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Language acquisition is facilitated by music and poetry. That is why lullabies and nursery rhymes exist which expose babies/toddlers to the rhythm and melody of their first language.
I am lucky to have a mother who spoke and sang a lot with us kids (besides intentionally exposing us already prenatally to classical music) and I pity the kids of today who miss their mothers' non-communicative permanent silent cell phone swipes as modern baby buggies are built in a way that they do not even see here.
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06-04-2024 09:26 PM
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Nat Adderley:
Originally Posted by RLetson
"We belonged to the Episcopal church with its sort of Gregorian chantish kind of music. For the benefit of the music people, it's all tonic and sixths [hums]. That's tonic and sixth. [... A]cross the street from our house, the Episcopal church was around the corner. But across the street was a Tabernacle Baptist Church, which was a sanctified church. And the Tabernacle Baptist Church, while we had the organ and the European Gregorian style music, the Tabernacle Baptist Church had a band. They had a one legged drummer and a piano player and a guy played guitar, and a trombone. And they would open up, and they had some tambourines and hand clapping, and that music was so fascinating that we'd leave our church, because the Episcopal church would finish like 12 o'clock, we were through. They were just getting into it at 12 o'clock. We'd come home, and then Cannonball and I would go stand across the street from the Tabernacle Baptist Church and check out that music. Because they were in there going, "oh, git it." And it was great."
Dizzy Gillespie always stressed that the foundation of his rhythmic abilities was the early "sanctified church" experience in his South Carolina hometown (refined later by what he learned from Afro-Cuban percussion masters like Chano Pozo).
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I've told this story before, but it's it's a good story.... Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I wandered off the road mid bike ride once in Senegal, I heard a really amazing bird call & wanted to know what made it, left my bike at the side of the road & ended up on a spit of land surrounded by the Senegal river & couldn't get back - a driver found the bike, took it back to the village I'd just came from where it was recognised & people got concerned...the local Tama kat (talking drum player) started calling my name where the bike was found, I heard it, guessed it was for me but couldn't find the path out & was too embarrassed to start shouting in case it wasn't...the beung beung (it sounds like that) asked the next village if I was there, did they need to get a boat to check the river etc...I finally found a track out half a mile down the road & everyone was extremely impressed with my ability to understand the drums.
I spoiled the celebrations but saying I'd followed a bird call & got several lectures on wasting peoples time, fast flowing rivers, crocodiles, hippos, snakes, & stupidity, mainly focused on stupidity.
I lost more points the next day admitting that I'd just followed the drums without understanding what they were saying & the tama kat insisted on teaching me to hear my name on the tama 'in case you do it again'
A few years later at a women only dance in Dakar the tama kat insulted me, everyone saw I'd understood - uproar.
I was handed his tama & told to answer, when I said I couldn't play it the women gave me all the money he'd collected instead.
I sent the money to his wife the next day & she turned up with a choice of two daughters of marriagable age...
Regrets, I've has a few...
Also, this guy...
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Please do not do that: art historian in the room. Originally Posted by ccroft
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I think language acquisition, fluency, vocabulary etc are just the beginning of the story. It's true that casual speaking is similar to improvisation in that the words come out and make sense often without any conscious forethought. But most everyday speech is extremely mundane (that might be a tautology). How many of us can verbally improvise something genuinely moving or interesting? But that seems to be what is expected of musical improvisation. I wonder if the closest verbal skill to musical improvisation is rap.
Last edited by CliffR; 06-05-2024 at 07:52 AM.
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Kendrick Lamar was apparently deep in a Coltrane phase in 2015 and you can hear it in the phrasing for sure. Originally Posted by CliffR
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If you spoke in rhyme 2 hours a day, your improvised poetry would be improve. Originally Posted by CliffR
Also, freestyle rap, slam poetry and stand up comedy are verbal improvisation.
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The Mills Brothers
The human voice sings, imitates an instrument, and improvises.....
The Swingle Singers
The voice sings variations on the MJQ ( ? )
The Samba - sung, played, and danced to.....
No better match up of a people's language and its' music.....( for me )
Lots of layers here..interesting.....
