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I can only go back to the Phil Woods Memorial Concert I attended a while ago.
Since most of his contemporaries are sick or dead, they had young musicians playing their asses off, but it all had this cold, technical sameness to it. It was too much sameness, every player was playing the same patterns they learned from the same source.
I was ready to go, even though I had driven through two states to pay my respects to Phil.
Then Houston Person limps up to the stage, and I thought to myself, 'great, now this guy can't even walk, what is he gonna do?'
He starts playing, and it was like a huge warmth filled the auditorium. I couldn't believe the difference!
Bill Mays had a gig before, so he joined Houston, and they were beautiful together.
I've thought about it, and I think it's something like this with the younger players:
1) The emphasis on technique I mentioned above and similar patterns used in their improvisations.
2) Their tunes all sounded like their improvisations, no interesting melodies to build on.
3) No contrasts in their selections; everything seemed like it was the same tempo, even ballads would feature so much double-timing that they might as well have been up tunes.
4) No spaces in their playing, just constant 16th notes.
5) No attempt to interject some beauty into their music, just constant dissonance.
With Houston Person and Bill Mays, it was the opposite.
It could also be like the great British jazz guitar player Terry Smith said about the college jazz guitar players in the UK- "They know all the tunes, they play all the right changes, they have great chops, but they can't play with any soul!!!!!!!!"
I admire all the new guitarists Djg mentioned, they're better players than I am, but I really don't like any of them. It probably comes down to taste I guess.
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04-19-2023 12:36 AM
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Or simply young musicians learn from the same educational sources.
or ... once on youtube Kenny Barron said that "young people play without heart."
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I always like it when we can agree on something
Originally Posted by kris
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We all went to the same school, didn't we. There was no institutionalized Jazz education until Jazz became a form of art in the 60s. Prior to this, Jazz was pop music and the artists explored friendly hoods not yet "discovered".... There aren't that many places on earth that are still undiscovered, but if you are prepared to take a plunge into the big blue ocean, most of the deep seas remain unexplored. -Who knows what you'll find down there?...darkness, pressure, ghostlike creatures...those are in fact some of the ingredients that have spurred the avant-garde in the past...-Are you prepared to open the hatch and swim outside your little box? (I think I rather keep my feet dry).
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In the late 60s when I was nobbut a lad etc, I became committed to what we termed 'the underground' as only a teen can. This concept involved Blues, much jazz, much of it free, folk, drone based stuff, psychedelia. There wasn't really any further subdivision of names because words like 'metal' and 'rock' had yet to be invented at least in the context of this new movement. (Certainly where roll went, rock wasn't far behind but that was a different thing). The point was, the industry was caught on the back foot and were not in a position to capitalise on the potential for making money and 'a scene' developed. The Bath festival in 1969, original, exciting, was completely different to the Bath Festival of 1970 where money took complete control in terms of roster etc. Bands like Henry Cow, the Third Ear band, Kevin Ayers and The Whole World were great examples of originality and daring. Maybe Kevin once had a top 100 single for three minutes. Their music involved whimsy, free music wandering, and some of what became termed as rock. Frank Zappa created art in the face of objection by the movers and shakers in commercial music (despite courting it as well). Same with Beefheart. I don't know what the equivalent would be in jazz as I only know the big ones. But I was as in love with Stan Getz, John Coltrane, Keith Tippett as I was with Frank.Never mind whether he’s exactly right about jazz, just notice that the forces he points at (collapse of record sales, their replacement by social media clips) are all firmly in the private sector."
There was 'a scene'. And the scene was generated by a cohesion of attitudes to creativity, originality and by performing. Audients wanted to be part of it so supported this new movement. The OP above is pointing, not to a difference between skills or faith in music by today's young musicians but the means by which they attempt to differentiate themselves from the herd, particularly when the herd has all been to the same music college as they have. And which the audience generally has as well. They learn their chops according to the curriculum and may try to find an original voice in their application of a minor pentatonic line in the 'wrong' place (which is generally my approach...). But gigs are less plentiful where 'less' is governed by the expense of even trying to put something together and the great number of non-musician pockets that need to be filled. Musicians also need to be seen as professional at a certain point and are less likely to do it for 'nothing' (though they will in my experience if the music is original enough to want to be part of). To present a version of yourself on Youtube is fine, but it has its pitfalls. As it is a permanent record, unless you are relaxed about it and maybe have a bit of faith in other values related to being a musician, your 'stuff' has to be top notch and popular to gain traction. IOW the language will be pretty much the same as personal development will still be in its early stages. I can't tell you how many times I have clicked on a link and clicked off again within one minute having copped the extreme loftiness of technique, the utter ingenuity of the missing semiquaver time sig and the dour expression of ease in the doing of it all. It seems a continual conformity in trying to play at the perimeter of modern music. The point is being missed. Hopefully it will re-appear after a few years of working in Sainsbury's HR dept or teaching in a cramming school.
