Jazz Music/Musicians and Improvisation

Cafe Society
1

I attended a concert recently featuring a bunch of Duke Ellington music, and some Jack Hylton (if you are American, you probably don’t know him, he was a British orchestra leader heavily influenced by Ellington). The Band/Orchestra made a deliberate effort to emulate recordings of Ellington’s group (and Hylton’s).

At some point during the concert, a comment was made about a certain suite of pieces in which Ellington scripted almost every note. This is not typical of Jazz music, and frankly even without this information the music was not typical of Jazz music.

It also reminded me of a concert I attended a decade ago because I knew the pianist for a jazz band at college. Afterwards, another friend commented to the pianist on how wonderful the flute solos had been. The pianist said “Yes, she’s good at playing the flute-- but she’s no jazz musician. The director wrote every note of those solos out for her in advance.” This was not a criticism, per se, rather it was a statement of fact–enjoy her playing all you want, but know that her solos were incredible because she couldn’t (and wouldn’t) improvise, rather than because she was so talented at improvisation. The regular band members improvised their solos to the best of their ability.

So anyway, now it’s your turn. Tell me what you think, or what you’ve experienced with Jazz music and improvisation. Please?

2

Well, I think it’s a little bit of a lie that even ‘improvized’ solos are all totally spontaneous and original. Musicians who improvize (in any genre) practice, and develop paterns that they can plug into a solo. The more a piece is practiced, the more refined the solo is, and the more fluid it might become.

Writing out a solo on paper ahead of time is one extreme of this example (and if the musician didn’t come up with the solo herself, then that is a bit different), but isn’t ‘less legit’, IMHO.

In something like Stairway to Heaven, Jimmy Page didn’t just 100% wing that solo in one take in the studio having never worked on it before. Likewise with jazz.

3

Pretty much, yeah, that’s how it works. Benny Goodman’s orchestra would always work out the solos in advance and pretty much nailed them down before going out. I think Duke did much the same thing.

Guys like Coltrane and Miles think in patterns and the beauty of their work is how they can intuitively put them together in a piece in a new way. Jazz, like a lot of music, is mostly about patterns – doesn’t matter what you’re learning you learn scales and patterns. Pick up any Jaz improv book and it will teach you patterns and methods of substitution. You practice what you can play over a given progression and you work out variations on classic melodies like “Night in Tunesia” or “Monk’s Mood” and spend your time playing it as many different ways as you can finding the best methods that you then either replicate or utilize in conjuntion with other ideas.

Pure improv is out there, but it is based on a solid foundation in practicing patterns and scales.
All of course brought to you by IMHO, inc.

4

musician here - I play mostly rock and blues, but know from improvisation.

Yes, Eonwe is right, that we know patterns. They are typically scales. With guitar, I learned “box patterns” - how different scales could be voiced when played at different places up and down the neck. The patterns would have a box-like shape to them across the strings.

Having said that, true improvisation is NOT just “take pattern A and transition into pattern B, then go back to A and slip into pattern C” - that’s just a mechanical behavior, not improv. What’s key is phrasing, tonality and your hands. One time at a gig, I was playing a solo during Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools, and was riffing in standard Gminor pent - the cliche blues scale of all cliche blues scales. But I stopped, gave myself some space and made a connection between my brain, my hands and my ears - I heard what I was playing and actually thought about what I was doing and how I wanted it to sound. Boom - same boneheaded scale, but this little, talky phrase came out. And I grooved on it - played it and then played something else and then came back. All spontaneous and new and everybody noticed - I got a ton of comments on it from both the rest of the band and the crowd. Did I know that scale? Duh. But that phrase and what I did with it? That was improvisation and its freshness stood out.

Good improvisation is inspiring to the person playing it - you know the words you speak, but when you string some familiar words together that get at the heart of something you want to articulate and you know you are doing a good job expressing yourself, it is fresh and gratifying and new. That’s improvisation.

In my experience, many, if not most, classically-trained musicians can’t improvise - or at least it is not something they spend time on. Jazz players have to as a ticket to play the game. Same with most rock players.

5

Gosh, I don’t even know how to start writing about improvisation. I’ve started this post three times now, trying to structure my thoughts on the subject, but I think I’ll just have to try the stream-of-consciousness approach.

Pretty much everybody is capable of improvisation. If you can skat sing or whistle a tune on the fly to a two chord vamp, you’re improvising. You don’t need to sit there and practice patterns until your vocal chords are raw. Yes, there are patterns you’re using. You’ve innately learned them from listening to a lot of music. The “rules” and the “patterns” of improvisation are all around you, and you already know a lot of them.

