/jazz/

How important is technique and virtuosity in jazz?

What are the most technical and least technical jazz recordings you enjoy?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=Rr-d3tO-sXM
youtube.com/watch?v=681-mXSMAj8
youtube.com/watch?v=A6zYwe3YCiI
youtube.com/watch?v=EEP8TYk2hQI
youtube.com/watch?v=oRCCku0CehU&list=PL613D1A6B3C4BBDF2&index=15
youtube.com/watch?v=EYnrtXiA0TA
wattxtrawatt.com/IdaLupino.pdf
clyp.it/haf0cffz
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

It's not important. It's just white people missing the point.

I think jazz is about managing your technicality, and knowing when it is/when it's not appropriate to play technically/simply. Bands that aren't technical at all can still be really enjoyable in their tightness, dynamics, and overall sound, while more technical bands are good for showcasing combined energy and individual talent.

It's arguable whether you can call it technical or not, but I think most of the appeal of Kind Of Blue, aside from the individual solos, is the simplicity and tightness of the playing and the sound.

As a jazz drummer myself, I love me some Ari Hoenig for complexity/technicality, especially in the rhythms of his stuff: youtube.com/watch?v=Rr-d3tO-sXM

>How important is technique and virtuosity in jazz?
It's important to the extent that you are able to express yourself effectively. If your technique is good enough to fully express your ideas, then your technique is good enough.

Frankly I'm pretty suspicious of any jazz musician who is satisfied with their current technical abilities.

play whatever you want fags. youre all thinking way too much.

nice dubs

also too much technique isn't good either. like i hate those fucks who just run a chromatic scale in the middle of a solo just to show off. most of the time it doesn't fit unless there is specific harmonies.

that being said I love me some zappa and weird shit like that. the important thing is htat complexity has to be done with taste.

also is this a general?

sure why not

Coltrane was so good at knowing when to get complex in his solos
youtube.com/watch?v=681-mXSMAj8

>like i hate those fucks who just run a chromatic scale in the middle of a solo just to show off.
why would running a chromatic scale be showing off? can you post an example of somebody just running a chromatic scale in the middle of a solo?

im not much of a jazz man. but you hear that kind of shit all the time in shitty speed metal

youre just being irresponsible now

so how's that relevant to OP's question?

ahahahahahahaha

well op was talking about complexity and shit and i was saying how sometimes too much technique isnt good, especially if you shoehorn it in, know what i mean?

>zappa as an example of taste

kek

zappa never puts shit in randomly. the only example i can think of thats a MAYBE is that one song from the jazz from hell album. the beltway bandits. even then thats pretty fucking good. most of his electronic albums try to go beyond norms

Admittedly, I'm not a Zappa expert but I've heard at least 9 of his albums. From listening to those though I would say that "putting shit in randomly" is a pretty accurate way to sum up Zappa's music.

youre a crazy nigga man. zappas fucking gr8. i guess we all have our own spectrum of whats random or not. but id expect a jazz thread to be lenient towards that kind of stuff

as long as you can say what you need to say, technique doesn't matter.

I'm still newer to jazz, have listened to most of the "essential" artists and my two favorite pieces of music are Eric Dolphy- Iron Man and the Duke Ellington- Mood Indigo single. I also love Frank Zappa, The Residents, Beefheart, etc. What would you recommend for me?

Also what Ellington compilations are worth listening to?

Hell, Wes Montgomery played with his thumb and sounded so smooth and unique. You have to be able to play the music you hear in your head and that's what it's all about.

Jazz. And Jazz music.

youtube.com/watch?v=A6zYwe3YCiI

You haven't listened to The Residents, have you? They're definitely not a jazz band, but their Warner Bros album is as random as it gets.

What are your favorite 2016 jazz releases so far?
Mine is pic related.

youtube.com/watch?v=EEP8TYk2hQI

...

It was pretty good too.

This one is nice too.

>'It's about expressing myself!!!'

Only halfwits who lack the imagination to create anything coherent ever say this.

