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The User's Forum has, to the best of my knowledge, a single Jazz musician making contributions: ME! Another User Forum member - one of the most talented - has made insightful comments and suggested a group discussion to take up the issue.

You know, people have told me regularly that they don't like Jazz. No problem, it's what I expect. What makes me suspicious are non-musicians who claim to like Jazz. I never ask them, but I'm sorely tempted to ask, "Exactly what is it about Jazz that you like?" I used to characterize Jazz as "music for musicians." But even that needs modification to "music for some musicians."

The member mentioned above is fortified not just by talent, but also by a generous supply of candor that I especially appreciate. When he came right out and said he didn't like a particular Jazz vocal (Moody's Mood for Love), I tried to put myself inside his head and made the following return comments:

(1)Lyricism. As a superb lyricist and singer, you want and expect lyricism - music that has the potential for supporting emotionally laden lyrics. Simple chords (and not too many of 'em) work best, and country guitar is an art in itself. If you can get lyricism in a Jazz solo, great, but there are competing goals. For me, the purpose of a solo is to illuminate the chord changes in new ways, build excitement, throw some surprises, etc. If your solo isn't as interesting as the melody itself, why bother with it at all? Just play the melody over again instead.

(2) Chaos. This really jumped out at me in your comments on Moody's Mood. You explained why you didn't like it and used the word chaotic. I think that pins it down for many not drawn to Jazz - lots and lots and lots of notes. Incoherent, chaotic notes. Jazz is disorder that hides deeper order, but no one said that perceiving it is easy, immediate, or for most folks even possible.

What is the deeper order? Do the points made in (1)-(2), above, ring a bell? The last year that statistics were gathered for CD sales was 2008. Jazz sales accounted for 1.1 percent of the market, classical music 1.8. The blues didn't get a category of its own, and was lumped together with Rhythm and Blues & Urban. This category showed miniscule sales as well. Do these fields do poorly for the same reason, or does each have its own problems?

Let me know what you think.

Aleck Rand

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IMO....

My music of preference is likely far more narrow than most here.
I'm no aficionado but I'll give a bump.

I've heard some jazz over the years that I find quite appealing and not as 'chaotic' sounding as others.
My dislike of jazz rears it's head when the notes/scales/key changes gets into an aimless frenzy of improvisation.
Increase the tempo 120mph and I lose more interest
It can sound like rapid, self indulgent noodling rather than a lyrical sounding song with a coherent melodic theme that gets revisited at certain points in the song.

So...maybe I just prefer the lighter (dare I say 'smooth') jazz renditions by default.

Should be interesting to here other responses.

That's my take on your query.
Carry on....

EDIT: my comments are not a reflection of the level of musicianship of jazz musicians....a 'level' that I will never achieve in this lifetime.

Last edited by chulaivet1966; 05/20/13 02:13 PM.
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Umm, have you seen my username and post count? There's no doubt jazz is declining and I've posted about that many times. Biab used to be criticized for being too jazz oriented and if you look at the oldest styles you can see that's true but those styles are over 20 years old now. It's telling that the very first Real Tracks and Drums were mostly jazz styles but not any more. The amount of rock, country, ethnic and other non jazz stuff is much larger now.

Times, they are a'changin to quote Dylan. Imho jazz is nearly dead, hell even on the best jazz station in the country, KJazz here in LA, traditional straight ahead jazz is declining. I haven't done a technical survey or anything but just listening off and on it seems like "real" jazz is less than 50% now. I'll bet within 5 years, it will be gone. The rest is blues and modern post bop smooth jazz. Two recent DJ's reinforce that, Davit Benoit in the mornings and Kenny G in the evenings.

And then there's that abomination of music, the Billboard Awards last night. It was pretty bad as far as live music was concerned. There were no real bands and live players except for the very end when Prince won the "Icon" award and he closed the show with his band. Prior to that, squat except for one very lame trumpet player in a rap song and one stumming country singer.

As far at this forum is concerned the vast majority of posters are different styles of guitarists, folk, rock, country etc. From what I see, there's a handful of keyboard players here.

