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Seems to me like over the past few months, we've had numerous threads in which people are looking for the exceptions in jazz history rather than the norm...so my question is, "why?" Why are some of us looking for reasons to debunk the idea that improvisation is central to jazz?
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03-31-2015 10:20 AM
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Could you say some more on this? 'got to admit, I avoid entire thread genres so maybe I'm missing where you're coming from. What kinds of exceptions?
Thanks Jeff
David
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I'll have to hunt and peck to find things...but even the thread on playing solos verbatim that's active right now seems to have this feel to it...
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Hey Mr B... I totally agree... generally because most people qualified to post musical BS, myself included, Don't get it, and would rather quantify or evaluate with what they understand or believe and ignore what they don't.
And because obviously listening to recordings seems to be the new standard or reference as to what Jazz improvisation is... and since that recording is no longer an improvisation, it's a fixed notational piece of music, the improvisational aspect is gone. The music becomes a composition.
Probable a result of the situation, I grew up listening and learning fro live performance. Gigs were a few nights in a row, sometimes six etc. The tune could be different every night... even the same tunes.
Most gigs now are a couple of nights at best, generally one performance and move on. And the material is more in show style of performance... tighter road maps etc...
Even many of my local gigs have books from who ever books or directs the gig. I'm always verbally changing charts or tunes in the middle of performance... trying to react to the situation, the audience etc...
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I think because the improv part of jazz is the hardest. One can listen, play memorized or written parts with a kind of authenticity. But to improvise through difficult chord and rhythmic changes is the REAL challenge. I have found that people tend to criticize that which they can't do.
My basic methodology is all improvisation. I don't have a ton of difficult heads memorized. Like Reg, I'd rather read them. I have no solos memorized. Never did. For me, the art and the challenge has always been make the shit up as you go. That's what the big boys do. And I'm wearing my big boy pants.
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I'm just a regular dude, no pro, but to me, improv is everything...it's the joy, the spirit...it's the absolute best part of jazz...it's a challenge, it keeps things fresh...I like that it's difficult...I keep learning. Every day.
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I think I understand where this is coming from. :-)
I don't presume to be at the level as some other players on this forum -like Reg, Henry, or even you Mr. B. But I personally don't feel like it's people "putting down" improv as a central aspect of jazz. Rather, realizing that there are other things as well.
As Reg points out, things have been changing in jazz since the beginnings of the last century, as they have in all types of music and the arts. Some of us here are old enough to remember how it "used to be", some of us aren't. We each have a very different relationship to that legacy and tradition of jazz. Not only that, but there's people here from Japan, china, France, UK, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, South Africa. Music means something different in each of these places (to which jazz is NOT a native art form).
I think we all struggle to be the best improvisors, as well as the best jazz musicians, we can be. Sometimes it's not the same thing. that's all...
I see it as a dialogue that helps us all understand each other and this "thing" we all love which is jazz guitar.
K
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Who is that french pianist, classically trained who did jazz type trio music? It was all written and bored me to tears. I live for that spark of instantaneous creativity. I live for it either as a player or a listener. It's the moment of creation. That spark has no permanence. No thought. It just is. The fire. The moment. The danger. The exhilaration. The flash of brilliance and the many misses. Man, that's the shit for me. It doesn't have to be perfect. As a matter of fact if it's too perfect, chances are it's not improvised. It's gotta be on the edge. Gotta have chances taken. Have to have the boardwalk, chess board, framework, roadway. Got to have the love affair, the drunken brawls, the betrayals, the assignations, and the hidden knives. You NEVER KNOW what's going to be on the menu. That's why I love it. It's not the perfection. It's the mess. It's the closest art and music I know that most closely resembles real life as it happens. Because it is real life as it happens, enclosed and encapsulated in sound, pitch, time, rhythm and the indomitable human spirit. . .
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Yep, that's it right there.
Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Is that Previn you're thinking of? He does a record with Pass and Ray Brown where I do think he's improvising, and it's quite good.
And I should say now, so the jazz police get a head start on me, that I do find MJQ pretty boring after a few tracks...
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I think generally, outside of jazz, just everywhere, revisionism is just really compelling for people. It's just more interesting to believe that maybe "everything you know (about some aspect of history) is wrong". So, when someone suggests that jazz isn't about improv - just historian BS... whatever... Just kind of gets people going. Davinci Code type stuff. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I mean, honestly, what's more interesting: believing that Abraham Lincoln was merely a great man or president, or that he was also a vampire slayer by night? Hey, who's to say that he wasn't. Coulda happend... :-)
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If jazz is moving away from improv and classical is moving towards it that's good.
