[Dixielandjazz] Tidbits while searching the internet

[Marek Boym]

I still have to hear anything from Ornette Coleman that sounds like MUSIC.
And I don't believe in the "language" part; it is not Hausa or Cantonese,
it is jazz.  Charlie Parker said that "bebop was not a love-child of jazz,"
even though his playing often sounds like jazz to my ears.
Cheers


On 24 June 2013 23:15, Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym at teledyn.com> wrote:

> 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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