Bob


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Even to me, Music with lyrics is grabs you bit more than some amount of other music.

Don't have the vocal abilities of most of you so delve into instrumental world more.

On my YouTube channel the Jazz based videos are the most watched.
This was and is a total surprise to me. Could be its is found easier, or
there is a silent group out there that like Jazz.

The noodling comment above is so true, but also the easy going versions of jazz
can be very nice to simply listen to.

I feel small next to so many of you and your absolutely first grade professional
music you create, then share.

Last edited by seeker; 05/20/13 03:37 PM.

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I’m definitely not an expert on jazz, but just to give my 2 cents, I think somewhere along the line the upper echelon of jazz musicians forgot that music is supposed to be musical, aka “pleasing to the ears”.

While there’s nothing wrong with challenging the listener occasionally, you’re not going to grow or even maintain a fan base if everything you play is so far outside the lines that people grow weary listening to it.

Highly skilled musicians like the top jazz players obviously want more challenging material just to keep themselves interested, but unless they bring the audience along for the ride by playing music that their listeners can comprehend and enjoy, ...... they’ll just be playing for the amusement of the others in the band.

You can call that “dumbing down” the music if you like, but it shouldn’t take a Masters Degree in Music Theory to enjoy a song. The old jazz songs pulled you in with melody, harmony and the musical ability of the players while a lot of newer stuff dares you to get close enough to listen.

This is just the musings of an old flatpicker that’s always loved playing jazz influenced acoustic music, aka New Acoustic, Newgrass, Jazzgrass, Progressive Bluegrass and Dawg music.

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Originally Posted By: aleck rand
The User's Forum has, to the best of my knowledge, a single Jazz musician making contributions: ME!


Hi Aleck,


What am I, chopped liver?

I've participated in these forums darn near every day for more than ten years.

And I love to play Blues, Jazz, Modern Jazz, Bebop and Abstract Truth.

While I also have played a lot of pop, rock, soul, r&b, even disco as a sideman or session musician, it is all based upon my knowledge gained from first the classical musics as a lad and then the Jazz.

I have played jazz trumpet, guitar and piano or hammond organ at the pro level for more years than I'd care to think about at this point.

Maybe by "user forum" you might mean one of the forums other than the main BB for Windows forum, where I hold court mostly...


Straightahead,


--Mac

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Originally Posted By: bobcflatpicker
...I think somewhere along the line the upper echelon of jazz musicians forgot that music is supposed to be musical, aka “pleasing to the ears”.

You can call that “dumbing down” the music if you like, but it shouldn’t take a Masters Degree in Music Theory to enjoy a song.


How do you feel about classical, Bob? The same?

Yes it does take education and acquired taste to enjoy both genre's, classical and jazz. I've said it many times here, jazz is rapidly taking it's deserved place next to classical and it will continue to be taught and heard in the same way as well. Taught in universities and heard at selected concerts. The highly educated crowd is not enough to maintain a national presence for jazz. The local small jazz scene is almost gone, you can still find it but it's not easy anymore. I'm guessing it's mostly found in the big college towns now just like at one big town in the midwest had a string quartet in a local pub. Music students will dig it but nobody else.

I'm not being elitist at all but look at history. Why do they call the 50's and early 60's the golden age of TV? It's because at that time TV's were quite expensive and only the upper middle class and higher could afford one so those are the people the shows were aimed at so the quality was much higher. Somebody with a Master's degree in anything is not interested in Gilligans Island or He Haw. Note those shows didn't happen until the explosion of more affordable TV's in the mid to late 60's. I remember reading and having lots of conversations about the loss of good TV. Prior to that it was Your Show of Shows with Sid Ceasar and Steve Allen because that comedy was complex and required some intellect to appreciate. Same as the music of that era, jazz. It's been in a long, slow decline since. But I fully realize it's only in a decline from my educated old fart point of view, the vast majority of people one generation behind me don't see it that way at all. They say good riddance.

