Guitarist in the High School Jazz Band

A Brief History of Jazz - excerpt from Chapter 1

2006-04-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

The book is coming along. Knee deep in Chapter 2. It's 50 pages so far without graphics or examples. Yikes...

Here's a taste:

The Apple

Congratulations, you’ve graduated through the introduction and made it to the “real stuff”. In other words, welcome officially to The Guitarist in the High School Jazz Band. Many of you probably don’t have a lot of knowledge or awareness of this music even though some of you are already playing and studying it. When we’re asked to define what jazz is, it may be next to impossible, after all how are you supposed to explain something that is only translated through the language of music? I guess the closest thing we can do is point out some of the essential elements that make up what we characterize as jazz. If I think about all of the different music that has come under the label of jazz, it’s very difficult to think of anything or word that would tie all of it together. Listen to Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5, then John Coltrane’s Meditations, then Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, then Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds of Fire, then Ahmad Jamal’s Live at Pershing, then Dexter Gordon’s Go, and then John Zorn’s Naked City and tell me what it all has in common. Probably nothing stylistically, but there is one critical element: improvisation.
To talk about jazz is to talk about the art of “making it up as you go”. Anyone that has done any amount of improvising will tell you that it takes an amazing amount of skill (anyone who says the opposite hasn’t listened to enough great improvisers). Well, you might say, “Hey, it’s simple! You just make it up!” Well yeah, but it doesn’t always mean that what you make up will sound good and/or more importantly, is what you would like to hear.
Imagine an apple. What color is it? Is it on a table? What’s in the background? What’s in the foreground? Is the sun out? Has someone taken a bite out of it? Who? What do they look like? OK, now draw it.
Does your apple look like what you saw it? Mine definitely doesn’t. It would take years of study and practice in drawing (shading, color, perspective, etc) to be able to recreate the exact image we see in our head. Ever heard anyone say that they “play by ear”? Think about what that means: it means that you can literally play anything that came into your head (the musical equivalent of drawing the apple as you saw it). Our goal is to one day be able to say about improvising, “hey, it’s simple! You just make it up!” After all, my artist friends can draw perfect apples with ease all day long. So for now, consider this the time when you’re going to learn the musical equivalents to shading, color, and perspective.

The 2nd Chorus

To be honest, I have not done a lot of study on the history of jazz, but one teacher of mine gave me this summary and it’s stuck with me. I’m sure some of you more ambitious students can research this fascinating field a little more thoroughly, certainly more than I’ve devoted to the subject.
To understand the history of jazz, let’s go back to the turn of the century (that’s 1900 for all you youngsters). Just as we still see today, musical theater was a popular form of entertainment (although more so at that time, what I usually refer to as the PXB period or pre-xbox period). Musical theater contained all of the allied arts and was more accessible for the “common-folk” than the stuffy bourgeois opera with it’s classical music. The popular composers in that field at the time were Gilbert and Sullivan. Similar to today, a musical theater company would take their production on the road (similar to a circus) and stay in a particular city for a certain amount of time (today we see the likes of Phantom of the Opera, Rent, etc). The musicians indigenous to those particular cities found that they could make money in the local bars and nightclubs playing the music from those shows long after the company had left town as most of the patrons had seen those musicals and were familiar with the tunes. Keep in mind that this was a time when people had to either go and see music or play it themselves in order to hear it, not like today when we have music virtually everywhere we are!
At that time, you might see a little combo of piano, trumpet or coronet, bass, and maybe a banjo to keep time. In a typical tune, they might play it through the form or a chorus 3 times, playing the melody exactly the same each time. Well, after a while they began embellishing on the melody in the 2nd chorus, although staying true to it at the beginning and the end. Eventually, the melody was completely abandoned in the 2nd chorus and the soloist became free to improvise over the chord changes of the form. The other members of the band eventually start taking turns in that middle chorus so that the entire tune expanded to accommodate everyone. The tune now would only include the original melody at the beginning and the end of the tune and the form in the middle would be open for however many soloists wanted to take a stab at it. In many respects, this is still the prototype for jazz today.