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Jazz is a performance art improvisation is essential, inseparable. I read so many biographies and article I'm forgetting who said what, but one of the legends puts it perfectly.... If you come a concert and expect to hear something from the past you really aren't a Jazz fan. Jazz is about spontaneous creation. In a big band that may be just a section of an arrangement, but it's still there. A player may quote some well know phrase of his or another player, but they surround it with something new, if you don't you've tribute band.
Like some many words Jazz is another overloaded word which just view just as a style only, but without improv you're playing in a style, your not playing real Jazz. Wayne Shorter said "hard to predict the unknown" that's the quality and excitement that real Jazz offers, never knowing what to expect.
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Originally Posted by Stevebol
Well, this is provocative, innit?
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No, not Previn. He at least knows what's up. I'm thinking of Jacques Loussier. He did jazz trio interpretations of Bach. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I'm not sure why jazz moving away from improv would be a good thing. It's one of the few musical forms that relies on improv for its essence, as described by many others above. I must say, though, that I do like hearing some improv in the context of 'classical' (or otherwise 'through-composed') music... Originally Posted by Stevebol
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I find the older I get the less I enjoy music that is focused on being a showcase for someone's improvising. And, unfortunately I feel most jazz albums in past 30 years have been focused more on "look at me I'm awesome because I can play an awesome solo" than on arrangements and composition. Improvising is a leg of the jazz chair but not the only leg and not always the most important.
Nowadays I prefer arranged solo pieces and playing my 8 or 16 bar solos when I get one with the big band. I like to try and say what needs to be said in 8 bars rather than 2 choruses of changes. Now, that's a challenge.
I'm not against soloing for long periods. I just dont enjoy listening to it anymore. Not everyone needs an 8 chorus solo... on... every... song... on... the.. album.
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See, but I don't see a long solo as just a showcase for someone's ego...that's the beauty of jazz, the WHOLE group is improvising...you can hear the soloist reacting, the rhythm section challenging...
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I think therein lies a big part of this issue. Jazz means a lot of things to a lot of people. Again, No one (least of all me) is saying "improvising ISN'T jazz", while I get the feeling a lot of you are saying "ONLY improvising is jazz" Originally Posted by docbop
I think we can all agree the "truth" of the matter lies somewhere in between. How much to one side or the other is quite up to each of us. right?
K
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Well...to play devil's advocate, to me, improv is the only leg of that chair you can remove and it falls over.
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Originally Posted by nosoyninja
You have the right to be wrong. Just kidding.
I do believe improv is a required part of real Jazz without it's just another song play with rolled eight notes. The only time I will compare music with sports. Jazz is like a watching a team sport and the excitement of the spontaneous interaction of the players. Watching a replay of the game is never as exciting because the outcome is known. You might appreciate the technical skills, but the excitement of the unknown is gone.
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Nosoyninga and Reg may be on to something here. Originally Posted by Reg
I know people who say they love Jazz, but their idea is a recording from a Jazz great, not a reharmonized, improvisational performance.
This appears to be be yet another division in the Jazz ranks - people who love hearing Jazz recordings and consider themselves "Jazz lovers."
Interesting.
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I can't help but wonder why people who think improv is the be-all and end-all bother to listen to the same record twice. Wouldn't that be an expression of anti-jazz spirit? I mean, you heard it before, right? So, like, it's old hat, right? ;o) (Just kidding!)
I posted this in another thread today---about improv. I don't think any of this classic performance by Count Basie and his orchestra from 1956 is improvised. It sounded great then, it sounds great now, and I suspect it will sound great in another fifty years.
I'm not against improvisation. I think it is important. But the suggestion that 'anything NOT improvised is not jazz' would push a lot of Duke Ellington and Count Basie off the jazz stage....
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I think it was Jacques Loussier. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Here is the article cited in the OP of another thread of this subject. (The use of transcribed solos in the jazz tradition.)
http://blog.uvm.edu/tgcleary/2014/01...azz-tradition/
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Here is the article cited in the OP of another thread of this subject. (The use of transcribed solos in the jazz tradition.)
http://blog.uvm.edu/tgcleary/2014/01...azz-tradition/
Here's a tidbit / tease:
>>>>Part of Parker’s mystique was that, rather than actually performing Lester Young’s solos, he incorporated older player’s concepts into an improvisational language all his own. However, as Charles Mingus relates in his essay ‘What Is A Jazz Composer?’, it was something of a tradition among the older players of the swing era for great recorded solos to be played note-for-note in live performances, sometimes by the players who had originated them. Mingus communicates a level of respect for this tradition, even to the point of questioning younger players’ ability to ‘repeat anything at all’:<<<<<Last edited by MarkRhodes; 03-31-2015 at 01:40 PM.
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