How to better understand the language of jazz?

Besides recordings, why not check out some live jazz gigs?
You can go see Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, McCoy Tyner, John Scofield, Herbie Hancock...all these people gig regularly. I'm sure there are great local musicians, or lesser known free-jazz/ avant jazz people all over the world that are ripe for discovery.

 

I'll second that recommendation and add it to my own. Watching great musicians play can be very instructive as well as moving and entertaining and etc. I was lucky enough to live for five years in Boston where it was possible to go out and hear great living masters young and old pretty much every week. Sometimes it was hard to choose between gigs on a Saturday night. I really think that there were very few figures active in the music in the 1980's whom I didn't see at least once during those years.

I have to say, however, that living in Richmond, VA has been a very different scene for the past 17 years. There are some good players in town, and there are occasional concerts, but it's not as if Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, or Mark Turner, Matthew Shipp, Dave Douglas, or whoever, is gigging down at the local clubs every weekend. DC is just far enough away to make it hard to go to shows when you've got work and kids to tend to. The jazz musicians are out there playing, but not everywhere.....

L.

 

Unless you live in of the big cities, you are unlikely to find live jazz at your local downtown. But the next bext thing is get some good equipment, good mastered jazz CDs, some booze and crank it up loud.

If that doesnt do it, give it up.

 

I will second (or is it third?) this recommendation. In listening to swing and early bop, it really, really helps to know the tune. An example that comes to mind is Dizzy Gillespie's version of "All The Things You Are" -- one of my favorite standards to begin with, and to hear what Dizzy does with it is a joy. Another example is Sidney Bechet's transformation of "Summertime", recorded for Blue Note in 1939. Probably everybody knows the tune, and that makes it easy to appreciate what Bechet does with it.

One way to get around this problem is to listen to the blues. I assume you're familiar with blues changes. Well, jazz musicians have played the blues from the earliest times up to the present. You already know the changes, so you can just relax and appreciate what the players are doing. Someone once said of Charlie Parker that every blues he played was like a snowflake -- no two alike, but each one perfect. Try "Parker's Mood", recorded in 1948 for Savoy.

 

The best way to "get" the music is to play it over and over. Pick a few different artists, find their best albums, and play that **** until it gets funky! Seriously though, you can read about artists and watch docs after you find the artists you really enjoy. I would listen to as much jazz as possible and see where you are in a month or so.

 

Ken Burns DVDs good primers to start with

Anyone involved in documentaries has his own prejudice, Ken Burns included.

I have Ken Burns Jazz and Civil War DVDs. I enjoy them and glad they exist, but they definitely have their preferences on what to mention and what to leave out. If I were a Jazz expert or Civil War/ History expert, I would have much more to mention in detail.
At this point with these subjects and most others, I am dilettantish. The documentaries are good for an introduction to most newbies, but probably less favorable to the enthusiasts at heart.
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This is something I have been struggling with too. Other then some titles that hit you on an emotional level (which could also be interpreted as "suits your taste"), one definitely tries to figure what they're overlooking on titles then don't (for example, I can enjoyfree jazz but I cant for the life of me get into some of it, for ex. albert ayler -- I dont know if i cant connect to it, just plain dont like it, or find it uninteresting (i remember being in a room playing with some guys in a rock setup and we all just played what ever we felt like -- and I sometimes feel that ayler's music sounds goes the natural (which is often used as a reason for why it is good if you push anyone to tell you - beyond the hip factor) way off - ie everyone plays fast, loud, unstructures, and tries to stretch out what they are doing (another reason used to support ayler's music) )
from what i've been able to read it is, as all music is no matter what kind, down to structure. popular music usually is made up of a simple 3 part structure (now i get why as a pop record sgt pepper had such a colossal affect) whereas many other types of music do not. western music has its roots in the european classical tradition and structure. other "world" musics (bad term -as it has a racist undertone which does not suit what it is being used to refer to, ex irish music uses a different structure which makes its way onto anthology of american folk music and onward-you can see how things start to get mixed up -- but it's what is used) have very different structures (i think this where my answer to free jazz is-but i have no idea where to begin in this area.)
as a result of this, learning music theory and structures can answer a lot of questions and can bring out some details (i have very little knowledge-mostly from guitar playing and the internet). for example i initial could not tell where, on kind of blue, so what ended and freedie freeloader begins . i think the group are improvising around a similar structure? scale/mode? in a different time signature. with this knowledge all of a sudden i could hear the different approach. i have no idea if this was correct assumption but it does lead to explaining whey kind of blue is looked upon as the apex{?} of traditional jazz music. a push away from an overtly theoretical, borderline serial music towards the form (ie the mode) where the sounds harmonize and come together - and the logical development from this would to move away from the form to the individual sounds [ i am using frederic jameson's capsule of t. adorno's philosophy of music as the basis for forming my statement -- so i could be completely missing the point]