The trick as an instrumentalist is to convert that music in your head into music from your instrument. Practicing scales (like the “box patterns” in guitar music) helps you locate those notes. The more you play and practice these scales, the easier you’re able to find those notes that you hear in your head.

When I improvise–and I’m not a great improvisor, but I’m competant enough for blues and pop music–I almost always hear what I play in my head a split second before I actually play it. Of course, there are riffs and licks and other patterns you rely on and help fill the gaps of your solo, but I usually hear those in my head, too, before I play them. Skatting while you solo is a great way to help fuse the music in your head with what comes out of your instrument.

Sometimes, when you solo, something different comes out, something unexpected. Sometimes, it’s good and you add it to your arsenal of licks and riffs. Sometimes you get caught on a particular pattern, and start jamming out on it, expanding it, throwing in new motifs and developing it.

It’s an organic process and usually unexpected. Sometimes it all clicks together and just happens. Other times, you feel like you’re going through the motions. Practicing your scales and patterns helps keep you from completely getting lost in a solo, but you shouldn’t feel like you’re just stringing together patterns. You’ll hear it in your music–it’ll sound mechanical and forced.

6

Part-time jazz saxophonist/clarinetist here. I think those who say improvisation is largely recycling licks have half a point.

The best improvisors have done what Charlie Parker said: master the music, master your instrument, but then forget it all and just play. Meaning that the underlying structure of harmony, theory, chords, scales, and modes is fully and instantly accessible to their mind’s ear –so much so that they can draw upon it freely and at will, and make it come out of the horn.

The average-to-good improvisor (all I claim to be) get by with a mixture of memorized licks, rhythms, etc., and a reasonably good ear for what is going on. I can’t always tell you the theory involved in what I play, but if I could, I’d probably be a better and more creative player.

To the OP: I believe jazz that’s written out can still be jazz, especially if it involves an arranger’s inspiration – say, in creative variations on a theme. Written solos are another thing, though. Here in New York there’s a band that plays not just famous jazz solos as written, but whatever was on the recording must be played as written. That, I think, goes too far.

7

I know he played a certain number of Ellington compositions and was tight enough with Duke to sponsor his British tour in the early '30s, but I always thought of him as the Paul Whiteman of Britain – ie: a show-band leader with a very large and well-schooled band that could (and did) play anything.

If we don’t know Hylton over here, keep in mind that we no longer know Whiteman very well either, or any of our own pop stars before people’s living memory. We’re a young country, and our culture gets old faster than yours.

8

Well, I can see I was misunderstood – that’s what I get for being unclear.

The important point I made was, like everyone else has said, is that the foundation of it all is patterns and knowledge. When I say “the beauty of their work is how they can intuitively put them together in a piece in a new way” isn’t to say they’re just echoing licks. I mean they are making connections and flowing in a steady way. They have played it countless times and are always looking for a new way to hear it. Sometimes, maybe someone will just parrot what they did last time, but man, even when it is flowing it comes from having internalized all that theory and pattern and scale information – it becomes you and when it comes out, it echoes you.

But at the heart is is about practicing, not just picking up a horn and blowing it. You have to be alive to whats going on around you too. Part of the mystery of Jazz is that reactionary tonal conversation – built on a common vocabulary. You can’t have a conversation in Mandrin and Spanish – no one would know what was going on. That vocab of theory and patterns gives you a language in which to dialogue. Like poets jamming, you have to be alive to what you’re hearing and respond and challenge and join with the other players – knowing how that phrase is constructed, knowing how it can come apart and fall into those patterns, or be embellished by them, or play counter to them.

But first comes the underlying foundation of knowing how to speak the language and that comes from practicing scales and understanding (and feeling) the harmonic twists and turns.

9

The only reason I’m a slight bit hesitant with your explanation is that it seems to put too much of an emphasis on theory. I know a lot of very good improvisors–in fact, some of the better ones I know, although this is more in a rock than jazz context–who have no idea what they’re doing theoretically. They don’t know what the hell a vi-ii-V-I is, what a 13th chord is, or what one means by a tritone substitution. My uncle is one of these people–completely self-taught, can’t read music, but play a chord progression or whistle a tune and he can jam the hell out of it. He’s completely instinctive.

There are many musicians like this, and I feel that current jazz pedagogy (and classical pedagogy for that matter) puts way to much emphasis on the left-brain aspects of music & improvisation, when it really should be mostly a right-brain activity, if this makes any sense.

I guess all this emphasis on modes and scales and theory irks me a little, because I’m quite knowledgable in these matters, but I never felt like I really played like a musician until I stopped thinking in these terms, until I started really feeling and listening and hearing and not caring whether I’m in the right mode or whatnot for a chord, as long as the music sounds right, as long as I’m playing what’s in my head. For that matter, I’ve never practiced patterns or scales (outside classical music), and I haven’t felt that to be a hindrance to improvisation.

