Hello there! Click on the link below for the official AQA notes on jazz, you will probably need to zoom in to read things clearly. Use YouTube to listen to the songs they mention. Don't forget all the notes I've already done for you and let me know if you think any are missing
http://www.evernote.com/shard/s50/sh/28517698-fbdb-4997-a31b-4345ffa69d07/7c0fb0bf06dffd9bf4af94d3cc86ea68
Showing posts with label Jazz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jazz. Show all posts
Wednesday, 12 June 2013
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Y13 A2 Jazz Notes: West End Blues - Louis Armstrong
I've taken this from here, it's an example of a more "fanboy" style of writing, but with plenty of technical terms to keep examiners happy! If it discusses the music, it's fine. If it discusses the private lives of the musicians instead of analysing, it's not good. This is good!
West End Blues
Story
1
West End Blues is one of the most famous recordings in the history of jazz for the following reasons: 1) Armstrong's introduction showed how dazzling his skills as a trumpeter were; 2) he laid the groundwork for jazz soloists to be considered true artists, the same as musicians in other styles of music and; 3) the recording introduced Earl Hines as the first real jazz pianist, who was Armstrong's equal in creative musical thought.
West End Blues is one of the most famous recordings in the history of jazz for the following reasons: 1) Armstrong's introduction showed how dazzling his skills as a trumpeter were; 2) he laid the groundwork for jazz soloists to be considered true artists, the same as musicians in other styles of music and; 3) the recording introduced Earl Hines as the first real jazz pianist, who was Armstrong's equal in creative musical thought.
Activity: Follow the outline below of West End Blues.
Trumpet introduction by Armstrong
Ensemble plays with Armstrong heard
above all
Trombone solo
Call and response: clarinet solo
alternates with Armstrong scat-singing
Piano solo by Earl Hines, playing with
a trumpet-like attack
Armstrong solos: holds a high B-flat
for almost four measures
Earl Hines' piano enters to join
Armstrong for ending.
What did Pops do that was so different? He established the blues
as a basic foundation for modern jazz. He elevated the role of the soloists,
not just himself as a feature in front of an orchestra, but rather Pops created
a band of individual soloists, which was a radical departure from the
collective improvisation of traditional New Orleans music and also from the
heavily orchestrated arrangements of dance bands. He established scat singing
and created a new style for American vocalists emphasizing rhythmic inflections
and melodic variation rather than straight, operatic-like singing. He
introduced sophisticated harmonic improvisation with the soloist making
on-the-spot variations. He established the trumpet as “the” major solo
instrument in jazz and it would not be until the arrival of Charlie Parker that
the trumpet’s reign would be challenged.
Pick up any major book on the history of jazz and you will read ecstatic paeans about “West End Blues” (from Complete Hot Five - Volume 3). The opening fanfare alone is enough to establish the song as a masterpiece, but check also how Pops reverses the tradition of horn obbligatos behind a lead vocalist. In this case, the saxophone plays the lead and Pops does wordless vocalizing behind the soloist. Armstrong’s accompaniment becomes so memorable that people regularly hum it and almost totally ignore the lead solo. Then there is a very, very modern piano solo, meaning that the pianist plays single note lines rather than chords. When Armstrong re-enters he uses a long, high, held note. Whereas "Heebie Jeebies" (from Complete Hot Five - Volume 1) has an old-fashioned 2/4 feel with a ragtime-like syncopation. When Pops does his second vocal chorus, dropping the wordless vocalizing, the song feels more modern than it does during the ensemble sections. Why is this? Because Pops had grasped where the music could go rather than merely rehashing where the music had been. This was the rhythm of the new era, a time period that would be dubbed the jazz age—fast, furious, forceful and full of fun, and Pops created a musical style that perfectly projected the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age.
Pick up any major book on the history of jazz and you will read ecstatic paeans about “West End Blues” (from Complete Hot Five - Volume 3). The opening fanfare alone is enough to establish the song as a masterpiece, but check also how Pops reverses the tradition of horn obbligatos behind a lead vocalist. In this case, the saxophone plays the lead and Pops does wordless vocalizing behind the soloist. Armstrong’s accompaniment becomes so memorable that people regularly hum it and almost totally ignore the lead solo. Then there is a very, very modern piano solo, meaning that the pianist plays single note lines rather than chords. When Armstrong re-enters he uses a long, high, held note. Whereas "Heebie Jeebies" (from Complete Hot Five - Volume 1) has an old-fashioned 2/4 feel with a ragtime-like syncopation. When Pops does his second vocal chorus, dropping the wordless vocalizing, the song feels more modern than it does during the ensemble sections. Why is this? Because Pops had grasped where the music could go rather than merely rehashing where the music had been. This was the rhythm of the new era, a time period that would be dubbed the jazz age—fast, furious, forceful and full of fun, and Pops created a musical style that perfectly projected the zeitgeist of the Jazz Age.
For
me personally, the “West End Blues” cadenza could have been issued as a record
by itself, like the later Charlie Parker “Famous Alto Break.” It’s like
listening to a song with all its different components and each time I hear it,
something different knocks me out: the opening descending quarter notes that
sound like an alarm clock; the dizzying arpeggios that build to the stirring
high concert C; the history-of-jazz-encapsulated-in-one-bluesy-run descending
blitz of notes that immediately follows the high C, foreshadowing where jazz is
going, yet firmly rooted in where it’s been; and those scattered chromatic
phrases, sounding so effortless in the hands (or chops) of an artist who is so
completely in command of his horn. It’s 12 seconds of heaven. The rest of the
record could have consisted of nothing but a yodeler warbling, “Stick out your
can, here comes the garbage man,” and it would still be a classic just for that
opening.
