[Dixielandjazz] Tidbits while searching the internet

[Gary Lawrence Murphy]

when they come for Monk and Ornette, well them's fightin' words ;)

so since not many have, I thought what the heck, I might as well weigh in,
with the up front disclaimer that I don't think I myself have played more
than a very few 'good' solos, but that doesn't stop me from having an
opinion on where I want to go :)

So there's three things here I'd like to say, and the first comes from a
conversation I had with my daughter many years ago when she asked me "how
can you tell if a jazz improvisation is 'good'?" which is to some extent
the same question. I haven't changed my views: improvisition is composition
in the moment, no time to work out clever cadences, all you can do is pull
your history out of a bag and assemble the stream of sounds best you can,
but nonetheless, it is *composition* and so it must be composed.  A good
solo has structure, it has thematic coherence to the piece being played,
and, here's where Monk and Ornette are exonerated, the solo must be true to
the language being spoken.  'True' is a fuzzy word here because I don't
think people would be aghast if you played a Mozart cadenza in the style of
Beethoven or in the style of Keith Jarrett *if that was what was
called for* but
overall a Mozart cadenza should sound like Mozart, a Bill Monroe mandolin
break should sound like the Foggy Mountain Boys, a Joe Oliver tune will
have a vocabulary and inflection, so will Ornette's harmolodics.  You have
to be speaking appropriately to the situation.

so that's my definition for 'good' in terms of "well-formed" -- the part
two is even more intangible: you have to be *sayin' something.* Not just
spewing notes, it isn't about playing vertical or playing horizontal, those
are just observations about Coleman Hawkins vs Lester Young that is like
saying African Koisan languages are full of clicks and rhythms whereas
Cantonese is a rollercoaster of tones, it doesn't help the solo make sense.
 For Joe Oliver, pre-Armstrong, I'm told the solos were restatements of the
melody with only a very very few alterations in pitch and rhythm; Armstrong
took the second-cornet lines and ran with them; Charlie Parker was a big
fan of classical music and looked at his lines like Chopin might; later
players took the "clever solutions" of playing changes up into the higher
triads of 9th-11th-13th and then Coltrane introduced the toolkit of
Slonimsky's book of all 'possible' scales in the twelve-tone music, others
followed Harry Parch into harmonics and resonance ratios of bizarre scale
structures -- all of them trying to "make sense" in different ways, some
according to the Theory of Music, some according to the expectations of
their audiences, but each is a statement.  so that's another criteria I ask
of myself, that there must be some *reason* for each note I play, otherwise
a machine will do a better job.

And lastly, and to me, as a child of the Rock and Roll era, I have to say,
like it or not, is the defining feature of the solo that is hardest to
define yet by far the most important: the solo must captivate the audience,
it must hold their attention and draw them along with you -- I think bad
bass-hearing must be the reason bass solos almost universally elicit
audience chatter ;) although I have heard bass players who really can pull
off a 'good' solo.  The solo need not impress music theorists, it need not
break new ground in pyrotechnical display or prowess on the instrument, it
only needs to hold the audience -- there is only one instrument worth
learning to play, and that is the audience ;) -- Neil Young's guitar solo
on Cinnamon Girl uses only one note, Louis Armstrong would start into his
high-C's and beyond just belting those notes into the balconies, and the
audience would hang on every moment.  *THAT* to me is the very *essence* of
a 'good' solo :)

and I sure wish I could do it ;)

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Ken Gates <kwg915 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Very few takers on my request for comments as to criteria for
> "good" solos.  So----I'll make an observation.
>
> It doesn't take much searching to find interesting comments as to the
> "science" or "art" of improvising.  There is the "vertical" vs
"horizontal"
>  -----the "melodic" and the "chromatic"  and the "modal" and on and on.
> Look at these quotes by Thelonious Monk for example--------------
>
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  Robin D G Kelley's biography of Monk reports that Monk was so keen
> that----" horn players should continue to have the composition in mind
> while soloing, that he was known to stop them in mid solo during public
> performance."
>  -------  and this, also from Monk     ------
> "At this time the fashion is to bring something to jazz that I reject.
They
> speak of freedom. But one has no right, under pretext of freeing yourself,
> to be illogical and incoherent by getting rid of structure and simply
piling
> a lot of notes one on top of the other. There’s no beat anymore. You can’t
> keep time with your foot. I believe that what is happening to jazz with
> people like Ornette Coleman, for instance, is bad. There’s a new idea that
> consists in destroying everything and find what’s shocking and unexpected;
> whereas jazz must first of all tell a story that anyone can understand."
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A "moldy figge" might say something similar..  In any event, Monk may
> well be a genius, but his  music is way over my head (or ears)..
>
> Methinks that for our kind of music, those with musical "ears" however
> inherited or acquired, along with willingness to practice and experiment,
> will become good players. Some will become really good players.
>  A very few will become great.  May all of us improve.
>
> Ken Gates
>
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