I think improvisation is overrated

[Jimmy blue note]

Can anybody name an accomplished jazz musician who cannot improvise in the jazz style?

After how many drinks?

[nyc chaz]

Can anybody name an accomplished jazz musician who cannot improvise in the jazz style?

I can think of a bunch of jazz singers that do not scat or improvise or do you not consider singers to be musicians?I'm guessing you are only talking about instrumentalist's.

[joelf]

And then there's big-band jazz, with arrangements and charts and spaces reserved for soloists to stand up and do something interesting. Are the charted sections not jazz?.

They are jazz. If you have the knack of getting the feeling of jazz and spirit of improvising in writing then it is jazz to me. Thad Jones always did that. And the writers who sound 'on the fly' I get the feeling that they went with their 1st instinct and didn't do that many postmortems. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like that with certain writers. Bill Holman; Mulligan; Wayne Shorter; Manny Albam. Jimmy Heath was a worker to hear him tell it, but even his big band stuff has that feeling of improvisation. I want to say Benny Golson but I read his autobiog and he tells that he works hard. Plus he wrote for movies and TV, a whole different animal and pressure cooker. But the jazz standards he did sound like he maybe did 'em quick sometimes (I think in his book he even said he wrote one in like a half hour).

Also, arranging and composing do overlap, but arranging is very detail and craft oriented. You can't improvise whether or not a part lays under a player's fingers or when to leave space for breathing or what practical ranges are. Those things are craft.

As for me, I ain't Thad Jones, but I do write a lot of music. I can tell you that my best jazz writing is the kind I do quickly, no self-criticism while writing, as if I were playing a solo and having a good time. The next afternoon is the time for tweaking. You do need to look at your stuff somewhat in the light of day.

The stuff I struggle with more stays on my piano the longest. Then determination and stick-to-it-ness kick in. But I'd bet anything that under a microscope the seams and sweat and 2nd-guessing would show...

[Christian Miller]

'Off the shelf' is one way of putting it - another is to say that much of today's film music is derivative of much older music, adding nothing new to it - whereas the music that the likes of Mozart churned out wasn't.

Well I mean, have you listened to much Galant music in general? I mean it all sounds great, but it’s basically generic. (If you get into you pick up on the subtleties of it of course.) But this is how they were trained.

The problem is we don’t tend to listen to historic musicians in the context of the music of their era, and the pieces we remember tend to be the ones that are unusual and break the mould.

Mozart is perhaps an unhelpful point of comparison here. He’s a legendary figure of course. It’s hard to separate the man and his music from the prestige and myth. (He also fit a useful role for the Germans in their own history writing.)

If I said instead the likes of Paisiello, Durante, Sallieri, the younger Bachs, even Chevalier St-Georges (all feted in their lifetimes) there’d perhaps be less cultural baggage. All were masters, but none exactly ‘original’ in the way we’d think of it through out post-c19 c20 progressivist mindset.

Even Mozarts music was often highly conventional (as Glenn Gould pointed out in his own inimitable way.)

Music meant something different back then and it was valued for different reasons. Now we rate Bach over Corelli perhaps, precisely because Corelli was more conventional, but during Bach’s era this stood in Corelli’s favour.

OTOH there are some brilliant film composers. The old school ones of course have a tremendous level of craft and skill in the dots on paper world (although of course this is increasingly less the world of film music today). If their work is often generic and unmemorable this may have a lot to do with the conditions they have to work under, such as writing to temp tracks of other film music.

But the most widely heard modernist music is film music.

EDIT: in jazz, I tend to think of 50s bop as highly conventional and 60 jazz as more progressivist and romantic. Not sure how fair that is. But it was a big era of common practice 1948-1959. Parker did kind of kill off quite a few avenues of jazz and focussed everyone into doing basically the same thing for a while.

[AllanAllen]

The Tristano school guys in generally are/were very wedded to the idea of pure improvisation.

How many ways can I be wrong about this whole thing…

[AllanAllen]

How did you reach that conclusion?
It's a skill you can build and become better at.