In other words, when you can't say that you're realizing a concept, or trying to reinvent a past stylistics, or rewrite a piece in a music-theoretically different terms, or fuse three or more genres, you're reduced to claims of 'self-expression'.

>tfw thought that that's how you're supposed to play jazz guitar before even seeing Wes

This one is amazing.

bump

Well most beginners play with their thumb :-)

I need some drum scores of jazz songs, got any ?

Scores? It's mostly improvised. Just find some books or something (I'm not a drummer), read about the 6/8 ride cymbal rhythm, and "dropping bombs" with the snare.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

>Also what Ellington compilations are worth listening to?

never no lament.

it's all about taste. i love bud powell but i can't stand art tatum...

I want to play jazz, my brother has a piano and i have interest in trumpet. Anyone have tips what type of instrument is good for beginners and how to learn?

I guess that the best instrument for beginners is the one that you love, the one that you want to play.

I started learning alto sax week ago and it's really fun.

man Gilad is so gnar

Michael Formanek and Ensemble Kolossus- The Distance (8.8)
Aruán Ortiz Trio- Hidden Voices (8.5)
Luis Perdomo- Spirits and Warriors (8.3)
Craig Taborn, Christian McBride, Tyshawn Sorey- Flaga: Book of Angels Vol. 27 (8.3)
Conrad Herwig and Igor Butman- Reflections (7.8)
Misha Taiganov- Spring Feelings (7.8)
Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith- A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke (7.8)
Eric Revis- Crowded Solitudes (7.7)
Renku- Live in Greenwich Village (7.6)
Jack DeJohnette- In Movement (7.5)
Jon Davis- Changes Over Time (7.4)
Myra Melford and Ben Goldberg- Dialogue (7.4)
Ches Smith- The Bell (7.4)
Herlin Riley- New Direction (7.4)
Henry Threadgill- Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (7.4)
Warren Wolf- Convergence (7.4)
Dr. Lonnie Smith- Evolution (7.3)
Protean Reality- Protean Reality (7.3)
Ralph Alessi- Quiver (7.3)
Reeds Ramble- Lets Call the Whole Thing Off
Harris Eisenstadt- Old Growth Forest (7.2)
Avishai Cohen- Into the Silence (7.2)
Boris Kozlov- Conversations at the Well (7.2)
Henri Texier- Sky Dancers (7.1)
Jeremy Pelt- #Jiveculture (7.0)
Bill Charlap Trio- Notes from New York (7.0)
Donald Edwards- Prelude to Real Life (7.0)
Logan Richardson- Shift (7.0)
Ken Fowser- Standing Tall (6.9)
Renee Rosnes- Written in the Rocks (6.9)
Jim Rotondi- Dark Blue (6.8)
Kenny Barron- Book of Intuition (6.8)
Fire!- She Sleeps She Sleeps (6.6)
Frank Woeste- Pocket Rhapsody (6.4)
GoGo Penguin- Man Made Object (5.6)

rock pleb here.
in rock we are used to vocals-guitar-bass-drums and sometimes keyboards.

in jazz however, i noticed that the instruments can vary widely. drums are the only instrument guaranteed in jazz.
i like jazz without wind instruments. stuff like avishai cohen trios or esbjorn svensson trio. are they taken seriously here? is it considered a sub-genre of jazz to not have wind instruments?

piano trios are very popular.

>drums are guaranteed

HAHAHAHAHAH

Go look up shit on the labesl Actuel, Esp Disk & India Navigations

>ellington
listen to the harlem suite all the way through, do it.
>reccs bitch
mingus presents mingus, ornette coleman-science fiction, black saint and the sinner lady, new york eye and ear control, ran blake and jeanne lee

nothing is guaranteed newfag, this is jazz. no those groups arent taken seriously, listen to the album "thelonious monk trio" and why the fuck not listen to "jaz advance" by cecil taylor

Drums aren't guaranteed, see Oscar Peterson trio, and for jazz without horns, try Bud Powell, some Thelonious Monk recordings, and Bill Evans.

