What do you think of jazz?

[ryguillian]

What do you think of jazz?

—Ryan

[stevie]

well, i know i like it, i know im interested in it. and this may seem like a silly question on first glance, but, define it for me...

what is jazz?

[cfortunato]

I enjoy old jazz, which has a kick and tune.  But much modern jazz sounds to me like so much musical masturbation.   The ultimate modern jazz tune would be a saxaphone slowly undulating between D and Eb, and keeping it up for a half an hour.

[JCarey]

I love jazz and I've been mainly a jazz pianist for 8 years. Surprised?

[thalbergmad]

As far as Jazz piano is concerned I love the older stuff such as Fats Waller, James P Johnson, Willie "The Lion Smith"  and Art Tatum.

I love "Trad Jazz" and mainly small groups as opposed to the larger bands.

Eddie Condon is the perfect sound for me.

[rc]

I dip my toes in jazz from time to time... Very curious, but more preoccupied w. classical for the time. After I feel I've got a handle on most classical, I'll probably turn my attention to improv and jazz.

Every once in a while I'll hear a 'jazzified' baroque piece on the radio, somehow those always work out very well. It was Handel's Water Music.

Agreed on the 'musical masturbation', every once in a while a piece comes on the radio that forces me to change the station for a few minutes. I think the challenge is to play as out-of-tune and out-of-time for as long as possible... It must be very hard to go for so long and not play anything that sounds good.

[prometheus]

I love bebop with a trio; drums, bass and solist. The solist instrument should be expressive. So I guess the sax is paragonical here.

[leahcim]

well, i know i like it, i know im interested in it. and this may seem like a silly question on first glance, but, define it for me...

what is jazz?

It's what you get if you chuck a blues band down the stairs.

Or more precisely

Jazz is like peanut butter, the smooth and the crunchy are an
abomination. It's the HIV of music. Play around too much and you might
catch it and well, then you're basically playing with yourself for a
looong time afterwards even when you're with the 50 people in the band.
"Let's play something together" "Oooh, can't do that, I've got jazz"

Just as you imagine the cacophony couldn't get any worse [another
marketing mistake - "I hear the new Yamaha keyboard has 512 cacophony my
last keyboard only had 32..."], Cleo Laine starts zub-a-zub-a-zubbing
over the top.

At least Simon Cowell has the decency to make his records stop after 3
1/2 minutes.

Besides if there is a good jazz piece [unlikely but think like a George
Lucas fan must when trying to believe the plot] and you say "hey, that
was actually good, let's play that one again tomorrow?" - if it's played
again then it's not jazz. QED.

Each to their own though, a lot of them are very good at playing.

[pianorama]

I like some jazz, but not all. In my opinion, jazz gets a 7.5 out of 10. Classical gets a 9.5 out of 10. See? I'm still a classical/ baroque/ romantic piano player. ( Though I sometimes do 20th century.) Jazz is fine for listening, but I don't really like playing it. To some degree, I like almost every style of music, (for listening), execpt heavy metal rock.

[contrapunctus]

Dave Brubeck is the best! 

[arensky]

well, i know i like it, i know im interested in it. and this may seem like a silly question on first glance, but, define it for me...

what is jazz?

Not silly at all, and the subject of much disagreement and dissent....

hit the wall, time for bed. back tomorrow....

[ted]

I can say I definitely like some music which is sometimes called jazz by some people. In the absence of an unequivocal definition that's the best I can do. The older I get, the more I just respond to pure sound and the less I try to classify it. This afternoon, for instance, I listened to a most attractive two-part invention improvised by Brubeck. Is it "jazz" ? Some would say yes and some would say no. Are Jarrett's intriguing solos on "Radiance" jazz ? Again, the response would vary. Are Waller's admirable worked out solos jazz or just jazz influenced ?

It's actually not much different from asking, "What do you think of classical ?". I like some composers and not others. I like Chopin but some would say his music should correctly be called romantic and not classical.