We've lost the opportunities, and the pressure from parties only interested in the monetisation of their platforms means musicians have to conform to what's available. That's not in total of course and many young musicians are doing it for themselves, possibly as a reaction to the moribund 'scene'. But I see the dead hand of commercial control laying on top of all this, and that control is always about money. It may not be manifested in an obvious way, but the control of opportunities is there for a reason.
Finally, I know there has always been 'control' and how you played the game varied. FZ wanted to be successful as did the Captain. Not sure about Robert Wyatt or Peter Ind but it wasn't a stranglehold. I hope young musicians decide that a career in music is not all that, and decide to become creative musicians, by doing something else instead.
'Fraid I've got to the point where I've forgotten my point. Can't find 'abort' so here goes. I'll leave it up to you to maybe find a resonance in what I have said. At very length.
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Jazz education and the development of jazz musicians.
See how it's all changing and constantly evolving... plus new technologies and the internet.
Why did musicians in the 50s , 60s ,70s play so well?
Some of them created new styles and set trends in jazz music.
This gives a lot to think about.
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i was trying to refute cootie williams' saying everyone sounded the same in the 50s. i was pointing out that just in the realm of straight ahead we had *at least* as many highly individual players as we have today. so it seems we're in disagreement here. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
you wrote:
"To me the difference sight unseen between say, Kurt, Julian Lage, Ben Monder, Pasquale Grasso and Reiner Baas say, I’d be reasonably confident. otoh ask me to tell the difference between this or that 50s bop guitarist sight unseen and I’d probably muck it up because they do sound sort of similar - there are differences but they are less obvious unless you listen to LOT of that stuff (I’d be on safer ground with horns and piano I suspect)."
of course there are obvious contrasts these days but you seem to imply with your "this or that bop guitarist" that this was less the case in the 50s. if i was to guess i#d say that there are more guitarists today playing that (for me) sameish dreaded legato style with (to my ears) most hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides on the wrong beat, than we ever had charlie parker imitators. and yes, i can easily tell that halvorson sounds different than lund, but that doesnt mean i could recognize the players. but as you point out, how could i if i have no desire to listen to any of them. otoh hand i'm doing quite ok on those zellon blindfold tests
and i found the winner of the last competition. he plays circles around me of course, not that this even needs mentioning...
and still i cringe so hard watching stuff like this:
this is probably what steve means when he says all the young cats are practicing the same stuff.
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Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
Mark Fisher:
Despite all its rhetoric of novelty and innovation, neoliberal capitalism has gradually but systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new. In the UK, the postwar welfare state and higher education maintenance grants constituted an indirect source of funding for most of the experiments in popular culture between the 1960s and the 80s. The subsequent ideological and practical attack on public services meant that one of the spaces where artists could be sheltered from the pressure to produce something that was immediately successful was severely circumscribed. As public service broadcasting became ‘marketized’, there was an increased tendency to turn out cultural productions that resembled what was already successful. The result of all of this is that the social time available for withdrawing from work and immersing oneself in cultural production drastically declined. If there’s one factor above all else which contributes to cultural conservatism, it is the vast inflation in the cost of rent and mortgages.
....
Producing the new depends upon certain kinds of withdrawal – from, for instance, sociality as much as from pre-existing cultural forms – but the currently dominant form of socially networked cyberspace, with its endless opportunities for micro-contact and its deluge of YouTube links, has made withdrawal more difficult than ever before. Or, as Simon Reynolds so pithily put it, in recent years, everyday life has sped up, but culture has slowed down. No matter what the causes for this temporal pathology are, it is clear that no area of Western culture is immune from them.
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Having interviewed number of undergraduate and postgraduate guitarists it was interesting how little interest any of the jazz guitar specialists expressed in internet jazz guitar content. I was actually quite surprised. Most of them were more interested in learning from mentors and playing with others. Maybe workshops and seminars by established players, but not so much like the sort of video you posted. Originally Posted by djg
i was trying to refute cootie williams' saying everyone sounded the same in the 50s. i was pointing out that just in the realm of straight ahead we had *at least* as many highly individual players as we have today. so it seems we're in disagreement here.
you wrote:
"To me the difference sight unseen between say, Kurt, Julian Lage, Ben Monder, Pasquale Grasso and Reiner Baas say, I’d be reasonably confident. otoh ask me to tell the difference between this or that 50s bop guitarist sight unseen and I’d probably muck it up because they do sound sort of similar - there are differences but they are less obvious unless you listen to LOT of that stuff (I’d be on safer ground with horns and piano I suspect)."
of course there are obvious contrasts these days but you seem to imply with your "this or that bop guitarist" that this was less the case in the 50s. if i was to guess i#d say that there are more guitarists today playing that (for me) sameish dreaded legato style with (to my ears) most hammer-ons, pull-offs and slides on the wrong beat, than we ever had charlie parker imitators. and yes, i can easily tell that halvorson sounds different than lund, but that doesnt mean i could recognize the players. but as you point out, how could i if i have no desire to listen to any of them. otoh hand i'm doing quite ok on those zellon blindfold tests
and i found the winner of the last competition. he plays circles around me of course, not that this even needs mentioning...
and still i cringe so hard watching stuff like this:
this is probably what steve means when he says all the young cats are practicing the same stuff.