>Science Fiction

Nice choice, but i think id start them with Dancing In Your Head

The best, least technical stuff is post-1970s Mal Waldron

Listened to Harlem Suite and I much prefer Ellington's singles. Love the two Mingus albums, I enjoyed seeing all the names on Eye and Ear, but it kind of felt like second rate free jazz to me. Will listen to the others.

Listen to Roy Meriwether - Nubian Lady too

Eh, not a bad choice, im probably just partial cause science fiction is a favorite of mine.

Technique and virtuosity are pre-requisites in jazz. Unless you're talking about modal jazz the genre has the most complex harmony in any form of music. You can't just solo in one key over the changes, the point is to play inside the harmony and to each chord, and the chords are whizzing by at sometimes 2 per measure like in "I've Got Rhythm". Not only are you expected to play deep inside each chord, you are expected to decorate it with chromatics such as passing tones, enclosures, extensions, and so on. There's a saying, "all roads lead to jazz", and it's true. As a musician advances in whatever their chosen genre is, as they reach new heights of technique and harmonic ability they'll come to a point where there is no challenge left to be had, and the only thing left that provides endless challenge is jazz.

Eh, not a bad choice, im probably just partial cause science fiction is a favorite of mine.
I disagree, I think Ellingtons genius in his compositions is displayed more beautifully on his suites but you really can't go wrong with duke. Eye and ear was just one I threw in just in case everything else seemed to light for you. Definitely not second rate, it really take a listen to the whole thing through, it was a movie soundtrack if that gives you context.

>the point is to play inside the harmony
What a fear-based style lmao

Though for a rockist dancing in your head might be a good recc, just wanted to make sure my recc could definitely be classified as "Jazz", which I wouldn't say dancing in your head is. I hate genre-fing stuff, especially with people as creative as ornette but I try to be careful on Sup Forums

I would think that a rockist would be better off with SF, because it has more "songs" compared to Dancing.

Do you even bebop? Where do you suppose that sound comes from? All jazz is not free jazz, there's a reason Birth of the Cool does not sound like Sun Ra, and it's playing the changes with chromatics sprinkled in. It's called discipline, not fear. And it takes true musicianship to express one's self staying with the forms and idioms of the genre. There's nothing wrong with free jazz or just blowing whatever notes and saying fuck the harmony, you're just not going to get a lot of gigs with cats that can play

>drums are the only instrument guaranteed in jazz
What is solo piano jazz?

>bebop stays exclusively in the harmony
Have you heard the coda to Moon Dreams? It's pure atonality. That sound has always been there. If you think bebop is "changes with chromatics sprinkled in" you should fuck right off back to Berklee

Or Charlie Haden's glorious duets album
Or Jimmy Giuffre's trio
Or Leroy Jenkins' solo violin album
and so on

Obviously I wasn't implying solo piano is the only thing to fit this discription

Right. The Coda. That's contrast. The whole tune is not like that. I'm not saying that's all bebop is either but it's a huge part of it. You think Miles isn't thinking about the chords he's playing over? Like I'm just gonna play whatever it's jazz nobody will notice. Are you a musician or do you still think jazz just sounds like random notes, because if so you need bigger ears. I'm just saying to be a jazz player and sit in with other musicians and jam you have to know your shit. If you can't read a chart, if you just play whatever you want when you're comping chords like a Dbmin7b5 when the piano player plays C9 you're going to sound like a fucking idiot and you will not get more gigs. What do you think is going on in Giant Steps? Why do think that is the major test of a jazz player's chops? Because the point is you have to play inside these crazy changes that are moving so fast, just like Coltrane did. Analyze his Giant Steps solo. Tell me what you see there. Chord tones. Chromatic passing notes. And that's it. And I didn't go to school for music, or anything else for that matter. I'm a musician.

