Jazz

We are organizing ourselves to feed this section. We will conduct interviews with Jazz musicians and play their music. In any case, jazz has an enormous culture and practice. Those who play jazz have harmony at their fingertips and in their brains. Everything develops around a harmonic progression, which is the main one for the theme of the composition. Many musicians acquire their own "formula" and build upon it. Each of them positions themselves close to a certain "style" or

I forgot an anecdote: once the great A. Rubinstein, who was often in Venice, listened to a concert there by the famous Oscar Peterson. He was impressed! In the end, he declared that he would not be capable of doing what his great colleague did.........

DanielePiano wrote:

Improvisation!!....essentially I believe this is what jazz is....but I am very ignorant regarding this musical genre....is there anyone who knows more about it...also regarding its derivatives (blues rock reggae etc...)???

Look Daniele, jazz is improvisation: however, given your declared lack of knowledge, it requires time and preparation just like classical music from my point of view.

Fundamentally, jazz has the blues as its father in structure, but its evolution over time has incorporated harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic structures coming from many parts of the world.

A large part of rock music has the blues as its father, but often one doesn't notice because perhaps a certain structure is associated with a certain type of music.

I know it is a brief and very superficial description, but jazz is so vast that it must be discovered little by little.

I will finish with an example that might be a bit clarifying regarding the structures with this:

The first part is a major blues (based on the E major blues pentatonic: E G# A B D) in E with the introduction of the guitar repeating more or less the same notes where the harmony and voice perform the melody until the transition when you can hear the electric guitar coming in: from that point on, the "rock" begins with a guitar riff (riff=set of notes that are then repeated) that breaks the introduction. The piece then closes by returning to the initial blues.

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I hope to be able to contribute to this section regarding Jazz music since it is exactly my field.

Improvising over a given chord progression requires an in-depth knowledge of harmony, the available tensions of the chords, scales, but above all the chord tones that compose the major chord families: maj7, min7, min7b5, 7.

Furthermore, one thing is absolutely essential: loving this music and listening to as many records as possible to learn the language, the pronunciation of jazz which cannot be learned without a lot of listening; nobody can teach you Swing, you can only acquire it through listening, just like you learn the pronunciation of a language when you are a child.

You must learn everything about chords, changes, substitutions, scales, etc., and then forget everything to create a logical discourse at the moment of the concert, with sensible phrases, with the right silences, all composed on the spot. Additionally, you must always have your ears open when playing: anything can happen: the bassist goes for a substitution and expects you to follow him and vice versa: this is interplay.

Improvisation is nothing other than extemporaneous composition.

DanielePiano wrote:

Improvisation!!....essentially I believe this is what jazz is....but I am very ignorant regarding this musical genre....is there someone who knows more about it...also regarding its derivatives (blues rock reggae etc...)???

I found this thread

http://www.pianoconcerto.it/forum/index.php?/topic/1040-improvvisazione-come-scelta-di-vita/

maybe it might interest you