Jazz Hands

Joyful Uke

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To go along with the other music threads, I'll add one on jazz.
I know very little about jazz, even if I did watch whatever I could catch of the PBS series on jazz.

Along with YouTube recommendations, what elements of music are important to learn to be able to play, (or at least listen to, with understanding), jazz? I admire the ability to improvise, which I tend to think of as critical to jazz, but it's not something that I can do (yet.) What else makes it jazz?
 
I didn't see Andie's jazz thread before starting this one. Sorry!
 
always room for another thread surely ? :D if we all squeeze up a bit ....
 
To go along with the other music threads, I'll add one on jazz.
I know very little about jazz, even if I did watch whatever I could catch of the PBS series on jazz.
...
What else makes it jazz?

I didn't see Andie's jazz thread before starting this one. Sorry!

I think Andie's thread was about singing jazz while playing uke. Your question seems more general, about the genre of music itself, so I'll post a few thoughts here.

That Ken Burns documentary is a great place to start - it's on Amazon and iTunes and I highly recommend a re-watch if you are so inclined. There were also CDs released that went along with it, including an overview with various artists. One of my favorite takeaways from it were two quotes from Duke Ellington, both of which I'm not going to do justice to, but I'll try: first, he was known for saying that there are only two kinds of music: the good kind, and the other kind. The other was someone reminiscing that the highest compliment Ellington could pay a musician was that he or she was uncategorizable.

So with that in mind - I find it hard to define exactly what makes one genre of music different than another (the folk music thread is a great example of this - lots of blurred lines!). But I'd say for jazz, one of the key elements would be syncopation, rather than playing it straight. Within the categorizable genre of "jazz" itself would be some very different styles - ragtime, Dixieland, bebop, vocal jazz, hot jazz, cool jazz, West Coast jazz, swing, bossa nova... and more.

A partial list of my favorite artists that would conventionally be categorized as "jazz" would include Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Benny Goodman, Chet Baker... the list could go on. But to illustrate the "uncategorizable" side, all of these artists crossed over into other genres, often unexpectedly. Sarah Vaughan covered the Beatles on one album. Louis Armstrong did Disney movie songs on another.
 
I think Andie's thread was about singing jazz while playing uke. Your question seems more general, about the genre of music itself, so I'll post a few thoughts here.

Yes, that's right. I didn't know if Andie's thread might end up covering both, so far, I don't think so.

Your thoughts are appreciated. Maybe I'll have to put the Ken Burns DVDs on my Christmas wish list. It's worth watching again for the footage they had of years gone by. That alone was impressive. Of course, the music was more than impressive.

I think we're (family) going to be watching a movie on Chet Baker this coming weekend, so maybe that will talk about the music a bit, and not just the person.

My very first album was a Bob Scobey and his Frisco Jazz Band album, so you'd think I had a good start in listening to at least some jazz. My dad bought it for me when I was very little, thinking he could then "borrow" it permanently, but I fooled him and liked it. LOL. We used to steal it back from each other over the years. I do have it on my digital listening device (not an IPod - I hate ITunes) now.
 
Like "folk", "jazz" encompasses a wide territory, so I couldn't even start to describe it. But it tends to be more chromatic than most popular styles, and utilizes more modes. The core of jazz is improvisation: each song has a basic harmonic and melodic framework around which the players improvise, often straying from it wildly, but still retaining a recognizable relationship to it. That said, big band jazz was often planned out nearly to the note.

If you want a more technical introduction, try The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine.
 
If you want a more technical introduction, try The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine.

I'll check out the Kindle sample later today, and then probably add this to my ever-growing wish list. Thanks!
 
Along with YouTube recommendations, what elements of music are important to learn to be able to play, (or at least listen to, with understanding), jazz? I admire the ability to improvise, which I tend to think of as critical to jazz, but it's not something that I can do (yet.) What else makes it jazz?

I'm still in steep learning mode myself but i have learnt from the music theory course i'm doing that jazz chords are often different. They often include 7ths and 9ths and even 11ths. Now that i'm nearly at the end of this course i know how to make to make up one of these chords. These chords add more "colour" and "flavour" to the music.

Sorry if this is basic to you but i dont' know your level of music theory understanding. On the piano, 7th chords and no doubt 9ths and 11ths are four note chords. As opposed to triads which are only 3 notes chords. This is one reason why the chords have more going on. ON a uke or guitar, this does not mean you have to play 4 fingered chords all the time. YOu can hear the jazzy quality when you play the funkier sounding chords from the chord charts i think. did you see that thread on your favourite one fingered chord. He chose Fadd9 its definitely got a jazzier feel.

In my jazz appreciation i am not actually big yet on the jazz impro stuff. But I like short bits of it which i think is some of what may go on in jazz singing. There's a wonderful version of Ella singing summertime which demonstrates short and long vocal jazz impro.


The first half is quite straight but it gets more jazzy in the second half.
 
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