Jazz has been called "America's Classical Music". Well, there you have it; as far as the fundamentals of music making go, there are far more similarities than differences. THAT is why I have been beating the drum about learning some fundamentals and building blocks of music. Still, there are obviously important differences.
Learsfool does a great job in his last post. A couple of further comments about his excellent points in response to Rok:
First of all, the idea that classical musicians play the same thing over and over again is nonsense. Yes, orchestras sometimes play the "warhorses" over and over again, but they also play a lot of new works; not to mention that there is a HUGE amount of lesser known (and unknown) works by the great composers that is programmed on a regular basis. Just last night I was part of a remarkable performance of a remarkable opera "Mona Lisa" (about the subject of the painting), composed in 1913 by Max Von Schilling. A beautiful work easily on a par with some of Richard Strauss' operas that received 1200 (!) performances during the years before WW1 and, incredibly, simply disappeared from the consciousness of the music world until last night's conductor found and purchased ($2 !) a score in a bookstore in Vienna. There are countless works that have met that fate.
Rok, you like the blues; or as the SNL character used to say: "You lika de blues". I lika de blues. Most of the jazz tunes that you post are based on the twelve bar blues form. To expound of Learsfool's excellent comments:
For the improviser, the "meat" of a jazz tune is not "the tune" (the melody), it is it's harmonic underpinnings; the chord progression. That is what the jazz player uses as his template (great term by Learsfool) for his improvisations, with, of course, references to the melody. The melody is often relatively simple, although there are tunes that are far more sophisticated both methodically and sophisticated. I would wager that close to half (or more) of all the tunes that you have posted use the same template of the twelve bar blues or some slight variation of that. Another common and standard chord progression is "Indiana changes" the harmonic underpinning of the tune "Back Home In Indiana" and "stolen" and used for many tunes, from Bird's "Donna Lee" to "The Flinstones" Theme. Have you any idea how many times the jazz player plays "the same " tune over and over again? They all had their "signature" tunes and their "set list". The point is, that miraculous as what a top improviser does is, it is not quite as mysterious and miraculous, as far as the challenges posed the player, compared to what a classical musician does when interpreting a classical work at the level heard in a top orchestra. There is a reason that jazz players almost always go and take lessons from top classical players when they want to learn to be better instrumentalists. There is no point in trying to make one discipline out to be "better" or "harder" than another; it's simply not the case. THEY ARE EACH HARDER IN DIFFERENT WAYS. The jazz player's challenge is in the spontaneous creation of music to fit a pre-established or familiar template. Analogy using your preferred twelve bar blues:
Imagine twelve people in a room standing in a circle. The catch is that each of them speak a different language (different chord change). Now, the challenge is to run around that circle a few times while making up a story about what O-10 would REALLY like to do to Pannonica, and every time you go past one of those people you have to switch to that person's language in a way that the story ends up being coherent and makes sense. There is a lot of latitude because if your voice cracks or you burp, or you sound out of breath while you speak, the message still gets across. Some of those people speak the same language which makes it a little easier; but hopefully you get the point. I think everyone would agree that it's a daunting task. The often mentioned and great Lee Morgan missed a note here and there, cracked a note here and there, and while playing with that amazing swagger of his was not perfectly in tune all the time.
The classical player from a top ensemble cannot falter, burp, fart, sound out of breath, or let his voice crack while he, instead of having to make up a great story about O-10, has to read the text of a familiar novel. He has to read it with absolutely perfect diction, rhythm, intelligibility and in the case of a solo artist, solo line in an orchestra, or section soli make it SOUND (and this is a point that is often missed) with the musical personality of the individual soloist or section leader within the confines of what the particular piece demands. The orchestral player who lets tiny little imperfections creep into his solo (or ensemble) lines with the frequency that even great jazz players do would not have his job for very long. Again, this is not because they are "better" musicians than jazz player's; it's that the demands are different.
Fess up, O-10 :-)
