How To Know You’ve Found Great Jazz Music

Everyone seems to love jazz music but common times the styles of jazz are confused and blurred. To further complicate matters, listeners (and dancers) often ask “What is great jazz?” or “How do I comprehend if what I’m listening to is ‘great jazz'”?

It’s demanding to put in words, but let’s give it a try. Remember jazz legend Louis Armstrong says: “If you obtain to request what progressive is, you’ll never know.” While swing can be broken into elements and much has been written on nonsense theory, the most serious thing to keep in mind is that the apparition that characterizes truly incalculable music can’t be dissected. The first rule of thumb concerning identifying great jazz music is that on condition that you like it, if it touches your soul, then it’s great.

Think of it this way – when you walk until an art gallery or museum and petition to see a great painting or sculpture, what is the museum guide supposed to show you? Art is personal! Even worse, ask an artist to explain his or her painting to you. Great art is not meant to be explained. It either hits you, or it doesn’t. It bypasses the left part of the skull that analyzes and categorizes things and goes straight to the right part of your brain that feels emotion and connects to your heart and soul. Music speaks to you in the same way.

Now as for the technicality of what you’re hearing, that’s a bit different. Jazz cup be torn into many styles, including rooted jazz, contemporary jazz, progressive jazz, modern jazz, dixieland jazz. Nevertheless, there are still six elements that truthfully comprise greatest great jazz music, and we’ve named them Improvisation, Syncopation, Blue Notes, Freedom, Interaction, and Feeling.

IMPROVISATION: is the root of jazz music. When a performer leaves what is written on the page and begins to “speak” (musically) from his head including nub you are actually witnessing a conversation, perhaps even participating through a sonic dance. What is really happening is that the musicians are conversing with each other but within a given structure (or language). When the musicians know each opposite well sufficient (and it can be instantaneous or take years to develop), then they are able to understand, support et alii converse thru that language.

SYNCOPATION: deals with the idea of rhythm. In our universe of lacuna and time, everything vibrates. Flutter consist of two things: on and off. It is the constant interaction of the on and off (crests furthermore troughs) that cause us to experience the universe. Those on besides offs are expressed over time. Too here’s the jazz music. When you oaf around with those vibrations from a very rigid form (strict rhythm) to either slower or quicker but with variety you’ll pile “Syncopation”. It’s fun. It’s what you like in music. It’s what you’re relating to when you dance. It’s what MOVES you in jazz music.

BLUE NOTES are an important part of a jazz musician’s vocabulary in the musical conversation. Within scales and keys cup be certain altered notes, some of which are called “Blue Notes.” Blue notes are key to creating strife and harmony, tension and resolution.

The following three elements are less a function of euphonious but come more directly from a musician’s spirit. How the following three affect the previous three are what really defines “taste” in jazz music.

FREEDOM: Within the ensemble framework, musicians may take solos. Or you may hear a vocalist interpreting a cantabile – that’s pretty much the same thing for the purposes like this discussion. It is that very freedom expressed within the language of euphonious that lead to jazz. It’s the talent and skill of a musician to express those feelings that lead to GREAT Jazz. Hey, the lifelong sayings still apply. “Live Free or Die!”

INTERACTION: No hombre is an island. OK, that’s not to mean their are prohibition monumental improvisation soloists such as pianists, harpist, guitarists ere other instrumentalist, but the overwhelming majority of jazz diapason ranges from duos to ensembles of say 20 musicians (Think big band jazz).

For the finale, so to speak: FEELING. Feeling is a key element because when each is said et sequens done, feeling is really the heart about it all. How the musician feels about what he’s playing and how you feel about what you’re listening to are both important elements, as well since the feelings that are being expressed from moment to moment. In the end, great jazz symphonic is apropos expressing (for the musician) and hearing (for the audience) the great range of human emotion.

Finally, a definition like great jazz? Let’s say it’s the interaction between performer and listener. And if that interaction communicates feelings that you can’t express as words, if you feel quasi though the music speaks to you, if you tin feel the performers emotions he’s trying to express thru his instrument, then the only words left are “That’s GREAT jazz”!