Jazz on the Frontier: Listen Up!

Listening One

Fusion borrowed a number of elements from rock and funk—including electric guitars, synthesizers, electric bass, a straight–four rock drum beat, and repeated simple melodies. Listen to the following musical excerpts and describe the instrumentation, rhythms, melodies, and arrangements that might combine rock or funk concepts with jazz.

• Miles Davis,  “Spanish Key”
• Herbie Hancock,  “Chameleon”
• Weather Report,  “Boogie Woogie Waltz”

Listening Two

Jazz musicians refer to playing “outside” when they test the farthest reaches of tonal harmony in their improvisations. If possible, have a music teacher or student musician demonstrate how “extensions” can be added above simple chords, such as triads, and altered sharp or flat to produce increasingly dissonant harmonies. Jazz soloists developed increasing facility with improvising among these upper harmonic extensions, producing a strange and often disturbing effect to uninitiated listeners. Rhythms might be altered as well. Listen to the following excerpts, and describe moments of the pieces when the musicians play within the expected tonality and moments when they play outside it. Compare these pieces with several others of your choice from previous lessons. Which do you find most interesting? Which do you enjoy the most?

• Eric Dolphy,  “Out to Lunch”
• Cecil Taylor,  “Steps”
• Ornette Coleman,  “Lonely Woman”
• Anthony Braxton,  “W–138”

Jazz: The New Frontier

The 1960's saw great social upheaval throughout America. As it had in the past, Jazz reflected the influence of social change. Please read the NEA Essay about Jazz of the late 20th century as it approached the millenium.

The elements of Bebop: Re-arrangement and re-composition

One of the trademarks of Bebop music is the sometimes sly reworking of well-known songs into newer more intricate versions. This process served a couple of purposes:

1. It was an excellent technical workout for the musicians on familiar material, and
2. It often frustrated the older, established musicians who might know the original version of the song but were unable to grapple with the more complex version.
Here is a classic example of an old standard jazz tune that was rewritten by the bop musicians to challenge and frustrate the less skilled. The original song is called Indiana and the bop version is called Donna Lee

I found two examples that use just saxophone to highlight the diferences...

and now the bebop version called Donna Lee

Do you notice a difference in the way these two saxophonists played the song? Can you think of examples of artists that have reworked other people's music? What are some of the reasons do you feel that reusing familiar material is so prevalent in music and in other aspects of our culture?

Major Artist Interview

We will be doing an interview project with a Major Artist from the history of jazz. Today, I would like you to begin your personal research about the major artists. You will select one to interview. Follow this link to find the list of Major Artists from the Bebop and Modernism period

Listen to the available audio clips and read the brief biographies of each artist. A number of these artists can even be seen in performances on sites like youtube.

For those of you curating a blog, your interview can appear within the blog environment. You should take advantage of the opportunities within the blog environment to include, images, video, audio, links to tangental information, or whatever might add to the interview with your chosen artist.

Once you have chosen the subject artist of your interview, prepare 10 questions for the interview.The interview will focus on questions such as:

• How did you first get involved in music?
• Who were your early influences?
• How do you describe your music?
• Have you worked with any other great musical artists?
• etc.
• etc.
• etc.

Once you have selected your artist, your questions will become more specific to him or her.

You have done elements of the artist interview in the past. If you need a refresher on that assignment or the sample interview, you can check out that blog post here.

This assignment is due by midnight on Friday May 17th. This assignment wil not be accepted late and will count as a double quiz grade. Your completed interview should be in the 750 word range. All sources must be cited. 
The scoring rubric for this assignment can be found by following this link.

The Elements of Bebop: Virtuosity

One of the characteristics of Bebop music that often gets mentioned is the concept of virtuosity. According to sources on the web, virtuosity is defined as...

• technical skill or fluency or style exhibited by a virtuoso
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• total mastery of one's instrument
  www.cgsmusic.net/Classical%20Guitar%20Sheet%20Music%20Dictionary/Classical%20Guitar%20Dictionary%20V.htm
• the artistry, or the degree of rhythm and harmony, displayed while a movement is executed. In general, the more flowing and seamless a series of ...
  www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Lot/2248/vocab.html

Virtuosity is not limited to the world of music. Can you think of examples of virtuosos in the field of your choice? In what ways do they exhibit virtuosity? Feel free to include links to examples (such as youtube videos)

Introducing... Bebop!

Bebop music was a complete rebellion from the often repetitive, arranged life of the big band musician. Characteristics of bebop included lightning fast melodies, dissonant harmonies and smaller more flexible instrumentation. The main proponents of this style were Charlie Parker and 'Dizzy' Gillespie.

Here is the only existing video w/audio of Charlie Parker (along with Dizzy Gillespie).



What are some of your favorite styles of music? How would you describe the characteristics of this music? Try to explain in words what you hear with your ears.