I'm quite sure that if you comp 10 choruses of blue bossa with a sheet and a backing track.
And then lose the sheet and try to comp with the backing track but without the sheet, you'll get it after a few choruses. Just make mistakes and find your way back if you get lost in the form.

If you are very comfortable playing with a sheet but uncomfortable without, you need to start practising playing without a sheet with much simpler material than what you play with a sheet.

This was where I going to go, if OP ever came back.

[emanresu]

I recently posted a vid to this thread: There is something special about improvisation.
Hoping that people would pick up on it for it's presented piece's similarity to improvisation on a simple form. "goes nowhere" being the key.
There you have a piece that is brilliant and beautiful... but goes nowhere.

The point (imho), when treating this as a composition (what it is), I totally get what the narrator says about it. Almost claustrophobic.
But switch the listening mood to "impro", it would kick ass so much.

[joelf]

Lee Konitz reminds me of that Mad Men scene where the intern tells Don Draper he feels sorry for him and Draper replies “I don’t think of you at all.” Parker being Don Draper.

He seems to have a lot to say about how much better he is, or more authentic. The kind of attitude that leads to pouting at home instead of gigging.

I hope OP comes back.

Not true at all. Read the book (Conversations on the Improviser's Art). Lee is completely reverential towards Parker. He called him a 'composer', and that makes sense: he meant an improviser who has a stockpile of phrases he uses interchangeably, mixing them up, taking them into other keys, starting on different beats, phrasing across the bar (maybe he was also thinking of Warne Marsh?). And he saved his severest criticism for himself. I think some of what he said at times publicly was more a classic case of overthinking.

Then there's the one-liner he famously made about how his own style came about: 'I tried to play bebop but it was too hard'.

I went to hear him at a place called Greene Street, in duo with Gil Evans. I was able to talk to him on break. I think the subject of Bird was broached by myself. Anyway he replied without equivocation or hesitation 'He was a master'.

He just realized, and probably Tristano goosed him too, that it would be too easy to 'go there'. To his credit he resisted becoming another Bird acolyte and was 100% himself. He didn't follow Parker around or become a slavish devotee like so many others. But deep respect was there...

[AllanAllen]

Not true at all. Read the book (Conversations on the Improviser's Art). Lee is completely reverential towards Parker. He called him a 'composer', and that makes sense: he meant an improviser who has a stockpile of phrases he uses interchangeably, mixing them up, taking them into other keys, starting on different beats, phrasing across the bar (maybe he was also thinking of Warne Marsh?). And he saved his severest criticism for himself. I think some of what he said at times publicly was more a classic case of overthinking.

Then there's the one-liner he famously made: 'I tried to play bebop but it was too hard'.

I went to hear him at a place called Greene Street, in duo with Gil Evans. I was able to talk to him on break. I think the subject of Bird was broached by myself. Anyway he replied without equivocation or hesitation 'He was a master'.

He just realized, and probably Trikstano goosed him too, that it would be too easy to 'go there'. To his credit he resisted becoming another Bird acolyte and was 100% himself. He didn't follow Parker around or become a slavish devotee like so many others. But deep respect was there...

Thanks to you, Christian and Peter for clearing it up for me. I had it all wrong. LOL.

[joelf]

Thanks to you, Christian and Peter for clearing it up for me. I had it all wrong. LOL.

'Bless me Father, for I have sinned'

'3 hail Marys, my son---and 80 worked out solos'...

[Christian Miller]

That is true, but I also totally reject what may be an underlying lurking thought---and I may be completely off-base here, not actually knowing you other than on here. (And to quote Ed Cherry 'I say this with love').

Your statement seems a justification for fear of self-expression/self-discovery.

I have no idea what’s good for my music but I do have some idea of what’s good for my mental state on a day to day basis. I’m naturally self absorbed to the point of obsession, neurotic and egotistical. What helps with that is focussing outward, on someone else’s music for instance. I have come to realise my best of me as a person is found in looking outwards, not in.

I don’t believe this is opposed to self discovery, I think it can lead to it in fact. Otoh I think it is entirely possible to think you are embarking on a journey of self discovery only to end up trapped in your own navel. I’ve had a fair bit of that over the past few years.