For me, the spoken word alone was improved upon a long time ago, but again that's just me.....
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It is already done. Originally Posted by emanresu
Music for years has been connected with spoken intonation. And you can actually hear it in national schools of music(realtion to the national language intonation and phrasing).
Also before music became an indepndent art (late renaissance/baroque) it was highly dependent on words and connected with the speech (or dance)
Then recitatives in baroque cantatas and operas.
Then late Romantic opera: Wagner or Puccini which is practically musically intonated speech.
Sprachgesang of 20th century...
it was always there
And finally... the origin of jazz intonation is mostly speech, firs vocal/speaking intonation influenced instrumental playing.
(Later I believe there was a backward process: instruments influences singers)
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I see lots of analogies of verbal or written speech with music. You can learn a lot by trying to organize a solo the way you would organize an essay, or a lecture. Intro, paragraphs, main theme, closure. Presenting arguments, developing them, moving to the next subject in a logical manner, moving from dealing with words to dealing with sentences, then paragraphs.. the list goes on.
Or just think of a lecturer, the way they present subjects, how they vary dynamics, volume, pitch, all those mechanisms designed to convey and stir emotions. Playing improvised music is the same thing.
I've learnt tons of things by transcribing vocalists (which of course is still music, but a lot closer to speech than guitar is). To this day my favorite electric guitar soloing style is the way Curtis Mayfield sings!
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Yes! Originally Posted by Alter
When reading a book that is kinda boring and just soldiering through, I sometimes just watch what the words do and later try to do something similar with impro.
When having this kind of mindset while playing, it becomes obvious and a more annoying when just noodling in a comfy zone, or moving to a completely new "topic" without caring what was before. Reading helps to keep the "point(whatever it may be in music)" alive longer.
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LOL Alter, I remember your lockdown solos were as long as they were cool, but what you're describing is more applicable to whole compositions, IME.
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But if one looks at all these classic soloists from the bebop era, solos are like a whole, instant composition. Using music to carry an indulging story.
That's the way I think about it, not necessarily when playing, but when practicing. You're just trying to play a tale, and organize it as best you can, with hooks, various levels of form, motifs and development, etc. You take a look at master jazz or blues players, they are all great at that! Especially if the player is also a singer, the correlations are obvious.
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To tell a good story or do a joke justice you need to be aware of where you're going and where you've been. There will be tension building and an element of surprise.
A noodle hound doesn't have this kind of awareness.
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OK, I understood the OP was asking about parallels between improvisation and speech in general. When talking, I do tend to "jam" in the same way I improvise over an unfamiliar progression, so lots of potential for BS there, plus the occasional gem. Hopefully. Originally Posted by Alter
In the case of a 32 bar AABA bebop tune, once the head has been played, absolutely, the soloist is definitely in the role of composer. Things would get tedious pretty quickly if this were not the case, right?
My own preference is for arranged music with (short) improvised sections/departures. Big fan of some of Thank You Scientist's instrumental stuff, just as a quick example. YMMV
Cheers
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Thanks for the video. I've always admired people who can speak many different languages fluently. It's truly impressive how they manage to find the energy and time to learn and master multiple languages. Each language represents a unique window into culture, communication, and understanding the world in different ways. Personally, I rely on propio language services customer service whenever I need help with translations at work. They've been invaluable in ensuring accurate and professional translations that convey the nuances and meanings effectively. Originally Posted by dot75
Last edited by benhatchins; 06-20-2024 at 03:15 PM.
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I recall reading somewhere that Wayne Shorter wrote a tune that was supposed to imitate the speech patterns of a close female friend. I think it was "Dolores" but I can't confirm it on a search. Anyway, here's my favorite version:
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When my son was a small child almost 40 years ago, we borrowed a childrens book from the public library called "Lugtebogen" (means "The Book of Smells") which had humorous small "poems" about various kinds of bad smells. The original was written in English but it was translated to Danish by a writer who was widely known as a devout jazz fan. He had managed to get the rhythm of those "poems" syncopate and twist much like the rhythm of say Charlie Parker. Very elegantly done. I don't think he would have been able to do it if he hadn't had jazz as his second native language.
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