when trad/early bands perform this AFAIK is to play this tune is to perform it verbatim including solos, which I feel is correct because it's brilliant. It's also jazz if you play it right. (Ellington himself loosened things up live.)
Same with the album cut of by Weather Report, other than the odd fill and Wayne sax noodle is a straight composed piece. Needless to say live, it's common extend out the middle section for solos.
On the other hand, I think that if a player from the Classical tradition wants to play some standards and I enjoy the playing, I don't give a toss, quite frankly, if it sounds good. I got some Toru Takemitsu arrangements for popular songs, and they feature a of stock CM devices and chord shapes as well as some beautiful touches. I would like to hear a good classical player (i.e. not me play them.)
It is of course unlikely that a classical player would play the piece with an authentic jazz feel, which I think is the dividing factor.... If a good jazzer played them verbatim and swung them, the result would be jazz.
On a completely different level - who cares? :-) We play music based on a tradition. Listen to music based around a tradition or given expectations regarding performance seems essentially quite sad and boring.
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Of course one of the never ending arguments is trying to answer the "what is jazz?" question. I posted this on another forum and it turned into a s**t storm, but it may be understood better here. It's Pat Metheny's take on the concept that ultimately it's all just music". Of course I had a very good straight ahead player and educator tell me that Metheny wasn't a jazz player too so go figure. My son is a drummer for a touring classic rock band and he met Elvin Jones a whileback. When he told Elvin that he was schooled (University of Miami) but was playing rock Elvin said, "Hey it's all good as long as we playin' music man". I agree.
Here's the Metheny thing on genres. It's a bit long but I encourage folks to read it.
"This discussion, which I've been on the front lines of for four years now, is not really a musical discussion. It's a politcal/cultural discussion. It's about how we choose to represent ourselves in terms of the cultural context that we're going to exist in as human beings. I sometimes look at the rock and pop world and there are things like "house" and "emo" and "death metal" and all of these things that don't really have much to say about the fact that the bass player's going to play the root on one, somebody's going to make a big noise on two and four, and it's going to be in 4/4 and you can count on that. In terms of music, they're all very deeply connected, but in terms of politics? Man, you don't want to get in between the death metal dudes and the country western guys. But it doesn't have much to do with music, it's a whole bunch of other stuff. The general community of musicians that I have been hanging with and that I am probably a pretty good representative of, we're not thinking about that stuff. We're thinking about music as one big thing."
I've played with David Bowie and I've played all written music by Steve Reich. I've played free, I've played really loud, I've played really soft, I've played really complicated, I've played really simple; it's been grooving this way, grooving that way. All of these elements are things that are part of the language of music that most of the guys I've played with can play a lot of different ways, and they're actually pretty comfortable in music in general. They could play a written piece well or play a completely improvised piece. That, to me, is kind of the area that I'm interested in, and it's not a line. More than anything, I don't feel really culturally aligned with this, that or the other thing. To a certain degree, I even reject the idea of alignment. It just doesn't feel resonant to me with the way the world is now.
To me, the world is increasingly fragmented by all of these cultural and political designations. But music is music, and music will always be music, the same way math will always be math. You can go to the other side of the universe and two plus two will always be two plus two. That currency of that really deep fundamental truth is the currency that I'm trading in and that I live in. It doesn't have too much to do with these various terms that people come up with. I've seen a whole bunch of them come and go and I'm like, "Okay, sure, you want to call it that, fine." But I'm not really living in that. I'm living in, "Why does B flat want to go to C?" and that is way beyond the politics of it.Last edited by Flyin' Brian; 11-19-2014 at 01:26 PM.
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I've tried to resist wading into this thicket, but now that you insult my idol and inspiration Joe Pass ... pistols at dawn! Actually, I've heard that opinion before. My wife won't let me play Virtuoso in the car. She says it's too "plinky-plinky." So here's my (somewhat rhetorical) question for the participants on this thread. Suppose we found out that Joe arranged "Night And Day" (one of the less plinky-plinky tunes on Virtuoso I) down to the last note before recording it. Of course not the case but just suppose. What would that mean? Is the recording then not a piece of jazz? Or is the music jazz, but the playing isn't jazz because it's totally rehearsed?
