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Originally Posted by Litterick
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05-30-2020 05:49 PM
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Originally Posted by Litterick
There's much to learn from both. It's not as if John Coltrane didn't know any songs. I know plenty of players much more modern than me who also know more tunes, and regularly go out with bands playing completely original music. So they aren't making excuses. And I won't either.
For context, most of the gigs I played this year (lol) were 90% original music and adaptations of unusual repertoire such a medieval stuff, rock, classical voice rep, whatever. The albums I have out and that are coming out are primarily original material.
One album coming out this year is a mix - it's London themed, so there's some unusual arrangements of well known tunes. So it's not 'Real Book' - it's sitting down with the tunes and reimagining them. I find this kind of thing just a creative and fun as composing. The advantage is people can still hear the song, so you can get away with more 'progressiveness' if anything, especially if the tune is really well known.
People who don't ever do this are missing a trick. But you need a song with a very strong melody. It must be said standards are usually easier to do this with than more contemporary pop material.
Anyway, it's perfectly possible to compose, arrange, and adapt all kinds of material and still know tunes. In fact, I think you will write shit tunes if you are not intimately familiar with some sort of repertoire. (Again, that could be anything.)
But standards - and songs in general - taught me a lot. Jazz musicians are hung up on harmony, but when it comes to composing, that's just one aspect. There's so much more to a song than that. If that wasn't true you wouldn't be able to reharmonise them so easily. So as a composer and arranger that's always interesting. Especially as I lack the proper compositional chops to come up with longer forms... but there's something useful about 32 bar forms. Jazz can do something with that.
Also as a player - thinking about melodies has made me change my approach to soloing; ultimately focussing more on playing around and ornamenting a melody. This is, if you haven't tried it, very hard at first. All the great players can do this without exception however progressive or traditional they are.
But if you can learn to do it as well as the best jazz players, that'll serve you in any music. You will always sound like you are playing the music. It gives your music heart and focus, and yet it is rarely talked about. But that's something I learned both from jazz standards and from Middle Eastern music where there is no harmony. And Wayne Shorter.
And all of this can happen with or without standards, but I do feel this is something that standards give to a budding jazz player that can be easily missed when focussing on more originals based music.
People who have problems with standards - I suggest this. Stop learning the songs your jazz teachers told you to, and learn some tunes that you love. Anything. Emotional connections are all important.
No one particularly wants to hear Stella by Starlight. Well, it's always fun to play for me. But none of the punters know it at functions, and jazz musicians have played it a zillion times. Autopilot jazz. People just play it because the repertoire is based around what Miles played in the 50s or whatever, and that seemed like a good starting point when people were putting together the foundations of modern jazz education. I think we can be more imaginative and more connected than that.
Anyway as I say I don't care. I'm not the standards police. Just some observations from my own experience. I think we can easily come up with BS narratives that can block us from being open to things. Me more than anyone lol.Last edited by christianm77; 05-30-2020 at 07:05 PM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
If audiences don’t want to hear the old songs, and players don’t want to play them, they fade away. So far as I know, they are not the foundations of jazz education in New Zealand schools. New Zealand jazz is more imaginative and connected than that.
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Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
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A few years back I was at the Green Mill, listening to Dave Liebman play with a great local rhythm section. The were calling chestnut upon chestnut, Softly, Night and Day, Invitation. Over a drink after the set, I remarked how the last time I heard him, it was all original music with the Quartet, and I was lucky to hear him in both situations. He raised his glass and said "It's both sides of the tradition, Baby!"
when.
I have toured a solid amount, playing original music in the US, Europe and Japan. It's a fairly regular occurrence to play a bunch of standards with the people you are playing original music with, depending on the situation This summer, I should have been rehearsing a CD of original material of mine with Dave, Drew Gress and Vinnie Sperrazza. The project got postponed early on in the lockdown, but a Public Radio appearance I was going to do duo with Drew remained on the books. We held out hope for a while, figuring we'd just show up and play standard tunes, but the radio appearance also got postponed, so who knows what will happen and when....
I've never felt the urge for dichotomy, both sides of the tradition work for me....
PK
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Originally Posted by Litterick
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I have to say the NZ musicians I have worked with have absolutely no problem playing straight ahead. One of them is actually a bop/swing specialist although I think they mostly move elsewhere probably down to the fact that there’s not so much of that in NZ itself.
I was responding more to the rhetoric of the post. A we/them dichotomy.