How many times have a lot of us here mentioned the state or lack of it of the current education system in the US? This is the reason for the Billboard show last night, no more music appreciation classes. Five percent of that show was actually musical, the rest is something else and don't ask me to define it, I have no clue.

No doubt the kids love it, the MGM Grand venue is the same one they have the big fights in, it seats over 15,000 and it was packed plus parts of the show was broadcast from other casinos and those rooms were totally packed too. I wouldn't be surprised if the Billboard Awards brought over 100,000 young adults to Vegas. It looked like 95% of the crowd was 21-28. That is the future of "music".

Of course, not totally yet. It takes time for the millennials to make their presence felt but as they get older and can afford to spend more, what I saw last night will become the current mainstream and pretty much all of our various styles of "classic" music will be gone. The 80's big hair bands, classic funk, rock and roll, jazz, all of it.

We'll be having this completely irrelevant discussion at the nursing home.

Bob

Last edited by jazzmammal; 05/20/13 04:56 PM.

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Quote:
How do you feel about classical, Bob? The same?


Bob,

Definitely not! I LOVE classical music. But to be honest, I haven’t listened to any modern compositions that I can recall. So I have no idea if modern classical is getting too “chaotic”.

Two of the best live performances I’ve ever been to were both string quartets in small venues. I was mesmerized. It was the same group of young ladies and they were flawless. They were the resident string quartet for the WV Symphony. If I recall correctly, they called themselves The Montclair String Quartet.

You may have mistakenly concluded that I don’t like jazz, but that would be incorrect. But almost all of the jazz I like is older songs, with people like George Benson, Johnny Smith and Joe Pass playing guitar. They were masters at drawing you into the songs.

And now, … you didn’t just use a Hee Haw reference did you? LOL.

I never have and probably never will watch a Billboards Music Awards show, but I did see where Kid Rock, (whom I definitely am NOT a fan of), said this:

"Let's give it up for people lip-synching under pre-recorded music,"

I would guess that was an accurate description of what followed. wink

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Oh, let me tell ya Bob, it wasn't easy trying to follow that show last night. It was so, so, strange to me all I did was listen to maybe 30 seconds of each segment and then fast forward. Between that and the commercials I did the whole thing in about an hour. It was hell, I'm telling you. I just had this morbid curiosity if there was anything real there. Very little.

The thing is don't forget all of our beloved classic tunes were all on the Billboard Top 100 and were all featured on the Awards shows back in the day and look where those tunes are now. Somehow I just can't imagine a classic whateverthehell you call it revival in 20 years with people going yeah, that was the real deal dude, they don't make music like that any more. And those now middle aged folks will absolutely hate whatever is current then.

And the cycle continues.

Bob


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On my personal taste for jazz, I'll echo Bobflatpicker. If it gets too far out "noodling" too long then I get bored but that doesn't mean I don't like or enjoy listening to any of it.

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Jazz is alive and doing well in the D.C. area. You can find smooth jazz to avant garde around here. I play middle-of -the-road jazz at a well known hotel that features different kinds of music on a regular basis. There are at least two schools for the arts in D.C. They have very good student big bands that play around the area, even Blues Alley. Then there are the Military Bands, full of outstanding jazzmen and women. Most of the upscale restaurants have solo jazz pianists or duos working. You need to check out more of this forum and you'll see that there are quite a few jazzmen here. You probably know this already but all the vocals of "Moody's Mood For Love" are words put to his improvisation on "I'm In The Mood For Love" back in the late '40s or early 50s. His solo is neither chaotic or noodling. Anyone with a decent ear can tell that he's cooking on the changes! He even sang it himself on gigs after words were put to it. Later, Ray


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It's not dead, but (please correct me as I'm not a student of the genre), the 'free jazz', directionless noodling that for many is unpleasant to the ears, did the same for jazz as Stravinsky and company did for orchestral music.

Sure, it 'advanced' the genre, but it lost it's popularity with the general public.

For the record, my 7th grader's .mp3 player is about half full of Coltrane, Getz, Parker, Gordon etc. (can you tell he's a sax nut?)