PS. I spent some time this morning thinking that STFU was the abbreviation of some bebop tune that I should know.
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I know I'm being like a dog with a bone here, so apologies, but this is a key point for me. Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
Nothing wrong with classical guitar playing. I love that too. A lovely and highly demanding art. But it's an entirely different trade and has little to do with the essence of jazz. Still, there are similarities of course. Many classical players improvised too during concerts and I think Bach is very bebop
DB
Yes, Bach's melodic language is often similar to bebop. His rhythmic language - the thing that makes bop bop - is obv. missing. But I think if you got the jazz rhythm thing, you could play bebop entirely using Bachian melodic/harmonic language.
Bebop is not about playing secondary dominants with b9's or bebop scales etc, or even upper structures. It's about the rhythm of the phrases. It's the rhythm that distinguishes it from swing as well, for example.
Barry Harris points this out in a masterclass somewhere - he says 'the harmony is classical' or something like that - can't remember which one. He is always very keen to point out the connections between bop and his favourite classical composers - particularly Bach and Chopin....
Hal Galper and Mike Longo make the same point.
Obv. this is the reason why a classical player improvising on Bach's melodic/harmonic language isn't jazz.... There are some very accomplished improvisers in the Early music world I'm glad to say - it's coming back!Last edited by christianm77; 11-19-2014 at 01:11 PM.
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I think sometimes there is a kind of "jazz snobbery" prevalent which suggests falsely that classically trained musicians are clueless when they try jazz. I believe that is false as a broad generalization. Though I do not wish to debate the issue or anger anyone, I think the following video of a fine Italian guitarist demonstrates that a player like this gentleman can find his way around a jazz tune pretty well.
Besides the nice performance, I add that this beautiful guitar just might be my 'dream nylon archtop'. I don't think I have ever heard a nylon string guitar with more beautiful tone in a video. On YT the maker comments on his guitars as well. My birthday was earlier this year, but Christmas is drawing near, so if anyone is in a giving mood....
Jay
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Just because it's not jazz (ie music of black American origin characterized by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm, emerging at the beginning of the 20th century) does not mean it's not good music. And just because someone tells you that what you are playing is not jazz, does not mean that he means it's not good and it's not an insult to say, that's not jazz.
But at the same time, just because it's great music played by players who are great at jazz, does not make it jazz. Without a significant improvisational component, it simply isn't jazz. It might be "jazzy", but I don't think it's jazz. "Jazz" is just a word, but words have meanings. In this case improvisation is a pretty important component of the meaning of the word jazz.
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Since this is a forum and everyone can chip in their thoughts, here are mine. All of the following should be understood to incorporate the words "in my opinion".
When I go to see a jazz performer, I don't go to hear them play the tune, or an arrangement thereof; I want to hear what they can do with it once they finish playing the head and they improvise. That's jazz for me. If there's no element of improvisation, then the performance of the tune may have a flavour of jazz in that it incorporates some of the technical aspects that jazz players use in playing; but it's missing the heart and soul of the music that it purports to be. It's a curry with no spice.
Jay, I can agree with you that improvisation based upon the tune/changes is a spontaneous (re) composition, to an extent - a kind of on-the-spot contrafact. For example, what do jazz singers do? Their role is to sing the tune, but they don't just do that if they’re any good, they interpret. Otherwise, it's going to become kind of dull for them. I was at a workshop last weekend with the singer Anita Wardell and was called on to do a colla voce intro with her on "It Never Entered My Mind", a tune that she's probably sung many times. We ended up doing that 3 times (not my mess-up either time, I'm pleased to say) and she sang it differently each time, clearly by design. Trust me, I had to follow/answer her phrasing and that lady knows EXACTLY what she's doing.
PaulW10. You gotta listen properly to Dick Ostenk's playing on his site before posting that kind of stuff. I don't think that anyone who listens to jazz is ever going to be wondering what he's doing. Guy's a player, man.
