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The modernists or postmodernists have a new theory to go with the new music.
Many teachers teach the old school. legit, sure. Glad to see more new school theorists here.
To analyse Kurt Rosenwinkle, Ben Monder, or (Germany based American) Blake Moses will not be possible from the Broadway tunes and standards functional harmonic perspective alone.
We all may know of a few monsters of the old school completely stumped when faced with a chart of polymodal chords. This is not to slight the masters at all. Perhaps this new music isn't even jazz, as some tradcats would have it.
What do you think?
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10-29-2012 04:43 AM
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i think its modal. they've been teaching it for decades at Berklee and other places.
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different tools for different tasks. Modern Jazz concepts and conventions differ a great deal from what was going on back in the earlier periods of the music. It is a combination of the history before it. Most really good current players are all well versed in bebop but have moved past it seeking something new, which is exactly what the bebop musicians were doing with their swing counterparts and what the swing guys were doing from trad jazz.
You can look at it whatever way you want to from an analytical point of view, it's all valid. Many guys still play over standards chalked full of ii V I progressions and make the changes but are looking for a different sound. The biggest difference is their choices of colours to use. Harmonic Major for example is not the uncomfortable pitch collection of the past.
Polyharmony is common place now when before the conventions of functional progressions were dominat. Composers like Wayne Shorter and his ilk changed what was acceptable harmonically and you get a lot of composers today purposly trying their best to stay away from any sort of conventions from any 'bop' era of playing while still trying to capture that spirit. It's a difficult task to juggle.
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I think it was Duke Ellington who expressed his disbelief or wonderment that one word "jazz" could be used to label so many wide and disparate styles of music. I don't know what you would call the "new" music of Kurt, Ben, etc. but I like it! Sure is a challenge to understand the "theory" of it, and that is part of the attraction to this ever evolving music.
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I think plenty of people here are into the modern stuff.
Personally, I love it. I also think it's very advanced harmonically, and nothing a jazz beginner should try to wade through without getting a foothold in functional stuff...It's certainly nothing I'm good at playing!
we have a lot of jazz learners here, which is why you might not see as many threads about this stuff--but it's out there.
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This same topic is going on other boards, but what I find interesting is people talk about bebop era and then modern era and like nothing happened in-between. All the 60's, 70's-90's with Miles, Fusion, ECM, and other variations in Jazz evolution through the years. They had polychords, polyrhythms, and modal approaches which what others have said are the part of the modern sound.
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There is a clear progression that an individual has to go through in their study of the music to reach any sort of understanding of what Modern players are working with in this music.
I have known lots of guys who start on Jazz by hearing a Miles Davis record and then skip 40years worth of music and important knowledge, recordings and lessons trying to play Mike Moreno solos, then you ask them to play over a blues and it sounds like crap.
Not everyone has to be a bebop master, but in order to understand anything current you have to understand the tradition and the history of the music at least to an extent where you understand harmony, phrasing and rhythm in the broad scope that is the music.
I consider myself a modern player, but I play straight ahead gigs all the time, just standards with standard keys with standard conventions, hell I even teach (help teach) a course on it. If you can't get through All the Things You Are and make it sound and feel good then you've not got a shot at making some crazy Adam Rogers thing work.
Too many people put the cart before the horse in that respect. Most people that I know who don't like Modern players don't like them because they don't understand what is going on, their ears have not moved past say what was going on in the Hard-bop hey day. There's nothing wrong with that at all, it's an aesthetic choice. I know a lot of great players who have huge ears and lots of knowledge but prefer the straight ahead styles, they understand harmony and form but make their artistic choice, and that's about as hip as it gets... when you can make a choice like that and dig it. Shit, there are guys all over the world that still only listen to and or play New Orleans trad Jazz and kick ass at it. If you played them Metheny's Ochestrion CD the might have a heart attack, who knows (haha)
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Opinion question: is modern jazz music that only other educated jazz musicians can appreciate?
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Has jazz been that since bebop?
Originally Posted by JakeAcci
It's obvious jazz is a small percentage of the listening public's taste...I myself do not know any jazz fans that are not musicians--not necessarily jazz musicians, but they play.
