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”