2 Listening to Jazz

Let's talk about listening. When listening you need to tier the listening (ie: focus it on specific things one at the time). You'll want to:

  1. Listen for the role of the soloist
  2. Accompanist next (usually more than one person, usually rhythm section).
    1. Supporting musicians will "comp" to help the soloist.
    2. Ex: The drums likes what the soloist is doing rhythmically, so the drummer tries to give a response rhythm to keep the vibe going.
Rhythm Section

We talk about these instruments:

  1. Drum
  2. Piano/Keys
  3. Bass
  4. Guitar

We may describe musical ideas visually with contour diagrams:

There's a lot of forms in jazz:

Twelve-Bar Blues

One common one is 12-bar blues, one example is:

I I I I | V V I I | ii V I V ||

There's a lot of alternatives too like:

I V I I | V V I I | ii V I V ||

General Form

Instead of using these chord symbols we group sections with letters:

AABA (each of 8 measures)

There's also variations of this too:

ABCA, ABAA, ...

Chorus & Head

A chorus is one time around the chord progression. Here AABA is the "head" (ie: the starting chorus). The second chorus might be a trumpet solo, the third a piano solo, then the ..., then the seventh chorus you play the head again to tie it together.

You can usually always count on the AABA structure (or whatever is decided on) for the solos themselves!

How it'd tie into 12-bar Blues?

The first time the AABA section of 12-bar blues (ie: the first 12 bars) is the head. Then multiple runs are the solos, until we tie it back together with the head again.

This is when the solos are trading 4 bars with each other (ex: one alto plays for 4, then the piano for 4, then ... (back and forth or keep cycling)).

Songs Listened To

  • Blue 7:
    • Starts with Bass
    • Then Drums and Bass
    • Then Sax solo (notice that the articulations are varied every time he plays that main melody. Mainly he played more legato, then more accented).
    • Then Sax + Piano
    • Then many Sax solos
    • After a while the Piano gets a piano solo
      • The left hand is comping the right hand
    • Then they start Trading 4's, but it’s really just a long drum solo played by Max Roach.
    • What’s cool is that the tritone is the most apparent part of Sonny’s solo and appears at the last playing of the head.

This is just tone color. Mainly comes from the type of instrument (ex: type of piano, type of sax, …) and their player.