"You can play a shoestring if you're sincere." - Joh Coltrane
previous thread: An experiment in a pen-and-paper composing general, made for all the theory autists
This differs from /prod/ in that it is more focused on the actual writing of music, not the production, and music theory. That is not to say /prod/'s electronic music is unwelcome, by all means, post here! But post with the intent on discussing composition. And remember, this is NOT /classical/. Any music, such as jazz, is acceptable
Post clyps and accompanying notation so we can accurately critique your composing from a theory perspective
Improvisation is cool but who are some jazz players who really put some thought into how they write the songs they improvise on?
Henry Howard
obv. Duke+Strayhorn, but also really fond of Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. Wild Flower might b the best jazz waltz I've heard: youtube.com/watch?v=9b0bKz6YA9c
Also shoutout to musicians who had very effective rearrangements of existing tunes, like Bill Evans with Nardis.
Luis Morales
so, after skipping the last challenge, I'm trying to catch up before the next one actually emerges.
Ignoring the face that the organ tone makes the first 3 measures sound like baseball music, it's pretty good.
Curious to see how it progresses.
Wyatt Lopez
thanks. There's no possible way to emulate organ registrations without sampled VSTs from real instruments, which are expensive to come by.
I'd say I do some more garlands first, then some more smashy chords, then a pedal solo, and then a tutti marche, and I need to keep it major most of the time, so it could actually work as a wedding march
Ayden Barnes
page 8 is bad, right?
Carter Phillips
I'm just waiting for the one user that I played my horn for. bump for visibility
Samuel Carter
In terms of small group jazz:
Horace Silver Chico Hamilton Eric Dolphy Wayne Shorter Andrew Hill Anthony Braxton Tim Berne Dave Holland Alex Sipiagin
Large group: Ellington/Strayhorn Charles Mingus Gil Evans Bob Brookmeyer Toshiko Akiyoshi Maria Schneider Darcy James Argue
Jace Walker
Oh and Stan Kenton too
Carter Turner
no keith jarret? Excuse me, I barely know any jazz. Actually none.
Colton Diaz
He's a great player but not really notable as a "composer". Some of his originals with the European quartet are good but I don't know if they're noteworthy or groundbreaking enough to list him in with these other jazz composers.
Sebastian Diaz
gotcha. I can't even tell the difference between a jazz composition and an improv, unless first one is strikingly elaborate.
Brayden Walker
you played for all of us, user
also; my nightly piece, couldn't make one yesterday because i had other duties clyp.it/rvgjgabz
maybe i should've made 8 more bars to make the ending a bit more predictable and natural.
also, truly honest opinion, does the modulation in the start work or not, what'd you think user?
left hand is busy, even when there's no notes on the middle line. In the last 4/4 bar for example the right hand holds an octave (a - a') on the first keyboard while the left hand plays the triplets on the second keyboard, then the right hand stays on the first keyboard playing the dotted quarters while the left hand plays the eigths. (see pic, those are the left hand lines)
But yeah, it's gonna turn into broken chords for both hands before it goes into a pedal solo.
Parker Fisher
why use 2 hands for the second part though? what if your nose was suddenly itching? you'd be feeling pretty dumb to play that part with both hands then.
Caleb Martinez
mainly because both hands are playing on different keyboards. Also, since organs have no sustain pedal, you have to find fingerings that allow you to play actual legato.
Ian Ward
next question: how do you mark which keyboard the notes should be played on? is it up to the interpretor?
Kevin Cooper
dynamic marks, or I write the number of the keyboard into the notes (I, II, III, IV) and write down which registers to pull for which keyboard.
It also highly depends on the instruments, some organs only have 1 keyboard, which forces the organ player to change registers on the fly. On dual and triple keyboard instruments, you can set each keyboard to a different dynamic.
The posted piece for example is for a 3 keyboard organ, and at the beginning, the composer tells you which stops to pull on which keyboard.
Then the piece starts on the Swell, then you have to go to the lowest keyboard and couple the higher ones to the lowest, while the pedal also gets couples with all other keyboards.
youtu.be/NZf7T1w_pPg?t=25m29s Is it just me or is the chorale-ish opening to this third movement just incredible? And then it comes back near the very end, and I mean, oh man.
What exactly is happening with the harmony, though?
Eli Morris
My personal favourite is Avishai Cohen with his Trio. Just check out some of the beautifully-integrated rhythmic ideas in Pinzin Kinzin, Chutzpan, Seven Seas, Eleven Wives, and The Ever Evolving Etude in particular!
For fuck sake change to treble clef in the first 2 bars.
Juan Hall
>For fuck sake change to treble clef in the first 2 bars. thanks for looking at my piece, but i'm actually not that interested in making the score look nice at the moment. in fact, i'm not expecting anyone, myself included, to spend time learning to play a piece that i don't truly believe is good.
The only thing i'm actually interested in at the moment, is just the sound. there are so many layers to good composition, and i don't really feel experienced enough to worry about all of them. I don't worry about structure either. It doesn't seem important to me before you can some decent polophony.
Anyways blogposting aside; all i really wanted to know was just if the start was interesting or too erratic? And if the section after sounds catchy or cheesy?
Benjamin Sanchez
bump
Mason Cox
very smooth. Clearly you got that solo trumpet and some secondary other instruments, which occassionally move in parallel to the solo. I'd maybe like a few more sporadic contrapunctual passages for those other instruments at places, where the solo trumpet rests, in a way as if the band instruments were taking over a bit from the solo.
