Do you ever think, "Wait, why am I improvising on this tune? It's already perfect."

[brent.h]

..

[AllanAllen]

A lot of people feel that way about Lush Life and Blood Count.

[Christian Miller]

I spent the past 4 days learning Round Midnight. I like the tune as a listener, but loved it even more when I 'looked under the hood'.

I mean the tune's perfect! The song is such a strong statement in and of itself; I don't think I have anything further to add. Nothing that I improvise will sound as coherent or melodious. I think this is one tune that I would not call at a jam session (aside from it being quite slow).

Does anyone else have such thoughts or am I crazy?

This is quite often my reaction to monk tunes


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[Jimmy blue note]

There's a LOT more to making a tune your own besides throwing scales on the floor and sweeping them into a pile.
Phrasing, lyrical emphasis, syncopated reinterpretation of the head, a subtle reharmonization while keeping the rhythm intact, a re-weighing of the rhythm while the harmony is intact.
There are many ways to hear a beautiful tune, even a masterfully composed one. That's the improvisor's challenge: To hear a composition in a personal way and to convey that sensibility in an articulate way.

I listen to Keith Jarrett's playing on standards (or Tommy Flanagan, or Ahmed Jamal, or Fred Hersch, or Mick Goodrick, or Ben Monder or Ellington...) and before I hear them, I'll often think "I know this tune so well. I play it all the time. What can he POSSIBLY do to make it even more beautiful?"
And every time I'm pulled in deeper, to see and hear things I've not been aware of.
It's a life long endeavour, to expand your own hearing and learn to add your personal sense of beautiful to a wedding with the composer's work.

THis is a great tune, so untouchibly beautiful from Camelot, I believe.
THen I heard Fred Hersch do it and I couldn't imagine it any other way.

[Rob MacKillop]

What Jimmy said ^

[Mark Kleinhaut]

What Jimmy said ^

ditto, what Rob said about what Jimmy said.

[SOLR]

ditto, what Rob said about what Jimmy said.

Darn! I wanted to say that!

S

[Cunamara]

There's a LOT more to making a tune your own besides throwing scales on the floor and sweeping them into a pile.
Phrasing, lyrical emphasis, syncopated reinterpretation of the head, a subtle reharmonization while keeping the rhythm intact, a re-weighing of the rhythm while the harmony is intact.
There are many ways to hear a beautiful tune, even a masterfully composed one. That's the improvisor's challenge: To hear a composition in a personal way and to convey that sensibility in an articulate way

And it can't be forced. It has to be a natural outgrowth of how you hear the song and how you think and feel about it. That performance by Fred Hirsch really shows that.

[lawson-stone]

Actually, no, I never think that. My reason? A "perfect" tune is precisely what inspires me to improvise. It fires my mind with all kinds of ideas and possibilities. If I hear a tune and am not inspired to improvise, I figure it's a very boring tune.
Improvisation is not "adding" to a tune or trying to help it along. It's a musician's way of celebrating a great tune.

[geoff23]

Peter Bernstein's take on Round Midnight is magic.

That is indeed wonderful. My fave, though, is this:

[Christian Miller]

I like it when Monk plays the song over and over. I like it when he comps for the horn player by playing the song. Genius. Why does no-one else do that?

I’ll be a bit of a troll but I was listening to some modern jazz being piped into the PA between sets with a bandmate who is a great early jazz stylist (but also a Sco fan). It was anything really good, not Jarrett or anything, but impressive, advanced playing. After a while he looks at me and says ‘why are they playing so many notes? Why are they doing any of this? It’s asinine.’

He wasn’t wrong. A lot of improvisation IS asinine including a lot of mine. We have to centre music, not our "awesome jazz skills". That’s what great musicians do in their own various ways…

After you’ve got your stuff together there is a strong argument in favour in only improvising if you have something that’s better than the tune to play. You can of course, embellish the tune.

“Speak only if your words are better than silence" sort of deal.

Obviously not my vibe but I can see its value haha. Or maybe I'm growing up? Who knows.

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[Christian Miller]

That is indeed wonderful. My fave, though, is this:

He plays the Miles Davis version, basically, the one in the Real Book.

The thing is Monk was SUCH a misunderstood and underrated composer. His music was very specific. There are so many important details in his tunes. Miles was always a bit slapdash with his versions of other composers' tunes, mistakes/changes to the original chords and so on. So many recordings are based on these simplified versions of the tunes.

So out of love for Wes, I kind of get by thinking of it as a different song because it is a great performance.

Not many people play Monk's tunes as he wrote them. There's a whole Ethan Iverson thread haha...

Pete is a very good interpreter of Monk.

[Bob_Ross]

Does anyone else have such thoughts or am I crazy?

I am a huge fan of either A) just playing the melody when it comes time for my solo; or B) waving off the solo...saying "No thanks, I've got nothing to say here."

Humility, restraint, and an ear for when something is perfect as-is are undervalued commodities in jazz.