No, he didn't get this stuff from the radio, nor from iTunes, but from dear old dad's CD collection (which I have purposely seeded with jazz greats amongst bluegrass, classical, rock, country and gospel greats as well. The big network of Goodwill stores in our town gives me access to cheap used CDs (usually $1.99) and the CD collection has at least doubled in the past 4 years with my addiction of finding great music on the cheap.)

I like Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool" (I have the version with the studio cuts and live cuts,) but man - his later avant garde stuff just grates on me.

Coltrane: Give me the smooth melody of Naima over the rambling (though I'm sure some understand it) noodling of Blue Train.

Just for one example of where jazz likely loses this listener - though this was a very popular Coltrane tune from my understanding.

In my opinion, which I think mirror's bobcflatpicker's comments, is there is a point with any type of music where the cleverness of the music outruns the general public's ability to enjoy it and follow it.

Whatever happened to progressive rock, where the great prog rock groups enjoyed massive popularity (Yes for example)?

Dream Theater is one band that is known (probably the most accessible and popular active prog rock band in existence today), but you won't hear a Dream Theater song on the radio unless it's some special show on a late night at a college radio station. As for chops, Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater can likely play/sight read/improvise the socks off of most classical pianists, jazz pianists, rock keyboardists, and so forth. But the music is almost too technically complex. He's selling apps for iOS devices.

What happened to choral music? My sister has a gig in Indianapolis as a first call soprano for a couple of college choir publishing companies - for their demo CDs. Most of the stuff is so technically 'out there' it's just noise. Rarely is it anthemic, epic, pastoral, etc. Simply just syllabic noise.

So, I guess to close up this bit of a ramble - I think what has happened to jazz is true for nearly every 'respected' genre of music. It's not gone for good, but there probably is a bit of reaction to the too technically clever flavors of it.

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DC has always been cool Ray and I'm glad to hear it still is. When I got out of the Air Force in 1968 I worked for IBM on the corner of Connecticut and K for about 18 months and prior to that I was stationed at NSA in Fort Meade for 18 months so I was there about 3 years. Loved it in spite of the weather.

Here in LA there is plenty of good jazz but it's all at high end places up in the Hollywood and Burbank area. $10 covers, two drink minimums and all more or less big names with recording contracts who are either promoting their latest or working in some new players for their next tour. It's great to go occasionally for a night out. I've seen Dave Weckl, Jeff Lorber, Alex Acuna and the like. Oh yeah there's the House of Blues too lots of big acts there like Spyro Gyra, The Yellowjackets, Tower of Power. $20-30 at the door plus valet parking. If you're not one of those names, there's little for you out here.

I have a friend who moved here from New York about 15 years ago, grad of Berklee on piano, plays his butt off, sings like pretty much anybody, killer performer. He wasn't making it in NY so he thought he would try the studios here through Local 47. 15 years, not one studio gig and the usual collection of casuals like we all get. He's a full time teacher now.

Bob


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Originally Posted By: Mac
Originally Posted By: aleck rand
The User's Forum has, to the best of my knowledge, a single Jazz musician making contributions: ME!


Hi Aleck,


What am I, chopped liver?

I've participated in these forums darn near every day for more than ten years.

--Mac


I think he was referring to the user showcase forum where people post their original songs. In that arena Aleck does seem to be the only jazz contributor (lately.... there have been others who posted original jazz tunes, but their main genre was always something other than jazz)

Aleck, there are actually quite a few forum members who play jazz, but they just don't participate in the user showcase for whatever reason.

Last edited by Pat Marr; 05/21/13 12:01 AM.
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It isn't really sufficient to address this question according to a general category "jazz", since Jazz comes in so many flavors.

Many of us are quite fond of some jazz, and less fond of other jazz. My preference is for melodic music, and therefore I don't particularly like dissonance. Some flavors of Jazz can venture pretty far into the blue notes, and although I find it interesting from a theoretical point of view, I don't find it pleasant to listen to.

On the other hand, I find jazz artists like Johnny Smith, Hank Garland etc (whose chordal melodies amaze me) quite enjoyable.

