What is Jazz
Re: What is Jazz
- Sam Spoons
Forum Aficionado - Posts: 21024 Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2003 12:00 am Location: Manchester UK
People often mistake me for a grown-up because of my age.
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- shufflebeat
Longtime Poster - Posts: 9508 Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2007 12:00 am Location: Manchester, UK
“…I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career” - (folk musician, Manchester).
Re: What is Jazz
So does he, well depending on where he is, he might well be in jazz heaven and lovin' it
Re: What is Jazz
I like one of the comments made on that vid.....
@maureenc1284
8 days ago (edited)
JAZZ - the new axe throwing for the TikTok crowd.
LOL
Re: What is Jazz
Having a 7#9 in itself is not enough to make music jazz. Purple Haze is based on a 7#9, but it's not jazz. You could say that's partly because it doesn't resolve. A typical jazz progression using a 7#9 is
| Bm7b5 / E7#9 / | Am7 / / / |
You could then think that jazz involves chord progressions, but that's not always the case. Kind Of Blue has tunes like So What where there are long passages of one chord.
| Bm7b5 / E7#9 / | Am7 / / / |
You could then think that jazz involves chord progressions, but that's not always the case. Kind Of Blue has tunes like So What where there are long passages of one chord.
It ain't what you don't know. It's what you know that ain't so.
Re: What is Jazz
merlyn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:58 pm Having a 7#9 in itself is not enough to make music jazz. Purple Haze is based on a 7#9, but it's not jazz. You could say that's partly because it doesn't resolve. A typical jazz progression using a 7#9 is
| Bm7b5 / E7#9 / | Am7 / / / |
You could then think that jazz involves chord progressions, but that's not always the case. Kind Of Blue has tunes like So What where there are long passages of one chord.
That's very true!
Re: What is Jazz
merlyn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:58 pm Having a 7#9 in itself is not enough to make music jazz. Purple Haze is based on a 7#9, but it's not jazz. You could say that's partly because it doesn't resolve. A typical jazz progression using a 7#9 is
| Bm7b5 / E7#9 / | Am7 / / / |
You could then think that jazz involves chord progressions, but that's not always the case. Kind Of Blue has tunes like So What where there are long passages of one chord.
I agree harmony alone can't be the defining characteristic though it is an important one. I would suggest rhythm is a more defining characteristic - especially thinking back to the origins of jazz.
One of the earliest manifestations of jazz was Ragtime. If you remove the syncopations from say Scott Joplin's The Entertainer it sounds not unlike popular music of classical derivation like Sousa's marches.
Conversely, add some syncopation to The Liberty Bell (Monty Python theme music) and you arrive more or less at Ragtime. We still use the phrase "to jazz it up".
As Richard T states above, we know it when we hear it - usually.
Re: What is Jazz
Seems to me Jazz is actually a bunch of genres over times.
Perhaps the thing that links it all together is the approach of the players?
To me it feels like the common thread is a kind of "I will play this because I believe in it, I believe it's worthwhile, I love it and I'm playing it for me, if you like it too that's nice, but I will not dumb it down for you"
Perhaps the thing that links it all together is the approach of the players?
To me it feels like the common thread is a kind of "I will play this because I believe in it, I believe it's worthwhile, I love it and I'm playing it for me, if you like it too that's nice, but I will not dumb it down for you"
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- Random Guitarist
Frequent Poster - Posts: 1078 Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 12:00 am Location: West Sussex UK
I've never liked a solo violin, you need at least five for a proper fire.
Re: What is Jazz
What about Western Swing?
- Sam Spoons
Forum Aficionado - Posts: 21024 Joined: Thu Jan 23, 2003 12:00 am Location: Manchester UK
People often mistake me for a grown-up because of my age.
Re: What is Jazz
This bloke, in defining western swing........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLVJenO26Js
Said western swing is hard to define, it is many things, but there is definitely one thing that what western thing isn't, and that's country?
I like west swing though......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVT5saGp1Wc
Important thing is, I played guitar along with it, and the eSsential 7#9 chord fits!
Re: What is Jazz
They could be equally important. Jazz educator Mike Longo said :
Jazz is the marriage of African rhythm and European harmony.
The cyclic form is also important, which may be the influence of Scottish and Irish folk music. And, of course, improvisation. I think a lot of people don't get jazz because they hear the solos as random. They don't hear the form -- the tune -- going underneath the solos.
One thing jazz is is the only American art form.
Ragtime isn't jazz as such to me, as there is no improvisation.
I see what you're saying, that syncopation is important, but de-syncopate The Entertainer and there isn't much left. Here is the first phrase of The Entertainer, with the syncopation marked :

Now, take that out :

Pretty lame, don't you think?

The phrases in Liberty Bell end on downbeats, and there is not a lot of room to shuffle notes around.

Those with delicate sensibilities look away now. The fact is Scott Joplin, being black, was coming more from the black tradition, and Sousa, being white, was coming more from the white tradition.
It ain't what you don't know. It's what you know that ain't so.
Re: What is Jazz
Yes and that is more or less my point. I was trying to suggest that jazz is characterised by syncopated rhythms more so than the harmony or melodies. Without the syncopations we have a 'lame' parlour piece of more or less classical origin.
Put that Sousa march into a 4/4 beat with swing and that can easily be jazz. Sorry I don't have the technology on hand to show.
Well done for going to the trouble of demonstrating this in detail by the way!
And yes, I know ragtime isn't truly jazz, but it probably marks the point at which jazz separated from the mainstream at that time.
Re: What is Jazz
Really?????
Listen to the following, the full 11:00 minutes, and by the way, if this isn't jazz then what is it.
Gato Barbieri
Intro/Cancion/Tango (00:00 - 11:13) from the album The Third World (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp5XcEi8cvc
Re: What is Jazz
I haven't said that isn't jazz - I'm not quite sure what specific point you are alluding to.
My remarks on suggesting that rhythm was perhaps the supreme defining characteristic of jazz were placed in a context of early jazz because we can get some glimpses there into how it emerged from earlier genres and forms.
Modern jazz is much more free of course.
Re: What is Jazz
GilesAnt wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 12:31 pm
I haven't said that isn't jazz - I'm not quite sure what specific point you are alluding to.
My remarks on suggesting that rhythm was perhaps the supreme defining characteristic of jazz were placed in a context of early jazz because we can get some glimpses there into how it emerged from earlier genres and forms.
Modern jazz is much more free of course.
The point is.......just asking
Re: What is Jazz
We were discussing some of the most important musical elements that distinguish jazz. By looking at the origins of jazz it is easier to see what these elements might be. Obviously things are so diverse nowadays that the picture will be more obscured.
Jazz is about other things too of course, but we just happened to be talking about these aspects.
Re: What is Jazz
GilesAnt wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 4:15 pm
We were discussing some of the most important musical elements that distinguish jazz. By looking at the origins of jazz it is easier to see what these elements might be. Obviously things are so diverse nowadays that the picture will be more obscured.
Jazz is about other things too of course, but we just happened to be talking about these aspects.
I'm still none the wiser. It seems if I play a piece of music, then add 7#9 chord it becomes jazz, really? Well I'll t'top of our stairs
Re: What is Jazz
Nobody is saying that. There are many elements to jazz, but the 7#9 is one characteristic feature. Most of the elements individually occur elsewhere in music, but when many are combined it looks and sounds a lot like jazz.