# Please explain to me why I don't like JAZZ



## Guest

When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.

Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.

I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony. 

Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving? 

What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


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## SixFootScowl

The only time I like jazz is when I am watching Charlie Brown cartoons. It is used for background music and works very well there. Oh and I did like Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, collected many of there albums back in the 1980s, but other than that, jazz just has not moved me.


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## Mahlerian

Well, firstly, Jazz is often more about performance than composition. An individual composition may be simple, but the framework is transcended by an inventive musician who is able to work within and around it.

Secondly, classical music is really the only tradition that emphasizes narrative growth through harmony. Jazz and other traditions may use more or less complex harmonies and patterns, but harmony is more of a background than a foreground element in most cases.

On a more theoretical level, the reason why Jazz likely seems more static to you is because it doesn't use the principles of consonance/dissonance treatment or harmonic function (they have their own versions of these) which were followed by common practice composers and also inform much post-common practice classical music. So you will have entire songs of "dissonant" chords followed by no traditional resolution.


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## Barbebleu

Hard to say why you don't get jazz without knowing what or who you've been listening to. Jazz is a very wide ranging genre that covers everything from Dixieland and trad through to the avant-garde and it would take a very eclectic taste in music to embrace the whole range of very diverse styles. My own taste in jazz runs from be-bop through to the avant-garde and music prior to the forties really doesn't appeal but there are millions of jazz fans who would disagree. Perhaps it's the fact that jazz tends to be improvisatory that doesn't appeal and classical music provides form and a rationale that does. I believe however that Mozart and Beethoven were not above doing an hour or so improvisation at the piano after having performed their programmed pieces. That would have been fun to hear!
BTW I would put Tom Scott and the L.A. Express in the pop music category rather than jazz but that's just me. I like my jazz to be a bit more out there.


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## Guest

Thank you for your answer, both erudite and concise.


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## Guest

The term jazz covers a very broad field. None of it may resonate with a particular individual listener, but it is not limited to "easy listening", I don't think that label would ever be applied to, say, Cecil Taylor.


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## Manxfeeder

As someone who loves jazz, I can't explain why I love it. Maybe the meme explains your dilemma.


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## Torkelburger

DoReFaMi said:


> When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.
> 
> Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.
> 
> I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony.
> 
> Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving?
> 
> What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


Have you tried Oscar Peterson yet? His playing does a good job of transporting me. In jazz, the sense of story-telling, tension and release, color etc. that you want to hear comes from the improvisational soloing rather than the harmony. Check out this Oscar Peterson clip as I feel it displays how a great jazz pianist starts simple and then builds and builds and builds up to an ecstatic climax (and then the last head serves as the denouement). It slowly builds like this over several minutes to one big payoff. Just when you don't think he can build it any further, he pushes it over the cliff. It feels like story-telling to me.




Oscar Peterson full concerts:




Sometimes jazz combos don't have a piano in them at all, as Sonny Rollins trio does here (just sax, bass, and drums). Give this a try:




Again, I get a sense of story telling as Sonny quotes parts of the head each time he solos over the tune. Each quote a variation of the head or previous quote. His solo builds to climactic chord scale runs before he quotes the head one last time.

Have you tried composers who are known for their non-traditional chord progressions/harmonies. Perhaps some Thelonious Monk:





The "easy listening" feel you do not like is probably due to the fact that jazz uses the seventh on every chord that some feel "softens" the sound of the triad. Every chord gets a seventh, whether it be a major seventh, a minor seventh, etc. That may create the mushy sound you don't like.


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## Torkelburger

Florestan said:


> The only time I like jazz is when I am watching Charlie Brown cartoons. It is used for background music and works very well there. Oh and I did like Tom Scott and the L.A. Express, collected many of there albums back in the 1980s, but other than that, jazz just has not moved me.


Have you checked out any Vince Guaraldi (the guy who wrote the Charlie Brown music) albums not related to Charlie Brown? Definitely worth checking out.
Here's a couple really neat tracks:








Bill Evans is a jazz pianist whose music "moves me". Like the following track. Hope you give it a listen and enjoy:


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## SixFootScowl

Hey yeah, that Vince Guaraldi is all right. Like the first track a lot. It reminded me some of the Charlie Brown cartoons.


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## norman bates

DoReFaMi said:


> When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.
> 
> Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.
> 
> I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony.
> 
> Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving?
> 
> What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


This post does not have a lot of sense. It's like saying that all classical music is like Vivaldi while you have Gesualdo and Stravinsky and Pierre Schaeffer and Xenakis.
I suspect you haven't listened a lot of it, and I'm not saying this because you don't like what you've heard but because you're doing incredible generalizations. For instance, you say "what gives jazz piano its easy listening feel" and I wonder if you have ever heard Cecil Taylor, or Andrew Hill or Lennie Tristano. 
And when you talk about the "dreamy harmonies" I wonder who or what are you considering.
Is this dreamy? Because to me it's not dreamy at all.





About that "using the same harmonies over and over again" there's certainly a good part of truth, because jazz is mainly based on the repetition of the chorus. But there's also Keith Jarrett doing things like the super famous Koln Concert and many other examples of musicians using extended forms.


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## Morimur

OP: keep listening and you'll get it. Jazz is worthwhile music.


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## Ukko

Why don't you like jazz? The simple answer is that you are too young - or too old - _between the ears_. Aren't moved (literally) by Pete Fountain? Too old. Don't 'feel the philosophy' offered by Art and Oscar? Too young.

And of course you are analyzing. That's OK if you plan to play - otherwise it's just ****-yzing.


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## millionrainbows

Much jazz, like the 'easy listening' piano you mentioned, is very conservative and stylistically stiff. That's why I don't particularly care for Bill Evans, except for the fact that Jim Hall is on some of the early records.

Harmonically, there's not much difference. Jazz uses the I-iv-ii-V a lot, which is just an extension of I-V in classical. The vi is a substitution for I, while the ii is a substitute for IV.

These kinds of jazz progressions are real repetitive, and can cycle endlessly, as in Giant Steps by Coltrane. You have seemingly endless chains of cyclic progressions, like Dm-G7-C/Cm-F7-Bb/Bbm-Eb7-Ab, descending in steps endlessly if desired.

This makes jazz a restless music, since it is always moving. The endless cycling can also be seen as a "static" state, since it is stuck in a predictable cycle, like a falling leaf which spirals downward. Perhaps the resolution and repose of classical is what you really like.

For me, I see these types of harmonic cycles as Western in origin, deriving from popular song forms like "I Got Rhythm." This is also due to the influence of the piano, not originally a jazz instrument. True jazz is horn music, created on left-over field instruments from the Civil War, trombones, clarinets, and trumpets. These are single-line melodic instruments, more voice-like and expressive than the piano, which is incapable of bending notes, and is therefore harmonically biased.

My advice is to listen to more horn and sax players: Louis Armstrong, Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and so on. Avoid Bill Evans, George Shearing, and the like. Thelonious Monk is safe to listen to. Maybe Bud Powell.


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## Robert Eckert

millionrainbows said:


> Much jazz, like the 'easy listening' piano you mentioned, is very conservative and stylistically stiff. That's why I don't particularly care for Bill Evans, except for the fact that Jim Hall is on some of the early records.
> 
> Harmonically, there's not much difference. Jazz uses the I-iv-ii-V a lot, which is just an extension of I-V in classical. The vi is a substitution for I, while the ii is a substitute for IV.
> 
> Yikes!
> It's fine that you don't like Bill Evans, but that really is the equivalent of saying that you don't like Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms.
> Bill was the greatest improvisational musician of the twentieth century. I met him in Chicago in 1979 and he looked over some of my transcriptions of his original compositions for guitar. The recordings of Jim Hall and Bill Evans are classics. Glen Gould was a big fan of Bill Evans and visa versa. It might be worth your time to really give him another listen. He was a genius!