Intro – Melody – Soloist 1 – Soloist 2 – Soloist 3(etc) – Melody-Ending

Most people today take as many choruses as they want during their solo and cue the next soloist when they’re finished although they switch soloists almost exclusively at the beginning of the chorus never half way or some other fragment through it (unless the form is extremely long or slow as in a ballad).
Time went on and more musicals were written. Composers like Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter wrote hit musical after musical and these tunes became known as the Great American Songbook or Standards. Jazz musicians would learn these tunes and use them as a vehicle for improvising. In addition, the jazz musicians began writing their own tunes and adding to the repertoire. Fats Waller, Benny Goodman, and especially Duke Ellington’s tunes were becoming as popular for musicians to cover as the standards. By the time Charlie Parker and his gang came into the picture, musicians were writing and performing their own music regularly as well as still playing the standards. Charlie Parker and the other bebop musicians began writing very complexed melodies (sometimes over the chords of popular standards) that were often played at fast tempos requiring a new level of musicianship in the jazz musician. The sky became the limit after that. Bebop, post-bop, hard bop, free jazz, and the avant garde pushed the limits of musicians and created some amazing music.
The guitar has been on a steady incline in popularity since it’s introduction into the jazz world. The uncle and predecessor to the jazz guitar, the banjo, served as primarily a rhythmic instrument meant to bridge the gap between rhythm and melody. Bands would often use a banjo instead of a drummer in many cases. The guitar carried on this tradition in the beginning until the advent of the electric guitar at which time the band could finally hear us take a solo. Today the guitar is in a lot of cases one of the primary jazz instruments out there. If the saxophone and the trumpet were the instrument of choice in the 50’s, the guitar is the jazz instrument of the new millennium.

Forward

2006-04-22T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm currently writing a book geared towards guitarists playing in their high school jazz band:

