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This makes sense, one is far more focused on precise articulation of a prepared score, while the other is focused (in large part) on improvisation.
by itaris 9y ago
This makes sense, one is far more focused on precise articulation of a prepared score, while the other is focused (in large part) on improvisation.
- Tycho 9y agoYeah, the opposite conclusion would have been much more surprising.
- wickawic 9y agoI would also say that in Jazz the rhythm of the music plays an outsized role as compared to classical. If you don’t “swing”* you can’t play with anyone and certainly can’t play jazz. On the other hand, classical musicians care about dynamics and tone in a way that doesn’t register wth Jazz musicians. Neither way is better, but they are almost like opposite approaches to music. *By swing I mean more than just syncopate with the rest of the band. “To swing” in a jazz context means to be able to play exactly in time with the rest of the band, except when you don’t (but you are in control). A very confused concept, read wikipedia for more info. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_(jazz_performance_style) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_(jazz_performance_styl...
- itaris 9y agoVery true that rhythm plays a huge role in jazz. Although, I'm not sure that I agree that dynamics and tone aren't as important in jazz.
- beat 9y agoTone isn't that important in jazz. Hence, the importance of the saxophone, an instrument rightly reviled in classical music for mostly sounding awful. I'm only half joking here. I'm a guitarist, and was having a conversation with a trumpet-playing friend once. I was talking about the technical struggle of legato playing at speed, something hard for trumpet players as well, but easy for saxophones. My friend was like "Yeah, but they have to play the saxophone". Few players can get a beautiful sound out of it, and only after years of struggle. Brass and guitars, on the other hand, have naturally beautiful tone, and are easy to get to sound nice. The importance of melody over tone, and the melodic advantages of the saxophone, explain its popularity in jazz.
- yesenadam 9y agoYou don't like the sound of saxophones? Wow. Well, everyone has their own sound on saxophone, 'the sound of saxophones' doesn't mean much. Not sure why you think trumpet is vastly easier to get a beautiful sound from than saxophone. That's silly. The importance of melody over tone? Wow, never heard of that. All you say sounds like you are judging jazz by classical (I imagine) criteria, and of course it doesn't do well.
- beat 9y agoIt's my observations as a jazz musician and a tone nerd. The buzzy, shrill reed sound of the saxophone is difficult for the ear. Trumpets are much closer to the human voice. I've come to prefer saxophonists who revel in the ugliness of its tone, and push its other forms of expressiveness - not just melody, but the marvelous squawky tones only a saxophone can make. (That said, I'm a huge fan of modern master Kamasi Washington, who has a luscious tone.) Look at it another way... would you rather listen to doves, or geese? Tonal beauty is objective.
- yesenadam 9y ago(Tries not be be snarky) You didn't respond to any of my points. Why don't you start playing trumpet, see for yourself how 'easy to get to sound nice' trumpet is. Everything you say seems wrong to me, except when you say what you like.
- beat 9y agoLike Dizzy Gillespie once said, "None of them blow easy". Yes, it's difficult to get good tone out of trumpets. Or violins, or guitars, or drums, or any other instrument. But assuming a skilled player, the tone of trumpet is more appealing to our ears than the tone of saxophones. It's ultimately easier to have nice trumpet tone than nice saxophone tone. Doves vs geese (or more correctly, elephants vs geese). I've put in a couple of solid decades trying to improve my tone, and practice regularly to work on tonal issues. I appreciate the difficulty that any instrument represents.
- wickawic 9y agoOh I totally would argue that position. (I am much more familar with jazz than classical). My main argument would come from how the two camps tend to practice. Generally jazz musicians will learn the 'changes' (key changes, common chord progression shapes) to a song, and the melody if it has one. At that point they start improvising. If they are really good their improvisation will include dynamic shifts and they will have good tone, but that tone may clash with other instruments. A jazz player will often learn a song before knowing in what arrangement they will be playing, and will play the same song in many different arrangements. On the other hand, classical music has tone and dynamics written into the score itself. The entire point of the conductor is to anthropomorphize these features of the music, so you know when she is flailing violently you should play differently than when she is shushing you. Additionally, the tone/timbre of the whole piece is set in stone by the composer; A classical orchestra would never think it was ok to let the flutes take a melody written for the trumpets, etc.
