Do you like jazz?

Fingerpicker

Try as I might, I just can't develop an attachment to jazz. I don't like the chords used and a lot of the playing sounds like scale exercises. I realise that these musicians are probably at the top of the musical tree,so why doesn't it connect? (I know you're thinking "because you're at the bottom of the tree, dumb ass") On the other hand, I love Martin Taylors work, is it because he connects by playing something familiar, and then deviates..... Should I see a doctor? Is there someting wrong with me?

PS I wonder what Martin Taylor's middle name is? Gibson?

(old forum) Poll Results: Do you like jazz?

Yes: 16
No: 5

Bob-Dubery

Fingerpicker wrote Try as I might, I just can't develop an attachment to jazz. I don't like the chords used and a lot of the playing sounds like scale exercises. I realise that these musicians are probably at the top of the musical tree,so why doesn't it connect? (I know you're thinking "because you're at the bottom of the tree, dumb ass") On the other hand, I love Martin Taylors work, is it because he connects by playing something familiar, and then deviates.....
Should I see a doctor?
Is there someting wrong with me?

PS I wonder what Martin Taylor's middle name is? Gibson?

That's like asking somebody if they like "rock". What's "rock" anyway? Bon Jovi? Metallica? Rod Stewart? Anthrax? Frank Zappa? Status Quo?

The terms are too broad. And they overlap. Were the Mahavishnu Orchestra jazz or rock?

As is the case with "rock" I can enjoy some "jazz". Jimmy Smith for example. But Chuck Mangione? Bleah....

inflames

Jazz in general is cool, but there are different types of Jazz.
So my vote is yes and no.

I do like so local Jazz!

Squonk

I took me a long time to get into "Jazz"

But I am not too sure it's "Jazz" that I like.
I can handle Chick Corea, Dave Grusin, Lee Ritenour, Mike Stern, Pat Metheny, Martin Taylor, Frank Gambale etc
But This might not be called Jazz, It's more easy listening "Fusion" perhaps.

Keira-WitherKay

+1 to Bob's comment .what jazz??????????? jazz is so broad and covers everything from standards(original jazz written in jazz era) to experimental jazz and everything inbetween ...it can be acoustic or electric or even electronic...

so yeah if you like martin taylor and so do i.... then you like melodic jazz standards...since he does write a lot of new stuff now but most of his work is instrumental solo guitar covers of old standards done in his multipart way ........

and yeah then it is a huge leap to other forms of jazz....

Miles Davis in an interview over one of his album releases....was asked by the music press... to explain the album to them cos this reporter claimed "he didn't get it" and Miles never missed a beat and replied.." you weren't meant to get it"

i've spent a lot of my career playing in various jazz bands as both a guitarist and a double bassist/electric bassist and yeah it may be an aquired taste but once you "get it" or find the style you "get" it is a true artform.... where little value is placed on anything else other than the music ... you can be fat and bald and 60 years old but top clubs will book you if you have something to offer with your music.......and yeah no room for pretenders/posers in jazz.... the scene is hectic and will weed out any inferior musicians very quickly ......... so yeah somewhat of an elitist club in many ways ..... but if you serious about music and a good musician there is scope in jazz field to do almost any style from melodic to over the top experimental......... and what i love about jazz is that most of your audiences even in small backwater jazz venues are knowledgable about music and appreciate the musicians for their talents.

oh and in answer to your question "do you like jazz?" no i don't like jazz .... I love jazz

lindsmuse

Not too mad about jazz guitar. Love jazz piano - if you can ever get to hear Errol Garner or Oscar Peterson.

PeteM

To quote Louis Armstrong - "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know"

Bob-Dubery

Fingerpicker wrote Try as I might, I just can't develop an attachment to jazz. I don't like the chords used and a lot of the playing sounds like scale exercises. I realise that these musicians are probably at the top of the musical tree,so why doesn't it connect? (I know you're thinking "because you're at the bottom of the tree, dumb ass") On the other hand, I love Martin Taylors work, is it because he connects by playing something familiar, and then deviates.....
Should I see a doctor?
Is there someting wrong with me?

To me this is going to the same place as a perennial debate/bone of contention on this forum - feel V technique. I personally don't spend a lot of time listening to the likes of Vai, Satriani and Govan. I don't disregard the technical gifts that these players have, they are considerable and there's no point saying otherwise. I do feel that a lot of the music that they produce is designed to be a showcase for the technique, rather than the technique being a tool used in making a greater statement.

I think this happens in Jazz too. I think there's always a temptation to go down that route when you have lots of technical firepower at your disposal.