I hear that in the UK which in many ways shares aspects with the NZ scene as you describe (ie a lot of Arts Council funded music graduates touring their originals), and I think in trying to create a sort of divide between the straightahead players and the more progressive players I find it unhelpful. there’s a lot of PR copy like that here.
OTOH the opposite extreme is also toe curling.
Mind you most people grow out of that inevitably.
The tradition of jazz is as much about finding your own voice and moving the music forward as it is about learning from the past. One without the other is not really the music IMO. And there’s plenty of room for your own ideas and creativity within that.
Part of this is I admit the vague feeling of annoyance that so many talented players on social media seem happy to noodle over vamps and declare this to be #jazzguitar. I’d just like a bit of musical nourishment, a song of some kind.
So what this is about is a feeling of inadequacy in some way that people dress up in some sort of narrative that validates them and diminishes other people’s choices and skills. ‘Oh I don’t know any tunes’ or ‘I haven’t written anything’ or ‘I sound old fashioned’ or ‘I can’t do the straightahead jazz box thing’ becomes ‘I’m progressive, not like those old farts’ or ‘I’m versed in the tradition, not like those modern cats who can’t swing.’
We all do it to some extent. At least I do/did, BIG TIME.
It’s all hot air and BS TBH. And you can be open to new things without admitting some sort of weakness.
To the OP- The way I look at it is not ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ but more - playing standards can offer a lot to a musician. If you like a song learn it. It’s that simple. If you don’t, don't. Life is too short for shoulds and shouldn’ts.
It’s perfectly easy to get an idea in your head and then spend time pointlessly subscribing to it.
And I’d know.Last edited by christianm77; 05-31-2020 at 05:09 AM.
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As I said earlier, I was reporting what I have observed of jazz in New Zealand, not trying to create a dichotomy.
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NZ must have a gov't subsidized jazz economy....
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TBF a lot of places do outside the states.
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Also the idea of music having some natural tendency towards progression and innovation generally is something I also question. the use of terms with a value judgement built in kind of reinforces this idea.
I think this is a bit of an import from the philosophy and history of classical Music. Usually defined in terms of positivist/enlightenment aesthetics in jazz. Music evolves but new music is not necessarily an improvement on old music.
i doubt you were thinking of any of that, but it does reveal how people’s assumptions operate.
i personally prefer to frame the journey of a musician as finding ones own voice within a community of music, and using the terms like contemporary, individual, modern, fashionable and unusual, instead of ‘progressive’, ‘advanced’ or ‘innovative’ because I think that takes a step back from it a bit more.
In some ways today’s music represents a simplification of Parker and Bud Powell for instance, and in some ways a development.
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Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by Litterick
I wanted to give an idea of why I interpreted what you said the way I did.
my words came across as a bit snippy. Reading them back I can see that. sorry.
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I’m alienating people and spending too much time on here. Time for a break?
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
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Thank you, Christian.
While noodling tonight, I found myself playing Love for Sale, a song I have never learned. So perhaps you have a point.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by guavajelly
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Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
Once when dining with Danish friends, Dexter Gordon lost his appetite when Aylers name was mentioned. He put down knife and fork and said: "You know, if Albert had a bad tone it could become better with practice. But he doesn't have any tone at all so there's no hope."
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I felt the same way as a teenager for the most part. Then I heard George Benson and BAM! This led me to a guitar teacher who introduced me to Pat Martino, then Joe Pass, Taal Farlow, etc..
My era was the 1970's with the CIT era jazz fusion records from Freddy Hubbard, George Benson, etc along with The Crusaders, Chick Corea, John McGlaughlins Mahavishnu Orchestra, etc.
There was no SMOOTHE JAZZ, that was Soul music on the radio still.
Anyway I have come to discover the Great American Songbook sung by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Julie London, Nancy Wilson,etc.
And now that's my favorite music. But to be fair I'm 63 and comfortably old,lol!
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Originally Posted by jads57
I also became a fan of American Studio era movies; this is how I explored the GASB. E.g. I hear Tangerine by Sal Salvador and then find the film the song was first introduced in (The Fleet's In, where both Tangerine and I'll Remember You were both written by the director of the film, Victor Schertzinger (a man with many talents!).
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For me it was Geoge Benson covering Horace Silver's "Song for my Father " I loved Don Sebesky especially doing Stravinsky's "Right of Spring"
I also appreciated things like Elmer Bernstein "Magnificent 7" , Jerry Goldsmith and Dave Grusin and of course Quincy Jones!
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