And as for modern, maybe I'm too old school, I call anything after 1959 or so "modern."
Certainly all that great Hancock and Shorter stuff falls into that category for me.
Maybe I'd be more apt to call the current players "Contemporary," but that seems to have a different connotation in jazz than it does in say, painting.Last edited by mr. beaumont; 10-29-2012 at 04:47 PM.
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Good topic... Being able to play, being able to understand and as JakeAcci said, being able to appreciate...
They're all good but different aspects.
The playing part... jazz players who have all their skills together have no problems covering what the original poster, Joe made reference to.
I'm an average pro... I can hear, read and understand any of what we're calling modern Jazz. And I'm really an old school player. I have no problems hearing poly modal, poly tonal and where they may go... Jazz players are very good at hearing what's going on with very few clues.
Personally most of what we're calling modern jazz becomes boring, not enough use of multi concepts going on... almost vanilla.
I like Jake Hanlon's point about having a choice to play what you want, that's been my approach since I was a young lad...
The understanding part... If your stuck in any one way of hearing or seeing music... you won't ever understand. But once those doors are opened... it all becomes very simple, just a matter of becoming aware.
I'm using a metephor because it can become complicated when verbally discussing.
Getting to the appreciate, any form of Jazz. As far as performance... almost any music when performed well and with the audience in mind and performing for the audience... will be received well. It always helps when the music is played by great players.
Not many appreciate the compositional, modern or old school concepts, unless their aware of the music. Performance goes by quickly... even with multiple hearings.
So getting to Jake's question... with out performance... yes. With great performance... No. That's part of our job... educate the audience.
Reg
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Good question. The same question could be applied to modern art, and to "classical" (aka "art", or "serious") music of the last century. All are deliberately elitist, even if they try to claim they are not. (And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, IMO.) Originally Posted by JakeAcci
As mr beaumont suggests, for jazz the process began with bebop, as jamming musicians wrestled the music out of the grip of popular taste (big band swing). Up to that point, jazz had been (primarily) popular dance music, although of course Louis Armstrong had provided a popular early prototype of the virtuoso soloist (made more user-friendly by his vocal performances).
Anyone trying to dance to bebop (other than Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonius Monk, that is) probably needed their head examined. They would probably have had their jazz club membership revoked
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It was music you (as a listening non-musician) were supposed to sit and appreciate intellectually. And if you couldn't do that, well, you could sit and stroke your goatee-bearded chin, nod out of time to the rhythm, and maybe respond with a "yeah man".
Any form of music that is led by the musicians, as a forum primarily for their own entertainment and artistic exploration, with conscious disregard for commercial appeal (because of its restricting effect on artistic expression), is going to go the same way. It happened in the late 1960s with pop music, when "rock" musicians split themselves off from the "hit parade", and ended up in prog.
It's quite natural, in fact, as musicians who might begin in a commercial set-up begin to discover all the unexplored subtleties in music. They "grow up", in a way most of the audience is not interested in doing, or is unable to.
Of course, hopefully such moves create a new, discerning audience, to replace the mass one that probably treated music as wallpaper anyway (and always will).
Does it really matter if the only audience for modern jazz is other modern jazz musicians (or wannabes) and a few critics?
Surely quality, not quantity, is what you want in an audience? (It goes without saying that both is preferable.)
IMO, it's not the job of musicians to "educate" the public. (I politely disagree with the estimable Reg there.)
Personally I like to entertain an audience. I would rather do that with good music than bad, of course, but if "good" music (however you want to define that) goes over their heads, and they love the "bad" stuff, I'll happily play the bad stuff (as well as I can, of course). Audiences may be ignorant, but they are never wrong.
There's a good argument that if you play challenging music really well, you can win an audience round, open their ears. But there's also plenty of hard evidence to the contrary. Great musicians, playing brilliantly, ignored or misunderstood by a crowd - because they happen to be playing music that is too unfamiliar.
That's not an argument for giving up and going for lowest common denominator (as I am often lazy or philistine enough to do
). But it is an argument for just playing the music, and being honest to that, and the hell with how it's going down. In any crowd, there's always (statistically) at least a minority (even if it's just one person) who should be up for some challenging, invigorating listening. They're the ones you play for.