Literally none of that is what I was talking about. I am a musician, and I think of myself as a jazz musician so I can see when you're shoehorning in slang to make yourself sound like a 40 year old black man but you just sound like a 20 year old white dude. Obviously you can't just "play whatever you want", if you think that playing outside is playing "Whatever you want" with no regard to what the band is doing it's painfully obvious that you have never honestly explored music that goes out. It's interesting that you mention Giant Steps, which honestly isn't that difficult after you study it, because Coltrane is the one person most directly responsible for what mainstream musicians think of as "going out".

Beyond any of that, if you are afraid to choose to go out because Coltrane didn't on Giant Steps, and you base your musical decisions on a distinction between "inside" and "outside" that died 40 years ago, if you think that the solo on Giant Steps is the end-all of jazz because it's technical and not because of what it says to you personally, you aren't the jazz expert you think you are.

Check out this analysis of Bill Evans' solo on Night and Day. Tell me if you think he was just playing whatever and happened to get lucky on every chord, or he is a disciplined musician using a lifetime of study and practice to improvise beautiful melodies that sit inside every chord change perfectly? Also, Louie Armstrong bud. Louie fucking Armstrong.

youtube.com/watch?v=oRCCku0CehU&list=PL613D1A6B3C4BBDF2&index=15
Forgot the link

>reading comprehension
What made you think "luck" has anything to do with it? And i've heard fucking Bill Evans on Night and Day, I'm a pianist for chrissake. Why do you think a lifetime of study and practice can't lead to exploratory, freer music?

Now listen to this, and tell me it doesn't move you despite the harmony being fluid:
youtube.com/watch?v=EYnrtXiA0TA

lol I'm a FIFTY year old black man. Listen, I think I get what you're saying. The point I was arguing was that playing jazz requires discipline and study, which I thought you were negating but I see you're not. As a jazz player myself I probably just think of things differently than you. If I'm playing "outside" I still think of the outside intervals as extensions, like a #11 or b13 or I'm not thinking too hard and just moving the scale up or down a half step for a moment. To play outside there must first be harmony to step outside from, right? And I'm just saying to go "out" you have to know what's "in" and that requires study that a lot of genres don't require.

All that is fair enough but I don't agree with the perspective. I study "outside" harmony to the point where I'm hearing it as consonant, so I don't have to use non-harmonic tones as effects or anything dishonest like that. So personally no, I don't think of an inside, but that's definitely a minority opinion.

Yes! That was my point, "a lifetime of study". You're obviously at a point beyond me, I'm still studying and working within the limited framework I suppose of just trying to keep up with the changes and keep it interesting with extensions and chromatics. Can you give me an example of your thought process for when you're doing something exploratory?

>if you think that the solo on Giant Steps is the end-all of jazz because it's technical and not because of what it says to you personally, you aren't the jazz expert you think you are.
This.
You're completely missing the point if you're listening to jazz solely for the flashy musicianship. I feel like people who go around espousing this attitude are probably non-jazz musicians who are impressed by how well these guys can play but who aren't actually connecting with the performances emotionally.

And I'm a 30 year old white dude. And I did shoehorn in that "cats" line. And if felt good. Really good.

When I hear Giant Steps I'm deeply moved. The jazz that I love impacts me emotionally on a super deep level. And I would love to do that myself, therefore I try to figure out how he was making those sounds that moved me like that, and I analyze the harmony and what he played to it to see his thought process that brought him to those notes. It's music for music's sake I promise you. Like when a filmmaker watches a Kurasowa film he doesn't just say "wow that's beautiful", he goes, "look at that shot, look at how he uses the light there, look at that edit". There's nothing wrong with wanting to look under the hood if you're interested in a craft. And people are usually interested because it moves them. You can lose sight of that, but you don't have to

If this isn't sarcasm, then I try to think in pure melody, like Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins' sequencing. I play melodies that resolve themselves with their own internal logic that sometimes can and sometimes cannot be explained by its relation to the harmony. The most perfect example is during the solo on the Bley tune in the link I posted: The song is in G (the tape is fucked so it sounds Ab) and one of the lines of his solo resolves itself a half step up. It sounds perfectly consonant and correct and there is no earthly explanation why. I can post my transcription of it if I can find it.
To get to this point I study the melody and harmonic process of older jazz musicians. Melodies from Ornette, Lester Young, yes Louis Armstrong, Herbie Nichols, the harmonic ideas from Monk, Tatum, Bill Evans, and whatever else I can find, and divorce them from their context in the original recordings.

