ON an old episode of Mythbusters the other day I heard the quote “… it’s kind of like jazz; we really are just figuring it out as we go along”.
Did the jazz greats really just improvise all their concerts and recordings? What about recent or current jazz musicians?
On a side note, am I the only one who found that quote annoying and borderline offensive?
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Changing channels on this thread from General Questions to the smooth jazz sounds of Cafe Society.
There are different types of jazz, and it’s not all improvisation. Even the heavily improvised songs often follow certain standard chord progressions, or they’ll lay out chord progressions at the beginning of the song and then will do variations based on that theme throughout the piece. A lot of times the rhythm instruments will repeat that chord progression while the solo artists improvise over top of it, sometimes taking turns at improvisation one after the other (with each solo artist then going back to playing the background rhythm for the other solo artists).
Improvisation is one of the fundamental characteristics of jazz that the people who enjoy listening to it look for. If it is played the same way every time, some folks think that’s boring, so at the very least they expect some variations on the theme instead of just playing it as-is each time.
Right. And there’s a full spectrum, from jazz that’s written out and played as written, to “free jazz” where the artists completely make it up as they go with very little preplanning. Even some stuff where the artists seem to not even listen to each other (ugh).
In addition to improvising, in jazz more than most other forms, the musicians play off the audience’s expectations. This is especially true when playing standards. The artists assume that the crowd knows the tune, and can take the liberty of not even playing the melody, but rather, dancing around it and hinting at it. To someone who doesn’t know the standard, it’s pretty incomprehensible. But to someone who’s familiar with the original as well as a number of well-known covers, it can be a real treat. Any music plays with expectations and surprises. Good music has a balance between these: setting up expectations, and then adding surprises. Jazz takes it step further by assuming a lot of the expectations.
Regarding the “figuring it out as we go along” bit, jazz musicians spend countless hours studying musical forms in order to be able to improvise. Even those who don’t read music and never formally studied (e.g., Errol Garner) spent years and years developing their ability to “wing it”. It doesn’t come out of a vacuum. But I don’t find it at all insulting, nor would I even were I a jazz musician. (I’m actually a would-be jazz musician who plays a lot of blues, since blues is easier than music.)
The main melody and the chord progression are pre-determined, and then the players solo over the chord progression.
So, it’s a mix but a solid 85% of it is improv.
For standard jazz (not free jazz), the musicians will typically play a written melody for a certain amount of measures before improvising over the chord progression, so it’s not really all improvisation.
The thing is, to the untrained ear (e.g., mine), the listener can’t tell if the musicians are all playing a scripted (is that the right word?) series of notes or going off-script.
So, here’s an example of Miles Davis playing a standard to help illustrate:
Miles Davis (the trumpet) plays the established melody of “Bye Bye Blackbird” up until about 1:12. There’s very little straying from the original melody, mostly just pushing or pulling the rhythms a little bit, but it’s melodically straightforward and instantly recognizable to anyone who knows the standard (feel free to look on Youtube if you’re unfamiliar with it–there’s many versions, including ones by Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and even Joe Cocker. You should be able to identify the melody in the Miles Davis tune as the same one.)
At around 1:11, at the end of the phrase, this is where he starts to go off script. 1:19 starts the improvisational part, as far as the trumpet melody goes. (The accompanying chords are known to all the musicians, but the actual notes played by the bass and piano will be somewhat improvised, particularly in reaction to what Miles Davis is playing and the energy level of his part. So if Miles is chilling out, the piano may want to stay back, and lay low, but when Miles is cranking it, the piano may want to reflect this energy and play louder, fuller and busier orchestrations, etc.)
OK, so at 2:10-2:13, Miles throws back in a lick from the original melody line. At 2:18-2:20, he echoes that motif. 2:40-2:44 he has another “restated” quote of the melody line. And onwards, he throws in two-and-three note quotes from the original melody to tie the solo together. There’s a little melodic “skeleton” of “Bye Bye Blackbird” hiding in there.
