Xiaoxi

The spirit is definitely improvisation. But "doing your own thing"? Not exactly. One could argue that jazz is about individuals doing what's best for the entire group. Jazz is a distinct style with a distinct language. Guitar string bends usually just doesn't fit in, neither do guitar vibratos.

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Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

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Xiaoxi

No, I prefer American, and there is plenty of American jazz that is not anchored by the blues, both new and old. And the ones that emphasize on blues is still not achievable if you only know how to play the blues.

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

chronowarp

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Xiaoxi

First of all, I said usually, and especially under the assumption that this is a beginner learning the basics of jazz. David Fiuzynski is far beyond that point. Second of all, this is modern fusion with strong emphasis on funk, which of course does have guitar bends. Does that mean you can break out a Real Book chart with a typical quartet and start bending whole steps and doing Zakk Wylde vibratos?

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

chronowarp

I'm yanking yer chain.

I understand what you're saying. that's why I said it's good advice to a point. But from the other angle I've seen plenty of "blues guitarists" with good feel and melodic sense completely lose everything good about their playing by separating themselves from those aspects of their technique in a jazz context.

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Xiaoxi

Which goes back to my whole point. That's why jazz needs to be perceived as its own entity, not an addendum to "the blues", whatever the hell that means to the person thinking it.

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

King Of Suede

To put it simply, I'll first raise my flameshield...

(straight ahead) Jazz today is basically musical masturbation. It's about complex harmonies (or the implication of complex harmonies) and is generally seen as "art music." Though it branches out far into other realms.

Blues is music that you feel. It's not necessarily about how "hip" your line is so much as it's about playing something honest with yourself. It's not to say the blues is easier than jazz because they are different beasts from each other.

Thats also not to say there's not overlap. There are blues recordings that will be called jazz and jazz recordings that people will label as blues.
Both genres stretch out pretty far and are not as simple as boxing something into jazz or blues.

That being said if you want blues, listen to more than Mr. Vaughan

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Xiaoxi

There is so much wrong with this....

Straight ahead jazz, by definition, can't be what you're characterizing. Straight ahead jazz is basically traditional, more-or-less bebop style jazz without venturing into modern harmonic territories. So if straight ahead jazz "today" is musical masturbation, then jazz has always been musical masturbation.

And sure, some musicians may be guilty of bringing in as complicated as harmonies and harmonic devices as they can to be show-offs, that is in no way representative of all modern jazz. That's like saying that guitar rock is all like Rusty Cooley and MAB trying to play as fast and flashy as they can without any musical sense. The majority of the top in-line jazz artists today make beautiful music that is a natural evolution of the standard jazz that comes before it. Of course, it may sound disorienting or incoherent to you if you aren't well versed in jazz to begin with, but a lot of jazz listeners can easily pick up on these new innovations without thinking that the rug has been pulled from under them.

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

chronowarp

dat shit jazz:

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Xiaoxi

lol you keep posting videos of my alums (and teachers)

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

chronowarp

good stuff

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King Of Suede

Ok... The art music comment was directed towards the fact that Jazz is often grouped in with Classical in an education setting as respected forms of music, right?
Jazz in a all encompassing term is not meant to be appreciated by the average listener, just like symphonic music today. It's generally seen as a higher form of music.

If we want to get nit-picky, "traditional jazz" is not bebop in any sense. But most people who want to be serious at jazz look at people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy, and Bird and go "THAT IS JAZZ. I PLAY THAT." Dig?
I am not saying that jazz has always been musical masturbation. During the '20s, hell it was equivalent to artists like Kanye and Katy Perry.

This is like me discussing the architectural layout of the next world's biggest skyscraper with an architect and him just going "Yeah, I mean it's nothing too ground breaking".. That doesn't stop me, who knows nothing about how to build buildings, from going "What the **** is going on. Is this real life."

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Xiaoxi

I had no contention with the art music bit...I didn't comment on it.

OK, but you were saying that straight-ahead jazz TODAY is musical masturbation. I assume that today is far removed from the 40s-50s when Parker and Gillespie and Bird (who is actually Parker) were playing. It sounds like you're suggesting that those guys aren't musical masturbation, but today, someone play straight ahead jazz, which is in that exact tradition, IS masturbation. It's faulty logic.

I understand that it may not be your taste. The problem with your brief on what jazz is is that it's extremely subjective of your own view, and not at all an objective explanation of the qualities of jazz, which is what is being asked.

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

King Of Suede

This was the reason for the shield...

Xiaoxi, if you would like to nit pick people's posts pertaining to giving a brief synopsis of the oh-so-popular jazz vs. blues conversation, I invite you to type up a post discussing the differences/similarities/other details you deem necessary to get your point across of jazz and blues.
I would be more than happy to discuss the semantics of your post.

Point being: I could have written a 5 page essay or discussed all the aspects of the styles all day with the OP over a skype call. However, I wanted to make a quick lay-man's explanation of both. It was not written to be an all-encompassing post. I am sorry you disagree with some of my word choices, but since I was making a post directed at someone who says Blues/smooth jazz = Stevie Ray Vaughan, I didn't feel that much detail on the semantics of both styles was needed in the context in which his question was presented.

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Xiaoxi

It has nothing to do with semantics, and I understand that you're trying to give a quick low-down of the differences. But they were just really poor explanations.

Imagine if someone wanted to know about death metal and I simply said: death metal is just really incoherent noise and guys trying to play as fast as possible. Is that at all an accurate objective breakdown of the genre?

That's basically what you did pertaining to jazz by calling it mental masturbation and almost implying that it's music that's unreachable to the layperson. Poor word choices? Even if that's not what you meant, that's what it came off as.

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Modes and scales are dumb and useless. Stop learning them. No, seriously.

Analyzing Brahms: Insights to Help Us Improve Our Music

Nelsean attempting to pronounce my name lol

I got Last.fm. Don't know why...

King Of Suede

K.

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:-D

three more scintillating pages

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jazz_rock_feel

ITT: Smiley using 20ppp

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An Afternoon with Stravinsky: Analysis and Observations of the Symphony of Psalms

I finally updated my SoundCloud with more recent pieces. Check it.

:-D

the setting of champions

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