None of this is to say that I CAN'T play straight-ahead jazz, but that's not my music.

so you guys who are claiming to be ancient jazz musicians post some of your playing so we can see who really knows what they're talking about.

I'm game to upload some garbage I've recorded but most current jazz musicians just play live

Posted from my phone:

Rock goes against the norm commonly as well

See: any drone doom, lightning bolt, death from above, many post rock and post punk bands

Not sarcastic at all. I think what you're talking about is really the ultimate goal of all of the study and all of the practice. That you can just think melodically without clouding the mind with too much information. I'd love to see that analysis, that tune is gorgeous

>but most current jazz musicians just play live
don't tell me you don't ever record yourself playing live. after all every good jazz musician knows how important it is to listen back to your own playing right?

The lead sheet is here:
wattxtrawatt.com/IdaLupino.pdf

And yeah, that tune is one of the most beautiful things ever

It's not for consumption though

Horns aren't wind instruments, family.

???

They're not woodwinds, but I mean, there's wind in there

lol.

whatever happened to the threads that somebody was trying to start where everybody would record themselves playing the same tune with a backing track? It seemed like a cool idea. I suck at jazz but I wanted to try to post in the threads to try and get better.

you're out of your depth mate.

Thanks for that! I'm a guitarist that doesn't play a lot of solo guitar by myself too much, so I'm not really dictating my own harmony, I'm either comping or soloing to someone else's changes. I'm gonna making a backing track with those changes from the lead sheet though and see what I can come up with. I love the idea of a G pedal with all these different flavors superimposed on it. What I'm usually doing, and let me know if you have any suggestions to free me from this, is like say I'm jamming So What with some friends, I'm thinking "D Dorian". Now I still am trying to hear what I play before I play it but I still have the notes of D dorian layed out across the neck in my mind. I don't hear the other notes too well yet so when I step out I'm grabbing some notes that don't have the "green light" on them and mixing them in, sometimes I know what it's going to sound like, sometimes I surprise myself. Then when the Eb change comes, everything just goes up a half step and I keep going. Not sure how to break out of that or if I even need to, tips?

I like that idea

If that's what you're hearing, then your playing is honest, but if you want to stop hearing that, get a backing track or whatever and play every note against it. Not fast or anything, just play the D minor and hang on C, then C#, then D, and see what all of them sound like. Approach it like you've never heard of a scale, and don't listen for consonant or dissonant, try to gauge in some sense what each note sounds like to you regardless of correctness or pleasantness. In the long term, study melody, whatever kind of melody you like whether its bebop, from some folk tradition, pop, wherever it's from. Learn them by ear, no matter how long it takes. If the stuff that you like is less inside, then you'll start to play less inside. Either way you will find honest music.

As far as just getting the sound of outside playing in your ears quickly, listen to John Coltrane's modal playing on stuff like India. For stepping away from the inside/outside divide, check out some 12-tone music and think about the way that even though it can be discordant, it's never dissonant because it's not trying to resolve.

quit bitching and post some of your playing

clyp.it/haf0cffz

I agree, analysing the tools a musician uses to create an emotional performance can be very enlightening.
As you said, so long as you aren't losing sight of the bigger picture it's fine to analyse a piece from a technical standpoint. It's when people start treating jazz solos like players are just setting up flaming hoops to jump through as an intellectual exercise when I start taking issue.

lel, I was always under the impression that "wind" was synonymous with "woodwind". I've always heard horns and such be described as "brass".

>not editing it into one long improve track with switchoff solos including at least one drum solo

It'd be best if everyone contributed a file with an isolated solo track

it's definitely pretty common i think. anything controlled by your lungs. I don't think a harmonium would fit under it, but I might be wrong