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Post by mrholmes on Oct 22, 2016 10:50:50 GMT -6
I would not call myself a Jazz musician but I love to think outside the box and that gives me inspiration for my own songs. Lets take the most famous tune Giant Steps. They play fast and they change the keys very often - what makes it difficult to improvise over it. B major / G major / Eb major / G major / Eb major / B major ..... I also get the intension GIANT STEPS some of the roots jump in minor and major thirds in classical music we would name those jumps mediants. Correct me if I am wrong. It goes that fast that the piano player cant even think chord subs. If someone want to improvise over it he has to train to change the keys very fast fluent. The solos Coltrane plays sound to me like a mixture of scales and arpeggios... anyway that is just an impression, I guess its more complicate. He plays that fast that he always can fill it with chromatic no one would hear a strong note. At least I cant hear one. Anyway what is the point of it...there is no true melodies. The solos go most of the time close with the changes... Its difficult to paly.. OK Whats the meaning of Bebop Jazz?  ? |
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Post by Bob Olhsson on Oct 22, 2016 12:41:00 GMT -6
Bebop was created by members of the Billy Eckstein band out of frustration over their songs starting to climb the charts only to be covered by a white singer who went on to have a huge hit. Bebop was music that only somebody really good and hence deserving could cover.
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 22, 2016 14:32:56 GMT -6
Bebop was created by members of the Billy Eckstein band out of frustration over their songs starting to climb the charts only to be covered by a white singer who went on to have a huge hit. Bebop was music that only somebody really good and hence deserving could cover. Speeding up because of competition... interesting. |
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Post by jcoutu1 on Oct 22, 2016 14:50:25 GMT -6
Here is record that I worked FOH on. A couple top flight bebop players played on it. Greg Abate with the late Phil Woods. It's less out and more downtempo than the stuff Greg usually does, but Phil wasn't in the best health at that point.
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 22, 2016 16:57:34 GMT -6
Here is record that I worked FOH on. A couple top flight bebop players played on it. Greg Abate with the late Phil Woods. It's less out and more downtempo than the stuff Greg usually does, but Phil wasn't in the best health at that point. your vid is not working.... |
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 22, 2016 23:04:56 GMT -6
Here is record that I worked FOH on. A couple top flight bebop players played on it. Greg Abate with the late Phil Woods. It's less out and more downtempo than the stuff Greg usually does, but Phil wasn't in the best health at that point. your vid is not working.... It works here.... |
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 23, 2016 17:19:20 GMT -6
As an improviser you can deliberately vary your own harmonic rhythm against the chord progression for effect - like in this IV-vi-ii-V-I
Original: Fmaj7 - A Min 7 - D min 6 - G7 - Cmaj7
Simple: A min 7 - A min 7 - G 9 - G9 - C Maj 7
You can also go down the road of adding more substitutions, but my understanding with the Hard Bop era was that the substitutions were already written in deliberately because the players were playing too fast to deal with those kind of variables. You couldn't be guessing when someone would do a tritone sub or passing chord.
Anyway: that mode of thought of analyzing Jazz via the preconceptions of musical mechanics from Classical/Western Art traditions can help but isn't always very inspiring for the player. It removes the clashes and dissonance, or at least plays down their role when actually the rhythmic and harmonic tension is what makes many jazz styles what it is. This is why they like to go after pieces like Take 5 or Giant Steps for analyses - they can't quite give you a reason that All Blues or A Love Supreme are equally if not more vitally *jazz* records. They just point at things that would make it noteworthy if the pieces were classical music.
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Oct 24, 2016 8:34:24 GMT -6
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 25, 2016 18:12:10 GMT -6
As an improviser you can deliberately vary your own harmonic rhythm against the chord progression for effect - like in this IV-vi-ii-V-I Original: Fmaj7 - A Min 7 - D min 6 - G7 - Cmaj7 Simple: A min 7 - A min 7 - G 9 - G9 - C Maj 7 You can also go down the road of adding more substitutions, but my understanding with the Hard Bop era was that the substitutions were already written in deliberately because the players were playing too fast to deal with those kind of variables. You couldn't be guessing when someone would do a tritone sub or passing chord. Anyway: that mode of thought of analyzing Jazz via the preconceptions of musical mechanics from Classical/Western Art traditions can help but isn't always very inspiring for the player. It removes the clashes and dissonance, or at least plays down their role when actually the rhythmic and harmonic tension is what makes many jazz styles what it is. This is why they like to go after pieces like Take 5 or Giant Steps for analyses - they can't quite give you a reason that All Blues or A Love Supreme are equally if not more vitally *jazz* records. They just point at things that would make it noteworthy if the pieces were classical music. Thanks I just took the classical word "mediant" not because I am a classical player. I understand what they are doing and that thy improvise all the tensions altered scale etc. I did learn some of the Jazz theory at music school conservatory and I am still learning and I guess it never stops. Once again to my taste - why that fast ... thats to much for my taste and I switch it off after 10 minutes. |
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Post by NoFilterChuck on Oct 25, 2016 18:57:14 GMT -6
That fast because it's hard to play that fast and sound good. It's music for musicians.