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## millionrainbows

Robert Eckert said:


> millionrainbows said:
> 
> 
> 
> Much jazz, like the 'easy listening' piano you mentioned, is very conservative and stylistically stiff. That's why I don't particularly care for Bill Evans, except for the fact that Jim Hall is on some of the early records.
> 
> Harmonically, there's not much difference. Jazz uses the I-iv-ii-V a lot, which is just an extension of I-V in classical. The vi is a substitution for I, while the ii is a substitute for IV.
> 
> Yikes!
> It's fine that you don't like Bill Evans, but that really is the equivalent of saying that you don't like Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms.
> Bill was the greatest improvisational musician of the twentieth century. I met him in Chicago in 1979 and he looked over some of my transcriptions of his original compositions for guitar. The recordings of Jim Hall and Bill Evans are classics. Glen Gould was a big fan of Bill Evans and visa versa. It might be worth your time to really give him another listen. He was a genius!
> 
> 
> 
> I hear more Debussy in Bill Evans than blues, and I like my jazz to have a bluesy element. I appreciate Bill Evans for what he did, mainly as an experimenter. But I see him and other pianists as a departure from the true roots of jazz, which are more connected to blues than with harmonic complexity.
> 
> Yes. he made some good recordings; I really dig the stuff he did with George Russell, and all the Jim Hall collaborations like "Undercurrent" and "Intermodulation," but you might as well get used to my attitude. I'm not a novice, and this is not an off-the-wall generalization; I just simply do not like "cocktail" jazz unless I'm drinking cocktails, which is never.
Click to expand...


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> I hear more Debussy in Bill Evans than blues, and I like my jazz to have a bluesy element. I appreciate Bill Evans for what he did, mainly as an experimenter. But I see him and other pianists as a departure from the true roots of jazz, which are more connected to blues than with harmonic complexity.
> 
> Yes. he made some good recordings; I really dig the stuff he did with George Russell, and all the Jim Hall collaborations like "Undercurrent" and "Intermodulation," but you might as well get used to my attitude. I'm not a novice, and this is not an off-the-wall generalization; I just simply do not like "cocktail" jazz unless I'm drinking cocktails, which is never.


I hear Debussy also in the "cocktail jazz" (if we want to insult, we should use the same term for the others who were doing the same) of band of Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Mary Lou Williams, Herbie Hancock and a lot of other stuff. Ted Greene? I thought you liked him. Many of those horn players you've mentioned were using that stuff too. Davis and Coltrane were taking a lot from classical music. 
I like to hear bluesy stuff (by the way, I suspect that the minor seconds used by Monk were a way to replace the bending on a piano) but reducing jazz to dixieland and say that the music should necessarily be simple is like saying that all classical should be like Vivaldi.


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> I hear Debussy also in the "cocktail jazz" (if we want to insult, we should use the same term for the others who were doing the same) of band of Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke, Mary Lou Williams, Herbie Hancock and a lot of other stuff. Ted Greene? I thought you liked him. Many of those horn players you've mentioned were using that stuff too. Davis and Coltrane were taking a lot from classical music.
> I like to hear bluesy stuff (by the way, I suspect that the minor seconds used by Monk were a way to replace the bending on a piano) but reducing jazz to dixieland and say that the music should necessarily be simple is like saying that all classical should be like Vivaldi.


I'm not really hurling specific insults at Bill Evans or any other specific pianist. My views on this come from a conceptual place, that jazz is essentially a melodic music which was gradually Westernized by too much harmony and less single-note, vocally inflected lines.

I see the piano as the main culprit, as it is inextricably tied to Western harmony. The piano is the machine for creating harmony, since it is incapable of bending notes and imitating vocal inflections. I see jazz as essentially a vocally expressive music.

This pianistic attitude has affected the guitar's role in jazz, forcing it to serve as a "lap piano" (as George Van Eps called it). Charlie Christian was great, but he didn't do much note bending.

Horns always had the advantage over pianos and guitars in earlier jazz, since they were more vocal and could bend notes.

Now we have jazz fusion-type guitars which bend strings, but some see this as 'rock guitar.' I disagree, and see players such as Scofield and Mike Stern changing this (Pat Metheney is still a traditionalist in this regard).

But this is not all based on my guitarist's resentment of pianos and the role they try to enforce; this trend emerged earlier, with horn players. Sonny Rollins usually did not work with pianos; Ornette Coleman as well. I think they wanted less harmonic restriction, to escape from the stylistic 'harmonic straight-jacket' that piano tends to impose on the proceedings.

I'll go further to say that Be-bop was the apotheosis of jazz' misguided need to be harmonically complex. Miles Davis always felt uncomfortable as a 'rat running a harmonic maze' and did not come into his own until the famous "Kind of Blue" album, where he used modes and tried to create less harmonically complex music which could set a mood. Coltrane followed this same direction after "Giant Steps," going into long drones, such as "My Favorite Things."

Additionally, I see this move away from Western harmonic complexity as being culturally significant as well. It was the black man re-claiming jazz, especially in Davis' case.

Jazz had been assimilated into TV theme show music by Henry Mancini and others, and I think Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins were compelled to "take it back" and make it once again a black man's music.


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> I'm not really hurling specific insults at Bill Evans or any other specific pianist. My views on this come from a conceptual place, that jazz is essentially a melodic music which was gradually Westernized by too much harmony and less single-note, vocally inflected lines.


classical music too was essentialy melodic music, but I don't think that the history of western music should have stopped with Perotinus. 
If something is good, why should I put before some concept to deny that?
Herbie Nichols was influenced by Bartok, so what? His music is exceptional and unique.
Besides, even if the harmony is complex and lush it's still possible to use the microtonal infllections melodically. 
(and I should add that there are pianists who say that it's possible to bend notes on a piano, or at least to give the illusion of it).



millionrainbows said:


> I
> this trend emerged earlier, with horn players. Sonny Rollins usually did not work with pianos; Ornette
> Additionally, I see this move away from Western harmonic complexity as being culturally significant as well. It was the black man re-claiming jazz, especially in Davis' case.
> .


you forgot to say that Davis started his modal period EXACTLY because he was influenced by a white man, George Russell. And that after that he played music with guys like Wayne Shorter who produced very complex tunes.
You know, I know that many persons hate Stanley Crouch, but I appreciate a lot of things he wrote. But while black musicians have been the bigger part of merit in the history of the genre, I really don't see the reason for denying that jazz has not been just black music, but a mix of influences.


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> classical music too was essentialy melodic music, but I don't think that the history of western music should have stopped with Perotinus.
> If something is good, why should I put before some concept to deny that?


I am not convinced by analogies.

I'm not against development, either; but jazz was 'appropriated' and changed by men like Henry Mancini, who by the way I love, and changed it into a Westernized version, and did countless TV and movie themes. Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Mingus, and Miles Davis simply "took it back" and re-connected it to its roots. Thelonious Monk is a much different kind of pianist than Bill Evans.



> Herbie Nichols was influenced by Bartok, so what? His music is exceptional and unique.
> Besides, even if the harmony is complex and lush it's still possible to use the microtonal infllections melodically.
> (and I should add that there are pianists who say that it's possible to bend notes on a piano, or at least to give the illusion of it).


Jazz has proven to be a very flexible form, but some of it strayed too far from blues for me. Players who remained true to blues: Pat Martino, Willis Jackson, Dolphy.



> you forgot to say that Davis started his modal period EXACTLY because he was influenced by a white man, George Russell. And that after that he played music with guys like Wayne Shorter who produced very complex tunes.


I thought George Russell was black, or a high yellow.

But "Kind of Blue" and that specific time period, even if Russell influenced him, does not tell the whole story. You have to look at Davis' later work, like The Cellar Door Sessions, and see that there is little to no harmonic activity; all the soloists are playing over what is essentially a drone, created by the bass player & drums, as a 'groove.' 


> You know, I know that many persons hate Stanley Crouch, but I appreciate a lot of things he wrote. But while black musicians have been the bigger part of merit in the history of the genre, I really don't see the reason for denying that jazz has not been just black music, but a mix of influences.


Jazz was created by black musicians in New Orleans. To say it is not black music is rather misleading.