As Stevie and Arensky have rightly pointed out, exactly what constitutes jazz for a given individual is usually very nebulous.

[arensky]

I love jazz and I've been mainly a jazz pianist for 8 years. Surprised?

Not a bit. I can hear the subtle jazz influence in your pieces (which are good BTW) and have known many "modern" composers who have made improvisation their primary performance focus, be it Jazz, "Rock" or playing for modern dance class, a la Cage. Improvising exercises the mental process used in composition, and keeps other composers through-composed compositions out of your head, that can be distracting and intimidating.

[mosis]

What do YOU think of jazz?

[arensky]

well, i know i like it, i know im interested in it. and this may seem like a silly question on first glance, but, define it for me...

what is jazz?

Attempt #6. I am throwing intellect and scholarship out the window now. Jazz is that stuff that origianlly came from America that "swings" (listen to the Count Basie Band, particularly "April in Paris". THAT is jazz swing feeling. You cannot "learn" it in the conventional sense, it must be FELT in order to be DONE.) and has a harmonic language that uses chords containing sixths, sevenths ni nths elevenths and thirteenths, as entities unto themselves, not as dissonances to be resolved. A genuine Jazz performance MUST contain improvisation. The more improvisation it contains, the better.  This means coherent musical statements and expressions, not random spewage, the stuff that bothers cfortunatu and leahcim. How to tell the difference in Jazz isn't always easy, it requires initiation. Sometimes it's obvious, though...so so far we have

1. Swing Feeling
2. Improvisation
3. "Fancy Chords", or a somewhat complex harmonic language involving 7ths 9ths 11ths and 13ths.

This mainly applies to Jazz before 1968. Since then Jazz has absorbed a great deal from it's cousins, Blues and Rock. And some pre 1968 Jazz (Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Lennie Tristano, some Thelonius Monk) doesn't swing at all, and uses highly dissonant and atonal harmony (Tristano, Monk, Taylor) or no harmony or swing feeling at all (late John Coltrane, Coleman). And from the 1940's Latin America has contributed  a great deal to the vocabulary and language of Jazz, with swing feeling influencing Latin music and vice versa. Hope this all makes sense. Jazz is many different things, and everyone feels a little differently about it. One person's jazz may be another's muzak. What is noise or masturbation to one listener may be the best jazz imaginable to another.

For me, the Jazz I like and play has swing feeling, and must be largely improvised  using combinations of diatonic scales, the blues scales and modes over the fancy chords. Of course this is very general. This music can be very direct and upbeat (Count Basie, Stephane Grappelli) or serious and introverted, powerful and cryptic (John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter). In just 100 years Jazz has produced almost as wide a variety of schools and styles of music that "Classical" music has in about 500. The evantual place and significance of Jazz in the art of Music as a whole has yet to be determined, though.

Still no definition!    I have spent enough time with this for now. A lot is in my post, it's somewhat rambling, though. Perhaps others can react to it, and we can come to a consensus or consensi.....

Consensi, that is not a word, I just made it up, of course it derives from "consensus", so you know what I mean, right? THAT is Jazz.....

Help me out people. This is making my head hurt. Ted, you have a handle on this, do share some more of your thoughts....

[prometheus]

I agree with Arensky. But the harmonic language and the rhythms are only jazz because of historical reasons. I mean, I could accept calling all improvised western music; jazz.

[mycrabface]

What do you think of jazz?

—Ryan

Jazz? Not Kenny G

[arensky]

Jazz? Not Kenny G

Datz rite, crabby 

[arensky]

I agree with Arensky. But the harmonic language and the rhythms are only jazz because of historical reasons. I mean, I could accept calling all improvised western music; jazz.

Thank you, I guess that made sense. I felt I was only seeing the individual grains of sand and missing the beach...

I'm unclear on what you mean by historical reasons....