Jackson Reyes
Harmony starts kinda with e Dorian (scale on e with the accidentals of d maj), then gets more chromatic as double dominants get in
Evan Lee
George Russell, Gil Evans, Thad Jones, Maria Schneider, John Hollenbeck, in chronological order.
Ethan Roberts
really cool stuff, ben. not sure what to say exactly, all of it is really smooth, i love the sudden change at 0:35
Landon Robinson
Gil is great arranger, not so sure about composer though, probably
what kind of style off jazz are you interested in?
Kevin Barnes
bebop desu
just hard swinging stuff
Chase Cruz
dubs dubs
As I understand it, bebop utilizes regular jazz harmony with frequent sequences and substitutions. Modality and key changes are common, and melody is often based on arpeggiation or the just the scale used, and is pretty fast
Adam Garcia
nice dub dubs
Bebop is a hard place to start writing melodically if you want to start writing Parker-style melodies. I'd recommend, if you're new to jazz, starting trying to emulate the writing style of standards that inspired Parker and company. Basically, I recommend trying to write How High The Moon before you start trying to write Ornithology. I would genuinely say to write a good bebop melody you would need to be a good improviser in the style.
Look at those old standards and look how the harmonies progress, they tend to be fairly simple, based on II-V's and such. Then look at a bebop interpretation side by side, and look at what chords have been added, changed, etc. A great place to see this is action is Blue for Alice compared to a typical blues form, it's only 12 bars but it showcases a lot of parker's most common techniques.
Dominic Morales
I just suck HARD at harmony since i'm a bassist and never really learned it.
I guess I should just find me a teacher. And start writing Blues melodies and Rythm Changes.
Jace Butler
this is incredibly enjoyable, desu
Any like it in english?
Good luck desu. Don't let youself think you can't do anything, too. Just look at Mingus. Bassist and one of the best jazz composers, imo
Jaxon Williams
(sheltered classicalfag here, unfamiliar with how jazz works) >i'm a bassist and never really learned it ??
Noah Wilson
>A great place to see this is action is Blue for Alice compared to a typical blues form, it's only 12 bars but it showcases a lot of parker's most common techniques. Thanks friend i'll do that. There's also Dance of the Infidles that's based off blues and I already know the melody for that so I guess it'll be smart to learn all of it.
Gabriel Brooks
Are you a jazz bassist? Usually a jazz bassist would know harmony extremely well, at least intuitively, just because you are essentially soloing all the time I don't quite know of a band like YMCK but with English lyrics. You've got Anamanaguchi but they are not nearly as good writers, nor as jazz influenced (still quite enjoyable though) and they're mostly instrumental. Shot in the dark but you might like Tennyson soundcloud.com/tennysonmusic/sets/like-what-ep
Hunter Reyes
Not trying to redefine the genre or anything, just have some fun. But thanks for the motivation
I know harmony in the sense of being able to provide a nice walking line or solo, but I really have almost no knowledge of voicings and arranging because I never learned it. I guess there were things more important to learn or I didn't put enough time in it.
Kayden Howard
>Are you a jazz bassist? yea
Alexander Jones
>I know harmony in the sense of being able to provide a nice walking line or solo I mean that's all you need to write tunes my dude. Let the pianist do their thing. Sure, you'd have to learn if you want to do larger arrangements, but for bebop you don't necessarily need to have good arranging skills
Jaxon Green
Yea but idk for placing nice chords and tensions, stuff like that. To me it's a big part of writing tunes no? I mean I write stuff on the Piano not the Bass.
Daniel Moore
Well I don't think that's really part of writing bebop tunes. You write a chord progression, and a melody, and you play it with a group. The pianist places nice chords and nice tensions, you improvise a nice walking line, the drummer emphasizes the important parts of the melody. It's very player generated.
Luke Richardson
All right I think I just holded myself back for thinking I don't have the knowledge. I'll try to write something, worst case scenario it'll suck lmao
Ayden Williams
We'll be waiting right here, user
Austin Flores
if your harmony isn't stupid, and your melody is singable, the worst that it can be is "kind of boring", so definitely go for it.
Adam Richardson
Truer words have never been spoken in /comp/
Besides *sforzandos*
Ethan Ortiz
What exactly do you mean by "stupid"?
Kevin Long
something that makes no sense and is really far from what a typical bebop/standard would use.
Adam Flores
Harmonizing an E major melody with Gb chords is stupid
Jonathan Powell
just woke up no warm up, it's shit and I'm using alternate fingerings because lazy, I gotta eat breakfast vocaroo.com/i/s178jb9YSD5i
:^)
Landon Butler
How to compose like Gucci Mane BURR-style?
Jose Adams
take up boxing for a few years
Jose Adams
Oh, that's actually a phillip glass piece, aint it?
You're a little off rhythm, the 5th note is a quaver(1/8) whereas you play it as a crotchet (1/4).
It's not written for a euphonium, even though the score says it is. Can anyone recall which glass piece this is?
Lots of "cool jazz" musicians incorporated counterpoint into their playing and their writing. The Modern Jazz Quartet and Dave Brubeck even wrote fugues on bebop themes. You should also check out Chico Hamilton's and Jimmy Giuffre's recordings from the 1950's.
Mason Parker
Any of you guys with even a little bit of interest in jazz and critical listening should consider checking out the /blindfold test/ thread
Jeremiah Bailey
>Posting with names or tripcodes is encouraged as it makes discussion much easier. instantly disregarded
Cooper Turner
how else would the thread work?
Justin Hughes
like every other Sup Forums thread
Jayden Murphy
Seems like a cool idea but the thread looks kind of dead t b h
Camden Gonzalez
Today is pretty slow so far but it usually picks up later. Here is last week's
