The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26
    joelf Guest
    Right. That Paul Berliner book is so atypical b/c he takes the African approach of passing down the lore---letting the practitioners of the art speak. A very welcome addition to the literature...

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Jazz musicians were not involved in fugal technique or extended compositional structures..: Well not much.
    Not so sure about that. Sophisticated jazz writers used counterpoint and fugues routinely. And---controversial comment alert!---the bebop writers moved backward in at least one respect: in the late '20s-'30s jazz arrangers were way more into through-composition. Radio Rhythm, (Nat Leslie, recorded by Fletcher Henderson) for only one example, moves and changes many times in a brief few minutes. No 'head-choruses-out' there. And even an easygoing tune like Line for Lyons uses counterpoint, as does many of Brubeck's tunes, I'm sure. Of course Brubeck studied formally with Milhaud. I know these guys didn't write whole proper fugues, but still...

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    Not so sure about that. Sophisticated jazz writers used counterpoint and fugues routinely. And---controversial comment alert!---the bebop writers moved backward in at least one respect: in the late '20s-'30s jazz arrangers were way more into through-composition. Radio Rhythm, (Nat Leslie, recorded by Fletcher Henderson) for only one example, moves and changes many times in a brief few minutes. No 'head-choruses-out' there. And even an easygoing tune like Line for Lyons uses counterpoint, as does many of Brubeck's tunes, I'm sure. Of course Brubeck studied formally with Milhaud. I know these guys didn't write whole proper fugues, but still...
    haha, joking right? Yeah Bach is an inspiration for so many musicians. you have to study him if you are serious about the craft of composition imo.

    But to describe something being a development on Bach’s own terrain - counterpoint and so on - and not merely an homage or nifty use of those techniques... well, Im just saying you might end up in the weeds with someone a lot more knowledgable than me haha.

    To back to what you were saying earlier, the idea that some non Western music could be on the level of Bach is difficult to swallow for some to this day. Tbh we focus on the lone genius artist and the idea of music as eternal, beyond context in Western Muisc. Bach is the poster boy for that.

    That’s how its viewed I don’t think other cultures. It’s not really how it is in jazz - Berliner shows us that. And it wasn’t how it was in Bach’s time. Bach’s music was mostly for a purpose, very often church based for instance...

    but yes, I was actually thinking about the simplifications bop made to what came before as well as what it made more complicated when I wrote the above....
    Last edited by christianm77; 02-15-2020 at 07:46 PM.

  5. #29
    joelf Guest
    I miss the days of unschooled, log cabin blues and jazz musicians in a sense sometimes. I swear I do. There was an uncorrupted, unemcumbered purity you barely ever hear anymore...

  6. #30

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    from RHYTHMS OF THE WORLD
    to JAZZ GUITAR CROSS RHYTHMS
    as said elsewhere, polyrhythm can be done with a single line, melodic or not. It is found in Blue Monk, for example


    part 1: the IndianSubcontinent, the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East pdf

    part 2:Africa, and Central and South America pdf

    example with SOLAR, Miles Davis

  7. #31

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    THE POWERFUL RHYTHMIC PRINCIPLES OF CHARLIE PARKER Jazz Advice

    Charlie Parker gives excellent examples where a single-note melody can develop polyrhythms. Indeed, a polyrhythmm is a relationship between the type of rhythmic signature bar (4/4, 3/4, 6/4...) and the length of rhythmic phrases (3, 4... beat) causing a lag, as we saw in the tunes of Thelonious Monk, including Blue Monk. Therefore, there is no need for the basic rhythm to be explicit, although it is as a general rule. Jazz musicians incorporate the number of beats per bar, and walk freely improvising through

    - BREAKING DOWN THE BAR LINE: CHARLIE PARKER’S RELATIONSHIP TO BAR LINES
    - USE OF SPACE: HOW CHARLIE PARKER DEFINES HIS IDEAS
    - PHRASE EXTENSION: HOW BIRD EXTENDS HIS PHRASES WITH TIES OVER THE BAR LINE
    - MIXING IT UP: HOW BIRD COMBINES VARIOUS NOTE DURATIONS
    - ADOPTING CHARLIE PARKER’S RHYTHMIC CONCEPTS

    listening to his records also brings down the commonly held idea of systematic accentuation on a particular part of the beat. His playing is infinitely more varied than the caricatures that give especially guitarists (some are here authoritative), for obvious reasons of technical, musical, freedom et imagination's limitations. For example, a slur, hammer-on or pull-off may very well be more accentuated than the previous note played on the pick: slurs and accents are two differents things