but, as everyone said, listen until you become familiar is the sure-fire way to go and the forms should start to appear [imagine what a head spin dark side of the moon must have been in its first appearance]

 

Definitely go see some live jazz, even if it's not "name" artists. You will start to get a sense of how a jazz group operates and how the audience responds to the ebb and flow.

A lot of jazz is about the interplay between the musicians rather than just the "lead" or "solo" artist. If you see a standard quintet (trumpet, sax, piano, bass, drums) play, you will see that there is a lot going on between the various musicians.

My recommendation following "Silent Way": Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" on Blue Note. While not an electric album, it has much the same feel.

 

I just heard Body and Soul for the first time (well, I may have heard it at some point before, but didn't know what it was) on Vol 6 of the Jazz DVD's, and I was mesmerized by it. The changes are just gorgeous. What I enjoy about pieces like that are trying to guess where the musician might be going next, and always being surprised by the twists and turns. It's magical.

 

As flawed as it may be, it's doing what I had hoped. Introduce me to TONS of music that was either unkown to me or ignored because I was to busy "rockin"! Until I watched this, I disliked swing......well, I couldn't stop boppin. I NEED some Count Basie!!!!!

 

One of the -to me- simplest ways of understanding the language of jazz is seeing it as a communication amongst the players and the musicians and the audience (if there is one). Thus, I would suggest playing a jazz album, sitting down (preferably with your eyes closed) and listening to how the different musicians converse amongst themselves through their instruments (if it's a recording with several instruments). This could take the form of listening to them work off what each other is doing, reply to what another one plays, back up and accentuate a solo here and there, follow or not the melody of the given tune (if the piece is based on a known one),...

 

I really love jazz. For me, it really seems to have a central historical pivot in the forties, when it really was "America's Music", when big bands were riding high on the pop music charts, when Jazz was the vernacular mode of musical speech. That sense of Jazz as a jangling, loud and highly danceable musical form is what gave us rock 'n roll. Big Joe Turner, with his modified Kansas City blues stylings, pretty much created Rock 'n Roll. Charlie Parker took that sort of sound---the K.C. blues sound---spun it around in a cyclotron and came up with bop, a ramped up form of jazz with a deep effect on Rock. A great deal of the sound and flow of singers like Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones and Sheryl Crow comes out of Billie Holiday. Those three performers make a great starting point because they left such a deep impression on what followed.

 

Nice to see you around here, Robin.

 

Well, this isn't a matter of "understanding" but more of a matter of taste in music. If you're having trouble getting into something it might just mean that it isn't for you, not that you don't understand it.
You don't have to understand music to enjoy it or not...you merely listen.

 

I know. I'm not trying to be extra cerebral about the endeavor. But for bop and swing, it's hard for me to even recognize what I like versus what I don't and I know I will like some of it if I can, for back of a better description, understand the language of it.

 

This will sound silly, partly because I don't remember it in full, but someone told me to listen to jazz much as I watch basketball. There's usually four or five guys, operating on an ostensible designed play -- the tune -- but at any particular moment circumstances change and the players improvise according to the new situation, cognizant of their roles and spacing and motion. And the better the team, the better and more coordinated they are on the fly.