Also there are different things going on in music and different people tend to relate to some components more readily than others. A good friend of mine has a theory that there are, when you get down to it, TWO components in music, and that there are emphasised or weighted differently by different composers and that different people value or react to one more than the other. These are the harmonic and the melodic. The friendly argument between him and his wife revolves around him enjoying the MELODIC (EG Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto AKA "The Emperor") whereas the missus relates more to the HARMONIC (EG the excerpt from Carmina Buran famously used in the Old Spice adverts).

Fingerpicker

Don't get me wrong, I'm trying hard to like jazz, I'm listening to DSTV channels 131 or 132 right now (that kind of jazz, Bob) , and the music just seems to wander around aimlessly and then fizzles out at the end. Maybe I am just not programmed for it. Maybe I just never locked onto it as a child.

The other thing is that jazz musicians come up with these teflon type answers and don't seem to be able to explain what the music is about eg

Keira WitherKay wrote
Miles Davis in an interview over one of his album releases....was asked by the music press... to explain the album to them cos this reporter claimed "he didn't get it" and Miles never missed a beat and replied.." you weren't meant to get it"

PeteM wrote To quote Louis Armstrong - "Man, if you gotta ask you'll never know"

Keira, I'll book a lesson with you, set aside two hours and teach me. (If you take fat, bald, 58 year olds, that is....)

PS the main aim of this post was to do a bit of stirring in a pretty quiet week.....

Bob-Dubery

Fingerpicker wrote Don't get me wrong, I'm trying hard to like jazz, I'm listening to DSTV channels 131 or 132 right now (that kind of jazz, Bob) , and the music just seems to wander around aimlessly and then fizzles out at the end. Maybe I am just not programmed for it. Maybe I just never locked onto it as a child.

The other thing is that jazz musicians come up with these teflon type answers and don't seem to be able to explain what the music is about

I tend to react adversely to those kind of answers. I always think it's a bit too much like the emperor's new clothes.

But then music is a strange thing that doesn't have an absolutely objective underpinning for everything. I can't for the life of me understand why other people don't like the stuff that I listen to. I've done a lot of listening over the years and thinking about what I listen to. OK... sad old me, why am I taking it so seriously anyway. But even so, WHY don't they hear what I hear?

So I don't expect musicians to be able to give good answers to those kinds of questions. They might say something like, well I play a lot of flat 2s flat 5s and there's often some syncopation between the 4 in one bar and the 1 in the next, but that doesn't really do a whole lot to explain the REAL appeal.
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PS the main aim of this post was to do a bit of stirring in a pretty quiet week.....

Good man ? But it is only Monday, and not even lunchtime yet.

Keira-WitherKay

well fingerpicker .......... the reality is if i go watch a jazz band and they not old and balding i ussually have little expectations of the show heheheheh ........ but i must say thats intended quite tongue in cheek ...cos even in jhb there are some way cool jazz musicians who are relatively young as in 30 ish .........

NorioDS

Fingerpicker, don't feel bad at all, you're very normal. I hated jazz growing up and, now, only listen to "easy listening" sort of jazz. I enjoy jazz because it breaks the rules but I can only listen to a song where the rules are being broken some of the time, not for the whole song ?

So I can relate. Just pick up some easier listening jazz and you'll be fine.

I think the more intense jazz becomes more enjoyable when you yourself can play it (or at least understand it very well) and understand what the muso's intentions were or appreciate why it was possible for him to break the rules in the way he did.

3ight8all

I recently saw a legend Jazz band at Jackson Hall that I really liked, just wish I had gotten their name :/ They really created a nice vibe and I had to actually force myself to leave the place, because their music was so good.

I've also heard a lot of Jazz that I find difficult to listen to. I'm not really sure how to class all the different types of jazz though.

Like some jazz is just one huge emotional overload because I'm not sure which direction it's going in or what feel the person is trying to create, it's just all over the place. A good example of this is "Tones for Elvin Jones" that John McLaughlin performed at the crossroads festival. The guy was like HAPPY->SAD->ANGRY->EXCITED->SAD->HAPPY. Had to get my thoughts together and a prozac prescription after that song ? HEhe

I've heard some pretty good tunes on Fine Music Radio after 10pm as well though.

Renesongs

I love Jazz most of my music collection is jazz - I just can't seem to get into playing it on guitar much (a little too heady for me) Jazz bass well that's a different story 8)

Ray

I see the Yays are in the majority. Well, I dont believe any of you except maybe one. I think that to really enjoy jazz you gotto understand it. It isnt easy listening. If you dont know what's coming your way you can sway and swoon all you like just for the show, ne. I had a sax teacher who was a jazz saxophonist and he played plenty to me. I used to tell him to back off I want to play rock 'n roll , I believe that what he is trying to teach me is pretty hip and cool but sound like a scale practice all buggerred. But that's just me and I am not one of the deeper individuals I guess.

