Jump to content
HAPPY NEW YEAR, TO ALL OUR HARMONY CENTRAL FORUMITES AND GUESTS!! ×

Jazz isn't all about improvisation... swing is probably more important


Terje

Recommended Posts

  • Members
Posted

You can improvise without playing jazz. Indian classical music is very much improvised but it's not jazz. Most of what is today known as classical music was improvised during its time. Beethoven was a great improviser for instance.

 

You can play jazz without improvising. A lot of the big band stuff is heavily arranged but it's still jazz.

 

The rhythmic aspect of jazz is probably more important than the improvisation part. Swing is what defines jazz IMO.

  • Members
Posted

You can throw in your swing in, do your arpeggios, do your scales, etc...

the thing that connects them all...chromatics.

That's the difference between someone like Lee Ritenour and Pat Martino. Lee keeps them all separate and organized, Pat connects everything with chromatic passages.

It's all revamping that melody each time over and finding new ways to connect things each time...chromatics is VERY important...more so than even swing. It where the strong movements come from.

  • Members
Posted

MJQ worked it all out ahead (I read that someplace). I read that Jimmy Bruno has a sort of mental library (Chinessse menu) of licks that work over common jazz harmonies (that is how most jazz players approach it). Are many players making up licks on the spot (I'd say sure thay are, but within a framework of an informed jazz vocabulary)?

I am into Mingus' Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Mingus would give players a specific scale or other loose guidance to improvise out of over specific passages so he could control the feel of it while allowing players to be expressive in that context.

There are a lot of things going on in jazz but swing is a pretty common thread.

  • Members
Posted

Originally posted by gennation

...chromatics is VERY important...more so than even swing.

 

 

So, modern classical music sounds like jazz to you?

  • Members
Posted

Originally posted by Terje

So, modern classical music sounds like jazz to you?

 

 

Even one of the most modal tunes around, So What, would just be scalular and diatonically sounding if it wasn't for the chromatics...meaning the approach note, anticipation notes, flurries, etc...without it it would just be a scales with swing (if that's how you want to play it).

 

Classic jazz has tons of chromatics right in the melody before even getting to improvisation (Billie's Bounce, Move, Little Willie Leap, etc...).

 

Think of Jazz with it's use of the Jazz Minor scale. Without it, you can swing your playing all night long and it'll just sound like diatonic, swung.

 

I'm not talking about sequential chromatic lines. It's all the single two note passages getting in and out of the notes of your scale, or the half step move coming into your arpeggio's, or the half steps you use the connect playing over "the changes".

 

Someone like John Mclaughlin or Pat Martino can rapid fire "on the beat" notes at you, but because of the chromatics they play, it sounds like hardcore Jazz.

 

Take out the chromatics and you get "smooth Jazz". It takes the edge off.

  • Members
Posted

Originally posted by gennation

Take out the chromatics and you get "smooth Jazz". It takes the edge off.

 

 

But it could still be jazz. It could even be interesting to listen to depending on who is playing it.

 

Take the chromatics out and it could still be jazz if it swings. Take the swing out and it wouldn't be jazz no matter how chromatic it got.

  • Members
Posted

Lemme throw out another term. Syncopation. Seems like a lot of jazz has continued through highly syncopated electric/acid/pop genre(s), yadah yadah, (there's some swing) - without actually swinging. What makest yee of this?

  • Members
Posted

yeah, what do define as swing? It's a bull{censored} term if you use it to define a genre of music. Does that mean that if someone plays straight 8s they're not playing jazz? Is the concept of "jazz" confined to an era that shares a common approach to time?
It's like saying that classical (to use the term broadly: I'm talking about baroque through to 20th century "art" music) music is all about counterpoint. Well, fine, but what about the stuff that isn't?

  • Members
Posted
Originally posted by bardsley

It's like saying that classical (to use the term broadly: I'm talking about baroque through to 20th century "art" music) music is all about counterpoint. Well, fine, but what about the stuff that isn't?



It should be burnt of course! :evil::D

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...