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## KenOC

I think Yogi Berra explained jazz well. The differences from classical music are quite apparent. "90% of all Jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, its right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong."


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> I am not convinced by analogies.


why? If you think that a genre should not change then it's the same.



millionrainbows said:


> I thought George Russell was black, or a high yellow.














millionrainbows said:


> Jazz was created by black musicians in New Orleans. To say it is not black music is rather misleading.


Marcello Piras for instance would disagree, he says that jazz existed already in 1500 and in 1600 in America. I'm not sure what are his arguments about this but anyway, even if we want to accept that jazz was invented in New Orleans by Buddy Bolden so what? Even in the first part of the history of the music the white influence was important. Was Ellington white? And still there were critics saying he was using the harmonies of Delius (and with Strayhorn the influence of the impressionists was even more clear). And don't forget that those black musicians were often playing the songs composed by white songwriters. Sidney Bechet doing Summertime, Armstrong doing Stardust, Coleman Hawkins playing Body and soul (without mentioning stuff like Queer notions). Don Redman with Fletcher Henderson was doing bold experiments.


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> why? If you think that a genre should not change then it's the same.


This has nothing to do with what you like. This is my view of jazz.



> Marcello Piras for instance would disagree, he says that jazz existed already in 1500 and in 1600 in America. I'm not sure what are his arguments about this but anyway, even if we want to accept that jazz was invented in New Orleans by Buddy Bolden so what?


I think you need to acknowledge that jazz was created by Afro Americans, with African influences. It changed and got Westernized.

Jazz is primarily about single-note improvisation and rhythm, not harmonic structure. Harmonic structures are just the vehicles it uses to convey improvisation. Hence the popular tunes (standards) they used: I Got Rhythm, etc. My contention is that jazz acquired too much harmonic baggage, and needed to be taken back by players such as Ornette Coleman, who you will note did not favor pianos. He didn't need 'em.



> Even in the first part of the history of the music the white influence was important. Was Ellington white? And still there were critics saying he was using the harmonies of Delius (and with Strayhorn the influence of the impressionists was even more clear).


Ellington was Ellington, and he was a piano player. He stayed within reasonable bounds of jazz.



> And don't forget that those black musicians were often playing the songs composed by white songwriters. Sidney Bechet doing Summertime, Armstrong doing Stardust, Coleman Hawkins playing Body and soul (without mentioning stuff like Queer notions). Don Redman with Fletcher Henderson was doing bold experiments.


Those songs were just vehicles. The important elements of jazz are those derived from African influences: rhythm, namely dividing the beat into 3, or 12/8, which is very un-Western. I could explain more, see this blog:
http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/1096-western-rhythm-marching-through.html

...as well as this one:

http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/2058-dividing-pulse-into-three.html

Coleman Hawkins and his solos are what is important, not the fact that he was playing over such-and-such harmonic progressions of popular tunes.

To clarify the point, we are interested in Coltrane's solo on "My Favorite Things", not so much the song itself. I'll admit that it's a beautiful tune, but by itself it is not jazz, it's a song by Rogers & Hammerstein. In other words, the paradigm for jazz is performance, not so much composition. As such, it is an aural form, only transmittable by ear or by recording it.

You seem to be unclear about the compositional paradigm, which is the Western classical music paradigm, and the non-Western or jazz improvisation paradigm, which is performance as composition or creation.

The creation of lines, while performing, in a spontaneous, un-written manner, is what most jazz and popular music is based on.

You seem to be of the view that the written composition is gospel, as in CM, and in jazz & most recorded music it is not.

As an example, Frank Sinatra is valued for his singing, and this exists as recorded performance (or live, if you were lucky enough to see him in concert).

This blog "Music Today" goes into complete detail on this. 
http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/2114-music-today.html

I'm not really interested in defending these ideas, or in debating the points.


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## isorhythm

millionrainbows said:


> I think you need to acknowledge that jazz was created by Afro Americans, with African influences. It changed and got Westernized.


This is awfully essentialist, sorry for the annoying undergrad word, but it is.

What you are describing is just not how music works.


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> This has nothing to do with what you like. This is my view of jazz.


yes but it seems we're talking about what you like... if you're saying that jazz can't change while classical can.



millionrainbows said:


> I think you need to acknowledge that jazz was created by Afro Americans, with African influences. It changed and got Westernized.
> Jazz is primarily about single-note improvisation and rhythm, not harmonic structure. Harmonic structures are just the vehicles it uses to convey improvisation. Hence the popular tunes (standards) they used: I Got Rhythm, etc. My contention is that jazz acquired too much harmonic baggage, and needed to be taken back by players such as Ornette Coleman, who you will note did not favor pianos. He didn't need 'em.


Jazz was created also by musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, who was a pianist.
If you prefer jazz that is not harmonically sophisticated fine, I know why Ornette preferred to play without pianists. But he wasn't just going back to the "purity" of the black origins, he was also an avantgarde musician who put a painting of the white Jackson Pollock (who besides being a white artist was influenced by european artists like Soutine) on the cover of his album. And he didn't use it just because he thought it was a nice picture. It was a way to make clear an artistic connection. See? The white influence is still there.



millionrainbows said:


> Those songs were just vehicles. The important elements of jazz are those derived from African influences: rhythm, namely dividing the beat into 3, or 12/8, which is very un-Western. I could explain more, see this blog:
> http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/1096-western-rhythm-marching-through.html
> 
> ...as well as this one:
> 
> http://www.talkclassical.com/blogs/millionrainbows/2058-dividing-pulse-into-three.html
> 
> Coleman Hawkins and his solos are what is important, not the fact that he was playing over such-and-such harmonic progressions of popular tunes.


so if the harmonic content is not important why do you care for it?
They were playing harmonically sophisticated tunes and you're saying that it doesn't matter, because the improvisation is important, so why you're against complex tunes? I've seen Joe Pass playing blues bendings over Bach.



millionrainbows said:


> To clarify the point, we are interested in Coltrane's solo on "My Favorite Things", not so much the song itself. I'll admit that it's a beautiful tune, but by itself it is not jazz, it's a song by Rogers & Hammerstein. In other words, the paradigm for jazz is performance, not so much composition. As such, it is an aural form, only transmittable by ear or by recording it.
> 
> You seem to be unclear about the compositional paradigm, which is the Western classical music paradigm, and the non-Western or jazz improvisation paradigm, which is performance as composition or creation.


I strongly disagree with this vision. In jazz the important things are the improvisation AND the composition.
Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk, Nichols, Hill, Ornette Coleman (who wrote beautiful tunes), Silver, Mingus, Carla Bley, Mary Lou Williams, Shorter and many others are some of the most important
figures in the genre and you can't say that their importance lies just in their improvisation, or even that the improvisations are more important that all the ideas and the quality of their tunes.
When Coltrane played My favorite things, he reworked the tune. If that wasn't important, he could have played like it was.


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## millionrainbows

isorhythm said:


> This is awfully essentialist, sorry for the annoying undergrad word, but it is.
> 
> What you are describing is just not how music works.


Oh, I know that jazz has changed, and was always an assimilating form, from the beginning; I don't argue that. If you like straight-eight beats, listen to Bossa Nova. If you like harmonic complexity, listen to Bud Powell. if you like classically-structured bandoneon tango music, listen to Piazolla.

But that flexible and assimilable nature does as much to boost or erode either side of this argument.

The only thing that matters in the end is where are you going to take it? Personally, I'll go with Miles Davis, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, later Coltrane, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, and all of the artists who tried to re-connect jazz with its more African roots. I like 'swing' rhythms that are not straight-eight "marching" music, and I like an African/blues element, not a Latin or Argentinian influence.

If you choose to go with Kenny G., Henry Mancini, Paul Desmond, The theme of Mannix, and Bill Evans, that's your choice, and is reflective of your opinion. That's all this really is in the end, is opinion. I just have some conceptual ideas that I wish to frame my opinions within.


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## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> yes but it seems we're talking about what you like... if you're saying that jazz can't change while classical can.