Of course, you might question how honest they were being, but perception wise I found it interesting.
The players who did watch a lot of YouTube were more the general guitar/music majors at uni and colleges like BIMM in the UK (focusing on pop rock performance)
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That's because the people you talked to were interested in jazz, and 1 minute transcription playalongs are not jazz, even if they are OF jazz.
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"...this is probably what steve means when he says all the young cats are practicing the same stuff...."
There is some truth to this....and recorded albums often have a similar mood.
Often recordings are made in excellent recording studios and sound very good .
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No one really owns jazz.
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well what I meant to say was, (from my extremely limited data set) it seems like jazz is still learned the same way as it was before the internet age which is to say within communities of practice. All do the musicians I spoke to emphasised the importance of the community actually. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
One of the students had a brick phone to spend less time on the web, which I found interesting.
I feel like it’s easy to overestimate the impact of the internet. What they all seemed to value was the ease of access to pre-internet media like the Leonard Bernstein lectures and Barry Harris Hague seminars.
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FWIW I find youtube enormously helpful because it contains pretty much everything I'd want to transcribe along with a function that slows that music down. Personally - although I do have experience of transcribing just from a CD - the internet and youtube specifically is something of a godsend for me, meaning I don't have to acquire or download something that enables me to slow music down. I wonder how many (other) jazz musicians feel this way? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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So to demonstrate what Steve means when he says that all the young cats are practising the same stuff, the evidence we have is one person playing through an exercise? I don't understand how playing through an exercise is remotely cringe-worthy. Originally Posted by djg
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yeah I do it off YouTube, I think the cool kids said that they do use the YouTube’s for that. Originally Posted by James W
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The shitposting of jazz to come repurposed this audio meme which I think will be sufficient for purpose
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Watching it now...maybe worth a listen/look..contracts? wow!....
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I think 100 years from now Robert Fripp will be much better known than any jazz guitarist alive today.
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Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
Lol, I don’t think so. McLaughlin, Benson, Metheny.
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Hate to be a contrarian, but I think that Jazz Education is getting better, not worse. We have to simply divide and decide as to WTF we are talking about.
Is it New Orleans, Swing, Bebop, Post Bop, Jazz/Rock or Smooth Jazz “fusion”?
Traditional/classical studies separate periods and practices, so why can’t we? Why is all this crap labeled as “jazz”, as if it’s a universal? Time marches on, and so do we.
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Maybe a better question to ask is will everyone who wants to learn jazz be a jazz musician or a good jazz musician?
It is good that a large number of people are interested in learning jazz because in this way the number of listeners and fans is growing.Translating internet youtube interests into reality is a bit risky.
But who knows?
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I don't think it would be possible to predict who will still be known that far into the future. The most popular recordings of 1923 in America were by Paul Whiteman, Isham Jones, Billy Jones, Al Jolson, Carl Fenton, Bessie Smith and Eddie Cantor, among others. Some of them are now forgotten, others are known to enthusiasts and scholars, but none are still popular. Many of the artists of fifty years ago, contemporaries of Fripp, are fading into oblivion. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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The Beatles Originally Posted by Litterick
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yeah I mean there’s a lot of syrupy generic dance music from the 1920s for instance. Not everyone was the Louis Hot Fives and Sevens…. Originally Posted by Litterick
(Of course loads of people copied Louis then. Mostly forgotten, we remember players like Bix and Rex Stewart who had their own sound…)
I think it’s hard to compare then to now in these terms unless you’ve lived through both. Time is a brutal editor - great stuff is often pruned away as well as generic or unremarkable work, but the stuff that remains is pretty remarkable.
Look at Bach for instance - how many of his contemporaries are widely known to non specialists today? Or lute songs that aren’t by John Dowland (I’m talking about the knowledge of non-lutenists)? History plays by Elizabethan playwrights other than Shakespeare (Ben Jonson and Marlowe maybe at best among the very well read.)
As you say even within living memory musicians become obscure. So in the world of prog, Pink Floyd and King Crismon might be widely known still, but Argent, Curved Air?
So, I don’t buy it.
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