[Dixielandjazz] Jazz Standards

[David richoux]

Charles,

I have also done a lot of "Free-Form" music - mostly with a group called Friday Night Music. We made a one hour tape recording of our spontaneous creations every week. It was usually a lot of fun making things up as we went along, but it was pretty difficult listening for non-participants sometimes. Usually it sounded something like Sun Ra without any groove.

Sometimes I can convince the band to not play a tune that I don't have a clue about, but other times they overrule my objection ( then they complain when I mess up some of the changes!)

David Richoux



> On Oct 14, 2014, at 2:44 PM, Charles Suhor <csuhor at zebra.net> wrote:
> 
> Yes, David, it gets tough as a listener as well as a player if you don't have the mental or intuitive image of the "song structure" of a piece. Most of my drumming years were with trad/Dixieland, swing, or modern groups that played the standards within those styles. But I remember having a dim sense of where we were at during extended solos in then-new materials like "Airegin." Much more of a problem, I'm sure, for a bassist who needs to work with the changes. 
> 
> As a listener, I try to ingest a sense of unfamiliar song structures at the outset, but I also find it okay, and even refreshing, to not even think about it. (It's not a damn TEST, after all). I just turn to  what I call "experiencing the performance primitively." That is, I go with the flow of whatever is being played and let myself find things to enjoy, not like, be excited or bored by, etc., benchmarks be damned. That's how most fans who aren's musicians hear all jazz, after all. And that's the way I approach a classical composition for the first time, letting it unfold without the expectation of some sort of comfort zone. Same for modern paintings.
> 
> Here in Montgomery, Alabama, several years ago a multi-instrumentalist named Jeff Mcleod held monthly free-from sessions. Players brought in unusual instruments like the Chapman stick, or even homemade invented instruments, and just stared playing based on some verbal prompt, image, random quote from a book, whatever, but always listening to each other. I knew that if I brought my drum set, my synapses would guide me to play stock patterns. Instead I used mallets on a large suitcase, with different parts yielding many different sounds. Sometimes what happened was interesting,  but even when our gropings were shapeless, it was tremendously liberating to give vent to the unconscious in a group setting. The thing about such performances (and most avant garde jazz, to me) is that the enjoyment is strictly in being there when the living creative event is unfolding. Very little of it is interesting on a recording. 
> 
> And after all that, it was great to go home and hear a few tracks of the Bobcats or Sonny Rollins.
> 
> Charlie Suhor
> 
>> On Oct 13, 2014, at 11:25 PM, domitype . wrote:
>> 
>> I often play in a group that covers a wide range of musical styles, from
>> "Trad Standards" to NOLA Hot Brass to "Post Swing Modern Jazz" - and also
>> some Pop Standards, R&B, Soul and Funk on occasion. As a bass tuba player
>> mostly experienced with the "Early Stuff" but growing up through the heart
>> of the Rock & Roll era, I still have some problems with playing some "Post
>> Swing Modern Jazz" without some rehearsal (which is not always available!)
>> The structure of many modern songs is not always clear to me, even if I
>> have heard (or even played) them many times. How many times will a chord
>> repeat until a change?  If there is a solo taking a lot of extended
>> choruses how do we know what to do when he is finished?
>> These questions may be elemental to most college trained or pro Modern Jazz
>> blowers, but I do get tripped up every once in a while in those situations.
>> But if the call is for a super fast version of "Indiana Changes" I know
>> exactly what to do!
>> 
>> David Richoux
>