1. Harmonic Language...this derives from European roots, Chopin, church music, Russian Romanticism and later on Debussy and Ravel, and still later Bartok. Also Jazz starts to feed off of and be influenced by it's own past innovations in this area (harmonic language), like any art form.

2. Jazz Rhythm is African at it's core, and is usually the defining characteristic of Jazz. This has become less so over time, Bill Evans, Keith Jarett and Pat Metheny are more focused on the harmonic aspects of the music than the rhythmic aspects, and although their rhythms are frequently very complex and sophisticated the swing or African element is not explicit in them, and in the music of Jarett and Metheny swing feeling is often not present at all.

I wouldn't call all improvised Western Music Jazz, because The Stones/Led Zeppelin/George Winston/Bruce Hornsby and a host of other musicians who improvise or rely on the device heavily do not fit the Jazz definition, IF we use my criteria listed above, as many people do. I think all improvising musicians today have considered and examined Jazz and many (but not all) are influenced by it. But Jazz has to have (IMO) harmonis sophistication and swing feeling, or at least allude to swing feeling.

[prometheus]

Well, what if the Stones or the Beatles would have solely played improvised music? It wouldn't have been pop because no one in their right mind would fill an album with improvised bland and shallow music.

I mean, both the harmonic language and the rhyrhms aren't really part of the philosophy of jazz. It is just the way jazz turned out because of historical reasons.

Of course not all western music that is improvised is jazz. But I also don't really think that jazz must have a swing feel.

I think my point is that the philosophy is the most important. The way this is manifested, from what cultural background it originates, to me isn't that important.

[cfortunato]

[[Well, what if the Stones or the Beatles would have solely played improvised music?]]

Pink Floyd has come pretty cloes.

And the Stones and Beatles - like most Rock n roll - is kind of half-improvised.  Usually only the melody and chords are written, and the arrangement is worked out by the musicians improvisationally.

[ted]

All right. In the absence of any clear definition, are there any invariant properties of jazz we can all agree must exist ? In other words, if such a property is clearly absent from a piece, then we would all agree it is not jazz. Let's approach it from the negative angle. A negative definition is better than nothng.

Improvisation is the first and most obvious invariant. If it isn't improvised then it might be jazz influenced composition, but it isn't jazz.

Prolonged and extensive syncopation is the next one which comes to my mind. I would replace Arensky's "swing" with "syncopation" to eliminate any implication of triplet rhythm. Some jazz does not contain "swing" in the sense of implied triplet rhythm. If syncopation is completely absent then I think whatever the music is it isn't jazz. This, of course, presupposes a definition of syncopation, but I think we can manage that a sight more easily than a definition of jazz. Or at least even if a watertight definition eludes us, we would probably all respond similarly when asked whether or not a given section of music involved syncopation.

Fancy chords seems a good idea, but I think there are a few too many counter-examples to make it a strictly invariant property. For instance, old-fashioned jazz and indeed, many passages in say Jarrett's concerts, involve very simple chords and rely heavily on rhythmic variation.

I would prefer to leave it to others more knowledgeable to come up with other invariant properties in the social and musicological areas as I don't really know a lot about those aspects.

If we cannot think of any more necessary properties, then perhaps we can start listing properties which are "almost necessary", in the sense that their absence "almost always" indicates the music is not jazz.

[leahcim]

Pink Floyd has come pretty cloes.

Yeah, in the studio perhaps, but I think the whole is more crafted than improvised.

Similar to the way the original Doctor Who theme was created from a "score" by Delia Derbyshire.

I know they famously chuck session singers to do something over the top etc, but I'd say their music was more experimental than improvisational in the Jazz sense.

Depending on the band the producer is usually the musical talent When they have these documentaries on "classic" rock albums [or on stuff like the film of the Def Leppard story] that usually comes across.

When it comes to playing live [or even before that, if they don't record live in the studio] some tend to play it again, even if it was originally improvised in a jam. Some craft their solos though.