We are all different. One actor can find a truthful performance through technique (the English school) another through self exploration (Stanislavsky) - both manifestly work for some people.

For me music is a kind of ritual or magic spell. If the details are observed the magic can happen and something can pass into you and the audience.

It seems self-limiting and self-defeating---though I may be not getting it, in which case I apologize.

No I don’t think it is. Tbh I think have my own voice whether I like it or not at this stage. It might be crap or it might be good (I can’t tell), but it’s definitely me haha.

I’ve learned to follow something I can’t really explain- an impulse to learn this solo, this song. Study this. Practice this. If it feels a certain way…

The guys you cite knew they stood on the forefathers' shoulders, but definitely were on their own journeys.

A lot of people here cite Barry Harris as guru, hero---whatever

Well, I knew him well, since 1976. Loved him too. He was a great man. But once he called me when I was in-hospital. I was feeling doubtful about many things. In that discussion I mentioned that I have (musical) limitations.

'There are no limitations'.

Now this is a guy who everyone seems to think did best systematizing what was already out there. Maybe so, but he also knew his worth and, frankly, had quite the ego about it when you peeled past the 1st layer. So he advised me that day to maybe have more ego, or anyway more faith in myself, what I, Joel Fass, could bring to the table. It's almost as if he was putting the masters, who he certainly revered highly and fought for their recognition, in a certain perspective. One of his heros, Thelonious Monk, insisted we be ourselves, even as he knew whose shoulders he stood on.

Anything can be taken too far, slavish devotion and blind following as well as blinders-on self-worship.To me at least in somewhere in-between, maybe closer but not all the way to the self side of the equation lies the key to artistry...

it may also be worth pointing out that insecurity, the tendency to obsess about not being good enough, imposter syndrome and so on is also a product of the ego.

I don’t think it’s egotistical to have confidence in your work. It takes self acceptance. We all want to be as good as x or y, but we are not x or y. We are something else entirely.

(But I say all this and I haven’t put my work out there for a long time. It’s easy to say this stuff.)

[Peter C]

Claiming that improvisation is overrated because "you aren't good at it" is basically BS. When you're in the moment in a jam and you maybe accent a particular beat and the drummer picks up on it and throws something twice as cool back at you as if saying, there, is that what you meant?, that's magic. Be a good accompanist by all means, but don't knock something just because it doesn't come naturally to you.

[joelf]

Christian:

It's like it's been said about falling in love:

'There are 2 kinds: the kind where you lose yourself and the one where you find yourself'.

Monk had no choice but to be totally himself in every way. He was just too weird and special for it to go any other way.

Barry was only a man, and flawed like any of us. What made him a great man to me was his generosity towards musicians he believed in. I witnessed him come back from Europe and spend great sums of the $ he made supporting his peers with gigs at the JCT and in many other ways. What made him less so to me was his narrowmindedness about what is and isn't jazz and unseemly contempt towards certain musicians who were his equal at least. I felt it was unwarranted and perhaps based in jealousy. But I'll go with the great man assessment over the other in a heartbeat.

(And it's not like it's only him: Joe Zawinul said some mean, self-justifying shit about both Barry and Wynton Marsalis---who'd just featured his music at JALC, fer Chrissake!. Talk about balls).

Big egos go with big talent. If musicians were that humble they'd go into ashrams to meditate by their lonesomes, not perform in front of people and get pissed when they feel they're not sufficiently revered and/or loved.

3 quick personal Barry experiences, the 1st 2 in case ill-informed people think he was married to his teaching or classes in general :

1. one night at the JCT he saw me sneaking out to sit in at a toilet with great music, the Star Cafe. He was about to start his improvisation class.

'You're not game at all, are you?'

'I'm going to the Star'.

(Smiling broadly) 'Oh, sittin' in with the cats, huh'?

2. I did go to class one time, and the next day felt I may have been 'vibing' my general displeasure with classes and large groups other than ones making music. So I called him to sort of apologize if there had been any perceived static.

'I didn't get any vibe at all, and it's cool not to be a "class person". Not everyone is'.

