How do you start analysing?

A set of notes I had written for RJC Jazz Club as well as the NUS Jazz Workshop

Introduction

What makes you love music?

Think about it. Take some time to fully remember the first time you found music and wanted to play it. Remember the joy of creating sounds and of generating a rhythm, a pulse, or this warm fuzzy feeling in your heart as you fiddle with your instrument to your heart’s content. In many ways playing jazz is similar to that. It is about playing for the love of playing, for the avid love of the sound, and the expression of one’s heart. Jazz is only one genre of the beautiful art called music, but it embodies much of the spirit of this wondrous art.

Keep your heart and ears open and hopefully you’ll be able to comprehend, appreciate and fully enjoy the beauty of this music; and if you work hard you might even get good at it and even express yourself through it.

What does jazz represent to you?

Everyone can view jazz differently. Some view it as “high society” music or “elitist” music, or a multitude of different things to you. It doesn’t matter what you view it as... yet. The more important thing is what it represents to you. Is it a way of showing superior skill, or superior intellect? Or is it a representation of something more advanced that what you’re used to? Or is it a language that you’re connected with. It takes years to find out what it represents to a single person. But to think about it always helps you understand more about yourself.

Why jazz?

There are so many genres of music. Pop music gets you the most applause. Rock music gives you the most immediate amount of release of energy. Funk is a lot easier to solo over (due to limitations). Classical is the most “high class”. Why would you come to listen to jazz?

To think about these questions is to begin, or to end, a journey into jazz that is undoubtedly life-changing if you do truly learn how to appreciate it. But with everything, it starts with the basics: The principles behind why you even want to consider it. There is no right or wrong reason. We can always start on a reason and end up changing the reason as time goes by. The most important thing is to identify the reason so that you can understand yourself. That is what jazz is about.

Basics

How does one learn music?

How do you learn to do anything in life? Do you just pick up a sport without having ever watched it or learnt it and just started to play it? Have you ever seen a person who excels at soccer, basketball, rugby or any other sport without having to observe a single game? How about a teacher who teaches without having ever studied the subject at all?

Everything starts from the idea of listening and feeling the music. If you listen to a lot of pop and nearly no jazz, whenever you’ll try to play jazz you’ll only play pop. If you listen only to classical and try to play jazz you will never swing. Start by listening. So let’s go through the very very basics – listening.

Here's There'll Never Be Another You as the first example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkDqTtb-h7o&fmt=18

Billy Taylor trio and Russell Malone are some of my favourite musicians and educators of jazz. I know for most of you, you will only concentrate on the instrument that you play (or since it doesn’t exist in this set up, switch off completely), but in jazz, every part of the band is critical in making the sound complete.

Listen to the ride pattern. There are multitudes of ways of playing the ride pattern, and each person has a different way of playing it, and even for a single person different ways at different speeds and different songs. But the ride pattern is one of the fundamental things in jazz that if you don’t understand it you can’t begin to understand jazz. Just listen to him go throughout the song in relation to how everything else is.

After a while, tune to the bass. Compare it to the ride pattern. There’s something called “pushing” that is critical in a jazz setting. That is a defining point about jazz, and almost any music. I do not want to describe it because I want you to hear the difference in time between the attack of the double bass and the ride pattern. Keep listening. Don’t strain your ears, but instead let go and let your heart do the listening. You’ll hear the little details in the music come out, such as the rhythmic placements of the notes between the bass and the ride pattern.

Then you listen to the melody. Go back to the top of the video. You can look at the score and compare what he’s playing. Even try to play what Russell Malone is playing at the same time. Notice where he is placing his notes. Is he playing on time? If he’s not then isn’t he out of time with the rest? But if he’s out of time and in time, what does that make him? There’s something called laying back that is also part of the basics of jazz.

If you can identify all of these, then move on to the piano “comping” placement. Accompaniment by the piano is also a very interesting thing. Listen closely to the placement of the notes. Is it more often on beat or off beat? Where are the emphasis of the notes? Listen to the chord colour. What emotions do they bring out in you? What is Billy Taylor doing in reaction to rest of the band?

Listen closely and every time you relisten, you will find new gems to learn. That’s the beauty of jazz.

Listen closely but with an open mind, and you’ll learn to appreciate the sound.

Do the same for these recordings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvhaFFM4AD4&&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbqkO7kp-KQ&fmt=18

What are the differences in the pieces?

Why are they all called jazz? How about the gypsy swing? Which do you like the most?

This is worth much analysis. Just from this one song so much can be said!