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I have never put a solo to paper. Why not? Because paper does not hear music. I put it into my mind, which does. I imagine this was the method of Messrs. CC, JR, and WM, and others - jazz musicians, nothing wrong.
Originally Posted by equenda
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03-26-2026 12:42 PM
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From an audience perspective, how would they know whether the musician they're watching (or listening to on a recording) is improvising or not? I suspect a ripping bebop solo on Autumn Leaves would be considered, by them, as jazz.
I have hundreds of jazz recordings and I have no idea of what percentage of the solos on these recordings were improvised, composed, or something in between. Every time I put the recordings on I hear the same solos (and I'm not bored!) and, of course, I still don't know. Most of the artists are long gone so I'll never get chance to hear them live, so I guess I'll never know.
That said, even if I did see a player live how would I know they they hadn't composed several solos for each tune in addition to the solo(s) on their recording(s)? Let's say someone, secretly, wasn't much of an improviser and so they cut those multiple composed solos up and played eight bars of one and sixteen of another and then a different eight to finish (in varying permutations on varying nights of their residency) - would this be jazz, and how would anyone know?
Of course, I'm thinking about this from an audience perpsective, because without them no-one's gigging and thus it's all irrelevant.
Derek
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It's a bit like live comedy.
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Just less popular. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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The cliches are what make you sound like jazz, country, heavy metal, classical whatever... it's the cliches and minutia that separate the genres. Cliche shouldn't have negative connotations. Originally Posted by Aiq
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Clichés are stereotyped phrases. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I don't know about anyone else but my favourite jazz does not feature clichés. It sounds fresh and exploratory, not stale dross attempting to sound like jazz (which is what cliché means to me).
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Nevertheless, I do hope you still enjoy performing music. Originally Posted by Skip Ellis
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Ready for this brutal truth, avant is stale too. Shape of Jazz To Come is old enough to be on social security retirement assistance. There has been nothing "fresh and exploratory" in jazz since 1959, any innovation has been a derivative self referencing ouroborus of pretension or a way to chase album sales since then. Originally Posted by James W
What real innovation happened after SOJTC? Soul jazz? Jazz Rock Fusion? Kenny G? Future Shock?
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I wasn't talking about genres. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
But yeah, all my favourite jazz albums are after SOJTC.
(Which is not to say that I don't deeply love some jazz before it.)
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dayum Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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I love some jazz after it too. But the fresh and exploratory thing isn’t happening anywhere. Even extreme industrial noise is based on stuff from 80 years ago. Microtonal music is centuries old. Originally Posted by James W
That’s the thing about music, there is nothing new and there’s also no first anything. It’s wonderful.
I picked avant because they are preservationists in denial. But any genre is subject to staleness. You just need to avoid turning into a caricature in an attempt to stay fresh.
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This is such a fascinating discussion, and four pages in but still going strong. We have so many viewpoints on the provocative question, clearly no single right one.
Reading through all these reminded me of an incident a few years ago. We had just emerged from corona here in Japan, during which there was little or no live music for the better part of two years. After things slowly crept back, I got wind of a jazz workshop and jam at a small local "live house" by a touring guitarist from abroad.
The guitarist began with a question: "What is jazz?" The answers varied slightly but most were a variation on "jazz is improvisation." Reading the body language and the facial expressions of our guest, I felt that was not satisfying. I keep quiet, but they ended up saying "jazz is history," and then I got it and chimed in "and repertoire." I got to know this guitarist a bit more over the years, taking a few lessons and going to their gigs on occasion, and I saw that were often themed around the tunes of one or another composer: the compositions of Bud Powell, or Thelonious Monk, etc., all with a guitar trio. In a sense, they practiced what they preached, it was all trad jazz. But in the lessons, it was all about talking and playing together, nothing about writing it out.
Regarding writing out solos, I lost my patience for that, as well as for transcribing, but I listen a lot. I think it was the sonic immersion that helped me most to play jazz. And after a few years of listening, I could hear what I was doing, or ought to be doing, and studied haphazard recordings of my playing out live to discern the clams from the very occasional gems, but I never saw the need to write down or compose anything. However, some of the very, very few gems, more or less stumbled upon, crept into my playing and I would play them, or variations on them, purposefully when soloing.