No, I never said that jazz couldn't change, as you will read again in my previous answer to isorhythm. I just prefer jazz that stays closer to its sources, rather than being "white-ified" by the likes of Glenn Miller and all the hybrid forms that jazz spun off.



> Jazz was created also by musicians like Jelly Roll Morton, who was a pianist.


That's a biased example, since Jelly Roll Morton was the first arranger in jazz, which was up to then an improvised music, transmitted and created by ear, not notation. He had the first published jazz composition, which 'proved' that jazz, an improvised form, could be codified. In other words, he gave it 'Western cred.' This example proves my point, that the piano and its players are usually biased towards Western ideas like harmony and notation, not improvisation.



> If you prefer jazz that is not harmonically sophisticated fine, I know why Ornette preferred to play without pianists. But he wasn't just going back to the "purity" of the black origins, he was also an avantgarde musician who put a painting of the white Jackson Pollock (who besides being a white artist was influenced by european artists like Soutine) on the cover of his album. And he didn't use it just because he thought it was a nice picture. It was a way to make clear an artistic connection. See? The white influence is still there.


If you see Ornette Coleman as 'avant garde', I think that is an over-reaction. To me, he took it back to Dixieland origins, as Mingus did, with the horns 'talking.' Yes, I'm sure that many of the be-bop players heard it and were shocked.



> ...so if the harmonic content is not important why do you care for it?
> They were playing harmonically sophisticated tunes and you're saying that it doesn't matter, because the improvisation is important, so why you're against complex tunes?


I see it just the opposite; Ornette Coleman's tunes on his first four albums were 'head' melodies which were stated twice, as themes. Tunes like "Rambin'" and 'Lonely Woman.' These were melodic ideas with no piano and very little harmonic implications. They were to be heard as tunes, not harmonic structures. The solos which follow use motives from the head, and play with it in various ways. The solos are done over static drones, not changes, so we are compelled to listen melodically, not harmonically. This makes the lines much freer. There is plenty of blues feeling, bent notes, and vocal expression in the horns.



> I've seen Joe Pass playing blues bendings over Bach.


I've seen Pat Metheney warm-up by himself in a YouTube video, and it sounds like Bach. Metheney has accepted the guitar's role as a Westernized 'lap piano' which functions to create harmonic implications through single-notes. Metheney is a harmonic thinker, most of what I've seen.



> I strongly disagree with this vision. In jazz the important things are the improvisation AND the composition.
> Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk, Nichols, Hill, Ornette Coleman (who wrote beautiful tunes), Silver, Mingus, Carla Bley, Mary Lou Williams, Shorter and many others are some of the most important
> figures in the genre and you can't say that their importance lies just in their improvisation, or even that the improvisations are more important that all the ideas and the quality of their tunes.
> When Coltrane played My favorite things, he reworked the tune. If that wasn't important, he could have played like it was.


If that's what you like, then go for it. Regarding Coltrane, note that he went away from complex harmony into his 'free' period (Stellar Regions, A Love Supreme, all the ABC Impulse stuff), as did Miles Davis. They were also criticized roundly by conservative critics.

I like Carla Bley and big-band stuff, but I always see it as a Westernized form. But ultimately, I see true jazz as a music of gesture and idiosyncratic nuance which is so connected to blacks that white people can only hope to emulate it. This gesture is apparently part of actually being black; it's in the DNA, the speech patterns, and probably more than that.


----------



## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> Oh, I know that jazz has changed, and was always an assimilating form, from the beginning; I don't argue that. If you like straight-eight beats, listen to Bossa Nova. If you like harmonic complexity, listen to Bud Powell. if you like classically-structured bandoneon tango music, listen to Piazolla.
> 
> But that flexible and assimilable nature does as much to boost or erode either side of this argument.
> 
> The only thing that matters in the end is where are you going to take it? Personally, I'll go with Miles Davis, Mingus, Ornette Coleman, later Coltrane, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, and all of the artists who tried to re-connect jazz with its more African roots. I like 'swing' rhythms that are not straight-eight "marching" music, and I like an African/blues element, not a Latin or Argentinian influence.
> 
> If you choose to go with Kenny G., Henry Mancini, Paul Desmond, The theme of Mannix, and Bill Evans, that's your choice, and is reflective of your opinion. That's all this really is in the end, is opinion. I just have some conceptual ideas that I wish to frame my opinions within.


good lord, magnificent musicians like Paul Desmond and Bill Evans put together with Kenny G. You really hate them don't you 
And by the way, Mingus did albums like his workshops and Let the children hear music and a lot of stuff that was deeply influenced by classical music. Mingus saw himself as a composer, and he looked at the european composers. Blakey played the tunes of guys like Shorter and Clare Fischer. Davis studied at the Juillard, imitated guys like Thornhill, used the musicians that worked with Tristano and many other white musicians, played the tunes of white jazz composers like John Carisi, and the second quintet considered by many his best band ever was all about complex stuff written by Shorter and Hancock (Hancock who himself was deeply influenced by Lili Boulanger, Clare Fischer, Bill Evans, Lyle Spud Murphy... all white musicians). I mean, not a great example of african roots.


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> If you see Ornette Coleman as 'avant garde', I think that is an over-reaction. To me, he took it back to Dixieland origins, as Mingus did, with the horns 'talking.' Yes, I'm sure that many of the be-bop players heard it and were shocked.


he took elements of the early jazz, as Albert Ayler for instance took his wide vibrato from players like Sidney Bechet. But he was also an avantgarde musician, fully aware of what was going on and influenced by white artists as the Pollock demonstrates. Even Picasso took inspiration from african art, that doesn't mean that he didn't was an european artist without european influences.
By the way, this is Mingus:




and you should read what he wrote, for instance in this article titled "What is a jazz composer".
http://mingusmingusmingus.com/mingus/what-is-a-jazz-composer

or look at this:







no, he wasn't trying to sell his piano 



millionrainbows said:


> I see it just the opposite; Ornette Coleman's tunes on his first four albums were 'head' melodies which were stated twice, as themes. Tunes like "Rambin'" and 'Lonely Woman.' These were melodic ideas with no piano and very little harmonic implications. They were to be heard as tunes, not harmonic structures. The solos which follow use motives from the head, and play with it in various ways. The solos are done over static drones, not changes, so we are compelled to listen melodically, not harmonically. This makes the lines much freer. There is plenty of blues feeling, bent notes, and vocal expression in the horns.


I know this, but still taking away the piano doesn't mean necessarily music without harmonic implications as in the case of Ornette.



millionrainbows said:


> If that's what you like, then go for it. Regarding Coltrane, note that he went away from complex harmony into his 'free' period (Stellar Regions, A Love Supreme, all the ABC Impulse stuff), as did Miles Davis. They were also criticized roundly by conservative critics.
> 
> I like Carla Bley and big-band stuff, but I always see it as a Westernized form. But ultimately, I see true jazz as a music of gesture and idiosyncratic nuance which is so connected to blacks that white people can only hope to emulate it. This gesture is apparently part of actually being black; it's in the DNA, the speech patterns, and probably more than that.


this is the most racist or absurd thing I've read this month. 
The modern jazz quartet was black. Pee Wee Russell was white. Charlie Parker was black, George Russell was white. According to your ideas it should be the opposite. There's nothing in the DNA, and even if black musicians have been the major force in the genre, they have been influenced too by the european music, and many white musicians have contributed a lot to the genre, as I've said above.


----------



## millionrainbows

> this is the most racist or absurd thing I've read this month.
> modern jazz quartet was black. Pee Wee Russell was white. Charlie Parker was black, George Russell was white. According to your ideas it should be the opposite. There's nothing in the DNA, and even if black musicians have been the major force in the genre, they have been influenced too by the european music, and many white musicians have contributed a lot to the genre, as I've said above.


Ah, pulling the racist card? When I say 'black,' I mean African.

Yes, jazz originated in the US, so of course it became assimilated, and it changed. But as an original form, as America's gift to France or whatever, it must exhibit at least some African elements, even if it is Bill Evans, otherwise it might not be recognizable as jazz. I think the main unifying element is rhythm, or 'swing' as it is quaintly called. This gave Gershwin the ability to 'jazzify' his Western harmonic tin-pan alley songs. He just 'jazzed 'em up.'