10

It is not just art education. It’s also professional education for a very tight business. Instinctive, right-brain dominated musicians waste people’s time and money, because you can’t just put a piece of paper in front of them and expect them to be at their best.

But mostly, I agree with you. How many times has anybody heard a good jazz soloist and thought, “Cat’s great, he just doesn’t have enough theory”?

11

If a non-musician may chime (sic) in here for a second –

Same kind of deal in tap-dancing. There’s a tradition called the challenge dance, where a bunch of dancers get together and jam. The “form” of it – esp. when you’re teaching new dancers how to improv – is to put together a couple of bars of a riff which the group as a whole does together, then to go around the circle and have each person improv a couple of bars as a solo. When you’re learning to do this, you’ll probably pick a standard step (time step, rhythm turn, Maxie Ford) as your solo, as long as it’s about the right length – the first time I really “got” it, I just beat out a broken rhythm with one toe [front of foot], 'cause it felt like it fit in with the bigger pattern – and my teacher gave me a huge grin and said “yeah…”

It was so cool.

12

Oh, you certainly want somebody with at least some knowledge of theory when you’re talking about studio musicians and the such. A basic ability to read chord charts is required, and sometimes that’s enough. Look at the musicians who work exclusively off the Nashville system. They don’t really need in-depth theory or even the ability to sight read to communicate music efficiently.

I’m not saying at all that knowing theory is a crutch. There is no such thing as having too much knowledge. I just wish that when I was growing up and learning music, more emphasis was placed on aural skills (hearing, relative pitch, etc) and more on thinking musically rather than mechanically plunking out the correct notes.
And that’s the thing–I see plenty of competent musicians who are musically smart, theoretically well-educated, but put them in a setting where they have to make up parts for their instruments based on a chord chart, they’re completely lost. And it wasn’t always this way with classical music or classical music pedagogy. In Bach’s time, improvisation was part and parcel of the music. They even had their own chord charts in the form of figured bass. Mozart was a fantastic improvisor, too, and his contemporaries were also expected to be so. It’s part of what makes a musician.

I suppose it’s a lot like learning the rules of grammar before learning how to talk. You learn talking through listening and imatation. Later you learn the rules. And the rules aren’t really hard-and-fast rules, for the most part–they’re a description of what sounds correct in a particular language, and those rules can change over time. I feel music is much the same way and the most natural way into it is through listening and imitation, learning the mechanical skills required to “vocalize” the language, and then learning the theory behind it. And there isn’t one music theory. Within just Western music. classical has a different set of rules from jazz which is different from rock.

13

Note to Beware of Doug:

I think I misled you unintentionally–I am American and I had never heard of Jack Hylton before the concert I attended. I would have put this down to my youth ( I was born the year Ellington died (1974, if that phrasing makes you curious)) and general lack of knowledge of the history of jazz music, but the presenter of the concert talked about Hylton in a way that made it sound like Hylton was talented enough, and well enough known in his era that it is a shame that he isn’t more widely known in the U.S. today. Your comments about the shortness of people’s memories (and I haven’t a clue who Whiteman is or was) are valid–they just read funny to me. I didn’t mean to be condescending about Americans not knowing who Hylton was, but I may have been smug about having been part of a very select audience for the recent concert.
To Everyone:

Thank you for your insights/perspectives. I started this thread because one of the presenters at this concert made a comment that sounded almost equivalent to “If there is no room for improvisation, then it isn’t jazz.” This struck me as odd, partially because it is intuitively wrong. If you listen to music on the radio (or the phonograph or live or whatever) and recreate it perfectly, or if you play based on sheet music which someone transcribed, if the music you are recreating was jazz, isn’t your performance also jazz?

Your answers also have given me some insights into how these performers could both emulate a recording and improvise at the same time. They might listen to the solo and play a solo like the one on the recording, or one that is “typical” of the 1920’s without having to be note-perfect on it. Most of the performers were jazz musicians with boatloads of knowledge of jazz history and theory, whom I have heard perform jazz music in other styles in other groups in the past. This discussion has given me a better feel for the role of improvisation in jazz music.

