The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by rintincop
    There’s nothing wrong with simple, the power of repetition is a very African jazz concept since the 60s. I don’t mind the three chords she’s playing, I think they have a nice meditative like quality. The problem I have is with the verses where she does that current style of fast syllable Nana Nana Nana hip-hop style of singing. It’s not melodic and I find it tedious and it sounds the same in hip hop influenced song after song. It’s almost corny and has an attitude effect I don’t connect with. I like when she sings the falsetto parts of the song, it sounds beautiful.

    Hi, R,
    I consume a steady diet of Jazz, Classical, Bossa/Latin Music, and Old School Funk/R&B. If I live a thousand lives, I'll never have the time to explore the totality of these genres for the gems they hold. Therefore, I never listen to mainstream radio/music for the above reasons. The other day, I was at a friend's house and saw a CD of Alicia Keys. When we played it, I thought she had a very expressive voice with great potential but the music she played was predictable and trite and I couldn't understand the lyrics of anything she sang. Is this the fault of the artist or is this the tripe she needs to sing to make a living/career in music? Who do we blame: the artist, the record company, her audience? And, if an "artist" devotes their entire life to this tripe , how should we judge the artist? Good playing . . . Marinero

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lemuel
    And that's all that needs to be said. I sometimes think there's some sort of dark agreement made in the country where i live, (Belgium), between radiostations, to see who can play the most commercial crap and get away with it.

    And they do a good job i must say. They never fail to do so. There's a handfull of stations who actually play some really good music, but that 's it.
    Uneducated masses you say? Come on over, we have tons of those. And they're liking it too. I've never understood that.

    I'd like to join the grandpa, shouting at the clouds. It's better than to slide over to the commercial, poppy, let's melt those braincells into nohting, side.
    Uh, there are more than two sides. E.g. grandpas can just ignore any art they find trite, commercial, poppy etc....

    What I see here is that grandpas are going out of his way to get annoyed. Are you folks trapped in an elevator?

  4. #28

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    "Are you folks trapped in an elevator?" Jameslovestal

    No James,
    Just living in a different reality than your own. It doesn't have to be bad . . . just different.
    Good playing . . . Marinero






  5. #29

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    Sometimes i do feel like being trapped in an elevator, yes. I'm trying my very best to ignore that which annoys me, but there's no escape. At my workplace, in stores, on (mentioned earlier) radio stations, it's everywhere. I can't ignore, for instance, Bohemian Rhapsody being played for the umpteenth time. Queen has a discography with which you could fill a modest library. But what do i hear? Yep, Bohemian Rhapsody. Maybe, if your lucky, Bycicle. Just to give an example. With so much beautiful music created and being created, you'd think there would be more than that? But it's probably me, i know.
    Most of the time, when i'm working or i'm out and about on my own, i have my earphones in. So i can go about not being annoyed. And i have the luxury of listening to some fabulous music.

  6. #30
    Again it's not the Entertainment side of music that bothers me. Its that the Artists that are actually talented are choosing to forego any part of it for fame and notoriety. Sting, The Beatles, EWF, Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder, etc all improved their art as they progressed.

    Now it's become apparent that going the other direction is the new normal.
    What does that say? To me it says we are no longer listen as much as watch music. And that along with no new Jimi Hendrix, Jaco Pastoius, Stevie Wonders,, Ray Charles, etc. Or at least talent that raised actual music as an art form, music is dying.

    I also get really tired of people saying that you just need to look for the great Music. It doesn't exist in any genre in any form. Snarky Puppy are talented musicians selling an older formula just for the visual masses. They aren't The Brecker Bros.
    I use them as an example because they are the previous genre minus the BLOOD!
    Just as John McGlaughlins eloquant analysis of the current state of music.

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by jads57
    Alecia Keys is rich already. Entertainment business is just humming along nicely. Music on the other has died several deaths with MTV, and Rap taking over as cheaper way of producing entertainment for business to get rich.

    The fact that we the general public accept this is deplorable. But so much for education, especially when they cut art and music funding.
    I'm not against McDonald's Cheeseburgers and cheap fun. I'm against comparing it against past accomplishments that are far better! And if you can't hear it, you should consider quitting music altogether.

    After all you guys can hear the difference between John Coltrane and Kenny G?
    Alicia Keyes does POP music. Pop os short for popular. Popular means millions like and buy it. She doesn't claim to do jazz, period. Relax, you'll live longer.

  8. #32
    You obviously haven't heard her version of Donny Hathaway song "Someday We'll all Be Free" She is a very talented musician capable of much deeper music.

    And like Lady Gaga, they need to lead their generation of listeners, not dumb it down for the sake of fame and fortune. There are plenty of posers already doing that.