/soapbox

[rpjazzguitar]

I've heard, from a musician who didn't like jazz, the idea that the tune already has a melody and doesn't need a new one.

When you're playing a standard, that's a tune that has stood the test of time. Unsurprising that it's challenging to improve it.

[James W]

Are there not more than one Miles Davis versions of 'Round Midnight'? The one from 1967 sounds reharmonised - it is gorgeous though.

As for improvising on tunes that are already perfect, the first things that sprung to my mind are a few Holdsworth tunes such as 'Above and Below' which exists both as just gorgeous chord-melody and as a vehicle for improv - I admit to listening to the chord-melody version more than the soloed-over version.

[lawson-stone]

I've heard, from a musician who didn't like jazz, the idea that the tune already has a melody and doesn't need a new one.

When you're playing a standard, that's a tune that has stood the test of time. Unsurprising that it's challenging to improve it.

Who actually thinks of improvising as "improving" a tune? Improvisation is a conversation with a tune. You kiss a girl and the burst of energy sends you out to do something fun and crazy. You play the tune (kiss the girl) and respond to it with something fun and crazy (the improvisation).

I don't know where folks get this idea that to improvise is somehow to "improve" on a tune.

[rpjazzguitar]

Apparently, there's more than one way to look at it.

My non-jazz fan friend dismissed improvisation since it didn't improve on the melody.

For my own involvement, you've got me thinking about how I used the word "improve". I don't expect to come up with a better melody than, say, Stardust. But, I do hope to play something that's an improvement over just hearing the original melody repeated.

[James W]

Artie Shaw has plenty to say about jazz & solos:

9:49 to 14:13

10:06 to 20:24

Some quotes from the second video:

I don't think that this so-called jazz is gonna go on much longer. I think that most of the players who are now playing jazz are outside the average person's perceptions. They're outside of even musicians' perceptions. You'll hear a guy get up and play so many notes on a tenor saxophone while the band is blasting behind him, you say, "What's going on?"

...

The performers have done all they're gonna do. From now on, it's just more, more, and more. More isn't better. More is sometimes worse, less is more sometimes. But what's happening now is that the idiom of jazz will find its way into the mainstream of music in composed form. Composition is where it's at today. A good jazz arranger is really writing music.

...

The reason I like writing better than music is that... when you play music, you're committing. The minute you hit a note, you've committed yourself. But sometimes you'll hear it later and say, "Oh, that wasn't really what I meant, what not I'd like to do that again." Writing, you keep fixing and fixing until you can say, "This is what I want at this time of my life."

...

I hear a big band record, I don't know what that guy's doing. He's said all he had to say in four bars, and he's going on for 48 bars. It's silly. Doesn't make sense. It's a self-indulgence. A lot of guys say, that's the trouble with jazz. They take a good tune and ruin it.

....

I think the future of jazz, of playing is over. I think it's all been done. It's all been said. Anybody who tries to play an instrument and play jazz in it and do something that nobody else has ever done, he's just gonna play more notes. It's all been I think probably reaches its apogee with Bill Evans. Bill Evans played the piano and he played awfully well. And that's about it. And if you go past that, you're getting into more notes. And that's not what it's about. More notes is an Olympic contest. "Ah, I see. I can play more notes and he can't." That's nothing to do with music. That's just show-off. Show-off has nothing to do with art. So, I think music has reached its performing, jazz music has reached its performing limit. I hear guys now and they can play more notes in one bar than I could ever dream of. That has nothing to do with a musical statement. It's totally beyond the audience's perception or the audience's caring.

...

The interview is worth the watch. Shaw talks very candidly about the music business and recounts a story about Billie Holiday (and even mentions Tupac!).

Bit patronising about the audience's capacity for perception if you ask me.

[padraig]

I honestly don't know why jazz musicians feel the need to improvise on everything, never understood it.

When you read a book do you read the first page and then make up the rest of the story yourself?

The way I understand music is a timeline. Baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist composers in that chronological order were the popular music of their time. The early 20th century composers writing for the stage and screen came next and that was the popular music of our time. Call it the great American songbook, the standards, whatever you like, it's just essentially the pop songs of the day. The big bands played them because that's what audiences wanted to hear.

And then what happened? A sort of sub genre developed, musicians using the harmonies from popular songs and using them as vehicles for improvisation. It's almost like something they would do in the rehearsal room for their own amusement but somehow it made it onto the main stage.

I've got no interest in it. I want to hear the tune, not every member of the band blowing a bunch of scales whilst the tune is hardly recognisable.

I don't play that way, "jazz" is not part of my repertoire. I play the standards and other popular songs but I stick to arrangements and read it off the page. No improvisation involved and no theory involved either! I don't want to be having to think when I sit down to play. I'm a performer not a composer. It's supposed to be fun, not hard work. Just read what was written and play it as intended.

