jazz players: help - i don't speak your language

[Paikon]

Originally Posted by sweiss

I was reading, comprehending, and even agreeing with some of your post until I got to this..



To say my jaw dropped would be a gross understatement. Would you like to rephrase that, or am I correct in assuming that any old noise can be called music. What is music supposed to be if not user friendly?

JonPR is right
"listener friendly" music is like censored music composed to be likable but thats not the only purpose of music...

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by sweiss

I was reading, comprehending, and even agreeing with some of your post until I got to this..



To say my jaw dropped would be a gross understatement. Would you like to rephrase that, or am I correct in assuming that any old noise can be called music. What is music supposed to be if not user friendly?

You used the phrase "listener friendly" in a way that suggested to me "easy listening". You implied that music you didn't like (regarded as a "disorganised mess") was not "listener friendly".
Some listeners would disagree. There is no music anywhere that nobody likes listening to.
There is probably a lot of music you would characterise as "any old noise".
In the old phrase, "there's no accounting for taste".

[dgb]

I like music that makes me feel something.
Most modern jazz only makes me feel nauseous. That's why I don't/can't speak the language.

I spent a long time trying to "get" jazz. I listened to so much of it that I even started to convince myself that I liked it (my friends must have hated long journeys in my car) .
One of the problems I have with it is the meandering/never ending improvisation.

I like structure, repetition and emphasis on melody far too much to appreciate jazz. (and my ears hate being bombarded by flashy jazz chords - what happened to good old major and minor?)

You either love jazz or you don't. It you don't then don't waste your time trying to play it.

[Sandy Shalk]

Hey Jersey,

I would say that Kenny Burrell opened a jazz door for me, specifically an album called Blues the Common Ground. Burrell bridges blues and jazz so well. He's not necessarily known for speed (although he's done cuts that clip along pretty well), but rather a soulful, accessible groove. A lot of his tunes are blues based (Chitlin Con Carne, covered by SVR, comes to mind) and he covers some great standards. I find myself revisiting KB after many, many years and I'm still blown away by what he does. He's still going strong in his 80s.

Sandy

[mr. beaumont]

I think there's a gateway drug for everybody...mine was Cannonball Adderly for listening, Grant Green for playing...

Like I said, it's a huge music...Saying "I hate jazz" is like saying "I hate vegetables."

[woa_horsey]

Originally Posted by Sandy Shalk

I would say that Kenny Burrell opened a jazz door for me

Loved his version of Willow Weep For Me. It was Pat Metheny who got me interested in Jazz though back in the 70s. And then the whole jazz-rock fusion thing was going strong and I still think that was the most creative music that appeared during my lifetime.

I completely agree with those who don't like bebop. Most jazz from the 50s and 60s didn't do much for me except Brubeck, Chet Baker and a couple of others. Before fusion I have to go back to the swing and rag of the 20/30/40s. Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Reinhardt and Grappelli, Art Tatum, on and on. And I still think Armstrong's rendition of St. James Infirmary is the best example of jazz-blues ever recorded.

[delb0y]

I consider myself a jazz fan, but probably only enjoy a fraction of what's out there, but as the man said, there's a lot of vegetables I don't like, too. Plenty of singer-songwriters and finger-pickers I don't get either. Hell, there's probably 99% of rock music these days that I find unlistenable and let's not even go into pop music territory.

Django is one of my favourite players ever. Charlie Christian, too. I love big band swing, especially if there's a decent clarinettist involved. One of my all time favourite guitar solos was something I heard on TV (alas before the days of videos) - Joe Pass accompanying Ella Fitzgerald. The greatest guitar player I've seen live is Louis Stewart. I happen to love early 60's bop, especially if it's funky and bluesy with a gospel tinge, but also am a big fan of Charlie Parker. Kenny Burrell, Grant Green...Kenny Garrett with Miles Davis played one of the finest saxophone solos I ever heard...Sinatra at the Sands...The fingerstyle jazz of Martin Taylor and Pat Donahue...Johnny Hodge's alto solo on Satin Doll with Ellington was what got me into buying jazz LPs in the first place...Cry My A River - both Barney Kessell's guitar part and Julie London's vocals...Nat King Cole's early work...George Benson...Dexter Gordon's ballads and Sonny Rollins Tenor Madness albums. Probably my favourite tenor player (but there are dozens) is Hank Mobley, although Zoot Sims' album with Jimmy Rowles is maybe my most played jazz album...Helen Merrill singing What's New with Clifford Brown on the trumpet...

I could go on for pages. Each to their own, but this is the stuff I listen to more than any other style, yet this is a tiny percentage of all-jazz, and I don't think any of it is disorganised, or not listener friendly. I probably gravitate to the simpler / bluesy end of the genre, but there's enough in that tiny space to keep me occupied for ever.

There again, each to their own. I listen to plenty of finger-picking, singer-songwriters, flat-pickers, ragtime players, and even rock from the good old days :-)

Enjoy whatever it is that floats your boat!