3. The 1 time he ever put my work down was at a wedding party. He said something negative and that I ought to go back to class. I was pissed and hurt but did go to a class. I happened to demonstrate something that time he said he hadn't thought of.

'Thank you, my son'. He had the class play it. Then

'I'm sorry I said what I did that time'. To apologize to a delinquent student like me in front of his worshipful class took real balls and humility. And showed the kind of man he really was.

Finally, my ego gets out of bounds once in a while too, until I or someone else reins it in. Oh, and I've said and done many things, made mucho mistakes I've regretted in my life in music and generally. But I think I finally shot that person dead. Now I'm just an Asshole Emeritus---mostly retired but available for consultation...

[Christian Miller]

Christian:

It's like it's been said about falling in love:

'There are 2 kinds: the kind where you lose yourself and the one where you find yourself'.

I like that

Monk had no choice but to be totally himself in every way. He was just too weird and special for it to go any other way.

Barry was only a man, and flawed like any of us. What made him a great man to me was his generosity towards musicians he believed in. I witnessed him come back from Europe and spend great sums of the $ he made supporting his peers with gigs at the JCT and in many other ways. What made him a mere man to me was his narrowmindedness about what is and isn't jazz and unseemly contempt towards certain musicians who were his equal at least. I felt it was unwarranted and perhaps based in jealousy. But I'll go with the great man assessment over the other in a heartbeat.

I guess it's important not to deify people. Barry was a human being.

Actually when he was holding forth about Stitt not really having the triplet in his playing or some such (I love Stitt BTW) the general impression I got was - these people Barry is critical of are our musical demigods, but to Barry they were just guys he used to do gigs with. I guess that helped humanise the whole thing including Barry. They all had their own view of things. I got something from his irreverence, even when it seemed a little mean spirited. Those old guys could be BRUTAL.

Sometimes young men try to put that on as a hat, and it always looks ridiculous.

3 quick personal experiences, the 1st 2 in case ill-informed people think he was married to his teaching or classes in general :

1. one night at the JCT he saw me sneaking out to sit in at a toilet with great music, the Star Cafe. He was about to start his improvisation class.

'You're not game at all, are you?'

'I'm going to the Star'.

(Smiling broadly) 'Oh, sittin' in with the cats, huh'?

2. I did go to class one time, and the next day felt I may have been 'vibing' my general displeasure with classes and large groups other than ones making music. So I called him to sort of apologize if there had been any perceived static.

'I didn't get any vibe at all, and it's cool not to be a "class person". Not everyone is'.

3. The 1 time he ever put my work down was at a wedding party. He said something negative and that I ought to go back to class. I was pissed and hurt but did go to a class. I demonstrated something he said he hadn't thought of.

'Thank you, my son'. He made the class play it. Then

'I'm sorry I said what I did that time'. To apologize to a delinquent student like me in front of his worshipful class took real balls and humility. And showed the kind of man he really was.

Finally, my ego gets out of bounds once in a while until I or someone else reins it in. Oh, and I've said and done many things, made mucho mistakes I've regretted in my life in music and generally. But I think I finally shot that person dead. Now I'm just an Asshole Emeritus---mostly retired but available for consultation...

Thanks for sharing these little anecdotes and insights, Joel, they mean a lot to me.

tbh I think the questions are more important than the answers. Probably change my views again in a few years....

[joelf]

Probably change my views again in a few years....

And I change mine every 5 minutes. Sometimes I think I should check if there was a sex-change operation when I wasn't looking...

[rpjazzguitar]

When I compose and then rehearse the band, sometimes I feel in control of the result. That is, to some extent, I'm dictating what the music is going to sound like, at least, until the solo section. Of course, it does depend on how much detail the charts contain, usually in terms of how specific the rhythmic content is in the chart.

When I improvise, it's more interactive, at least, on a good day. To some extent the solo dictates, but a big part of it is reacting aind interacting.

Comping actually strikes me as even more interactive. It's easier to lead when you're soloing, but comping is, more often (not always) akin to a committee making a decision.

[Jimmy blue note]

I can think of a bunch of jazz singers that do not scat or improvise or do you not consider singers to be musicians?I'm guessing you are only talking about instrumentalist's.