Not that that's a negative, the thing that struck me about PF at live 8 was how well they played their records [certainly compared with the disaster that Led Zepplin were at live aid]

[arensky]

Well, what if the Stones or the Beatles would have solely played improvised music? It wouldn't have been pop because no one in their right mind would fill an album with improvised bland and shallow music.

I do not know...

I mean, both the harmonic language and the rhyrhms aren't really part of the philosophy of jazz. It is just the way jazz turned out because of historical reasons.

Of course not all western music that is improvised is jazz. But I also don't really think that jazz must have a swing feel.

I think my point is that the philosophy is the most important. The way this is manifested, from what cultural background it originates, to me isn't that important.

What is your philosophy of Jazz? This is cool...I have never met a Jazz musician who had a philosophy of Jazz. Strong opinions, yes. Philosophy, no. I think the history and cultural background of any music is very important, it can tell us a lot about the culture the music arose from, and lead to a greater understanding of that culture vis a vis other cultures. I think it's fascinating, because people (excluding us wonks) don't generally consider music intellectually, or think about it beyond "I like this, it's so pretty!" or "I like this song, it really moves" . So when people do start to think about music, and why Coltrane is like Hendrix and how they are different from Cage and Berio, and then throw Mozart and Scriabin in, it's cool. Because the virgin territory of music as something to think about (for "everyman", not us) allows for freedom of thought and increased self discovery about everything, not just music. This will evantually lead to a more openminded and thoughtful mode of existence, or at least heightened intellectual awareness. BTW I teach Music History to the uninitiated, so this is an important topic for me. And so, I am curious about your philosophy of Jazz.

No Jazz doesn't have to have swing feeling, but it helps. In most cases like this the melodic lines are usually very syncopated and disjunct, or there is slip slidy tempo rubato thing happening. In other words, the steady constant underlying rhythm that characterizes most Western music, Indian music and Rock is not present in these cases. Jazz is about highlighting the beat by avoiding it in the improvised melodic lines, in my experience...

[arensky]

All right. In the absence of any clear definition, are there any invariant properties of jazz we can all agree must exist ? In other words, if such a property is clearly absent from a piece, then we would all agree it is not jazz. Let's approach it from the negative angle. A negative definition is better than nothng.

Improvisation is the first and most obvious invariant. If it isn't improvised then it might be jazz influenced composition, but it isn't jazz.

Prolonged and extensive syncopation is the next one which comes to my mind. I would replace Arensky's "swing" with "syncopation" to eliminate any implication of triplet rhythm. Some jazz does not contain "swing" in the sense of implied triplet rhythm. If syncopation is completely absent then I think whatever the music is it isn't jazz. This, of course, presupposes a definition of syncopation, but I think we can manage that a sight more easily than a definition of jazz. Or at least even if a watertight definition eludes us, we would probably all respond similarly when asked whether or not a given section of music involved syncopation.

Fancy chords seems a good idea, but I think there are a few too many counter-examples to make it a strictly invariant property. For instance, old-fashioned jazz and indeed, many passages in say Jarrett's concerts, involve very simple chords and rely heavily on rhythmic variation.

I would prefer to leave it to others more knowledgeable to come up with other invariant properties in the social and musicological areas as I don't really know a lot about those aspects.

If we cannot think of any more necessary properties, then perhaps we can start listing properties which are "almost necessary", in the sense that their absence "almost always" indicates the music is not jazz.

Go Ted! Ok, here are our invariant properites so far, and this is what most writers evantually agree on in their disagreeing....

