Jazz for dullards

[TH]

I didn't really have time to respond to this appropriately KLR, but I've got some time now.

By "composing" you mean improvising, I assume. The original composers of the songs now known as standards were often pretty crude musicians. What their songs have evolved into is another matter. I was a bit surprised when I got my first fakebook, I figured this music must be hopelessly convoluted to play, listening to Miles's recording of It Never Entered My Mind for instance. But it actually doesn't take much to play the tune per se. I knew major/minor/7th stuff, just throw in aug/dim/9ths on top of that. Not much of a toolkit, and futzing around with those is more than enough material to allow me to have fun on my own.

...
Dunno about resenting anything, I'm just an outsider like you say, and curious about how this all works….How about a type of jazz you go about like bluegrass, which has teachers for sure but you can also just learn some licks and sit in with beginners and move on from there?

Each year I attend a folk festival here in New England. Three days of people jamming in the hallways, giving workshops, sharing good times, dancing and eating. I've always envied that scene. I've often wished for a similar way to share with those that speak jazz. I get that with musicians I know; there're many microcosms in jazz.
First of all, jazz itself is a very broad art form. There are and have been gatherings that are not about the challenge but rather the gathering. I'd see Woody Allen perform in a NY club and it was very much about a very enjoyable pass time for him. That's one side.
Across town, there would be other musicians, whose idea of social engagement was to find others who understood their love of Berg, Stravinsky, Herbie Nichols, David Binney and all the ground they spent their lives breaking. To talk about these things in a musical language, in real time and to express one's identity in that moment is a different endeavour, and for an appreciative audience, it's a rush. Different sensibilities, different rules.

When I say it's a composer's art, I mean it that way. There is a notion that "improvisation" is something created in the moment as a reflexive creation. Well yes. But for some, jazz is the same process as writing a piece on paper, composing a piece of many dimensions, but with a coincidence of harmony of another piece. What one chooses to put into sound is a result of assimilated vocabulary, a sense of musical syntax and a semantic reason for doing it. Say something articulate and meaningful in a way that respects the traditions it's working within.
So when playing the same patterns becomes tedious, a growing musician can explore the assumptions they made about what music is, find new ways to make it their own and apply their own choices into doing something that discovers a new sense of beauty or satisfaction.
I think that's what it's about. People move on and find new options because they are always growing; their sensibilities are always changing.

It's not an attitude that needs to be requisite to make good music, but listening to jazz is really like listening to real human beings finding their own way. If it doesn't make any sense to you, it shouldn't. They went through a lot of living to make a statement. You find what you like, and when you grow, develop and change, you'll find a musician that will speak to you on that level.

Listen and enjoy-to what speaks to you.
David

[John Tom]

mmm... jazz is the feeling, jazz is this, jazz is that.
Of course - true, but when you're starting out (and I am) it's about as useful as saying to someone who's never ridden a motorbike before "just do what you feel man".
Beginnings are beginnings and when I wanted to play jazz guitar I just wanted to know what to do.
Book after book told me to learn the scales, learn the modes, sharpen this, flatten that.
I'm still steering a course through all that BUT I have learned this dear friends:

You DO need to know your scales - that's where the lovely lines dancing around the melody come from.
You DO need to know your arpeggios - that's how you'll know the notes you can cling to when the lines dance.

HOWEVER I wouldn't do what I did and spend months & months perfecting each major scale starting on a different string with a different finger (that comes later).

I WOULD do this:
Take the simplest major key tune you can find & play the chords till you are blue in the face.
[ Make sure the chords are close on the fingerboard (in the middle area is always nice) - very important because what you're trying to achieve is difficult, and hopping up and down the fretboard is a distraction ]
Play the tune (similarly Smurf-like resolution)
Repeat till you cry - they're fixed in your head now, throw away the book.
Now play the chords as arpeggios, if possible with a friend or looper supplying the 'chord' chords behind you.
Play the tune - again tears will start to fall - mix in one or two arpeggio notes - this is where magic begins to
happen - the tune is there but you are moving above and below the notes of the tune, and your additions all sound in-tune!

Oh my goodness you're improvising - no you are, very slowly hopefully, but you are.
This step is the same step as when you first swam on your own, you can't actually believe it.
The trick of course is to make this better, so you fit scale notes in that aren't in the arpeggio, but only ones that sound good. Then you change the rhythm a bit, play the tune doubling the amount of notes maybe, precede a few of the tune notes by a note a single fret under or above (some might work some might not).

Now I'm sure I'll get some "for goodness sake" comments - stating the bleeding obvious, but this is the point where I started to see something happening & it saved from giving up altogether because I never thought I would ever play jazz. I'm still at the very beginning of my journey but at least it's started - and if this helps anyone sitting with their guitar trying to do the seemingly impossible - I'm a happy man.