A Question for Both Musicians and Non-Musicians

[Teasing the Korean]

Ms. TTK and I have been together for nearly 27 years. She is a music lover/obsessive like I am, but is not a trained musician.

Over the decades that we have been together, I have noticed that she is very adept at listening to an improvised solo and being able to identify the tune based on the chord progression under the solo.  

I wonder how common or not this ability is in non-musicians who listen to jazz.  If you were to create a blindfold test with only the improvised solos over changes from well-known standards, would many people be able to identify the tunes?  I'm guessing this ability would vary greatly, depending on the ear of the listener.  As most of us know, there are listeners with no formal musical training who have very good ears. 

 

[JSngry]

5 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

f you were to create a blindfold test with only the improvised solos over changes from well-known standards, would many people be able to identify the tunes? 

[Gheorghe]

16 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Ms. TTK and I have been together for nearly 27 years. She is a music lover/obsessive like I am, but is not a trained musician.

Over the decades that we have been together, I have noticed that she is very adept at listening to an improvised solo and being able to identify the tune based on the chord progression under the solo.  

I wonder how common or not this ability is in non-musicians who listen to jazz.  If you were to create a blindfold test with only the improvised solos over changes from well-known standards, would many people be able to identify the tunes?  I'm guessing this ability would vary greatly, depending on the ear of the listener.  As most of us know, there are listeners with no formal musical training who have very good ears. 

 

That´s really a good ability your wife has . Not many listeners have that .
Well it also depends on what is the chord progressions. If it´s one of those hundreds of tunes based on rhythm changes in Bflat it is easier to check out, but if it´s a standard with another form and maybe more chords in it , it´s a little more difficult for beginning.

Let´s say, tunes based on "Lover Come Back to Me" or on "Indiana" , or if it´s a combination of chords, let´s say one standard in the A section and another standard-section in the bridge. Eddie Lockjaw Davis´ "Hey Lock" is a good example for that: "Body and Soul" in the A section, and "Lover" in the B section.....

But that´s the audience I like most, people who really know what you do. But I love to play for all who enjoy the music. 
For me as a musician it is also very important to figure out what it is, what not musically trained audiences thrills on jazz. Is it just the  beat, is it the sound, I mean if they enjoy it without knowing who is doin what. 
Maybe it is more like if I look at a picture. I may enjoy it but don´t know how it was done. 
I also have invested much time in gettin the sound that might move people if it´s a ballad. So it reaches them, it must touch them...

[BillF]

I am not a musician (well, apart from a little blues piano), but I can recognize the changes of well known standards. In fact, I feel a bit lost when I can't identify the structure.

Like Mel Torme, "I Like to Recognize the Tune". 😀

[Gheorghe]

1 hour ago, BillF said:

I am not a musician (well, apart from a little blues piano), but I can recognize the changes of well known standards. In fact, I feel a bit lost when I can't identify the structure.

Like Mel Torme, "I Like to Recognize the Tune". 😀

That´s really fine ! So you got big ears. I´d love to play for you. 

[danasgoodstuff]

I've played in public, and I can't do that.  And don't try and don't care.  

[BillF]

Well, many jazz listeners can't hear the changes. Greg Abate, who tours in these parts regularly, told me that a local gig promoter, who must have heard thousands of hours of jazz, had no idea when a chorus started or ended.😒

[Teasing the Korean]

51 minutes ago, BillF said:

Well, many jazz listeners can't hear the changes. Greg Abate, who tours in these parts regularly, told me that a local gig promoter, who must have heard thousands of hours of jazz, had no idea when a chorus started or ended.😒

That is interesting!

7 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Well it also depends on what is the chord progressions. If it´s one of those hundreds of tunes based on rhythm changes in Bflat it is easier to check out, but if it´s a standard with another form and maybe more chords in it , it´s a little more difficult for beginning.

It happened most recently with "You Go to My Head."  She walked in the room in the middle of the solos.  I told her when a new chorus was starting.  I think she guessed correctly during the first 8 bars.  As you say, there are a number of jazz tunes in which they Frankensteined together changes from different tunes, but if a listener can identify which tune the progression is lifted from, that would still demonstrate this ability.