But I still dont believe you, except one , maybe big maybe two.

Bob-Dubery

Norio wrote I think the more intense jazz becomes more enjoyable when you yourself can play it (or at least understand it very well) and understand what the muso's intentions were or appreciate why it was possible for him to break the rules in the way he did.

I think that's kind of limiting. Surely the music should convey an impact that can be felt by people who don't have a deep understanding of musical theory?

I'm not saying that you may not analyse the music, only that it shouldn't NEED this kind of analysis.

As I've posted a couple of times lately, I've recently been enjoying a CD by Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer. I don't know anywhere near enough musical theory to be able to analyse what these guys are doing, but that doesn't stop me enjoying the music. IMO these two guys cracked it on this album - both monster musicians, but they managed to transcend things like musical theory and create a selection of works that can be enjoyed by, that can move those of us who don't have a substantial theoretical knowledge of music but didn't do so by dumbing things down.

NorioDS

The more I understand about something, the more I enjoy it. I hardly think that's limiting.

It's like Tanya. I didn't understand her but I liked her. Then I got to understand her more and more and then I liked her more.

You might argue that I started out liking her but the same applies to people I didn't like in the beginning. I started looking into understanding where they were coming from and then I started liking them. I started appreciating why they did things that way.

Same goes for music, at least for me. The more I understand it, the more I enjoy it. It's not a need, it's a choice ?

Bob-Dubery

Norio wrote The more I understand about something, the more I enjoy it. I hardly think that's limiting.

It's like Tanya. I didn't understand her but I liked her. Then I got to understand her more and more and then I liked her more.

Well exactly. You can like things but not understand them. The problem is when the liking depends on the understanding of some technical point or other.

There are things that I can appreciate in different ways with repeated listening and new things revealing themselves or as my own understanding grows, but I have no interest in something where you HAVE to appreciate that the music revolves around some complex rhythmic scheme or key signature or changing keys or flurries of 1/32 notes or whatever.

I don't respond to the works of da Vinci or van Gogh because of the intricacies of their technique. Maybe there are different layers of appreciation that open up as you learn more about painting or music or poetic tradition etc etc. There are works by Gilbert and Sullivan that are calculated parodies of pieces in operatic works, but that's an ADDITIONAL attraction, not the main attraction. They stand up by themselves.

A friend of mine likes a particular piece by Genesis because it's in 9s (or 11s). I think if that's all the piece has got going for it then yes, maybe it was difficult to play and requires a higher than usual level of skill, but so what? That I can't tap my toe to it doesn't make it great art.

Art should reach out and grab people first. Analysis may enable us to understand how the piece of art (song, painting, photo, whatever) is constructed, but it shouldn't be necessary. Once it is then it's limiting because it deliberately confines itself to a small clique of people in the know.

PeteM

Jazz is not about theory - it's the musicologists that try to put theory behind jazz - the so called music intellectuals.

Jazz is like the blues, its expressionism, although jazz is usually more complex in its form, structure and harmony.

When jazz started out in the early 1900s in New Orleans, the musos, most of whom never had any formal education in music theory, would feed off one another and lead one another into different harmonic and rhythmic journeys as they improvised.
People listening to the music either 'get' where they are going or they don't. I can't say that I fully 'get' a lot of the jazz out there or that I enjoy all of it. One thing I don't do though is to try to analyse what they are doing. With jazz, I prefer to absorb the whole and try to move along with the music. That to me is the pleasure of listening to jazz.

True jazz to me is when the musos improvise. When a number is scored or rehearsed and played over and over with the same riffs to complete a composition, I reckon it is no longer pure and the music enters into the genre of popular music. I tend to do the latter when playing and can therefore not classify myself as a jazz artist.

NorioDS

X-rated Bob wrote Art should reach out and grab people first. Analysis may enable us to understand how the piece of art (song, painting, photo, whatever) is constructed, but it shouldn't be necessary. Once it is then it's limiting because it deliberately confines itself to a small clique of people in the know.

This is where we'll just have to agree to disagree. To me, art has no should, must, need. It's expression of self. You enjoy something because you recognise a part of yourself in it. If you don't recognise a part of yourself in it, you won't enjoy it. That's not to say it SHOULD have a part of you in it. Only that it doesn't.