The harmonic aspects are what got changed the most, and is what makes jazz 'more Western' and probably is responsible for its wide popularity.

What do I mean by this? That jazz is ultimately derived from non-Western African people and African sources of musical thinking, and African music is not harmonic in the way we think of 'harmony' and 'chord changes.' Much African music is purely linear, and any 'harmony' is derived from the natural harmonic series and its transpositioning, which created "scales" or correspondences of intervals in two harmonic templates. These correspondences are what gave rise to blues and 'blue notes,' but these elements are to be understood in a non-Western way, not as 'scales' or 'chords,' but as combinations of harmonic drones. In other words, there is no 'harmony' in much African music.

That's why I keep saying that the piano changed this, and jazz which remains suitably connected to its roots is melodic in nature, as solos by horn players.

But suit yourself; if you prefer jazz which is more harmonic, so be it. I like much of it too, and we have much in common. I like jazz, all kinds of jazz.

But this does not change the conceptual framework that I have developed over my years of playing, listening, transcribing, and studying. I understand Miles Davis, and I completely understand why he went in the direction that he did; and I think he came to an intuitive understanding of what jazz is, and he defined it as black, or African in nature. It was "in his DNA" so to speak, and I believe this on all levels, including his experience as a black man in America. If that's racist, you are mistaken.


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## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> Ah, pulling the racist card? When I say 'black,' I mean African.
> 
> Yes, jazz originated in the US, so of course it became assimilated, and it changed. But as an original form, as America's gift to France or whatever, it must exhibit at least some African elements, even if it is Bill Evans, otherwise it might not be recognizable as jazz. I think the main unifying element is rhythm, or 'swing' as it is quaintly called. This gave Gershwin the ability to 'jazzify' his Western harmonic tin-pan alley songs. He just 'jazzed 'em up.'
> 
> The harmonic aspects are what got changed the most, and is what makes jazz 'more Western' and probably is responsible for its wide popularity.


I think it must be said that the harmony in jazz was a mix of both blues emements and western harmony, that produced something unique. The songs of songwriters like Gerswhin, Harold Harlen, Hoagy Carmichael etc incorporated both the sophistication of western harmony and the blues, so you have songs like Stormy weather or Willow weep for me or Loverman etc.




for instance, listen when she sings "SAD as I can be" at 1:11. You have a piano with his fixed intonation playing rich harmony and a voice that is slightly bending a note.
I'm saying this because it seems that you think that the western and the african elements are harmonically in conflict and one excludes the other, but actually the two things produced a successful combination.



millionrainbows said:


> I understand Miles Davis, and I completely understand why he went in the direction that he did; and I think he came to an intuitive understanding of what jazz is, and he defined it as black, or African in nature. It was "in his DNA" so to speak, and I believe this on all levels, including his experience as a black man in America. If that's racist, you are mistaken.


well it was the "DNA" thing that does not convince me at all. About Davis, I still think that you're simplyfing his position. Davis worked with a lot of white musicians. Bill Evans (that Bill Evans that you see very distant from the blues, and I can agree on this) was with George Russell a major influence on Davis when he started playing modal. Flamenco sketches for instance is just a copy of Piece peace, a tune written by Evans.
So this modal approach was actually black or white? And the european composers like Palestrina were black or white?


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## Petwhac

millionrainbows said:


> I see the piano as the main culprit, as it is inextricably tied to Western harmony. The piano is the machine for creating harmony, since it is incapable of bending notes and imitating vocal inflections. *I see jazz as essentially a vocally expressive music.*


(My bold) That my friend, could be said of all music. First came rhythm and the voice. Music, even Jazz, develops, changes with new discoveries and instruments.

Remember classical music grew from monophonic vocal writing to polyphony to harmony etc. Even in Bach, we notice the music is conceived as 'voices', whether instrumental or not.

Many people don't like Jazz and that's perfectly OK. Your rationalisation of why you don't like Bill Evans strikes me as a little odd since there is a great deal of blues inflection in his improv. Because the piano can't physically bend notes, pianists use appoggiatura and grace notes. It is true though that Evans's harmonic sense is one of his more celebrated aspects.


----------



## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> ...About Davis, I still think that you're simplyfing his position. Davis worked with a lot of white musicians. Bill Evans (that Bill Evans that you see very distant from the blues, and I can agree on this) was with George Russell a major influence on Davis when he started playing modal. Flamenco sketches for instance is just a copy of Piece peace, a tune written by Evans.
> So this modal approach was actually black or white? And the european composers like Palestrina were black or white?


Miles Davis went through a lot of various phases: Be-bop, modal, but it is ultimate direction in his late period where he found his true conception of jazz. The same with late Coltrane. This is based on melodic elaboration (solos) over a simple drone or rhythmic groove.

The modality of Palestrina, etc, cannot be compared to jazz use of scalar-derived modes. Ask any uptight, rigid academic thinker on this forum.


----------



## millionrainbows

norman bates said:


> I think it must be said that the harmony in jazz was a mix of both blues emements and western harmony, that produced something unique. The songs of songwriters like Gerswhin, Harold Harlen, Hoagy Carmichael etc incorporated both the sophistication of western harmony and the blues, so you have songs like Stormy weather or Willow weep for me or Loverman etc.





> ...for instance, listen when she sings "SAD as I can be" at 1:11. You have a piano with his fixed intonation playing rich harmony and a voice that is slightly bending a note.
> I'm saying this because it seems that you think that the western and the african elements are harmonically in conflict and one excludes the other, but actually the two things produced a successful combination.


Yes, the African idea is different than the Western idea, and the African idea had to adapt to Western instruments and tunings. So yes, there was conflict, as well as successful hybrids.

What I am saying is that the Western influence began to overwhelm and subsume jazz into a Western idea of what jazz is supposed to be, and this whole process went way too far.

Also what I am saying is that the bent notes of jazz are due to African influences, due to the use of a fundamental and its partials, and blues as well as jazz attempted to preserve this with bent notes, which could be done with the voice, or with winds and horns, NOT pianos.

Whatever "jazzy" influences that white musicians like Benny Goodman or Paul Whiteman were able to emulate or preserve were the rhythmic aspects. Some of them could passably solo, but the vocal inflections and bent notes were derived from harmonic conceptions which are totally foreign to Western musical thinking; also these lines were derived from vocal and speech patterns which were either hardwired into the black man's DNA, or so culturally ingrained that they might as well have been.

Yes, jazz became a legit, respectable form, especially when it left the bars and clubs of its origins and is now taught in universities.

Face it, man: the real jazz was invented by blacks, who lived black lives in black areas, and jazz reflects the black experience, black ways of being and thinking, and the black heritage.

All that followed, which deviated from this, was an emulation, an attempt to be like that. All else that followed is art, artifice. All else that followed was an invention, a clever borrowing of genuine elements.

Real jazz (and blues) is a refection of the experience, and of the being, of the African American slaves who were brought over here. All else is merely artifice. Yes, much of it is quite beautiful and effective music, but I say it is not true jazz.

If you acknowledge that openly, then you can move on, and create your art, and make beautiful music. But any other notions or hybrid cultural forms that takes jazz away from its essential African roots, is artificially modified, and is on a trajectory away from those roots. While it may be called 'jazz,' it is something else, which was created later.

I speak of musical elements and musical thinking more than technology. Miles Davis was electrified, and used modern sound systems. The point I am making about the piano is that it is not 'evil' in itself, but it tends to influence musical thinking because of its inherent strength as an instrument of harmony, not solos.

The best piano player for real jazz is going to sound more like Thelonious Monk than Bill Evans. Monk had a very percussive approach, and stabbed tone clusters. Bill Evans sounds like he's trying to 'out-Debussy' Debussy.