14

There’s an expression that can refer to a lot of things in life, including (excuse the political reference) to G.W.B. reading statements in his press conferences: “Too many scales, not enough music.” Even though the best of the best jazz musicians include riffs, figures and tropes and phrases that recur in their work, the artistry is in the moment and what occurs in that moment. It’s in what is played and how. These days, it’s pretty easy to hear people playing what they refer to as “jazz.” There is, for instance, a radio station in suburban Chicago that claims to play “all jazz.” And it sounds like jazz. Sort of. But listen for more than just a few moments and you’ll hear performers stringing together riffs and figures and phrases that are totally NON-musical. It doesn’t swing. It just has the rhythm and sound of a piece that does. It’s a fraud. The deal about improvisation is that it has to come from the heart, not the head. There are a gazillion guys who can play the tenor sax, for instance, but only a select number play in such a way that you want to hear it again and again, and you want to hear them play ANYthing, as long as it’s them doing it. Stan Getz? Scott Hamilton? Just two that pop into the head. They play music. You can’t write that stuff out ahead of time. And you can’t copy it. Compare Sidney Bechet with Kenny G. One is music, one is scales. Ah, don’t get me started. xo, C.

15

In his book, Listening to Jazz, Jerry Coker writes about the various things one is likely to hear during an improvised solo: habits of the performer, such as change-running and patterns, cliches, and quotes. He then goes on:

And these thoughts about soloing from Charlie Parker, wise words for any creative endeavor, IMO: “The audience needs to know what’s coming about 50% of the time. More than that, they get bored, less than that, they get confused.”

16

Excellent. And when a musician is playing a well-known song, knowing what’s coming is sort of built in, which is why you can hear the same piece played by different guys and it’s so interesting to hear the variety. And, to some extent, the musicality of the piece has been built in by the composer. However, when guys improvise and they just do figures and such, and you can no longer hear the harmony or the melody, it gets much harder to find the music in it. Add to that the fact that many of the jazz pieces today are just made of an unconventional set of changes and almost no melody, and you have guys playing what seems like jazz but that has no soul. One other thing, while I have the floor - when you hear a musician play a standard of his, if he plays it exactly the same way as he did before, or always does, it does get boring, great as it may be. Parker sure had it right, didn’t he?

17

It’s OK – I assumed you were British simply because you mentioned Hylton. (Ass, u, me. :smack: ) As it is, I assume at least the presenter was British?

Didn’t read any smugness at all. Saying that musical figures of that era are poorly known, even among musicians, is only stating simple facts.

BTW, here’s more about Paul Whiteman. If you like Hylton’s music, you’re very likely to like Whiteman’s.

18

This makes sense. When I solo, I tend to have “milestones” in my leads - at certain points over a chord change or a change in rhythm, I have a lick that fits in that spot - what I try to do is mix it up between those milestones, so I maintain uncertainty in my head and need to figure out a new way to get to the next milestone, so there is a basic arc to the solo while also a freshness…

19

Nope. Jack Hylton had a daughter who loved (and loves) horses and horseracing. After many years of involvement with horses she moved to a horse farm which is somewhat near me. She then made contact (probably through the local university’s music program) with the presenter and eventually inspired this concert.

20

Very interesting thread, and such wonderful responses. This reply is not specifically to the issue of arrangements being True Jazz, but this observation popped up in my mind.

Ellington was a brilliant orchestra leader, bringing the jazz tradition to an unsurpassed formal level. His orchestra was also a dance band; that sound was meant for people to have an evening out, in an exceptional atmosphere, with a big dance floor, for the audience to move and truly feel the music, become a part of the performance. My experience in the blues music world is that people dancing is essential to the musician’s success with an audience. That music was grounded in being able to sustain the dance, a community event, not just listening, but moving, encompassing the music in body. I think it’s an amazing gift that African culture gave America, the ability to love to dance. I know Mozart had waltzes as well, but dance as an individual expression is an African influence.

In the 50’s, jazz departed from the dance, more of an intellectual exercise. The improvisation was for sitting still and letting your brain do the work. This coincided with recordings being more widely available, so was delivered to people to listen to not as a community event, but in their homes.

Two points thus;

Where so much modern jazz improvisation leaves me cold is because they’ve forgotten the dance. It doesn’t make you want to move,shout, transcend the day-to-day ,the impetus of jazz in it’s origins. On that note, do any of you musicians replying here think of people being able to dance to your music? Is it an integral part of your performance?

Improvisation is alive and well in African American tradition, with Rap and Hip Hop, and its current permutations. The beat is different, fast and more harsh, but that’s the modern world. White kids ain’t singing Sinatra.

Musings brought about by this thread, curious about y’alls thoughts.

Eureka, Ya might well have found it to delve into the works of Albert Murray, a fine scholar and contemporary of Ellington and Basie, privy to their best thoughts on jazz, who has well described improvisation in terms of cultural and artistic theory. He was there when it all happened, and will give you a new window into the Jazz world.