My reason for not PLAYING jazz is that in North Carolina there's more demand for just about every other kind of music, so it boils down to commercial viability

Last edited by Pat Marr; 05/20/13 11:58 PM.
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The follow-up question to people who don't like Jazz is: How do you define Jazz? What is Jazz to you?.

If I tell them about Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman (nobody seems to know Lucky Millinder, so I don't mention him), or "Dixieland" then they like it. But they still don't like Jazz. Usually, they don't know what Jazz is.

They relate Jazz to some special music for special folks, played late at night and often it seems to be music to drive people into other activities.

It's like:
If somebody doesn't like Whisky -- often it is related to Scotch whisky -- but if they like Cognac, start with Canadian Club, go to some very mellow Bourbon whiskies to eventually 50 or 60 bottles of refreshments to finish with a fine 25 years aged single barrel cask strengh Laphroaig. (Don't start with the latter!!!)

People need to understand the music they are listening to, and Archie Shepp, for instance, is sometimes hard to understand. And consequently music they don't understand is Jazz.

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There is no more wrong with jazz than there is with any genre. Some good, some mediocre, some bad. What is good or bad is decided by the listener because that is his/her world. It all boils down to taste. When you mention sales statistics is just goes to show that people are not buying music to listen to, but as background noise or group experience, or just to dance to. Like the tv in some homes, it's always on but nobody watches.
You don't need to be a musician to be able to listen to music, but you need to be able to listen.


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Originally Posted By: Pat Marr


I think he was referring to the user showcase forum where people post their original songs. In that arena Aleck does seem to be the only jazz contributor (lately.... there have been others who posted original jazz tunes, but their main genre was always something other than jazz)

Aleck, there are actually quite a few forum members who play jazz, but they just don't participate in the user showcase for whatever reason.


Think about it a minute.

Many jazz players like to improvise over "standards" - which are invariably copyrighed materials.

The Forum Rules get in the way of that, though.

And, while there are jazzers who write their own material, I think you will find far more who are not writers but prefer to improvise over the copyrighted songs already out there in the jazz world.


--Mac

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One of my prefessors explained it this way: "people want to hear a line."

There is something deep in our psyche that demands to see faces. So much so that we will find face-like patterns in abstract designs. in art we look for faces. Abstract art moved away from that, and became something very different from what it had been. Photography and film took over the job of telling stories through pictures. Art became more cerebral, more elitist and less connected to the daily lives of average people.

Classical music did something similar in the 20th century. I think it was Schoenberg who made the shift permanent. The music lost its connection to its former audience in a similar way to what art had done. Since then various forms of popular music have arisen to fill people's need to hear a hummable melody.

Jazz has done the same thing. It might have been inevitable, considering the monumental level of technical expertise acheived by Bird and some of the other postwar innovators. They mastered all the traditional chops and then went far past them. Along the way they gave up their focus on catchy tunes by choice.

I understand these musicians need to look for new challenges in expressing themselves. Goodness knows they have earned the right to do so. Is that a problem? Not for me. It just gives me more choices and more ways to suit my listening mood.


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If the performer is not bothering to create Musical or Lyrical jazz lines in their improvisational examples, I tend to lose interest quickly.

It is my opinion that jazz should not be a contest about who can play the most complex thing.


--Mac

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5:10: Troubleshooting

www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2024full/chapter11.htm#audio-input-monitoring

Video: Enhanced Melodists in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows®!

We've enhanced the Melodists feature included in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows!

Access the Melodist feature by pressing F7 in the program to open the new MultiPicker Library and locate the [Melodist] tab.

You can now generate a melody on any track in the program - very handy! Plus, you select how much of the melody you want generated - specify a range, or apply it to the whole track.

See the Melodist in action with our video, Band-in-a-Box® 2024: The Melodist Window.

Learn even more about the enhancements to the Melodist feature in Band-in-a-Box® 2024 for Windows at www.pgmusic.com/manuals/bbw2024upgrade/chapter3.htm#enhanced-melodist

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