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## millionrainbows

Petwhac said:


> (My bold) That my friend, could be said of all music. First came rhythm and the voice. Music, even Jazz, develops, changes with new discoveries and instruments.
> 
> Remember classical music grew from monophonic vocal writing to polyphony to harmony etc. Even in Bach, we notice the music is conceived as 'voices', whether instrumental or not.
> 
> Many people don't like Jazz and that's perfectly OK. Your rationalisation of why you don't like Bill Evans strikes me as a little odd since there is a great deal of blues inflection in his improv. Because the piano can't physically bend notes, pianists use appoggiatura and grace notes. It is true though that Evans's harmonic sense is one of his more celebrated aspects.


I like Bill Evans well enough for what he was, but generally I find that pianos tend to clutter and complicate things. If they are used for what they do best, which is harmonic changes and song structures, that is fine. But jazz is more than changes and song forms. Those are just vehicles. But pianos tend to start dominating the proceedings.

If a piano is used to play Beatles songs, or is in an authentic genre such as boogie-woogie or blues, then it is doing what it was designed to do. But "modern" jazz piano stylings do not cut it. A virtuoso like Oscar Peterson can get away with a lot, but it becomes ersatz jazz in the hands of lesser players.


----------



## norman bates

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, the African idea is different than the Western idea, and the African idea had to adapt to Western instruments and tunings. So yes, there was conflict, as well as successful hybrids.
> 
> What I am saying is that the Western influence began to overwhelm and subsume jazz into a Western idea of what jazz is supposed to be, and this whole process went way too far.
> 
> Also what I am saying is that the bent notes of jazz are due to African influences, due to the use of a fundamental and its partials, and blues as well as jazz attempted to preserve this with bent notes, which could be done with the voice, or with winds and horns, NOT pianos.
> 
> Whatever "jazzy" influences that white musicians like Benny Goodman or Paul Whiteman were able to emulate or preserve were the rhythmic aspects. Some of them could passably solo, but the vocal inflections and bent notes were derived from harmonic conceptions which are totally foreign to Western musical thinking; also these lines were derived from vocal and speech patterns which were either hardwired into the black man's DNA, or so culturally ingrained that they might as well have been.
> 
> Yes, jazz became a legit, respectable form, especially when it left the bars and clubs of its origins and is now taught in universities.
> 
> Face it, man: the real jazz was invented by blacks, who lived black lives in black areas, and jazz reflects the black experience, black ways of being and thinking, and the black heritage.
> 
> All that followed, which deviated from this, was an emulation, an attempt to be like that. All else that followed is art, artifice. All else that followed was an invention, a clever borrowing of genuine elements.


if something deviate, it's not an emulation. It's emulation if it keep imitating again and again an original model. Jazz right from the start was a mix of influences, the spanish tinge like Jelly Roll Morton called it (that was already present in the music of Gottshalk for instance), othe latin influences (St James Infirmary to me sounds a lot like calypso), the ragtime, instruments that were often invented by white musicians (because trumpet, saxophones, clarinets etc don't have the fixed intonation of the piano but still those were tools of white musicians), the blues, the propulsion of the swing rhyhtm, the american songs of that tradition that started with Stephen Foster, the western harmony. It was from the start a hybrid music and it was something original exactly because of that.



millionrainbows said:


> Real jazz (and blues) is a refection of the experience, and of the being, of the African American slaves who were brought over here. All else is merely artifice. Yes, much of it is quite beautiful and effective music, but I say it is not true jazz.


I think that the most correct thing to do is farting really hard over the idea of "true".
I can't care less over something so stupid. I care about quality, that's all. I think that there's great jazz made by black musicians, and great jazz made by white musicians.
I've always thought that the sentence attributed to Picasso "after Altamira all is decadence" was one of the most stupid things ever said, even if he was a wonderful artist.
The past has to be respected, not treated as a fetish. This idea of purity is a myth. 
Everything evolves.



millionrainbows said:


> If you acknowledge that openly, then you can move on, and create your art, and make beautiful music. But any other notions or hybrid cultural forms that takes jazz away from its essential African roots, is artificially modified, and is on a trajectory away from those roots. While it may be called 'jazz,' it is something else, which was created later.


actually those who support this idea hate the word jazz.


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## millionrainbows

*jazz*


(_music_) A musical art form rooted in West African cultural and musical expression and in the African American blues tradition, with diverse influences over time, commonly characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and improvisation.

I love the term jazz, when it's properly used.


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## norman bates

http://sites.bu.edu/afammusicworldculture/speakers/marcello-piras/

Talk Title: Ecos de México: Young Scott Joplin and His Secret Role Models

Although Mexico's musical history is the richest, longest and best documented in the New World, "the" Mexican music the world knows mostly comes from a short period, ca. late 19th - early 20th century. While such compositions as Cielito lindo (1882), Sobre las olas (1888) and Estrellita (1912) were winning international success, music in the USA was in transition from an era of obscurity to a golden age. No wonder that Mexican musicians, specially when touring the USA, were being revered by many Northern colleagues. In the 1890's, young Scott Joplin was wrestling to master the language of white American genteel music and turn it into a distinctly Negro idiom-a problem still quite new for the USA, but not at all new in the Spanish-*‐speaking world. Joplin soon found that Latin musicians were ahead of him in many respects and could be sources of effective musical solutions. This fact - so far overlooked by ragtime research - is documented in Joplin's music, which, surprisingly, hides entire strains virtually lifted from Mexican compositions.


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## Petwhac

millionrainbows said:


> I like Bill Evans well enough for what he was, but generally I find that pianos tend to clutter and complicate things. If they are used for what they do best, which is harmonic changes and song structures, that is fine. But jazz is more than changes and song forms. Those are just vehicles. But pianos tend to start dominating the proceedings.
> 
> If a piano is used to play Beatles songs, or is in an authentic genre such as boogie-woogie or blues, then it is doing what it was designed to do. But "modern" jazz piano stylings do not cut it. A virtuoso like Oscar Peterson can get away with a lot, but it becomes ersatz jazz in the hands of lesser players.


Why is it that when the very first blues, gospel and jazz musicians took African elements and blended them with European harmony, it's 'authentic'. Yet when later generations take that original hybrid invention and mix it further with popular idioms and instruments, it is 'ersatz'?

As for note bending, I'm pretty sure European/American folk singing has it.


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## millionrainbows

Petwhac said:


> Why is it that when the very first blues, gospel and jazz musicians took African elements and blended them with European harmony, it's 'authentic'. Yet when later generations take that original hybrid invention and mix it further with popular idioms and instruments, it is 'ersatz'?


It doesn't always turn out that way. I'm speaking in broad, sweeping generalizations.

For several reasons, jazz gets watered down. One is that jazz is like other "ear" music, in that it was conveyed without notation, as performers, not composers. Read my blogs about how recording changed music.

Even if there is a lead sheet, the solos are improvised over that skeleton, not notated and read. So, like other forms of folk and popular music, jazz is not notated; at least the solos are not.

Later on, the problem is not just simply 'mixing idioms and instruments,' but changing the basic paradigm by notating it, or using too much harmony, and simply by losing the blues feeling of it.


----------



## Petwhac

millionrainbows said:


> It doesn't always turn out that way. I'm speaking in broad, sweeping generalizations.
> 
> For several reasons, jazz gets watered down. One is that jazz is like other "ear" music, in that it was conveyed without notation, as performers, not composers. Read my blogs about how recording changed music.
> 
> Even if there is a lead sheet, the solos are improvised over that skeleton, not notated and read. So, like other forms of folk and popular music, jazz is not notated; at least the solos are not.
> 
> Later on, the problem is not just simply 'mixing idioms and instruments,' but changing the basic paradigm by notating it, or using too much harmony, and simply by losing the blues feeling of it.


I've often said that recording changed music. How could it not.

I just fail to see why on earth you tend to put a negative spin on the changes that are inevitable to a living popular art form. It's called evolution! It's like moaning that the earth isn't populated only by single celled organisms after 4 billion years because they have some sort of 'purity'. (Slightly exaggerated comparison-perhaps).

