A classical pianist look for jazz players...

[economist]

Hello everyone....

I'm a classical pianist and played jazz for 3 years. Really hoping to find some people who are also ametuer jazz musicians to play some music together and gain more experience.

Any reply will be grateful  

[ludwig]

hi a guy,

I myself is really interested in jazz too, not just improvisation, but all the great chords and progressions, all the great songs, and also the "feel" of being in a band. But since I live in a hole, no one is really that interested in this. But I am curious, generally would you say that a classical piano performer would find it very difficult to convert to jazz thinking? I had a few experiences with some VERY GOOD art music pianist who just simply can't think in chords, impro and progressions, or transposing.... is there some guidance to jazz playing when you're trying to convert from thinking classically and jazzy? btw, where do you live? I'm sure there are heaps of jazz musicians that can't wait to jam together.

[economist]

Hi Ludwig,

I think it's really not a problem to "convert" from classical to jazz, if convert is the word. I think both classical and jazz are music, and really not need to be treated in an isolated way. I think the most important thing for classical musician to play jazz is to get used to the feeling of "swing" and really get into the groove. This is a kind of feeling and really no way to "learn" or "teach". But I'm really happy to find somebody who's classical pianist also interested in jazz. It's really great music.

I'm living in London. Do you know anyone in London may also be interested in jazz?

[Binko_Binobo]

Sure you can "learn" swing. But I suppose it all matters what you mean by "learn." If you're talking repetative technical exercises, then, no you ain't gonna swing. General hints for getting into swing is to, quite simply, listen to TONS of jazz, paying special attention to horn players, who seem to swing better than most piano players. Also, remember the accents in jazz are generally reversed to classical music. To help you on the road of getting the swing feel, play a scale up and down the keyboard, but accent the "AND" beats, not the downbeat. Practice to a metronome. This is crucial in jazz, as jazzers are only as good as their rhythm. (OK, I'm simplifying, of course.)

Sometimes "swing" is marked by a notation which says two eighths = quarter-eighth triplet. If only swing were that simple. Generally, the swing is less than 2:1, although in shuffle songs, it can be as extreme as 3:1. In a lot of modern jazz, there is very little swing as far as time values of eighth notes go. It's pretty much straight eighths, but the accents and phrasing give it the swing.

[ted]

It is generally a lot harder for a classically trained pianist to play jazz than vice-versa. Rhythm in general is something you feel, and unlike harmony and pitch, cannot be notated in a completely unambiguous way. Pitch and harmony on the piano are simple discrete things; rhythm is a continuum. The rhythms in classical music are made to comform more or less to discrete notation, whereas in jazz, Oriental music and other heavily syncopated forms, the playing and the feeling come first and notation is at best a crude approximation.

To put it more clearly, I could sit down and play a few seconds of music whose rhythm could quite easily be felt and remembered by all present but which would altogether defy writing out. Even within classical music, something as seemingly simple as a rubato, a slowing down or a speeding up, cannot be completely defined by notation. It can be indicated but the actual result depends on the performer's internal perception of rhythm.

The difference is one of degree rather than type. The classically trained person learning jazz is faced with a sudden forced dependence on his internal sense of rhythm. Until then he will have moved within a very confined landscape of rhythm. Learning to play tunes with the right chords and so on will be the least of his worries - anybody can do that - that's not the hard part.  The big step is to reorient musical consciousness to the immediate, intuitive effect of the sound, rather than toward a tradition of notation.

Of course that is not to say that things such as Joplin's rags, Brubeck's highly articulate scores or Dapogny's valuable transcriptions of Morton could not be used to accelerate the process - but they are approximations to something very highly intuitive. The relationship or, indeed, relevance of score to performance is much more tenuous than with,say, a Chopin study or a Bach fugue.  

[Binko_Binobo]

Yes, Ted, I agree with many of the points raised, but I think you're exagerrating the degree to which there is difficulty.

I grew up learning classical. I switched to jazz/blues in my teens, and now am returning back to classical. And actually, a lot of what I learned in the jazz stylings are proving to be very useful for classical music; i.e. especially of the Romantic era. Let's take some of the more popular works. Chopin's Nocturnes op. 9. 1 & 2. Not one of his more technically demanding works, but you really need a good sense of rhythm, phrasing, and just plain musicality to make it work. If you play those pieces note value for note value, they sound plain dull. In this sense, the rhythmic notation is only a vague representation of note values. Does anyone play the 11 over 6 rhythmic part exactly in rhythm? I've never heard a performer do it without extreme rubato.

And this goes for a good bulk of Romantic music. Understanding the phrasing of Romantic music requires the same sort of discipline as understanding jazz. Listening to a lot of it, studying it and thereby understanding how rhythmic patterns were to be applied. In a lot of ways, jazz rhythms are actually less difficult to master than classical rhythms. You usually have a backbeat (if you're playing in a trio) and you follow the drums and the bass. That's your foundation, you're safety net. You can always refer back to that. You can "feel" the rhythmic pulse from those two instruments. In this sense, you also often have "a confined sense of rhythm" in jazz music.

[economist]

So.... Ted and Binko, are you both jazz musicians or classical musicians?  

[ted]

Binko:

Yes, you may be right; someone with real musical feeling should be able to play anything. It's just that I've heard so many terrible renditions of jazz and ragtime by classically trained people here. Of course it could be a geographical thing. Americans tend to be much more eclectic in their approach to musical education. We're a long way behind here (N.Z.) with our antagonistic attitudes - classical ones look down on jazz, jazz players ignore classical ones, pop ones ignore the lot and so on. I played Maple Leaf Rag for an audition in a classical group and the committee looked like a row of bulldogs chewing on wasps.

Despite the wide ranging talents of many prominent musicians past and present (Jarrett, Marsalis, Previn, Iturbi, Gershwin, Mayerl ... long list) these artificial divisions still exist. I think it's due to economic and social considerations rather than musical ones.

Economist:

I find it impossible to classify myself. I seem to spend most of my time improvising these days but not necessarily in ways that could truly be termed jazz. I think classical and contemporary ragtime has a peculiar charm all its own. I play a lot of it and write a number of pieces in that and related idioms. But then again I like romantic piano music and create in that way too.  I also like many more modern ways of playing - Ives, Bridge, Barber .... It's probably a fault - I'm too broad to make significant progress in any one direction !

[ludwig]

Talking about jazz and art music, I was learning percussion a year ago and it was SOOOOO difficult to play 6 against 5 on the drumkit, and it had to be spot on, other wise the swing will go out of place. It is about coordination, they say that jazz is a very loose and feeling based art, I beg to differ, it invovles both a loose and emotional approach, but also, a very precise and coordinated approach, both within the performer him/herself, and with the ensemble. Therefor I reckon when playing classical and jazz music, two completely differeny state of mind is employed, thus it is very difficult to compare the difficulty and feeling involved.