Frank Sinatra. Singer. Doesn't scat. Every song he performed and recorded is a textbook reference for phrasing, dynamics, reframing of the given line into something that swung and was absolutely owned by him. You wouldn't believer how many serious heavies (just recently a talk with tenor player Jerry Bergonzi revealed his deepest reverence for Sinatra's improvisational phrasing with songforms) see Frank Sinatra as a masterful jazz musician.
I admit, for a long time I didn't get it. Then the more I worked with lyrical line and personal sense of phrasing, from totally inside to free improvisation, the more I really came to love Sinatra. After him I see Mark Murphy, Shirley Horn and Blossom Dearie as great instrumentalists who don't need to scat to improvise and compose. Rebecca Martin, Jill Seifers, Theo Bleckmann are also vocalists who have taken the jazz form and genre and made their own defined mark within it.

[Christian Miller]

But but Frank isn’t a jazz mu…. Oh I’m dead of boredom already

who cares?

music is the BEST

[Christian Miller]

Cheeky Ethan Iverson opinion

Is Jazz Improvised? and, What About McCoy, Herbie, Keith, and Chick? (Twitter Files 1) | DO THE M@TH

starts

“The more I learn about the tradition, the more I think jazz is NOT improvisation. It’s a repertoire, including what gets played in the solos. Billy Hart calls it “America’s Classical Music” for many reasons.”

the rest is peak EI.

Kind of agree? Tbh I’m over thinking about whether what I do is improv or not.

If it’s tolerable music I’ll take that as a win.

[RLetson]

Not just Frank, but bunches of standards singers whose way with a song is clearly informed by the way jazz--and especially swing--shapes a tune. Goes back to Bing, who admired Armstrong and the Boswell Sisters. Hard to hear Tony Bennett or Keely Smith without hearing jazz time and phrasing even in their most ballad-y performances. (I figured out how to manage "Sunny Side of the Street" from Keely's version on Politely.)

[Christian Miller]

Also EI says

‘In general, there is simply too much improvisation at the student level. Enough already. Learn the repertoire’

haha I have to agree. Student level jazz musicians need no encouragement in this area

This is interesting

‘[Gary] Bartz says he is a composer, not an improviser, and Billy Hart says this is America’s Classical Music. Why? It’s one way of protecting black music writ large. Jazz education frequently starts in the most Caucasian parts of America with kind of a casual attitude: “Here’s a chart on ‘So What.’ Any of the white notes are ok for the first 16 bars. Play what you feel!”

Treating the jazz greats as composers with specific languages enforces some kind of helpful gatekeeping. It’s fun to play jazz, of course, but it’s not only fun.”

I think I would fail to get through EI’s gate lol. And yet I think he’s right. All of that BS in the academic papers I mentioned, it boils down to this. Jazz absolutely has an aesthetic and aesthetic objects (most often recordings) and I actually find it really offensive when people make out that it’s just ‘play what you feel’ (I mean tell me you don’t like jazz without telling me…) The emphasis on improvisation from the early stages really plays to this.

[pamosmusic]

Was it Branford Marsalis who said the thing about jazz being swing, the blues, and improvisation, and in that order of importance?

[joelf]

Little Jimmy Scott.

A major influence not only on Nancy Wilson, but............................................... .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ......................... JOE PESCI!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvdzVkdVvKs

[Christian Miller]

There is also a downside to describing jazz as ‘americas classical music ’ of course. You pick up a lot of bad things from classical music if you’re not careful….

[pamosmusic]

I do think it’s interesting that if you ask a person why they’re attracted to jazz, most of them will say “improvisation” or creativity or something like that. Which I tend to think is almost certainly not true. Loads of improvisational music that doesn’t attract listeners so readily (free jazz, being an obvious example). Anyway … it seems like it should be a no brainer that people tend to find themselves attracted to jazz because they like the way it sounds. So it would follow that folks might be well served by trying to sound like jazz before getting too hung up on improvising.

This coming from someone (me) who loves improvising in just about any context and thinks that’s by far the most fun part of playing. Trying to sound like what you like tohear is still the best way into improvising, whether you call idiomatic jazz playing improvising or not.