Another thread here, IIRC, reminded me that long ago, when I was studying at a music conservatory, I wrote everything down. That stemmed from private lessons with Irwin Stahl and Ruth Schonthal, the former studying arranging and the latter on illustrating her take on Hindemith theory. Both assigned me to write out two part inventions every and then critiqued them in the lessons. That was back in the 1980s, and my memory is vague, in the midst of those studies I wrote a four-part harmony on Monk's "Straight No Chaser." I realized, reflecting upon what I studied with the above teachers but also going by what sounded good to my ears, that each of the four parts gelled together better if they also worked as independent lines, in other words through thinking horizontally rather than vertically. That became apparent not only by listening but especially through writing different parts down on paper. During that period, I also took jazz guitar lessons with Remo Palmier, and he hand wrote everything for me. So I gained some facility with and great respect for writing it down.
After a decade as a work-a-day musician, I got disillusioned with the lifestyle of an entertainer so I quit the guitar, sold all my gear, and combined the proceeds with my gig earnings to study and travel for a decade. I delved into world music, Arabic, Iranian and Turkish, and although it found that although it was all improvisation based very little if anything was written down. I thought that was because penning quarter tone stuff on staves might become tedious, but then I soon realized that this music--the traditional forms of these musics--put a premium on being in the moment, on spontaneity, especially playing solo without an ensemble. And I got good enough on the Iranian tar to get into the zone, just enough to understand that this becomes something like a meditative state (and much of that music is influenced by Sufism).
After settling in Japan, I returned to the guitar and delved back into trad jazz, but with the shadows of the early formal studies and the immersion in Islamic musics in there with me. I gravitated at first to Gabor Szabo, and his minimalist sound led me to Bill Frisell, both of whom dabbled with world music. Of course, several horn players got deep into world music, John Coltrane and Yusef Lateef leap to mind, the latter writing out various scales and modes in his repository. But to my ears, that didn't sound like the trad jazz that I loved to listen to and play, by which I mean the GAS standards.
After immersing myself in the local live music scene, participating often in jazz jams, I found each venue has its own preference: bossa, funk, hard bop, etc. The hard bop spoke to me most, maybe because it ported the blues and gospel back into jazz. So I started listening to Art Blakey's recordings, who had a real knack for identifying the next gen of horn players. And I started to notice something that was brought up here in another thread, that the jazz greats played similar solos each time they played a tune. I didn't study it deeply, maybe they wrote them or "composed" them by ear, but it was clear that many of them were not only purely improvising spur of the moment, because there's clearly an element of repeating phrases, etc., across tunes. So this verified that improvisation, as many of you pointed out, has a recombinant element.
Then, just last night, I watched "The Jazz Loft According to Eugene Smith." It has a wonderful scene with Thelonious Monk and Hal Overton, and I saw that Monk was scrupulous when having what he played written down, although when a player was having some trouble playing what was written down, Monk also "danced" that part!
Sorry, this got too long, so let me end it here and get back to reading your stories!
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Boo. Bummer. Also, not really true. I don’t do a lot of experimental listening, but I catch cool things here and there on YT. The last being a couple of young dudes playing tenor together - trading back and forth. Super good. Different sounds. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Now we're getting somewhere; I asked ChatBot an open ended leading question... Originally Posted by JazzPadd
Jazz, improvisation, and cryptomnesia?
ChatBot :
Great question! Let’s break down the concepts and then see how they might connect:
Jazz and improvisation:
Jazz is a musical genre known for its rich harmony, rhythmic complexity, and especially improvisation. Improvisation in jazz means that musicians spontaneously create or modify melodies, harmonies, and rhythms while performing, often responding to each other in real time. This creates unique, one-of-a-kind performances every time.