I don't listen to jazz either. I listen to big bands, Joe Loss Orchestra, Glen Miller, Syd Lawrence orchestra. The good tunes are all intact, the arrangements are creative, improvisation is kept to a minimum save a few tasteful embellishments and horn breaks.
Some piano players I listen to embrace improvisation a little more, Beegie Adair for example. That's about the extent I can cope with without wondering where we are and where the tune has gone.

[pamosmusic]

Just read what was written and play it as intended.

Well gosh I sure hope you don’t have any leadsheets or fakebooks on your shelf.

[Christian Miller]

I honestly don't know why jazz musicians feel the need to improvise on everything, never understood it.

When you read a book do you read the first page and then make up the rest of the story yourself?

The way I understand music is a timeline. Baroque, classical, romantic, impressionist composers in that chronological order were the popular music of their time.

They were the popular music of the ruling classes - later the middle classes as they emerged in the nineteenth century. Folk music existed at the same time. Posh people music was more likely to be written down.

Somebody has to make up the music that gets played. Improvisation is really just composition but with less editing.

The baroque and classical composers all improvised. Not everyone was Mozart or Bach, but it was a basic requirement of the job, because deadlines were tight. Your employer, an aristocrat to whom you owe your accommodation and livelihood has decided he wants a symphony for his Soiree next Saturday. Get writing!

As Robert O Gjerdingen puts it - we would be hard pressed to copy music as fast as those guy wrote it. And what they could on score they could also do on their instruments. There's a famous account of an improvisation contest between JS Bach and Sylvius Leopold Weiss on lute, for example, improvising fugues and all sorts

Furthermore, baroque music has a basic stylistic understanding that you will ornament the written score.

Improv died out in classical music beginning around the second half of the 19th century. But the material conditions of the composer had changed, and they were no longer playing their own stuff. I'm studying baroque improvisation atm, from original sources on how to do it. There's practical how to guides to improvising baroque suites and so on from the early eighteenth century. I could send you links lol. CPE Bach wrote a book with a whole chapter on 'making stuff up' in his keyboard book.

But I would say improvisation is poorly understood by most people. There is an ideal of improvisation making up music Tabula Rasa which is very appealing to many, but the actual progress of learning to play jazz (or any music) is based around acquiring a deep intuitive and aural understanding of the music. It's not about indulging oneself. At least ultimately, that has to be understood. Took me a while haha.

But the idea of improvising for the sake of improvising still has its appeal because it is such an absorbing and interesting activity, similar to meditation. Performing well learned composed music can be similar. Do I expect people to pay to hear it? Not necessarily - although improvisation forms part of my professional life as a jazz player. But then most here are hobbyists so presumably the attraction is that it's an absorbing and interesting thing to do.

To go back to your analogy - good writers read voraciously.

You often hear amateur and school bands playing a big band chart and then the solos are as you describe them - just scales. It's because they haven't read any books at this stage, so to speak. To me this seems like putting the cart before the horse- something where we might agree - why expect beginners to be able to make up music from raw materials? The result is rarely musically effective, and I think having things that sound good in public presentations of music are kind of important.

Improvisation itself is very natural. Kids improvise all the time. But it doesn't mean that it's jazz, or baroque fugues, of course. As we become more immersed in musical culture, and learn our instrument, our ability to invent coherent music on the spot increases. It does need to practiced, but ways to improve one's improvisation skills don't necessarily involve improvisation. This is something it's quite hard for students to see sometimes.

[pamosmusic]

To go back to your analogy - good writers read voraciously.

There’s also the saying among writers that “you can’t edit a blank page.”

The skill of just getting words out and dealing with them later is maybe a little underrated? Maybe not.

But the skill of just spitting out some music and reorganizing it and perfecting it later certainly is. We’ve really separated the two things to the point where a composition must be perfectly composed and meticulously edited and heard before written and improvisation must be pure and spontaneous.

[Mark Kleinhaut]

Improvisation in the one true god! There now, I’ve said it.

[MinToyTot]

To a listener, lots of improv is ideal! It means that the performer has the opportunity to create sounds which are not only relevant to the accompaniment but also to the time and place in which they are performing. I hate to use a rock example but Hendrix' Star-Spangled Banner did not exactly conform to anyone's chart thereof... But DID conform to what would ultimately be the most pleasing/beneficial to the audience. The same goes for good improv of any kind in any genre.

[Christian Miller]

There’s also the saying among writers that “you can’t edit a blank page.”

The skill of just getting words out and dealing with them later is maybe a little underrated? Maybe not.

But the skill of just spitting out some music and reorganizing it and perfecting it later certainly is. We’ve really separated the two things to the point where a composition must be perfectly composed and meticulously edited and heard before written and improvisation must be pure and spontaneous.

I think what didn’t help with that is the fact that music moved away from a shared language of schemata and cliches (such as the Mannheim school) and became more self consciously progressive and important.

So yeah you bet everyone starts editing their work when the symphony is no longer about spitting out 15 minutes of well crafted but generic music for small orchestra and starts being about a epic commentary on the human condition using a vast orchestra and a musical language limited only by the imagination of the composer.


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