Edited January 16, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[mikeweil]

For me, it is the changes and the structure. If both are distinct, it is easy. But I would fail miserably with any newer sequence and all those substitutions.

[JSngry]

I wonder what some people really hear, much less are able to listen to. 

[BillF]

A regular attender at a Sunday afternoon jazz gig I used to go to was an elderly woman who wasn't a musician, but who had a comprehensive knowledge of the Great American Songbook, including lyrics, no doubt because so many of the tunes had been pops in her youth. She would quietly sing along with what was being played, continuing with the melody and lyrics throughout improvised solos and always fitting with the changes. I guess she had a jazz sense!

[Teasing the Korean]

49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I wonder what some people really hear, much less are able to listen to. 

That is the larger question. I've known people who love music, but who can't carry a tune to save their lives. They must be hearing something that they like.

[JSngry]

Tone, rhythm, energy, a lot of things.

But not too many people are honest about what they can or cannot hear, or what they are actually listening to.

The whole "there are no wrong answers" thing is bullshit. Of course there are. So an opinion is only as good as what it's based on. So a person who makes a statement about something they're not able to actually hear.. that type of opinion has zero credibility 

Be careful with nouns and adjectives, that's all I'm saying. 

[Teasing the Korean]

Just now, JSngry said:

Tone, rhythm, energy, a lot of things.

But not too many people are honest about what they can or cannot hear, or what they are actually listening to.

The whole "there are no wrong answers" thing is bullshit. Of course there are. So an opinion is only as good as what it's based on. So a person who makes a statement about something they're not able to actually hear.. that type of opinion has zero credibility 

Be careful with nouns and adjectives, that's all I'm saying. 

But when others provide those assessments, we don't always know what they are based on, and we really can't know what they are hearing.  We may assume that a musician can provide more in-depth or nuanced evaluations, but even musicians hear things differently from each other. 

[JSngry]

A lot of any music is objective, though, and can be evaluated thusly.

An opinion that defiantly gets the objective qualities wrong carries no weight at all, imo.

[Teasing the Korean]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

A lot of any music is objective, though, and can be evaluated thusly.

An opinion that defiantly gets the objective qualities wrong carries no weight at all, imo.

I agree with you, and I've actually had people argue with me that music in entirely subjective, which I think is BS.  I you are auditioning drummers, you can objectively say who has better time and a lighter touch.  

[JSngry]

55 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I you are auditioning drummers, you can objectively say who has better time and a lighter touch.  

Up to a point, yes. After that point, it does become subjective. But people who want to think that there is no such point at all are The Enemy.

You gotta be careful about that though, because also a factor is what are YOU looking for? 

Still, at some point, objective truth is a very real thing. I love to use Pharaoh Sanders' work with Trane as an example - those who insist that all Pharaoh is doing is just randomly squealing and shit like that are TOTALLY wrong. He's playing off the natural overtones of his instrument and he is in fact pretty damn organized about it. And DEFINITELY in control of it  So that kind of talk gets zero cred from me. Not liking it is one thing, but that's totally NOT the same as cluelessly IDENTIFYING it. And anybody who thinks that that difference is not real and meaningful... Alternate Facts live there.

I was taught this lesson by John Purcell. I told him that I loved the Special Edition records he was on, but hated the ECM sound of them. He gave me a look and asked me why. It's a full sound, no highs, just a dullness I told him 

Well, he pulled me over to a turntable and put one on, then started fiddling with the EQ to very insistently and convincingly make the point that there was PLENTY high end on that record, listen to the stick on the ride cymbal. But what Eicher was doing was pulling back on the mids to emphasize both the top and the bottom.

"You gotta be careful. Don'tsay wrong shit. The people who know are the people who can fuck you up when the time comes ." 

That's what he told me, and that's the lesson I learned. Don't say wrong shit. No matter how many people will believe you, the people who know can fuck you up when the time comes.

There's enough people gonna fuck you up as is. No sense in not having truth/reality on your side where and when you can. 