Your choice of words and phrases such as "watered down" and .."the problem is.." and "too much harmony" seem to suggest that you are more interested in preservation of endangered species than in music.

The black/white thing is just a side issue. If any art form has a value other than some sort of case study for anthropologists and museum curators, it is in it's universality.

I am very happy that such watering down as you put it, has given us Ellington and Dorsey, Goodman and Basie, Coltrane and Brecker, BB King and Derek Trucks, Hancock and Corea etc.


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## norman bates

Petwhac said:


> I've often said that recording changed music. How could it not.
> 
> I just fail to see why on earth you tend to put a negative spin on the changes that are inevitable to a living popular art form. It's called evolution! It's like moaning that the earth isn't populated only by single celled organisms after 4 billion years because they have some sort of 'purity'. (Slightly exaggerated comparison-perhaps).
> 
> Your choice of words and phrases such as "watered down" and .."the problem is.." and "too much harmony" seem to suggest that you are more interested in preservation of endangered species than in music.
> 
> The black/white thing is just a side issue. If any art form has a value other than some sort of case study for anthropologists and museum curators, it is in it's universality.
> 
> I am very happy that such watering down as you put it, has given us Ellington and Dorsey, Goodman and Basie, Coltrane and Brecker, BB King and Derek Trucks, Hancock and Corea etc.


I obviously agree. By the way, a funny detail is that brazilian musicians had to deal with a similar criticism ("corruption of purity") for a long time. For instance a composer like Pixinguinha who made some of his more famous tunes like Carinhoso and Rosa between 1916 and 1917 was accused to be too much influenced by jazz because of the sophisticated harmony he used. 1917. The year of the first jazz recording.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixinguinha

today those songs are some of the most beloved in all brazilian music, and thanks to that "harmonic corruption" brazilian music is a treasure trove full of musical gems. One is even hironically called "Influencia do jazz"

_Pobre samba meu
Foi se misturando se modernizando, e se perdeu
E o rebolado cadê? não tem mais
Cadê o tal gingado que mexe com a gente
Coitado do meu samba mudou de repente
Influência do jazz_

("Poor samba of mine went mixing up and modernizing, and lost itself." Obviously is a song with a very lush jazz harmony)


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## hpowders

OP: Probably because you've never heard Miles Davis-Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson and Kind of Blue.


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## millionrainbows

All things aside, I do like all kinds of jazz, and own lots of CDs of different kinds.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

These guys know what they're talking about


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## starthrower

DoReFaMi said:


> When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.
> 
> Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.
> 
> I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony.
> 
> Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving?
> 
> What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


What jazz pianists have you listened to? Herbie Hancock, Monk, Paul Bley aren't easy listening. Herbie's solos always transport me as a listener. He's a story teller as far as my ears are concerned. I would say get hold of the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-68 box and listen to all of that stuff. And Herbie's Blue Note album, Speak Like A child.

It's interesting to note that both Bill Evans, and organist/pianist Larry Young studied with the same Hungarian piano teacher in New Jersey. And she studied at the Bartok Conservatory as a young woman. And they are both known for the modern harmonies in their playing.

And you've got Chick Corea, Andrew Hill, and McCoy Tyner who employ modern harmonic concepts in their music.


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## Strange Magic

millionrainbows said:


> These kinds of jazz progressions are real repetitive, and can cycle endlessly, as in Giant Steps by Coltrane. You have seemingly endless chains of cyclic progressions, like Dm-G7-C/Cm-F7-Bb/Bbm-Eb7-Ab, descending in steps endlessly if desired.
> 
> This makes jazz a restless music, since it is always moving. The endless cycling can also be seen as a "static" state, since it is stuck in a predictable cycle, like a falling leaf which spirals downward. Perhaps the resolution and repose of classical is what you really like.


I think millionrainbows has seized the heart of the matter here, for listeners like me. I think that one way of dividing musics is into "process-oriented" or "circular" musics, of which Jazz is a prime example, and "goal-oriented" or "linear" musics, such as much rock, pop, and classical. I will leave the minutiae of these distinctions and examples to my betters, but I know that I am not now and have never been the audience to whom Jazz is directed. I like to think my musical train is heading for a destination: cusp, culmination, resolution, orgasm, whatever, and not spinning in circles, hypnotized by its own motion (my impression). As always, to each his/her own, _de gustibus_, have a great day!


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## seven four

I dig the new...I like how it unfolds with new ideas. Not that other music doesn't!


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## millionrainbows

Strange Magic said:


> I think millionrainbows has seized the heart of the matter here, for listeners like me. I think that one way of dividing musics is into "process-oriented" or "circular" musics, of which Jazz is a prime example, and "goal-oriented" or "linear" musics, such as much rock, pop, and classical. I will leave the minutiae of these distinctions and examples to my betters, but I know that I am not now and have never been the audience to whom Jazz is directed. I like to think my musical train is heading for a destination: cusp, culmination, resolution, orgasm, whatever, and not spinning in circles, hypnotized by its own motion (my impression). As always, to each his/her own, _de gustibus_, have a great day!


Yes, linear or narrative music, with a goal, is probably due to scoring and written notation. "Circular" music, as you call it, is probably that way because it is 'ear' music which is created by performing and improvising, a much less rational and 'stream of consciousness' process.
I'll bet you keep all your socks neatly folded and stacked, as well.


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## Guest




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## Strange Magic

I do keep my socks paired and folded, but not stacked. My taste in process-oriented music leans much more heavily to this, than to jazz:






I can listen to (and watch) this for hours.....


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## Larkenfield

Jazz music kept the spontaneity in music and improvisation alive when classical musicians got too lazy and forgot how to improvise. Beethoven was known as a great improviser and so was Mozart and so was Chopin and so were many others. But that tradition has been lost because just about everything in classical music has to be nailed to the page and practiced to death before it can be played. Jazz is about creativity in the now, in the moment, and at its best its rhythms can swing like crazy and get the body moving. There have been many jazz geniuses, such as Bill Evans, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Lester Young, and many others, who have loved and played the music because it's really about freedom, exploration, and joy.


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## Merl

OT: I 've never been able to like jazz, either. This about sums jazz up for me. "Tune? What tune? This is jazzzzzz!" (Jackson Jeffrey Jackson)


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## millionrainbows

Even since my last posts, I have updated my views on music.

There's different kinds of jazz: be-bop is linear, with complex chord changes and super-fast solos. It is like Western classical, in that it uses progressions which are goal-oriented. This is mainly because the song models that be-bop used are based on Western tin-pan alley songs, like Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm." Any jazz which uses these models will be linear and goal-oriented, with the usual attraction, resolution, and directionality of Western CP classical tonality.

Newer jazz which appeared after this, like late John Coltrane and later Miles Davis, is vertical music. It has a more definite "at rest" sense of tonality, and is not goal-oriented, is more "floating" and mood-inducing, and often uses only one or two chords as vehicles for melodic soloing.

Enter the new jazz:


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## philoctetes

Jazz has gone beyond Evans, Coltrane and Miles, by a few measures. The use of rhythm in jazz is often neglected but continues to drive the evolution of the form. The best players and composers are incorporating more classical structures, melodic elements, and updating the "standards" playbook. 

Was interesting to hear Ravi Coltrane, Matt Garrison, and Jack DeJohnette in SF last week... a great example of three generations, teachers, students, fathers and sons, all sharing the torch.... Garrison was especially pushing the envelope with his electric bass / laptop combo. Jack D was his usual self on hi-hat and tom-toms. 

For more direct links to classical, pianists can be the way to go. Brad Mehldau has been taking Bach programs on the road lately.


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## Gaspard de la Nuit

I liked some big band music but other than that I've never really taken to Jazz.


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## millionrainbows

DoReFaMi said:


> *Please explain to me why I don't like JAZZ*
> 
> When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.
> 
> Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.
> 
> I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony.
> 
> Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving?
> 
> What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


The "boring piano" part depends upon what piano player is playing. I certainly don't get bored hearing Thelonious Monk, or Oscar Peterson on a good night. Paul Bley, Carla Bley, Don Preston, McCoy Tyner…there's a lot of jazz piano players to be making such a sweeping generalization.