Oh, well. I did use this analogy in reverse to successfully explain basketball to a devoted football fan who complained basketball was too chaotic to watch.

 

First time I have ever read the names of Billie Holiday, Sheryl Crow and Rickie Lee Jones in the same sentence

 

There...that's better!

 

The suggestion to see live jazz is an excellent one. However, there is a problem with it: a lot of the jazz world is dominated by "smooth" and jazz-pop crossover material.

Going to your first jazz performance is kind of like going to your first opera- it had better be freakin' great, or you'll get very bored.

I took a girlfriend and her roommate to a performance of some group I wasn't familiar with but a couple of the musicians had some solid credentials on their resume so we took a shot. It was their first jazz performance. Man they were dull- just completely no imagination of excitement... and the worst part was that the audience was pretending to love it (jazz audiences piss me off, but that's another topic). And they were looking at me like "WTF is wrong with you?!" and I had to explain to them that this one sucked.

I later took that gf to burnin' McCoy Tyner performance and she finally got it.

I took my current gf to a Joe Lovano (w/ Hank Jones) show on our first date and she's at least been accepting and appreciating my addiction since. Though also not understanding the "language," she quickly picked up on why Hank is my favorite living piano player- phrasing, space, elegance, invention. We went to the Newport Jazz Festival and she instinctually reacted positively or negatively to various performances in ways that I mostly agreed with, which was cool. Lovano w/ Jones played their, too, and she told me that she still liked them the best and suggested it was due to a bias since she had seen them before. I told her that, no, she was right, they were the best.

Sometimes I give her CDs to listen to and of course gave her some Mingus who is my favorite. At first she didn't get it but after learning some of the stories behind some of the pieces and what Mingus was trying to do, she began to appreciate it.

She's no hardcore fan or anything but she certainly has began asserting her own tastes and preferences and knows what she likes and is open-minded. Neither of us have any musical training or theory or anything.

I guess the best way to get into jazz is to have me as your boyfriend.

 

I could ask my wife but I don't think she'd go for that.

 

When I first heard Sonny Rollins' "The bridge", I think I finally was understanding jazz (as close as this white boy can get anyway). I found i was in to it, especially the fast tempo stuff. I can sit and listen to that. The other stuff, is more background (but great background) music for parties and such. Now seeing this stuff live (at least the classic stuff) would certainly keep my attention! But, alas, this would be rare find here in Florida. [Don't care for smooth/canned jazz].

Now if i can only understand classical...

 

Greg, why don't you go for the new release of Monk w/Coltrane at Carnegie Hall? Newly discovered, newly released (about two days ago), and the music is stunning. And once you listen to it, you can post your opinions in the ongoing thread about it!

 

Whoever recommended Coleman Hawkins' "Body and Soul" was on the right track.

The idea with jazz (originally) is that you take a basic tune and mess with it -- change the rhythm, the phrasing, the tempo, break down the melody, etc. A master of this, and easy to relate too, is Louis Armstrong. But listen to the vocals as opposed to the trumpet. His trumpet is pure ebullience and joy (not to mention genius), but the vocals are where you can really hear him messing with melodies and rhythms, really creating a lot of the vocabulary of jazz right there on the spot.

Another one -- listen a "standard" version of "I Can't Get Started" and then Dizzy Gillespie's version. You can also do this with "Willow Weep For Me" by Art Tatum. Or "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" by Monk.

I myself prefer pre-bop jazz -- it's joyful and fun, and it's also dripping with the blues. I still like a lot of bop, but jazz is almost a completely different animal by the mid-60s.

 

Just jump in! Anything different from what you are used to hearing is going to sound a bit strange to you. That will change as you listen. We all have our faves, but don't let us color what you like. I would suggest reading some posts here (not necessarily this thread) and see who/what tickles your fancy. I envy you jazzz newbies in so many ways! Let us know how you feel the first time you hear Monk!!

Good luck and enjoy it all!!!