[Gheorghe]

13 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

 

 

Still, at some point, objective truth is a very real thing. I love to use Pharaoh Sanders' work with Trane as an example - those who insist that all Pharaoh is doing is just randomly squealing and shit like that are TOTALLY wrong. He's playing off the natural overtones of his instrument and he is in fact pretty damn organized about it. And DEFINITELY in control of it 

 

 

Yes. But there were few people over here, who could understand that and just listening to it with that knowledge. And the worst were those who thought they can start from that without even knowing what it is. 

14 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

  I you are auditioning drummers, you can objectively say who has better time and a lighter touch.  

If I have to audition drummers, it´s natural they have the best time, but about the touch I´d say, I love those who play a bit louder (I want the HEAR them) and just have the ability to fascinate me, to amaze me. But I must not really do auditioning I know who are the hottest guys in town and if that one who fascinates me most of all of them and he is available, then I´m the happiest man . 

[Jack Pine]

On 1/15/2023 at 9:06 AM, Teasing the Korean said:

Ms. TTK and I have been together for nearly 27 years. She is a music lover/obsessive like I am, but is not a trained musician.

Over the decades that we have been together, I have noticed that she is very adept at listening to an improvised solo and being able to identify the tune based on the chord progression under the solo.  

I wonder how common or not this ability is in non-musicians who listen to jazz.  If you were to create a blindfold test with only the improvised solos over changes from well-known standards, would many people be able to identify the tunes?  I'm guessing this ability would vary greatly, depending on the ear of the listener.  As most of us know, there are listeners with no formal musical training who have very good ears. 

 

It is a similar situation with my own wife. She passively listens to me practicing standards on piano, often for hours every day, and has become quite familiar with the melodies. She isn't so familiar with the names of the songs, but if something comes on XM radio that's in my repertoire she is very quick to pick it out. I think it is much more the melody that sticks in her head though, not really the changes. She is fairly musically inclined though, played french horn and percussion in high school.

[Gheorghe]

26 minutes ago, Jack Pine said:

It is a similar situation with my own wife. She passively listens to me practicing standards on piano, often for hours every day, and has become quite familiar with the melodies. She isn't so familiar with the names of the songs, but if something comes on XM radio that's in my repertoire she is very quick to pick it out. I think it is much more the melody that sticks in her head though, not really the changes. She is fairly musically inclined though, played french horn and percussion in high school.

My wife always says she doesn´t like jazz, but she knows more than she admits and maybe she is just "overfed" with the stuff. 
If I hum or scat a tune while cookin´together with her , she might join and if I say "but you know my music" she would say "Do I have another chance ? I can´t escape from it. 
But she really knows if a player is good or not, she attended many concerts and above all, she told me a lot about stage appearance. 
Before I finally got back to play with really great professional jazz artists, and on my slight attempt to get back but playing with amateurs she would listen very closly and than after the gig tell me "what is this guy playing ? Get rid of him". "how does this guy dare puttin his beer bottle on the piano while YOU are playing, tell him to not do it ever again.....and so that helped me a lot. 

[John L]

Jim's original answer to the question with the Warne Marsh cover was a somewhat subtle but good one.   It is much easier for a non-musician to recognize the changes of a standard when the soloist is playing around the melody as opposed to something completely different on the changes.   

I am speaking for myself, although I am not sure if I qualify as a "non-musician."   I am not a professional but I do play music (mostly non-jazz).  I can almost always recognize changes, including passing chords, although I certainly cannot always recognize what the changes were.  

[JSngry]

I've known players with GREAT ears get lost on one or two of the solos on that Warne record (there's a volume 2 as well!).

There's next to no piano on it, so you gotta follow the bass line along with Warne. It's a tricky proposition sometimes!

And hey - the best was to follow a tunes is quite often to follow the bass line, not the solo, and not the comp.

[Michael Weiss]

Martin Milgrim can do it. He has no formal musical training, never played an instrument but identified every tune I soloed over, - standards, bebop tunes, didn't matter.

[Gheorghe]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:16 AM, Michael Weiss said:

Martin Milgrim can do it. He has no formal musical training, never played an instrument but identified every tune I soloed over, - standards, bebop tunes, didn't matter.

I must admit I don´t know who is Martin Milgrim, but I love audiences like that you just described. 
 

[Michael Weiss]

Martin Milgrim posts here as MartyJazz