Oh and matt.guitar.teacher raised the question of Martin Taylor being able to improvise? You don’t spend that many years with Grappelli without being able to cut that particular mustard. I saw him in the very early ‘80’s at Barking Polytechnic (as was) in Essex, sitting in at a concert by Eddie Lockjaw Davis and Al Grey. This was in the days when he was establishing a rep as "the Guv’nor" around Essex (where Martin is originally from) and London. I can tell you, he had no trouble whatsoever doing the biz.
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That was lovely. Beautiful sounding guitar as well!
This is another area I'm likely to be booted off the jazz train. I love archtops, but I've been favoring my nylon guitar much more these days. I love the clear, dry, quickly decaying tones and its breathing volume in your face. It seems easier to be expressive with as well.
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This is where I think Mostly Other People Do the Killing comes in. If the improvisation purists have out and arranged chord melody and the like aren't jazz then why are prefab changes or melodies or predetermined tempos or times considered jazz? After all, deciding those things ahead of time does take a small element of improvisation out the equation. If bebop licks and arrangements are jazz and improvisation in its purest form isn't the most important facet of the music then why isn't a note for note rendering of an existing recording jazz anymore? It's discussions like this one that make me extremely sympathetic to Pat and the Ravi Coltranes and Nick Paytons of the world when they'd just rather shed the label entirely and make music. What's really the point of arguing about it? What do you win if you're right?
Last edited by pamosmusic; 11-19-2014 at 02:04 PM. Reason: grammar
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Good lord. How philosophical are we gonna get?
Take 10,000 jazz records. I'm guessing somewhere in the high 9,000's have improvisation. It's a signature. Not the only one, but a signature of jazz. To say you like jazz but not improvisation is to say you really like baseball except for that whole "batting" thing.
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That got a chuckle here. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Alternate takes on records reveal just how much an artist will improv on the same tune, same day. For the most part it differs greatly, including the playing of the head. A/B Stan Getz, Wes, etc... to see that they were always in the moment.
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In the words of the great Richard Thompson 'I agree with Pat Metheny.'
So @ ColinO - those examples I posted wouldn't be jazz then in your estimation? Not saying that that's wrong necessarily, but maybe the idea of there being this thing that is (or isn't) jazz is pretty asinine anyway. Nicholas Payton's blog on the subject is worth a read.
Personally if I'm marketing a gig I find the names of sub genres - i.e. swing, blue note, bop, hot jazz, jazz/funk, soul, blues, jazz fusion, free jazz etc do a lot more to give people an idea of what to expect at a gig. In a larger sense, the label jazz means very little.
It says 'jazz guitarist' on my business card. I used to think that was simple- Wes Montgomery through to Kurt right?
Years later, I have the numbers of hundreds of guitar players on my phone, but not everyone can do what everyone else can do. If I need to fix a guitarist for a contemporary/post bop/modern straightahead gig I use different people than if I need a swing guy. I get booked for certain things. So the term jazz guitarist is in a sense meaningless even in my day to day life as a musician.
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Sorry. Didn't mean to get too philosophical. I'd rather be improvising than doing anything else and I also don't call a lot of what I play jazz in the strictest terms... I was just sort of commenting on how these discussions seems to spiral with very little to show for it except to exclude some music and uplift other music based on a label a lot of musicians that we consider jazz guys never really bought into. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Its an interesting discussion.
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I liked the idea of what they did (the practice of it is more or less irrelevant I think - doesn't sound terrible, but doesn't swing as hard.). Seemed to get up a lot of people's noses, which was interesting. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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11-19-2014, 02:26 PM #75Dutchbopper GuestFirst of all, Joe always improvised (see Mr. Singh's entry in this thread). But suppose he did not and record a track like that. Indeed, would it still be jazz? Originally Posted by Ren
I have asked myself this question too and came up with the following answer. For the listener (the receptive side or the product side) it IS jazz. No doubt about it. But from a productive point of view (the player's side or the process side) it is not.
When I am listening to Band in a Box playing a jazz tune is it jazz? Same thing.
I tend to emphasize the productive (process) view. So no impro, no jazz. But others do not and only hear the music, so the product. And then everything which remotely sounds like jazz, IS jazz. Even computer generated midi stuff.
Kind of philosophical but it works for me.
DB
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