- the_cat_kittles 9y agoyes. for those confused- where you put things relative to the metronomic beat (center of the beat) matters hugely. depending on styles and settings, bass will be slightly ahead, drums behind, guitar right on top etc. its cruical to hear everyone else in the band the way they hear themselves, relative to the beat. otherwise people think they are being rushed or dragged and it just doesnt congeal. and the feeling when it congeals is like being weightless, its truly great. it may sound trivial to the uninitiated, but its maybe the most important thing for bands, at least in my experience
- beat 9y agoSome of my best music lessons were around rhythm. Early on as a musician, I spent time playing reggae, with a bassist who wanted a guitarist, and was willing to put up with my innocence. He taught me a beat isn't an exact point in time, but rather sort of a region of probability, where sound is more or less likely to occur. Notes can begin or end at any point in a beat. The difference between reggae and ska is largely that in reggae, guitars and snare drum happen late in the beat, and in ska, it happens early. The former sounds languid, the latter frenetic. Same chords, same tempo, same "beat". The other great lesson came from the jazz/rock drummer, Steve Smith. He describes "swing" as the simplest possible polyrhythm - a diminishment of three against two. Once you have three against two, you can start stripping out duplicates, until your down to ding ding da-ding ding da-ding ding... sound familiar? You get a strong backbeat (2 and 4), and an anticipation note at the very end of a bar before starting the next. Now, that anticipation note can be shifted earlier or later within its own beat, making things tighter or looser. That's swing.
- the_cat_kittles 9y agowell there is one rub with swing which is that at faster tempos i think alot of people imply it less with note length and more with strong-weak dynamic, since its kind of hard when you are at 280+ to really keep the triplet legit. for drums i guess think of the "mueller stroke". angelo debarre is a counter example i guess, he still uses triplet like eight notes at crazy tempos, but for the most part i think people dont do that.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago> I would also say that in Jazz the rhythm of the music plays an outsized role as compared to classical. If you don’t “swing” you can’t play with anyone and certainly can’t play jazz. A great deal of European jazz (represented by, for example, ECM) does not have have the concept of rhythmic swing. Unfortunately, there’s a tendency to talk about jazz as if the genre is purely the music of the New Orleans-Chicago corridor in early 20th century America, and jazz now has far too many subgenres in order for a claim about one to hold true for others. (Even improvisation is no longer de rigeur, and an artist may well perform from a written score.)
- wickawic 9y agoI'm really interested in that. Do you have any songs/records in mind? Googling 'ECM Jazz' doesn't seem to bring up a wealth of relevant results.
- Mediterraneo10 9y agoECM has recently become available on streaming platforms, but the label acts quite aggressively against YouTube uploads of its music, so you’ll either need to use a streaming service or seek out the physical disc. However, I think that releases on the label like the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble’s The Zoo is Far or Vassilis Tsabropoulos’s Archirana would serve as good examples (just two among myriad) of how certain forms of jazz exist quite apart from traditional American expectations.
- yesenadam 9y agoWell, they don't use the word jazz. It's Manfred Eicher's German label. Keith Jarrett, for example, has released dozens (100+, I imagine) of recordings on ECM.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago> It's Manfred Eicher's German label. ...which since the 1970s has had a huge amount of Norwegian and Swedish (and more) musicians recording for the label, and recording sessions are often held in Oslo or Lugano. German headquarters, but more than just a German label.
- stuffedBelly 9y agowhenever I need to explain swing, I refer people to some Texas shuffle playing from SRV. Not jazz per se, but most of his blues rhythmic playing accentuates swinging quite a lot.
- tunesmith 9y agoIt almost seems as if what they're really testing is the difference between practice and performance. Some of jazz is actually making a mistake "work" for you by how you recover. (It's a myth that jazz improvisers always know what they're about to play.)