One of the most difficult and confusing positions in high school is not student council president, quarterback, chess club president, cheerleading captain, or even teacher’s pet. The amount of knowledge, understanding, talent, and training in order to simply “play your part” correctly in a high school jazz band as a guitarist is intense. The trumpets, saxophones, and trombones unless asked to improvise can basically get through their rehearsals and performances with a limited understanding of the notes on the page, their instrument, and rhythm reading. A guitarist is asked to be steeped in the language of chord symbol nomenclature and not only understand what it means to read it, but to be able to translate it to their instrument. No other instrument is asked to make this “leap of knowledge”. Most bass parts at the high school level are written out and don’t require the player to construct their own lines based on the chord symbols. Even the piano parts have written out chords. Maybe it goes back to the old joke, “how do you get a guitarist to shut up? Put a piece of music in front of them.”
This joke, however cruel, has (as most jokes do) some truth to it. Strange to think that as guitarists, we would prefer learning a GMaj7#11 chord and all the theory/nomenclature that goes along with it rather than reading those individual notes on a staff. It seems that the latter would be the easier approach, wouldn’t it? I like to think that it’s our thirst for knowledge that makes us learn the hard way…..who am I kidding, anything that would resemble traditional music notation freaks most guitarists out. The nature of our instrument (especially in the 20th century) is associated more with a folkier, self-taught, instrument "for the people" kind of thing rather than a formal, disciplined, conventional approach to learning. Most of us have related more with Jimi Hendrix playing with his teeth than Andres Segovia playing with proper hand technique and sitting position.
Most of you reading this book are probably trying to make some sense out of this jazz stuff and are probably not quite sure how you feel about it yet. I’m assuming that most of you are probably pretty good rock guitarists that got put into the jazz band because it’s the closest thing to playing guitar in school and getting credit for it. Chances are you probably even get to do a few solos. That’s one thing that you have on the horn players in the band; if you’ve done any amount of jamming with your friends, you’re probably pretty comfortable with the blues scale, the pentatonic scale, and improvising. That alone, has made your playing jazz way more advanced than understanding all the notes on the page. If not, we’ll be getting to all of that so don’t worry if you haven’t done any improvising.
This book is intended to strip away some of the mystery of those elusive charts that you’re supposed to understand. I’m not going to lie to you. This is not all fun. It will take a lot of dedication and commitment, especially if you’re using this book on your own without a teacher.
Jazz ability cannot be measured. It is a subjective art form. In other words, if Tiger Woods hits a 300 yard drive, I think golf fan or not, everyone can admit that that is impressive. Conversely, just because Charlie Parker can play a great idea using the half whole diminished scale doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone will find that impressive. In fact, Charlie Parker probably wouldn’t think that impressive. The joy of jazz doesn’t come from executing what you’ve practiced; the joy comes from the practice itself or more specifically, the process. I know who’s the astute student by when I point out a few things that they can work on that they will instead of being frustrated, smile as if to thank me for discovering a weakness.
You’ll often hear musicians talk about “shedding”. A phrase associated with practicing. It comes from the idea of going out to the woodshed and building your craft. A great drummer friend of mine, Randall Stoll, had a better take on “shedding”. He equated it to a snake, shedding its skin. Still the same snake, but with a new (and better) outer layer.
Shedding your musical skin can be a frustrating and difficult process, but the difference between the good musician and the great musician lies within the attitude of shedding. The good musician will see practicing as a necessary evil whereas the great musician will view practicing as one of the most exciting and satisfying parts of music.
Big Las Vegas casinos will often pay cheats to go in and see if they can fool their dealers. When the cheat does “rip-off” the dealer the casino thanks them for exposing a problem that they can now solve by re-training their oblivious dealer. Instead of ignoring the problem, the casino investigated and took action; heck, they even paid the cheat for discovering their incompetence!!!! Within music, in order to progress, you must adopt the same attitude. Be proud of your accomplishments, but understand that you must be humble enough to be accept criticism and work on your weaknesses.
The skills that you will learn in jazz can serve you in all forms of music; I guess that’s why some people call jazz "multi-directional music". Learning extended chord qualities (Maj7, min7, 9th, #9th, etc), reading, comping, chord-scale relationships, diatonic harmony, slash chords, substitution and reharmonization, motific playing, etc. are not jazz exclusive concepts; they’re found in all styles of music from rock to country to classical to metal. Jazz musicians are inherently great imitators. Most session and back up musicians or “hired guns” have had training in jazz. Jazz tends to set the bar quite high so that when asked to play another style, jazz musicians tend to feel completely comfortable playing just about whatever style.
A great musician once said to me, “Rock player can play rock, country player can play country, and classical player can play classical, but none of them can play jazz. One doesn’t dabble in jazz. The jazz musician can play jazz AND all of their styles too.” Not to take away from any of those other great styles and there are certainly exceptions to the rule, but it’s true that most jazz musicians are well equipped to handle most musical idioms.
Jazz is an amazing music. It’s exciting and can move your soul. The thing that first attracted me to jazz was the musicianship. It should come as no surprise that jazz is very demanding. It will require every musical skill that you ever have and will ever learn in some way. It requires a “complete” musician. If you see this as an exciting proposition then this music is made for you.
Jazz doesn’t only exist in your classroom either. Imagine someone’s idea of rock was listening to a few 8th graders trying to jam on Smells Like Teen Spirit. Not a very good representation of the music is it? Same goes for jazz. I’m always blown away to hear students at high school competitons telling me that they’ve never listened to jazz and that their only experience with the music is their jazz band rehearsals at school. You mean, you’re competing in a festival playing music that you have never even heard????
I also hear from some students that jazz is boring. I think you should listen to whatever turns your crank, but make sure that you always give a certain music a chance before writing off the entire genre. Maybe you’re not listening to the right stuff. For some people, jazz is John Coltrane. For others it’s Kenny G. For some it’s Nora Jones. For others it’s John McLaughlin. For some it’s Ornette Coleman. For others it’s Lester Young. These are all quite different and diverse artists that all have very different and unique styles. To listen to and like one doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll like some of the others.” Jazz is a very diverse music and there (like all music) is something for everyone. I have yet to play a couple great Wes Montgomery tracks for some of my most musically stubborn students and not have a look of curiosity about who this virtuoso is. I then tell them that he was playing with his thumb; it’s at that point that I help them pick their jaw up off of the floor.
For me, jazz sounded like "elevator music" until I saw it live at age 13. I went to see my teacher, Oliver Gannon play and I up till that point felt pretty content with my guitar playing. Hell, I could play almost everything Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmy Page had done at that point. When I left the concert, I was so excited; I realized I had a LOT of work to do. I didn’t translate how amazing jazz was until I saw someone do it live. Almost 20 years later I still feel like I’ve got a LOT of work to do and that's one of the greatest feelings in the world!