  9. #33
    It don't mean a thing,if it ain't got that SWING!

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by ronjazz
    Alicia Keyes does POP music. Pop os short for popular. Popular means millions like and buy it. She doesn't claim to do jazz, period. Relax, you'll live longer.
    He also doesn't respect younger jazz musicians since he doesn't respect any and all musicians that didn't come from his generation.

    How do I know this: well this is a statement from him, just today:

    "I also get really tired of people saying that you just need to look for the great Music. It doesn't exist in any genre in any form"

    Does NOT exist in ANY genre in ANY form.

    What a misguided, crazy (at best), statement.

  11. #35
    Please show me some great new music in any genre? Not just great musicians, but actual great Music since the invetion of the Iphone.

    Haven't found it yet and believe with You Tube and the Internet I've found great old music.

  12. #36

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    Expecting musicians to starve for their art is just asinine. Sane ones produce music that sells. Jazz does not sell, and it's difficult, if even possible, to make a living just playing jazz. 90 or 100 years ago it might have been possible, but not in the last 50 or so. The number of musicians who make a good living doing nothing but playing jazz is vanishingly small. Jazz is not popular music, it's a small niche market. We may play jazz for the love of it, but not many on this forum actually make a living doing it. The number is not zero, but it's very small. Slagging anyone for making good money by producing non-jazz music is not something I consider right. I may not listen to it, but I don't condemn it. My idea of good music is not the standard everyone is required to meet. Rent has to be paid, food has to be bought, and baby needs new shoes.

  13. #37

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    Officially, the best song of the last 50 or so years. Perfect.


  14. #38

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    Officially, the best song of the last 50 or so years. Perfect.




    Yep, i totally agree on that!

  15. #39

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    Quote Originally Posted by jads57
    You obviously haven't heard her version of Donny Hathaway song "Someday We'll all Be Free" She is a very talented musician capable of much deeper music.

    And like Lady Gaga, they need to lead their generation of listeners, not dumb it down for the sake of fame and fortune. There are plenty of posers already doing that.
    Actually, they owe you nothing, jabs. And the fact that Alicia can do several levels, some deeper than others, should be quite enough for you. Nobody is forcing you to listen to her. If she were to follow your advice, she would be another struggling unknown.

  16. #40
    Nice video, song is okay. Nobody owed the Beatles, Ray Charles, Brian Wilson, Sting, etc and they were and are quite wealthy!

    Quit tryinging to defend the banal crap in all things,just because it sells. Alicia Keyes is better than that,and that's the point.
    If the Artists capable of carrying the torch don't do it. Then we're all in trouble!

  17. #41

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    Quote Originally Posted by jads57
    Nice video, song is okay. Nobody owed the Beatles, Ray Charles, Brian Wilson, Sting, etc and they were and are quite wealthy!

    Quit tryinging to defend the banal crap in all things,just because it sells. Alicia Keyes is better than that,and that's the point.
    If the Artists capable of carrying the torch don't do it. Then we're all in trouble!
    Artist have always released commercial 'crap', and that includes those mentioned above. Same goes for songwriters.

    E.g. Hoagy Carmichael; For every Stardust, Nearness of You, Georgia on my Mind,,, he also wrote some very cheesy basic songs.

  18. #42
    Agreed on above statement, except there's no NEW Good songs , music wise anyways.

  19. #43

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    Look modern music is screwed either way, no?

    - if it's new/different it's a ghastly racket
    - if it's evocative of past eras, it's derivative

    So it can never win...

    Joking aside, I think there's a couple of cultural currents here

    1) Music is moving heavily towards overlaps with sound design. This is certainly true of modern Pop production, which if you are into that is a serious heavy art form. But if you are a harmony guy, you aren't going to be interested.

    This is also true of the composition faculty in the conservatoire where a friend works. They didn't have a counterpoint module anymore, until someone got upset and now my friend teaches it, learning as he goes lol.

    (But also of film music, cinema composition is all like Han Zimmer. HZ was ahead of the curve tech wise incidentally, hence his influence. Film music is very sonic now.)

    This has a flip side... You have retro sound design too... people trying to recapture a texture of the past. Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson were influential here.

    2) Change of form... OK so everything now is streaming and YT. This has completely changed the pacing of songs. I also often feel that stuff feels .. half finished. Unsatisfying. It's like they got halfway through the song and stopped polishing somehow.

    I feel this really strongly with popular artists like Tom Misch, Vulfpeck and so on. There's a lot I like, they can actually be fabulous musicians... but also ... it never quite connects right. It's hard to say... I don't know if anyone knows what I mean

    (Misch is a nice guitar player BTW, check him out... He's just released a new thing on Blue Note. I can almost forgive him for being from Dulwich. Dave Cliff also lives in Dulwich so I can live with it.)