    Parker's Omnibook says from the introduction : « mobility of attack, freedom of accentuation, imagination and fluency of his inventive faculty and rhythms. »

    here are two excerpts from books that describe Charlie Parker's accentuations
    - Charlie Parker His Music and Life p.56
    - The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History p.264
    Last edited by Patlotch; 02-17-2020 at 01:52 AM.

  8. #32
    joelf Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    haha, joking right? Yeah Bach is an inspiration for so many musicians. you have to study him if you are serious about the craft of composition imo.

    But to describe something being a development on Bach’s own terrain - counterpoint and so on - and not merely an homage or nifty use of those techniques... well, Im just saying you might end up in the weeds with someone a lot more knowledgable than me haha.

    To back to what you were saying earlier, the idea that some non Western music could be on the level of Bach is difficult to swallow for some to this day. Tbh we focus on the lone genius artist and the idea of music as eternal, beyond context in Western Muisc. Bach is the poster boy for that.

    That’s how its viewed I don’t think other cultures. It’s not really how it is in jazz - Berliner shows us that. And it wasn’t how it was in Bach’s time. Bach’s music was mostly for a purpose, very often church based for instance...

    but yes, I was actually thinking about the simplifications bop made to what came before as well as what it made more complicated when I wrote the above....
    This really gets me thinking (can you smell the wood burning?). I wonder if this idea of a performer being in a kind of isolation can be traced to an earlier European mindset and the advent of the concert stage. Don't wanna get in hot water by overgeneralizing here. There's a separation there: performer/stage/audience---though spirit and great art supersedes that.

    African traditions seem more communal, though I'm a neophyte and need to study much more. But the idea of passing down lore is community-based, and it seems like, historically, so are a lot of the musical settings communal. It was passed on, those traditions, with the arrival of slaves in the Americas.

    Jazz itself was much more a 'we' music than a 'me' music in the beginning---pre-solos, when the improvisation was contrapuntal---group improv. Then it became a concert music, too, and more of a soloist's art. Inevitable by-product of maturation and social factors. But the communal aspect still exists in that jazz---the kind you don't read about in DownBeat, etc., still is viable in communities and some venues as what Miles Davis and the late Mullgrew Miller called 'social music'. I don't mean audience participation as in singing We Are the World, but that division between performer, performance space, and listener greatly recedes.

    My favorite place to perform in NY is Fat Cat. It's a cavernous basement with pool, ping pong, shuffleboard, chess---and jazz. High level jazz, from 6 PM to 4 AM. (They have Gospel, too, and I've even heard a string quartet!). The music is only part of the mosaic. There are the games, the makeout corner, the bar---and the sofas and chairs just feet from the mid-right bandstand area. If people (lots of different types, from NYU students to professionals to street people) want to listen they sit and listen. No pressure on anyone, and totally unpretentious.

    So that approach and tradition still alive and well...

  9. #33

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    Definitely - I think the 19th century idea of the romantic artist has a lot to do with it. That’s when the myth making of Mozart really kicked in, the era of the concert artist elevated above the merely human - Paganini, Liszt etc.

    square pegs and round holes when it comes to jazz. Even the concept of a ‘solo’ can be problematic.

  10. #34
    joelf Guest
    They were the rock stars of the day. Liszt with all that hair. It was a spectacle and with huge divisions. The opposite of every Eastern and African use and view of music. I'm sure I'm somewhat generalizing, and it wasn't always like that in Europe. The Troubadours were like today's street musicians. That's a social setting if there ever was one.

    I have to do more research. This theme has me by the lapels---especially the rhythm part...

  11. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by joelf
    African traditions seem more communal
    Many different traditions all over the continent; it's a big place, and to a Moluba a M'sai might as well be from another planet. But in general, drum patterns and techniques, as well as their construction, are in the hands of select groups associated with those who keep the tribal secrets and who lead the initiation rituals and procedures.