It's a waste of time (IMO) worrying about educating the rest. As I say, they may be ignorant (in that they don't know our music or what it's about); but that doesn't mean they're stupid; they just have different tastes, and it's not our business to patronise them, or look down on them.
Even with what most of us may regard as "safe" (even "easy listening") forms of older jazz, I've lost count of the number of people who simply don't get it, saying they like the "tunes" at the beginning and the end, but the "bit in the middle" sounds to them like the musicians are just messing around playing garbage. "They're making it up as they go along" they say dismissively. They are totally bemused by the notion that actually that's the whole point. I saw a semi-serious letter to a newspaper recently from (obviously) a non-jazz fan who said it sounded to him like "they just haven't learned the music properly yet" (so they're frantically searching for the right notes and failing). Of course, we can all think of jazz performances we've heard that we could describe in those terms. But he meant ALL jazz.
Last edited by JonR; 10-29-2012 at 12:17 PM.
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I don't think so. Take Kurt Rosenwinkel - a lot of his music has a groove that most listeners can relate to and the melodies are often 'simple' enough that they are hummable. Will the non-educated listener enjoy/appreciate the improvisation or 'modern' harmony? I don't know. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
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Do you know anybody that isn't an educated musician that enjoys listening to Kurt Rosenwinkel? Originally Posted by Bryan T
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You might alter that question to say, " Do you know anybody who isn't an educated musician who even knows who Kurt Rosenwinkel IS?"
Our stars are but blips on most of the public's radar. That's said not to sound elitist but rather realist....nobody cares about us or our heroes. That's not "woe is me," either....just truth.
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It is true that certain rhythms and styles have had a relationship with the general dancing public strong enough to generate a vibrant dance club scene,Anyone trying to dance to bebop (other than Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonius Monk, that is) probably needed their head examined. They would probably have had their jazz club membership revoked .
It was music you (as a listening non-musician) were supposed to sit and appreciate intellectually. And if you couldn't do that, well, you could sit and stroke your goatee-bearded chin, nod out of time to the rhythm, and maybe respond with a "yeah man".
but jazz musicians and dancers have always been interacting and feeding off each other.Bebop is highly rhythmic music.
The tap dance community in particular was close behind creating new steps and approaches for bebop.
This is true for most subsequent evolutions of jazz rhythm as well.
Here's 2 bebop examples:
Looks more like fun than an intellectual exercise to me.
No. Music can reach people on many levels, a doctorate in music theory is not required.Opinion question: is modern jazz music that only other educated jazz musicians can appreciate?
As Reg says performance clarity and energy is a factor. I've seen very dense and abstract music concerts succeed and I've seen bands with very commercial song lists not succeed. The secret ingredient is.........
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Sure, but that kind of underlines my point. That's virtuoso (professional standard) dancing, to match the virtuoso playing. Originally Posted by bako
The kind of dancing people did to big band swing, or hot 20s jazz, was much more accessible to ordinary folk. It only required amateur skills, which was why it was so popular.
The average dancer couldn't dance to bebop (not easily anyway). But neither could they easily understand it as music to listen to. That was of no concern to the musicians, who had other fish to fry.
Hey, don't keep us guessing! Originally Posted by bako
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Jazz Guitar is a little bit like bicycle road racing in America before Lance Armstrong nobody but the participants know what it is, where it can be found, who does it etc. I thnk a lot of people have open ears and minds but don't know where to find the real music. It is odd that with the easy access we have via the internet to just about anyone's music it is harder to find because of the massive amount of music out there.
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I didn't know who he was either until I started visiting sites like this... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
(But then I don't know if I'd describe myself as an "educated musician"... except in a very threadbare fashion...)
Right. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Our heroes tend to be the kind of person known as "a musician's musician".
We simply respond to different factors in music than non-musicians do. We hear things that go over most people's heads. Hell, some of us have even been known to play things that go over most people's heads!
(There's some kind of joke here about hats, but I can't quite work it out...