Cryptomnesia:
Cryptomnesia is a psychological phenomenon where a person recalls a memory but doesn’t recognize it as such and instead believes it to be an original thought or idea. In other words, someone might unintentionally plagiarize something they’ve encountered before because they think it’s new or their own creation.
How are these related?
In the context of jazz improvisation, cryptomnesia can come into play because musicians often draw on vast stores of learned musical phrases, riffs, and motifs from previous listening or playing experiences. When improvising, a musician might spontaneously "invent" a melody or phrase that they don’t consciously remember hearing before. However, this phrase might actually be derived from something they heard earlier, making it a form of cryptomnesia.
In simpler terms: a jazz player might think they’re creating something totally new on the spot, but they could be unconsciously recalling music they’ve previously absorbed. This is quite common and not necessarily problematic since jazz values reinterpretation and building upon tradition.
Summary:
Jazz improvisation involves spontaneous creation of music during performance.
Cryptomnesia is when someone unknowingly reproduces a memory thinking it's original.
Jazz improvisers may experience cryptomnesia when they create phrases that feel new but are actually subconsciously recalled from past music exposure.
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I tend to think of the 70's Fusion as the last new jazz horizon. I was there when it happened. I remember seeing Return to Forever, Weather Report, The 11th House and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. There was an energy (and thousands of listeners) that made me think that Jazz would bloom and morph forever. But that didn't happen. And after the New wave rock of the 80's, not much happened there either. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Sure, we have had grunge rock and a lot of spin off E music in the rock world and lots of world music fusions in the jazz world, but for the most part, it really isn;t anything new (to my ears, YMMV).
So, what to do? Pick a genre, a framework and play some fucking music and be happy. Happy to be alive, happy to make music, happy to be part of one of the last actual human community driven things in this detached tech world (which soon may be dominated my AI driven mainframes in any case). Or if you like, you can simply sulk.
Cliches? Music is a language and cliches are easily understandable words in the language of music. Use them to draw your audience in and further the whole community thing of music. A lot of modern jazz is indulgent, masturbatory music that no one wants to hear. If that floats your boat, go for it, just don't expect anyone to pay you to do it.
PS: AllanAllen, my rant was not directed at you, or anyone else here, I am just trying to say that reinventing the wheel is not necessary when you already have wheels that work.
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Yall need to pick some more interesting Anywheres.
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It's like if they can't subvert the truth then they at least try to not make sense.
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Well, I beg to differ. Also, I wonder just how much contemporary jazz you listen to? I mean, do you think everyone these days sounds stale and just repeats music made over half a century ago? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Extreme industrial noise? Could you post some examples of this as well as direct us to the 80 year old music it's supposedly based on? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
So, you've gone from saying jazz stopped innovating from 1959 to now saying that originality itself does not exist. Some of my favourite albums were very new and original and yes, still sound amazing after 1000+ listens. Do you not think that that such albums as Bitches Brew, Interstellar Space or Devotion are original accomplishments? Putting aside personal tastes, I mean. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
How much contemporary (or other) free jazz do you listen to, out of curiosity? But I agree any genre is subject to staleness. My original point was not directed at any particular (sub-) genre of jazz. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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You know what you like, because you like what you know.
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This is just my experience/perspective. Apologies in advance if the content upsets anyone.
My understanding of jazz (heavily influenced by Branford & Wynton Marsalis) is that this music is all about energising a melody from a particular kind of jammable songform. This 'energising' is just imbuing the melody with swing, syncopation, and the Sound/Feeling of The Blues.
That's it. If you can do this, you're already playing jazz.
Coincidentally, I'm at a point in jazz-guitar journey where frankly, I'm sick of 'lines' in general: my lines, others' lines, stealing lines, building lines with BH bebop Lego, trying to write/play asymmetric lines like Prez or Charlie Christian. I'm sick of them because while they can be musical, fun, and/or challenging to play, they don't sound like the song. I'm not sure how lines can convey or best the emotional weight of well-composed message by the composer and lyricist.