1. Improvisation
2. Swing Feeling or Syncopation
3. Harmonic Sophistication, or "Fancy Chords" ()  ?

The issue with #1 is how much improvisation? Glenn Miller and some other Big Band artists are not considered Jazz in some circles, because the pieces are more arranged than improvised, and often when a player did inprovise a solo on a hit record, that became part of the piece, and even today players are expected to play the improvised solo that Hepcat Harry or whoever made up one day in 1939. I personally feel that Big Band is Jazz, but some is more jazz than others, some bands have more pronounced swing feeling  and contain more improvisation than others. So to be Jazz a performance must contain improvisation, and the more the better, I guess.

Now it gets a little sticky...much of modern jazz and jazz fusion does not swing or syncopate in the underlying rhythm, but the solo lines, given and improvised may contain syncopated phrases. Lennie Tristano's ballad playing is a good example of this, and some of Monk's also. And the chords involved are usually VERY fancy, which brings us to....

"Fancy Chords".....I believe that harmonic sophistication is a hallmark of jazz, whether it concerns a  fancy chord progression or individual fancy chords in a conventional progression. Regarding early jazz I think it's important to remember that the jazz chords in that era were very fancy then, but after Tristano and McCoy Tyner they seem simple to us... a lot of Jarett seems harmonically simple, but he is just disguising the 7ths and 9ths by making them into suspended clusters, or "sus chords", as they are commonly known. For instance C maj 9 (omit 7) = Csus2, C maj 11 (b11) = Csus4, and so on. BTW this "sus" sonority is one of the defining sonic signatures of 70's pop and "New Age" music, which Jarett was instrumental in inventing (new age, not 70's pop), although I'm sure he is not happy about that....

Anyway I don't think his harmonies are simple, any more than Mozart's. They are both always throwing a monkey wrench into the standard harmonic practices of their day. They are vry subtle about it, though....

Anyway, we have two, maybe three invariant possibilities, I want to include my Fancy Chords (I love them so ) but maybe they are not an absolute......I will continue to ponder this important question... y'all chip in now! 

[leahcim]

Anyway, we have two, maybe three invariant possibilities, I want to include my Fancy Chords (I love them so ) but maybe they are not an absolute......I will continue to ponder this important question... y'all chip in now! 

I think these all boil down to it "sounds like jazz" Modern day perhaps there's lots of genres that overlap, but nevertheless our bod on the street is going to think Summertime played from a score is Jazz, even if our Jazz aficionado won't accept that and wants improvisation involved. Although I think improvisation often involves cliches and patterns that have been played for years by lots and have a place in exercises so they are as composed as anything else now.

Bill Bailey in his stage show does a joke where he says "Not jazz, that wouldn't work" and then plays a single line of notes which "sound like Jazz" I guess that's modal scales used and the timing.

He does that with other genres and styles too, playing stuff that "sounds French" "sounds Cockney" "sounds like Billy Bragg" and so on that I think lend some weight to the idea.

[arensky]

I think these all boil down to it "sounds like jazz" Modern day perhaps there's lots of genres that overlap, but nevertheless our bod on the street is going to think Summertime played from a score is Jazz, even if our Jazz aficionado won't accept that and wants improvisation involved. Although I think improvisation often involves cliches and patterns that have been played for years by lots and have a place in exercises so they are as composed as anything else now.

Bill Bailey in his stage show does a joke where he says "Not jazz, that wouldn't work" and then plays a single line of notes which "sound like Jazz" I guess that's modal scales used and the timing.

He does that with other genres and styles too, playing stuff that "sounds French" "sounds Cockney" "sounds like Billy Bragg" and so on that I think lend some weight to the idea.

You are right, it does boil down to "sound like", and the aficionado has to lump it, and be glad the stuff is still around at all! Yes improv is cliches and patterns, but so is everything else, Beethoven, Zeppelin, you name it. It's what a composer/musician does with those patterns that signifies to us whether they are a real creator, or a regurgitation machine....

This Bill Bailey cat sounds right up my aley; I will google him....

[cfortunato]

Isn't it interesting that people think of jazz as growing out of ragtime, when part of the definition of jazz is that it includes improvisation, and part of the definition of ragtime is that it DOESN'T?

