How many play note-for-note versus on-the-spot improvised?

[christianm77]

this wynton crap is really getting old by now. so when did jazz exactly die? in the 40s with bird, in the 50s with monk, in the 60s with trane and ornette, in the 70s with weather report, in the 80s with metheny, in the 90s with steve coleman, in the 2000s with bad plus or EST, or in 2014 with glasper or drumhedz? yes, we all know the chitlin circuit is dead, the apprencticeship system is dead, yada yada yada. times are changing. some doors close, others open. there's never been *that* much innovation in jazz anyway.how many real innovaters did we have? 5, 6? was jazz already dead when mobley or stitt recorded? was sonny rollins already flogging the dead bebop horse at 19? maybe the word jazz *is* problematic, this has been covered by art taylor in tones and notes decades ago. interesting read.

I agree with almost everything you say, actually. The word *jazz* is problematic in communication with non-musicians in particular, and may in fact be a poor description or label for music in any case.

Perhaps the type of music that Stitt and Mobley recorded was already in the process of tradition. Stitt is a bit like tidied up, classicised Bird, in a way. Already embalmed. The innovation in music had moved elsewhere from bebop.

So jazz is a tradition and/or a process - we could argue (and have argued) about what that is to the musician, but really this is not the issue.

What started me off on all of this wordage is that I don't care for a high handed dismissal of music as 'non-jazz' and I would say if we do call something 'non-jazz' it is no reflection on its quality.

Really jazz and 'non-jazz' is what you or I say it is - and we've seen that we have different ideas of what that is. Barry Harris's definition of jazz is different from yours, for example, you might disagree with it, but there are others who would agree.

If I like Steve Coleman, EST, Glasper etc (which I do) it has nothing to do with it being jazz. It's because I like it.

[christianm77]

When someone says that jazz or any other art form is "dead" I wonder what exactly they mean by that. That it doesn't exist anymore? That no-one is playing it anymore? That no new music in that genre is being written? If it's just that fewer people are listening to it, so what? That doesn't mean that it's dead or that it isn't moving forward as an art form.

What I mean is that the style is prescribed, defined and classicised. The fact that at an art form is also culturally peripheral follows naturally from this.

Bebop, like Bach, is such a style. Playing Bop now has a different cultural significance to playing it in 1948. It also attracts a musician with a different sensibility, someone interested in curating or recreating beauty, rather than looking for something strange, exciting and new (although Charlie Parker's music sounded pretty weird the first time I heard it.) As I play old, dead forms of music such as bop and swing (some of which seem to have wider public appeal than more 'alive' forms of jazz) I am very much aware of the tension between style and freedom. I happen to find that interesting, but I don't flatter myself for a second that that's same sort of creative space that Bird existed in.

Obviously, the exacting study of a form, dead or not, is important to a musicians development. Bird studied Lester Young whose music was very much alive at the time, while Mozart studied counterpoint, a dead form, in order to move his own art forward. What these artists produced was new. Obviously it's not given to many of us to be in a position to do this.

I do feel that Charlie Parker's rhythmic language is still extremely fresh, quite poorly understood from the perspective of formal jazz education, and can be applied in all sorts of places - including harmonic, modal and non-tonal music. I think we've seen a lot of that in music over the past 60+ years, and not just in 'jazz'. It's revealing that bop pedagogy focusses so much on harmony, when I always felt that Bird was trying to break out of these strictures.

[sundogg52]

I've heard it said that you can only truly improvise on a song once, after that you are playing from memories of what you've done, or thought of doing, before.

[Jonah]

I've heard it said that you can only truly improvise on a song once, after that you are playing from memories of what you've done, or thought of doing, before.

well... by this logics even the first time we might play something we heard before... expereince is very complex..

For me actually improvization is connectend with dicision now and here - no matter what I did before or not - I just decide if i do now this or that... and this choice makes all the difference...

[Michael Kaye]

Great thread. I appreciate the discussion greatly. Obviously there are many strong feelings on the topic but it's discussion like this that I find the most interesting. Partly because the OP brings up a question that is dear to me in my own studies and partly because the responses come from many who have far more experience in the Jazz genre than I do.

Just going back to the OPs original idea. I have struggled with these same issues as I approach the end of my first year working on chord melody. I have struggled getting through others arrangements of tunes. At times it seems laborious and "unnatural". It becomes an exercise in mimicry - and a bad one at that. Other times it becomes an accomplishment when I discover a new way to voice a melody note over a certain chord. Simple ideas like, what if the chord is clearly a maj 7 but the melody note is the tonic? Some of these issues have been resolved by the study of other's arrangements. But ultimately, the concept of improvisation is lost when strictly working with other's arrangements. Not very satisfying as a player.

So so a few months ago I started an exercise, for lack of a better word, where I simply pull out the real book or any song book and read the chart and try to construct a chord melody on the fly. Whoa - slow going, I have to say but ultimately more satisfying. I have come to really enjoy this and have expanded on this idea to include just playing bits and melodies from memory, or playing variations/alternate versions - trying it without the chart etc. slooooowwww going, but very rewarding. I am SURE I am not doing anything innovative or anything highly sophisticated. But it is starting to come from ME and not strictly from someone else. That is pretty cool to me and feels more like "Jazz".

Which brings up improvisation. I don't know, when I think of improvisation I don't only think of jazz soloing or music alone. I think all artists of whatever discipline thrive on improvisation. Painters, actors, dancers, chefs, you name it. I'm sure the guy who came up with ranch dressing was just "jammin" in the kitchen one day and went "hey, this stuff's pretty good!", lol. I can totally see how improvisation is the soul of jazz. It's kind of fascinating to have been a musician for so long and yet, today, I can say "I have so much to learn". Wow

[mr. beaumont]

Nice post^^^^^

[christianm77]

Yes - it's interesting how important improvisation is for actors for example. Really, it seems that Classical music is extremely unusual in not incorporating improvisation of some kind although, this is slowly changing largely through the influence of Historically Informed Performance practices and contemporary music.

Has anyone here read 'Improvisation' by Derek Bailey? For those who have not read it - this is an excellent guide to improvisation in several different musical contexts and cultures, as well as covering Bailey's own work. There was a TV series in the early 90's which was even wider in I think you can view online, although I have no link - maybe someone else does? It had some excellent interviews with Max Roach, John Zorn and many other IIRC.

[CP40Carl]

This has been a great thread. I play classical and jazz and agree that there is a huge void in the education of classical guitarists as musicians given the reliance on sheet music and lack of improvisational tuition. Some courses now include a section on improvisation so I see this as a step in right direction.

I think that the labelling of music into different genres has been detrimental. I read somewhere that a catalyst to this categorisation was the advent of radio, which necessitated the labelling of music in order to identify and play to different audiences, etc.

Let us just imagine for a moment that this categorisation never occurred. Guitar tuition would not be divided into seperate camps, with differing priorities such as the ability to sight read or improvisation. How much better an education the humble guitar player would receive if he or she were to learn all of musical skills without exclusion.

Not sure where I'm going with this but my own interest is to close the gap between classical and jazz guitar (my tutor played and taught both styles, which I considered a great advantage, and did not like to distinguish the two). More broadly, if music wasn't categorised so heavily more guitar players would be exposed to a more diverse and broad range of amazing music (Brower and Bream, Frisell and Gismonti, Towner and Williams, Pass and Abercrombie,it's all wonderful).

Sorry if I'm going off message in my post but felt I had to throw my contribution in...

We have a wonderful heritage in jazz guitar music, only surpassed by the heritage of guitar music of all styles.

Nuff said.