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Post by M57 on Oct 25, 2016 19:45:25 GMT -6
That fast because it's hard to play that fast and sound good. It's music for musicians. I listen to Coltrane the same way I listen to Bach. For me they are both the Cabernet Sauvignon of their respective genres. The parallels are striking. Don't get me wrong - I prefer a Bordeaux (a blend of genres), but if I'm going to sit down, totally mix my metaphors and dig into a straight varietal, this is what I'm talking about. |
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 26, 2016 2:02:58 GMT -6
Coletrane's playing is indeed also very pattern heavy, and bordering on the uninspired when you begin to recognize his penchant for constantly transposing intervals. A Love Supreme is his best example of his transpositional style, but there are many awful examples. Similar to Bach in that sometimes he just feels like he's mailing it in.
The speed thing sort of overtook itself, by the time Hard Bop was big the players were already bored of it. Birth of the Cool soon followed. Sort of a shame the intensely fast modulating chord progression idea wasn't reapplied in a Minimalist way, that the improviser would strip back to very small pockets of notes that would put the emphasis on the roaring harmonic rhythm. I've wanted to hear a Jazz ensemble try something like that for a while.
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Post by M57 on Oct 26, 2016 4:33:45 GMT -6
I will concede that Train's vocabulary in some ways was his Achilles' heel. Bach does not seem to have been melodically constrained at all, though granted he had the 'luxury' of through-composing his work (of course, it is claimed he was a master improviser). He embraced and set the harmonic benchmark for composition with equal temperament that remained unparalleled for centuries, and I would claim that excluding atonality and serialism, pretty much all of western music falls in the shadow of that contribution. Nah.. come to think of it, he was even experimenting with tone rows.
Coltrain is more like a Petit Verdot.
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Post by mrholmes on Oct 26, 2016 5:55:28 GMT -6
Thnaks for your answers jazznoise and M57 they reflect what my ears tell me, it also reflects the emotion part of it. I guess Bebop is not meant for me. Faster, higher etc. I never was fan of competition. Many students on workshops classes start to compete. I ask myself why. I often can see that it ruins the day. Someone is all the time left with a broken heart, wants to stop to paly music, feels out of a sudden a unworthiness etc. I always tell the Chet Baker Story and that Millions of people loved the way he played. Miles Davis for example helped Chet Baker in the moment some players talked bad about Chet. Miles advised them to shut up because he liked what Baker did. I like technique and I practice every day up to 4 hours, but I don't overdo the speed part. Thnaks again... |
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Post by thehightenor on Oct 27, 2016 15:07:11 GMT -6
I'm with Nofilterchuck.
I tend to think of Be-Bop in terms of harmony ie it was blowing over more traditional changes 2-5-1 etc.
To me the move to a more modal, less cyclical jazz harmony was the dawn of the modern era, roughly Miles onwards.
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Post by jazznoise on Oct 27, 2016 16:32:38 GMT -6
Miles was a bit of a visionary, alright, certainly from the Birth of the Cool he was just 12/10 completely correct in every decision. His vibrato was great in that he never used it, his note choice was great in that it was sparse, his playing was great in that he frequently didn't play that much on a song. He selected good musicians and instructed them well. His whole thing, to me, was that if you create the right scenario then good music can just happen. Herbie Hancock definitely picked up on that too, but in his own terms.
I still practice my playing so I don't have to think too much when I really need to play, that's the whole point to me. If I have an idea I should be able to reach out and grab it, I should be fretting when I improvise and I shouldn't be worried about trying to grab a note regardless of where it is. The ambition to just play a certain thing for technical reasons is just total bravado. I think that's what saw him and others walk away from it - there's no creative progression down that route, you'll eventually reach a dead end.
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Post by johneppstein on Oct 30, 2016 7:17:07 GMT -6
The ambition to just play a certain thing for technical reasons is just total bravado. I think that's what saw him and others walk away from it - there's no creative progression down that route, you'll eventually reach a dead end. "shredding" |
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Post by Ward on Nov 3, 2016 7:16:21 GMT -6
GIANT STEPS SNIP... difficult to improvise over it. B major / G major / Eb major / G major / Eb major / B major ..... I also get the intension GIANT STEPS some of the roots jump in minor and major thirds in classical music we would name those jumps mediants. A very common pop sequence is a variation of this... I III VI I7 IV IVm I like G B Em G7 C Cm G |
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