I found that if I went down that 'lines' route, it was so easy to get lost in all that technical stuff - changes, arpeggios, patterns, cells, cliches, etc. - and forget connecting with the audience. For me, this pursuit becomes quite a depressing, never-ending marathon of acquiring and woodshedding little bits of playable things to throw into a solo in the hopes of making something sound musical or emotionally resonant. Even though learning and coming up with lines earlier on did improve my chops and helped me hear things a lot better, I feel that it's just too much work and it could have been replaced with learning many more tunes.
So, I've stopped trying to learn and apply lines because the 'ROI' in terms of time isn't worth it to me. I don't care too much about improvising lines anymore, and I feel improvising is a bit overrated. All I want is melody.
I like that Branford mentions that musicians should focus on melody, pulse, and sound (tone, dynamics, etc) more because these are the very things that tug at a listener's heartstrings more than lines. He always makes it a point to say that in most live musical situations, 90+% of the audience doesn't know anything about music at all, and they are here to hear you play something nice for them.
I've played this music for 2 years now, and I'm starting to get a sense of what gives me the most joy:
- spending all my guitar time learning/practising songs in different keys and string sets; really knowing the plain song inside-out
- listening to my favourite kind of music without transcribing: 1910s-30s tunes played by orchestras that feature orchestrated counterpoint, orchestrated syncopations, and limited improvisation e.g. McKinney's Cotton Pickers (these guys are REALLY good)
- listening to my favourite kind of solos without transcribing: trad jazz soloists who just use the melody heavily in the solos or simply vary the melody
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I know I have an extremely narrow, conservative view of jazz, which might be to my detriment. But I feel like by making a firm, committed decision on what I want to include/exclude in my playing, I have a much more definite path:
1. I know exactly what my tastes are
2. I know exactly what I want what to learn
3. I know exactly how to learn that thing
And I don't care if this makes me a lousy musician or a non-jazzer to jazzers.
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Jam session – you go on stage and play with people you don"t know.
There are cases when musicians play a song for the first time and they don"t know the song exactly.
Who here is thinking about writing solos?
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Composing solos is not jazz…which is an improvised music. On the other hand, the act of composing solos out of time and putting them on paper can certainly help your ability to improvise since you’re working the same ‘muscle’. It’s a bit like transcribing.
While I only speak one, I imagine many of the excercises involved with learning a new language are pertinent.
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How did this thread get so crazy; where does the confusion come from?
Are you playing jazz? The answer is Yes. Originally Posted by TF
Is improvisation required? The answer is No. Originally Posted by TF
The answer is you need to practice more learning to improvise. Originally Posted by TF
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I'm really talking about the point that cliches make music stale. Everything is derivative of something else and basically makes nothing new and innovative. I do however have a chip on my shoulder about avant/art musicians thinking they are at a true artistic apex farting on their snare drums, playing by ear, looking down on anyone who knows how to tune their instrument and can play Satin Doll. Originally Posted by James W
They're my punching bag because if avant/free jazz is full of cliches, what else is left to be new?
The 80 year old industrial music would be Karlheinz Stockhausen. Like I said, it's about reinterpretation of existing concepts (ie, cliches).
After free jazz we have things like Bitches Brew and Soul Jazz. Miles Davis was open that his expanding sound was directly a case of him trying to reach an audience. He looked up at an acoustic gig, saw a half filled auditorium, then saw Sly Stone playing to thousands of screaming fans at a festival gig and he's got his On the Corner sound. Derivative, not that derivative is bad in this case, it's just where the inspiration came from.
Maybe I'm using the wrong terms.
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Well yeah, I think you are using the wrong terms. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
In a nutshell, just because no music is ex nihilo that doesn't therefore mean originality is an illusion.
Have you actually compared Sly Stone's music with Bitches Brew? They're quite different, you know. One aspect of Miles's genius was to transcend his influences.
I don't particularly like your caricature of 'avant' musicians and it does not chime with the conversations I've had with such people or their attitude. I wonder what experience you are basing your attitude on.
This is the first I've heard Stockhausen referred to as industrial music. And he invented a fair few innovative concepts, if you took the time to explore his stuff. He also happened to inspire Miles Davis.
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