    3) No-one makes any money apart from Max Martin.

    4) Youth culture is centred around video games and online culture. These take the central space occupied by music in my dad's generation. Even during my adolescence, video games were creeping in. Now they dominate. Many kids are actually more into video game music than pop music. Which is cool actually, I think, because that's very stylistically diverse. People get turned onto John Dowland, jazz, all sorts through video games.

    But you don't get music tribes like you used to. Kids are very eclectic now.

    5) Not many gigs (before the 'rona I mean). Guitarists play into laptops now. Instagram. This prog rock guy Plini had never plugged into an amp until he had to tour. You get the tour off the back of your presence on the web, right? Esp. social media. That affects things too.

    I think that covers it...

  20. #44

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    Anyway I can do you list of modern stuff I like, if you care, which I don't think you do.

  21. #45
    Don't get me started on Vulfpeck, Most Unfunky Music ever! These guys are like Computer generated loops pretending to be James Brown. No space, no mistakes, and NO FEELING!

    I hate this most of all pretending to be Hip, when it's not! Prince suffered this imo.Almost a total rip off of other artists music and sold it visually to everyone like he invented it. I don't care if Jeff Beck, Miles Davis and everyone else bought it as well.
    He was the Wizard of Oz in his generation. He was a brilliant Sales and Marketing person who had musical skills.
    Kiss was a robotic remake of James Brown Papas Got a Brand New Bag. Almost everything he did was repurposed JB,Sly,Jimi, or New Wave Pop.

    My only admiration was for When Doves Cry and a few select other songs.But just because he was a P.T. Barnum of his generation , shouldn't put him in a Musical Genius category like Stevie Wonder.

  22. #46

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    More banal tripe for the masses....


  23. #47

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    Do the masses know about Spalding?

  24. #48

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    Do the masses know about Spalding?
    Well, she won the best new artist Grammy in 2011, so you think that would put her on the map. But she challenges herself, so I guess she doesn't qualify as good music because she doesn't represent mainstream pop. I don't know.

    This newer music rant about no great music being made in the past 20 years versus top 10 shit that's been selling for the past 20 years. I guess that invalidates new good music cuz it doesn't sell or chart or mainstream is unaware of it???

    When culture gets low, you have to dig extra hard for the good stuff, but it's there. I know it's too much work to seek it out for many, and easier to whine about it. Just another reflection on the current status of stuff.

    The tastemakers aren't doling out good stuff for the discerning ear, just product for the consumer culture. $$$

  25. #49

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    tbh I do think there are problems with modern music. I think contemporary music always does best when it says ‘screw you’ and embraces a new aesthetic.

    so if the new aesthetic is digital, that means are moving away from some of the aspects of analog and ‘people playing proper instruments’ era...

    but there is still huge nostalgia even for those too young to remember it... in fact some of the sequences sounds - 808s and so on - are themselves vintage. Genuinely new digital sounds are perhaps rarer than it might seem.

    so it’s sort of uneasy. Bruno Mars is a case in point (and I like him.)

    also instrumentalists are absorbing programmed music/EDM aesthetics into their playing. Mark Guliana is a good example in the jazz sphere. My impression is guitarists are sort of stuck. We’ve had our day in the sun.

  26. #50

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    I have always said there is great music from every era, you just have to know where to find it.

    Brittany Howard, D’Angelico, Kendrick Lamar, Nathaniel Rateliff, Brenda Carlisle, Wilco, Jason Isbell immediately come to mind. And Gillian and Dave.

    Re’ Cage the Elephant—like their recordings, but saw them at an outdoor venue with the Black Keys, and they played excessively loud, and their performance was way too punky. And I know from punk.

    The problem is that pop music in general has migrated toward a real rut, where there are banal melodies, annoying production techniques and a real lack of variety. My GF put on Taylor Swift last night and remarked, “why is she the biggest musician in the world right now? I don’t get it.” And Taylor is pretty talented and not the worst of the lot, really.

    The worst sins in my opinion are overproduction and overwriting. Yes, Uptown Funk is fun, but every other song that mines that groove is horrible and derivative. And Prince did it himself and 10 times better 40 years ago.

    There is something about the songwriting that I have a hard time putting my finger on. You listen to even trivial stuff from the 60’s by Dionne Warwick or Lulu or the Association...there is such a craft evident, and the melodies are SO MEMORABLE. (I bet you are all humming Do You Know the Way to San Jose and Wendy right now...)

    You play a modern pop song by Taylor or Katy Perry or Bruno Mars, and I challenge you to hum it even 5 minutes later. They are so, so unmemorable. Tin Pan Alley has become a Tin Pan graveyard.