[Siberian Husky]

jazz is awesome..i love all music..

[lau]

here comes harmelodics reply

[harmelodic]

Jazz is beautiful music.  I had been playing piano for about 4-5 years and at the point where I was learning my first Chopin Etude when I heard Bill Evans.  Had no idea what was going on but I was deeply moved and decided I had to learn more about this music.

I spent many hours trying to transcribe and learn his recordings, and ever since then I've been playing both classical and jazz.  The two definitely help each other in so many ways.

In fact, Evans himself believes that jazz is really an extension of the classical tradition.  We know improvisation was a skill many of the great composers/pianists possessed - Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc.  Somehow, this skill fell by the wayside sometime around the turn of the 20th Century.

[ted]

We're not doing too badly; probably as well as anybody has, I would say. The trouble with "fancy chords", of course, is agreeing on a universally acceptable definition of fancy. If it were all just a matter of the combinatorial analysis of note groups then we could reason that any chord type, reduced within an octave, is a partition of twelve; therefore "fanciness" is simply proportional to the order of the partition. Unfortunately this won't do for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is the question of implied "fanciness". As Arensky rightly pointed out,  to a naive primitive like me, a simple group of notes played by Jarrett (the sort of thing he used to grind out for ten minutes in his earlier solo concerts) is just that and no more; to a musician trained in two hundred years' worth of tonal theory, three notes can imply a whole host of complex harmony both momentary and contextual.

Secondly, "fancy", harmonies, in the sense of meaning complexity and nothing more, is not really what we want to say. In this sense, Charles Ives used "fanciness" beyond the wildest excursions of any well known jazz pianist, but although it was, in fact, conceived through improvisation, nobody would refer to the Concord Sonata as a prime example of jazz based composition with respect to chords. We would probably not hesitate, however, to do so with the Rhapsody In Blue.

Actually, these two examples are much better than I intended as an illustration of why I have insurmountable difficulty with distinguishing between  "jazz fancy harmony" and "otherwise fancy harmony".  I think my own naivety, perhaps a decided advantage in my own playing, I hasten to add, severely limits my ability to formulate this distinction in words. Somebody on the forum who is well versed in both general Western harmony and jazz could probably do so well enough for our purposes.

[phil13]

Love jazz. Can't play it at all, but I love it. Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis are awesome.

Phil

[lau]

here comes harmelodics reply

Did you not notice that I foretold harmelodics reply?

[leahcim]

Did you not notice that I foretold harmelodics reply?

Yeah, relax, mission accomplished, we noticed you.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?action=who

[lau]

Yeah, relax, mission accomplished, we noticed you.

https://www.pianostreet.com/smf/index.php?action=who

thanks for blowing my reputation as a psychic

[leahcim]

thanks for blowing my reputation as a psychic

Yeah sorry, but as my mother always said to me "you won't get far if you pick someone who'll go and look at the source code to see what you did when a red warning about a new post appears and it's a message that leahcim is about to post..."

Now, as cliched as it sounds, 25 years later I finally understand what she was going on about.
So it's true what they say.

[phil13]

thanks for blowing my reputation as a psychic

Ah HA!

Phil

[pianistimo]

funny, but i always think of the words and rhythm more than anything in jazz.  so, i'm stuck with rhythms like 'i got rhythm, i got music, i got my man - who could ask for anything more.'  it sort of fits the pattern of question/answer.  this is dumb, but i always think of the owl on sesame street that plays the sax, too.  remember that episode where --hmm was it a clarinetist came on and they had to imitate one another?

and natalie cole comes to mind.

[lau]

Ah HA!

Phil

dang.

