A Question for Both Musicians and Non-Musicians

[sgcim]

On 1/16/2023 at 8:20 AM, 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's why these horn players and guitarists that post themselves soloing over changes without a chordal instrument playing changes or playing the head while they're playing at some club, are just turning people off to the music, rather than offering something that at least some people might appreciate.

They have a barely audible bass (on my JBLs), and drums as the only audible accompaniment, and people are supposed to hear the changes?

[danasgoodstuff]

I just don't feel the need to check musicians' work like this.  What do I hear/listen to/for?  I hear quotes without particularly listening for them, I hear theme and variations, I hear interaction and energy and stylistic references and speech like inflections that imply questioning or certainty or wonder, etc.  I hear continuality and flow and juxtapositions and sonic novelties.  Music has many dimensions.  Different strokes for different folks.

19 hours ago, sgcim said:

That's why these horn players and guitarists that post themselves soloing over changes without a chordal instrument playing changes or playing the head while they're playing at some club, are just turning people off to the music, rather than offering something that at least some people might appreciate.

They have a barely audible bass (on my JBLs), and drums as the only audible accompaniment, and people are supposed to hear the changes?

This assumes that general audiences want to know what the changes are or when the chorus starts, they don't and don't need to.

[sgcim]

On 4/1/2023 at 2:23 PM, danasgoodstuff said:

 

This assumes that general audiences want to know what the changes are or when the chorus starts, they don't and don't need to.

But the general audience is whom I'm addressing. If it just sounds like a stream of notes with nothing they can relate them to, who's going to want to listen to it?

They don't need to know the changes, just have something they can latch on to so it won't be so abstract to them, and they dismiss jazz as "just a bunch of notes".

[JSngry]

But it is a bunch of notes, just not just a bunch of notes, or noise, except if a listener has no context then yes it is. And that's not just for jazz. 

[danasgoodstuff]

8 hours ago, sgcim said:

But the general audience is whom I'm addressing. If it just sounds like a stream of notes with nothing they can relate them to, who's going to want to listen to it?

They don't need to know the changes, just have something they can latch on to so it won't be so abstract to them, and they dismiss jazz as "just a bunch of notes".

I suspect that having someone bang out the changes would not help most of those performances to which you refer be any more accessible. 

[Teasing the Korean]

On 3/31/2023 at 7:01 PM, sgcim said:

That's why these horn players and guitarists that post themselves soloing over changes without a chordal instrument playing changes or playing the head while they're playing at some club, are just turning people off to the music, rather than offering something that at least some people might appreciate.

They have a barely audible bass (on my JBLs), and drums as the only audible accompaniment, and people are supposed to hear the changes?

Sometimes, they may alter their approach to the solo, even subconsciously, to outline the harmonic contours if there is no chordal instrument.

[mikeweil]

I think that thematic improvisation may be more attractive for an audience, but how many out there are good at this? Given two songs with different themes over the same changes, will the impro sound the same? The saying "lost in the changes! may get a new meaning here.

[Gheorghe]

I think a lot of help for non musicians is those quotes of other more popular songs in the  solos. 
Yesterday my wife and me we listened back to some live video from a gig I played last week and she was delighted by the quotes of the soloists, the saxophonist gettin "Don´t be that way" and "Let´s Fall in Love"  "Strangers in Paradise" , or playing a passage of "September in the Rain" on Tadd´s "On a Misty Night" (which anyway is based on that standard). So as she is not a musician, and not a typical jazz fan at all, those little interpolations help her a lot. 

That´s why she liked Dexter Gordon so much, his trademark quotes. 

[Stevie Mclean]

On 1/17/2023 at 4:25 AM, 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.

I can really relate to not remembering song names. However I might go as far as to say I am more inclined to recognize changes rather than a melody. I enjoy figuring out contrafacts, I have even started a spreadsheet categorizing contrafacts by their original version (with the hopes that it will help me one day remember song titles).

[Gheorghe]

8 hours ago, Stevie Mclean said:

I can really relate to not remembering song names. However I might go as far as to say I am more inclined to recognize changes rather than a melody. I enjoy figuring out contrafacts, I have even started a spreadsheet categorizing contrafacts by their original version (with the hopes that it will help me one day remember song titles).

Sometimes if I quote from another song in the improvised chorusses it just comes and maybe I don´t even know what song it is, but mostly if my fellow musicians quote from somewhere I know from what song it is. 

Contrafacts, that is the most easy thing. You hear the changes and know where it comes from. Yesterday I heard an Eddie Lockjaw Davis thing in the radio and it was one of his own compositions, and though it was a straight ahead stuff, it had the chords from "Girl Of Ipanema"......