Derek

[woa_horsey]

Johnny Hodge's alto solo on Satin Doll with Ellington

Did you ever hear him play Passion Flower? There's a live YT video of him playing it that's even better than the record:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ww-XDuaxcw

It's a shame he and Chet Baker never recorded together. They were undoubtedly the two best ballad men in the business in my opinion.

[JonPR]

IMO, what happened to jazz in the 1940s is similar to what happened to both classical music and visual art around the end of the 19th century.
Its practitioners got bored with what they began to see as an art that was too limited by popular taste, or had run its course in its current form.
For post-classical (or rather post-Romantic) composers, the major-minor key system they were working with became exhausted. Functional harmony had nowhere left to go.
With painters, photography had usurped one of their functions, and they began to get more interested in the medium itself, and in what "art" was actually supposed to be for. (What could paint still do that cameras couldn't?)
20th century composers then began digging into mostly "user-unfriendly" systems such as atonality, other ways of dividing the octave, electronic sound, and sounds that most people would describe as "noise".
Painters moved from impressionism into dada, surrealism, abstraction and conceptual art - likewise leaving the general public scornful or simply bemused.

It took jazz a little longer to go that route, but then it was a new genre anway; barely 40 years old (?) when the beboppers began their jam sessions in the early 40s, looking at ways of exploring the music beyond the simple demands of big band dance music. (You weren't supposed to DANCE to bebop. Not unless you were Dizzy Gillespie...)
In a sense Louis Armstrong (unwittingly) started the whole process, by showing how one musician could express himself as a soloist in front of a band. He always did it in a band context, New Orleans style, tied to songs, and was always audience conscious (he never liked bebop). But that idea of self-expression via musical exploration caught on - and went way beyond what an average listener could understand or appreciate.
Bebop followed modern art in that respect. You needed some education in the genre - perhaps even being a musician yourself - to understand or appreciate what was going on.
Like modern art, bebop became self-referential. It made no sense unless you knew all about where it came from; unless you had some idea of the thinking behind it.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. There's the argument that certain artists and musicians are "ahead of their time". That the avant garde of one generation become the popular geniuses of the next generation (and then the easy-listening bores of the one after that ).
It happens in pop music too. In the early 1960s, the Beatles were "outrageous"; to anyone over 25 they made an awful noise. The Stones were even worse, practically the Devil incarnate. It's all just happy pop music now. But the 1960s saw the beginning of a split between the "hit parade" (ephemeral, commercial nonsense) and serious "rock" (album oriented, challenging, rebellious, prog, etc).
Popular acceptance hasn't quite happened with the likes of Coltrane, but Charlie Parker sounds fairly innocuous now. And most straight jazz fans appreciate the genius of Monk, regarded as a charlatan by some when he began.
(FWIW, Monk is my particular favourite jazz musician. His music always makes me laugh; it's witty. But I accept few people are going to get the "gags".)

[ruger9]

Premier Guitar article, I thought a good read on this subject of "avant garde/non-listening-friendly/non-musical jazz", or whatever.

FWIW, I think Bohlinger has hit the nail on the head. But, since he admits he "sucks at jazz", I'm guessing that will make his opinion null and void? Interesting read nonetheless...

http://digital.premierguitar.com/pre...pm=2&u1=friend

[mr. beaumont]

He had me for a bit...then he said some crap that didn't make sense.

Thinking bebop killed jazz only works if you think jazz history is linear. It's not. It'd be like saying Bread killed rock and roll because nobody rocked after them.

Bebop represents a very small, yet very important slice of jazz history. The music born directly out of it, hard bop (or just bop) is highly melodic and deeply blues related. If you listen to say, Bird and Diz and then Hank Mobley's "soul station" you'll hear the difference.

And then he went and used the "modern jazz" tag...I was unaware all the music I love and play is the same!

Please...listen to Anat Cohen...the Paul Motian's Garden of Eden era band..then Bill Frisell...then David Sanchez...then Christian Scott...then Jacob Young...then Charles Lloyd...and Brad Mehldau. That's all "modern jazz." You'll hear amazing melodies, improvisation..and it will all sound vastly different from tune to tune....jazz has changed...nobodu whines that rock music doesn't sound like Buddy Holly anymore.



Owe it to yourself to dig deeper than the bargain bin.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

nobody whines that rock music doesn't sound like Buddy Holly anymore.

Oh, I think that some people probably still do....

Don McLean certainly did back in 1971... "the day the music died" was 1959 for him.

[dgb]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

You'll hear amazing melodies, improvisation..and it will all sound vastly different from tune to tune....jazz has changed...nobodu whines that rock music doesn't sound like Buddy Holly anymore.

Show me an amazing melody in a reasonably recent jazz tune. I want to hear something that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

[Paikon]

Originally Posted by dgb

Show me an amazing melody in a reasonably recent jazz tune. I want to hear something that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgqM_m_5Kzw

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by dgb

Show me an amazing melody in a reasonably recent jazz tune. I want to hear something that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.

Well, I can't speak for your hair, but if you can't hear a melody in this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9SlZ7IwjZI

or this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixD-B...eature=related

or...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiw8CTK2o_Q

Then maybe melody isn't your thing...