[arensky]

We're not doing too badly; probably as well as anybody has, I would say. The trouble with "fancy chords", of course, is agreeing on a universally acceptable definition of fancy. If it were all just a matter of the combinatorial analysis of note groups then we could reason that any chord type, reduced within an octave, is a partition of twelve; therefore "fanciness" is simply proportional to the order of the partition. Unfortunately this won't do for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is the question of implied "fanciness". As Arensky rightly pointed out,  to a naive primitive like me, a simple group of notes played by Jarrett (the sort of thing he used to grind out for ten minutes in his earlier solo concerts) is just that and no more; to a musician trained in two hundred years' worth of tonal theory, three notes can imply a whole host of complex harmony both momentary and contextual.


Secondly, "fancy", harmonies, in the sense of meaning complexity and nothing more, is not really what we want to say. In this sense, Charles Ives used "fanciness" beyond the wildest excursions of any well known jazz pianist, but although it was, in fact, conceived through improvisation, nobody would refer to the Concord Sonata as a prime example of jazz based composition with respect to chords. We would probably not hesitate, however, to do so with the Rhapsody In Blue.

Actually, these two examples are much better than I intended as an illustration of why I have insurmountable difficulty with distinguishing between  "jazz fancy harmony" and "otherwise fancy harmony".  I think my own naivety, perhaps a decided advantage in my own playing, I hasten to add, severely limits my ability to formulate this distinction in words. Somebody on the forum who is well versed in both general Western harmony and jazz could probably do so well enough for our purposes.

I have been thinking about this a lot, and did not wish to reply to Ted's last post until I had come to a real conclusion....

By "fancy" or "sophisticated" chords and harmonies, I mean those that contain 6ths, 7ths, 9ths 11ths and 13ths. I went back and listened to the earliest Jazz I own, "The Original Dixieland Jazz Band", Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. The intervals beyond the 5th are present in almost all the chords employed by these musicians in their earliest recordings, 1917-1926. And so I do not hesitate to include this as part of our definition, and the correct term should be "Extended Harmony"..... there is very little music that can be called Jazz that does not contain it.

While Ives uses some "very hip changes"  it is not Jazz, because the rythmic element is missing. And so, we may add "Syncopated Rythym" or as I prefer to call it, "Swing Feeling" (which is still evolving, but all jazz swings to some extent.).

"Improvisation" Gotta have it. As leahcim pointed out, the man in the street who hears "Summertime" played from a score with no improvisation may think it's Jazz, but it's not. Not a big deal... Improvisation is as central to real Jazz as it is to Marga (Indian classical music) . And leahcim is right, it evantually boils down to "sounds like Jazz" ...but what is that?

So here it is......

1. SYNCOPATED RYTHYM/SWING FEELING

2. IMPROVISATION

3. EXTENDED HARMONY

Can anyone add more? I can, but it's time to sleep

[dave santino]

I love jazz, especially fusion and suchlike, but I also love bop, cool, you name it I like it. I've played both jazz and classical for quite a while now, and have played many proffessional gigs as a jazz pianist/guitarist. I think the theory about extended harmony is a good one, but one vital thing to remember is that a lot of the time, the chords themselves aren't that complicated, but wht is being played over them makes it seem more of a complex chord. For instance, Michael Brecker often uses chord implication over simple chords such as maj7, m7, etc. to give the music a more "sophisticated" sound. Over a m7 he'll play a maj7 arpeggio on the 3rd of the scale to imply a maj9, and obviously much more complicated things also. In fusion especially this is the case; it is the improvisation that provides the complexity, as when playing over more standard chords, say Bb7 as opposed to Bb7(#9 b13), you have a lot more freedom in what you can play and what will sound "out" or "in", whereas with more extended chords I feel you're restricted to some extent in what you can do. The most most complex jazz in terms of chords is often as a backing to a simple tune, for instance when I play Round Midnight with a singer/sax player/whatever, I'll add extensions and substitutions to make the backing more interesting, whereas if we're playing some hardcore fusion, the backing will remain harmonically quite simple, whereas the complexity will be in the rhythm, metre and solos. Hope this helps.

Dave