3:25 onwards is the sax solo. You can hear a few recognizable snippets of the main melody there, until about 3:44, and then Coltrane goes off, just improvising over the chords, before at 4:28 throwing in the main Blackbird motif to remind us where we are. Then the piano comes in with a blues-influenced solo, only quoting the melody at the end of the solo, and the “written” melody comes back in with Miles Davis’ horn at 7:08, with a little noodling around the notes to the end.
So, this is not an unusual format. One time around with the “written” melody, then trade solos for awhile, then finish off with the “written” melody. (The reason I have “written” in quotes is because that melody can be embellished and is usually not played exactly as written, unless you have multiple instruments playing the melody at the same time.)
In a set-up like this, you typically will just play off a “lead sheet.” This just gives you the melody and the chords. Here’s the lead sheet for “Bye Bye Blackbird”. That contains pretty much all the info any of the musicians need to know to play the song. As long as you agree on the chords and the song structure, experienced players should be able to just pick up and go from that. You don’t need the bass part written out. You don’t need the piano part written out.
Now, there are types of jazz that are even more improvisational, and types that are less, but I think this gives you an idea of how much is improvised in jazz in general.
Thank you for the explanation, pulykamell. Do you know Miles was going off-script simply because you can recognize it, or do you know the story behind the recording?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m just wondering how you would know.
Oh, just because I recognize it, and it’s the basic formula of jazz.
If you can follow the lead sheet that puly linked to, you’ll notice that the soloing starts right after the band plays through the entire form, all 32 measures (note: there’s an 8-bar intro in the recording that’s not on the lead sheet so the melody starts at :16). That’s the end of the melody. Then they go right back to the top and repeat the whole thing again, and again, and again… but with improvised solos instead of the given melody. (some songs are conventionally played twice through before breaking off into solos). Solos typically begin at the top of the form and end at the end of the form (a soloist may choose to go 2 or 3 or 10 times through the whole form before passing it on to the next soloist, and when played live this is typically communicated with a subtle look or gesture).
The band always keeps to that same 32-bar form but given the information on that lead sheet, they have nearly an infinite amount of options of how to realize that information. Certain chords can be left out, certain ones added, certain ones substituted for others, musical “gestures” can kinda be slipped in between them, the rhythm can be played with, and on and on… and there’s a constant interaction happening between all the musicians based on each others’ choices.
One of the most common difficulties that people learning to play jazz have to overcome is being able to keep the form. (and if you do lose it, being able to find yourself again without the rest of the band stopping).
But from what I’ve read, the genre of smooth jazz actually has very little improvisation.
To answer the second question, I don’t see it at offensive at all.
At worst, it’s ignorant, but, as the answers here suggest, it isn’t wholly wrong.
In our culture, making things up is an admirable trait. We liked Indiana Jones when he said, “I’m making this up as I go.” We grin at the line, “We’ll have to muddle through somehow” in “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Improv comedy is popular, along with party games like charades, where on-the-spot inventiveness is a key virtue.
Oh, yeah. That’s actually what I find amazing about it and what drew me to it. I don’t find it offensive at all. To do improvisation well is something to be proud of. And it’s not just jazz music. I would say most forms of music have some degree of improvisation to them.
I love this explanation! That could explain my favorite Christmas album.
I was in jazz band in school and will would play around during lunch. We would do pretty much this exact thing with a 12-bar melody someone had made up. (I still remember the melody, but not how to play it). The hardest part was timing the ending when you had the solo, but because it was improve you could just keep going.
I meant “annoying/offensive to folks that aren’t into jazz”, though, in retrospect, it seems obvious that any stereotype might be offensive to the people it refers to.
Several hours after starting this thread, I finally realized why that comment annoyed me so much. The way he says it, implies that the second part (“were making it up…”) is a corollary of the first statement. Thus it should be obvious to their audience. Of the many statements I might expect too follow “it’s like jazz”, ‘we’re improvising’ isn’t even in the top 5.
If I was counting the measures accurately, when the trumpet did play snippets of the written tune, it was at the point in the composition at which they actually appeared.
That never occurred to me while I was listening to the music without the lead sheet. I’d figured he’d just noodled around for a while and then thought, “Better play a couple of recognizable notes sometime soon.”
Thank you for an excellent post, pulykamell.