)
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Judging by concert-goers, it seems like all sorts of people like modern jazz players. From college students through retirees. I'm sure not all of them are 'educated musicians.' Originally Posted by JakeAcci
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It's important also to realize that the Modern Jazz community and Jazz as a whole has been a counter culture to American Music culture since the mid 60's and has over the last 15years probably blown so fast and far beyond what the average person considers to be 'good music' because of the over simplfied music that is available to them in pop culture.
Art Music has always been this way, an attempt to stretch the evelope of what we as Humans are capable of. What that means is that people get left behind in terms of understanding, appreciating or even caring about what is going on. Jazz has been on the fringe of what our society thinks is worth listening to for a very long time (close to 70yrs) and won't ever reach a mass audience ever again unless something completely insane happens like "listening to jazz prooves to cure world hunger". Because those of us out there that make this music for a living are doing it because it's a calling moreso then it is anything else.
Every serious and professional level Jazz Musician that I have worked with, talked to, studied with couldn't do anything other then this with their lives outside of maybe raise their families. I know guys who would sooner give up their wife then give up their axe (I've seen it happen actually). You are consumed by it, and you actually don't care if people like what you're playing or if they understand it or want to listen to it... then you get confused why people don't buy your album or go to your gigs.
It's a funny thing to live that way. Some people make it work. Some people are the starving artist for their entire lives and are of the happiest people on this planet.
I feel strongly that no matter what path you take in the music, how advanced harmonically or rhythmically if you're honest about the music and your place in it, you'll find an audience, no matter how small. Talent is a very small part of the success game in Music, it's probably like %10 of the reason someone makes it. The rest is insanely hard work at and away from the instrument and bandstand and the drive to get to whereever you need to get.
You look at an extreme case of Pat Metheny who still does 200+ shows a year... how many Jazz artists play 200 shows a year? Probably not too many... how many play 200 sell out shows a year? Metheny is pretty modern, he's also insanely popular and one of the few 'famous' Jazz Musicians in this world... and he's a guy that holds the flag up high for tradition and support of the old guard as well.
As far as the have to be a musician to like modern jazz? I think that's bullshit. It would help on an intellectual level. I think no matter how complex the music is, that if that musician can get the message of the music across it will speak to any listener. If their music has no message, they need to go back to the drawing board.
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no. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
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Jon, I think, thanks for satirical compliment...
Jazz is designed to be played live in front of a live audience... the audience is part of the equation... If your not aware of the equation, then there's another skill to put on your list on the long and windy road to developing into a jazz musician.
There are some pretty narrow views and ears on this Jazz forum, I played jazz gigs in the late 60's and by the 70's I could cover... yada yada... I don't just talk jazz...
Maybe you haven't played enough live jazz gigs in front of an audience to feel and see how much effect the audience can have on live jazz.
Or maybe you haven't developed your jazz skills well enough to be able to draw an uneducated audience in to be part of that equation.
There has to be some reason for such naive comments about jazz and performance of jazz.
Jake very real post... thanks... I sometime wonder why some post what they do... are there goals... where do their comment go, what's the point, or is this simply entertainment from the sideline...
I don't hear or think of Jazz as "Art music"... I do help develop jazz audiences. I educate their ears... even if they don't hear. That's what I try to also do on this forum... I want musicians and listeners to have relationships to Jazz. It usually takes a while...
Reg
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Originally Posted by JakeAcci
To be fair, i just want to make it clear that I'm just asking the questions - I don't really know what my own opinions are about the answers. Obviously my question implies a certain leaning, but I don't really know. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
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You know, a while back I asked my teacher if he listened to a lot of modern jazz. He said immediately,"no!".
Keep in mind, he is of the caliber of player and teacher that people like George Benson and Joe Diorio have asked to study with him, in the past. And he personally started, wrote the syllabus and got accredited the first college level guitar programs in the area ever, many years ago.
His general gripe is that melody and lyricism have become dirty words. At a certain point, it's like music became too esoteric, too academic.
For myself, as a relative beginner who mainly enjoys playing for the sake of playing, with no professional ambition other than to enjoy playing music for myself, I always try to ground myself on very basic concepts: is it in time? Does it groove? Is it melodic and lyrical? Really basic stuff, as far as discussions go, I guess. But, when it comes down to it, the most important stuff.
So, yeah, a lot of modern stuff is for players-only music. Too bad.
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