What the main thrust is, is that jazz is not European like classical music, so there are major differences in how performers are treated, what is demanded from them, technique and stylistic differences, and more. That's probably the real basis of why you have no desire to explore jazz, in my opinion.


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## Luchesi

Robert Eckert said:


> Jazz uses the I-iv-ii-V a lot, which is just an extension of I-V in classical. The vi is a substitution for I, while the ii is a substitute for IV.


That confuses me, but I haven't read all the posts in here


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## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> That confuses me, but I haven't read all the posts in here


Go to the white keys of a piano and play some triads (3-note chords). You'll see that CEG and ACE share two notes, C and E, so they can "substitute" for each other.

I-iv-ii-V, spelled out in C, is CEG-FAC-DFA-GBD. Notice the shared notes.

This "substitution" idea becomes more apparent when 4-note 'seventh' chords are used: CEGB (C major seventh) can be seen as EGB, an E minor triad, but also the upper notes of C major seventh with no root (C).


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## fluteman

DoReFaMi said:


> When I hear jazz piano, for example, I'm not transported. It's okay. But I don't particularly care for it.
> 
> Now that I pay a lot more attention to details in the music, I was wondering if it has to do with jazz harmony.
> 
> I find jazz music very static, using the same harmonies over and over again, so there's no real sense of story-telling, of tension and release, of color (as Mozart would use by switching a theme in major to minor). It seems to be the same "dreamy" type of static harmonies, that classical composers would use with parsimony.
> 
> Am I off track here or can someone explain to me what I'm likely perceiving?
> 
> What gives Jazz piano its "easy listening" feel that I don't particularly like, in harmonic language?


Most early jazz was not especially adventurous harmonically speaking, though that began to change in the late 1940s and 1950s. Jazzophiles talk endlessly about a Miles Davis album called "Kind of Blue", and more advanced harmony is a big reason, though I don't think he gets sole or even primary credit for such innovations. You can also check out the work of John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy for more sophisticated harmonic language.
But I suspect the real source of the problem you have with jazz is that it is a form of music where rhythmic ideas usually predominate over harmonic ones. If you can't accept that, you won't like most jazz.


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## Luchesi

millionrainbows said:


> Go to the white keys of a piano and play some triads (3-note chords). You'll see that CEG and ACE share two notes, C and E, so they can "substitute" for each other.
> 
> I-iv-ii-V, spelled out in C, is CEG-FAC-DFA-GBD. Notice the shared notes.
> 
> This "substitution" idea becomes more apparent when 4-note 'seventh' chords are used: CEGB (C major seventh) can be seen as EGB, an E minor triad, but also the upper notes of C major seventh with no root (C).


but iv is F minor


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## philoctetes

Modern jazz uses extended chords to extend harmonic relationships, along with complex rhyhmic signatures that combine to give musicians a lot of musical freedom, but most jazz musicians must actually learn the theory to take advantage of it. I'm inclined to think Mozart and other composers known for improvisation would like modern jazz a lot....

The jazz progression I've often seen documented is stated ii-V-I or vi-ii-V-I, in ascending fourths. I guess I-vi-ii-V also works since the I and vi share the 1st degree, plus the 5th if they are 7th chords.


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## fluteman

philoctetes said:


> Modern jazz uses extended chords to extend harmonic relationships, along with complex rhyhmic signatures that combine to give musicians a lot of musical freedom, but most jazz musicians must actually learn the theory to take advantage of it. I'm inclined to think Mozart and other composers known for improvisation would like modern jazz a lot....
> 
> The jazz progression I've often seen documented is stated ii-V-I or vi-ii-V-I, in ascending fourths. I guess I-vi-ii-V also works since the I and vi share the 1st degree, plus the 5th if they are 7th chords.


Modal scales rather than standard chord progressions too, as Miles Davis is famous for. But your comment about "complex rhythmic signatures" is the key one imho, and it's not just the signatures. There's a reason that drummers became increasingly important in progressive jazz in the late 40s and 50s. I've noticed that many posters at talkclassical take for granted the predominance of harmonic elements over rhythmic ones (also over other basic elements such as structure -- scope and scale, counterpoint, etc -- dynamics and timbre) in music, the original poster here perhaps included. 
To me that betrays a primary focus on 19th century western classical music. Nothing wrong with that, but once people here begin to consider genres and eras of music other than 19th century western classical, many seem puzzled, bored or even offended that harmony doesn't occupy quite the same, or in some cases anywhere near the same, exalted position. That's my interpretation of the original post here, apologies in advance if it's off base, but I do think it applies to a lot of the threads and debates here.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Jazz just isn't loud enough!


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## millionrainbows

Luchesi said:


> but iv is F minor


I meant vi, as the typical I-vi-ii-V7, or one-six-two-five.




philoctetes said:


> Modern jazz uses extended chords to extend harmonic relationships, along with complex rhyhmic signatures that combine to give musicians a lot of musical freedom, but most jazz musicians must actually learn the theory to take advantage of it. I'm inclined to think Mozart and other composers known for improvisation would like modern jazz a lot....


I think you're right, philo, they would like it. I remember a philo from AAJ. You dat?

In jazz, the performer is spotlighted. In classical, the players are expected to simply play as instructed, more or less, so the conductor is really the variable, and the conveyor of "being" in the music. The score, as blueprint, can also convey "being", but this is in the hands of the conductor.

However, chamber music is most similar to jazz; in it, the players are the performers as well.


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## philoctetes

"You dat?"

No I be one o dem ol Amazon "friends"...


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## Luchesi

Mine's a Kawai.


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## norman bates

fluteman said:


> Modal scales rather than standard chord progressions too, as Miles Davis is famous for. But your comment about "complex rhythmic signatures" is the key one imho, and it's not just the signatures. There's a reason that drummers became increasingly important in progressive jazz in the late 40s and 50s. I've noticed that many posters at talkclassical take for granted the predominance of harmonic elements over rhythmic ones (also over other basic elements such as structure -- scope and scale, counterpoint, etc -- dynamics and timbre) in music, the original poster here perhaps included.
> To me that betrays a primary focus on 19th century western classical music. Nothing wrong with that, but once people here begin to consider genres and eras of music other than 19th century western classical, many seem puzzled, bored or even offended that harmony doesn't occupy quite the same, or in some cases anywhere near the same, exalted position. That's my interpretation of the original post here, apologies in advance if it's off base, but I do think it applies to a lot of the threads and debates here.


but in jazz, especially as you said from the late forties (and sometimes before) become often harmonically a very complex form of music. Art Tatum, Lennie Tristano, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Gil Melle, Andrew Hill, Herbie Nichols Wayne Shorter, Booker Little, Joe Diorio, Ted Greene, Coltrane, Dennis Sandole, Clare Fischer, Lyle "Spud" Murphy, Allan Holdsworth. George Russell etc (and I could go on forever with this name-dropping). I even had a discussion recently here with a guy who thought that all jazz is always too much harmonically complex and it uses always extended harmonies...


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## Etherealz

Well, it sounds sexy in a classy way as opposed to sounding sexy in a trashy way.


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## millionrainbows

*Please explain to me why I don't like JAZZ*

Uhh, because it is a music which was created by African Americans in New Orleans?

Hey, at least they didn't wear powdered wigs, silk pants, and play harpsichords!


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## musicaljohn

Haha true! Amen to that


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## millionrainbows

Okay, now please explain to me why I LIKE jazz.


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## Barbebleu

millionrainbows said:


> Okay, now please explain to me why I LIKE jazz.


Because you are an intelligent person with impeccable taste.


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## Nate Miller

millionrainbows said:


> *Please explain to me why I don't like JAZZ*
> 
> Hey, at least they didn't wear powdered wigs, silk pants, and play harpsichords!


 I dunno.... I saw Miles Davis in the late 80s


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## millionrainbows

Nate Miller said:


> I dunno.... I saw Miles Davis in the late 80s


Ha Haaa! That's funny.


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