Fortunately, what follows is still pretty magical. Armstrong plays Oliver’s lead in harmony with Jimmy Strong’s clarinet as Fred Robinson’s trombone lends a foggy bottom to the proceedings. Armstrong maintains the dignified, somber feel of Oliver’s record, until he gets to bar seven, where his reading of the melody begins to grow more airy and ornate. At the 12-bar chorus, he spins another arpeggio up to a high concert Bb and then takes a breather, handing the ball over to Robinson to take a short solo. Robinson was no legend and on many of these 1928 sides, he doesn’t hold a candle to Armstrong, but even he seems inspired on this one, taking his time and moaning the essence of the blues on Oliver’s written second strain. He gets delicious backing by a Zutty Singleton shuffle beat with his hand cymbals and a steady, nearly 12-bar tremolo by Hines.
The feel of the record shifts in the third chorus, as Hines and banjoist Mancy Carr simply pound out the melody delicately over quarter notes behind clarinetist Strong’s chalumeau take on Oliver’s next strain. Every phrase Strong plays in answered by some of the most sober wordless vocalizing ever contributed by Armstrong. I hesitate to call it scatting because usually the word “scat” sounds happy and joyful and Armstrong is anything but that during “West End Blues.” There’s not a trace of gravel in his voice and he phrases up high, just like his trumpet, though it’s so relaxed, he sounds like he’s listening to the radio. There’s not a trace of a laugh or a grin; it’s just some very pretty singing.
On the Oliver record, the sober mood was broken by the ridiculous clarinet playing. On Armstrong’s version, the fragile nature of the Armstrong-Strong duet is temporary upset by Earl Hines’s dazzling piano solo. However, unlike the clarinet solo, this is not a bad thing. Hines was one of the most innovative pianists to ever sit behind a keyboard and his virtuosic display on “West End Blues” is one of the record’s most memorable features. Singleton and Carr drop out, leaving Hines all alone but he makes the most of it. His left hand is consistently shifting; part stride, part descending and ascending octaves and tenths, all mixed up the occasional jarring, off-the-beat accent. And that’s just the left hand! The right hand plays a lot of those “trumpet style” octaves, but there’s and a lot of single-note runs, too, leading to the solo being equal parts melodic and flashy. All of it is mesmerizing; just listen to the ascending chordal run he plays with both hands simultaneously for a second at the 2:28 mark for a short example of Hines’s brilliance.
With 51 seconds to go, there’s only enough room for one chorus and a coda. Again, this comes off so perfectly, I don’t think anyone could write it off as being completely spontaneous. Almost like an arrangement, Robinson and Strong harmonize, Strong holding one note while Robinson discreetly accents on the first beat of every bar, hitting a blue note in bar for. Meanwhile, Hines and Carr comp dramatically, surging together as the song begins to sweat. And on top of it all, the celestial being known as Louis Armstrong, holding the most dramatic, throbbing, high Bb in the history of recorded music. He holds it for four bars (12 seconds), with just the right amount of vibrato to send the hairs on one’s neck to rise to attention. It’s such a genius move, because he basically takes the original motif from Oliver’s melody, and inflates it into something much more bold and stunning than anything those original 12 bars suggest
But he’s not done yet! After four bars of the held note, Armstrong unleashes a furious series of descending runs off an Ab7 chord - Bb-Db-Gb-Eb, four notes repeated five times in five beats before Armstrong turns it inside out and hits a high C for a second. He continues onward, phrasing with a flair that does indeed suggest opera, especially with the upward, almost scalar, run he plays towards the very end of the chorus, as well as the little turn of a phrase that ends it.
Then it’s on to the coda, or the final resolution, to continue my movie analogy from earlier. I think if “West End Blues” had a cute little Lil Hardin ending, it might have taken some of the steam out of it. But instead, the actual ending, with Hines’s descending inversions and the final melancholy statement by the horns, delightfully maintains the mood of the entire record. In the noes to a Time-Life LP box set on Hines, the pianist remembered now the ending came about:
“Now how the ending was going to be we didn’t know. We got to the end of it and Louis looked at me and I thought of the first thing I could think of, a little bit of classic thing that I did a long time ago and I did it five times and after I finished that, I held the chord and Louis gave the downbeat with his head and everybody hit the chord at the end.”
Well, almost everybody. As everyone held their final chord, Zutty Singleton unleashed a somewhat strange “clop” from his cymbals. I’ve always liked this sound because, to me, it sounds like someone closing a time capsule on the amazing brilliance that just occurred in the previous 200 seconds. But Hines explained that Singleton had a little trouble with his simple duty: “Zutty had this little clop cymbal...and he clopped it wrong. So then we had to start all over again...We spent hours in there with the hot wax.” Thus, we can be fairly certain that “West End Blues” wasn’t a completely spontaneous performance. No alternate takes survive but I often do wonder that if they did, would each one of them contain the exact same cadenza?
The musicians were justifiably proud of their efforts, as Hines attested to. “When it first came out,” he said, “Louis and I stayed by that recording practically an hour and a half or two hours and we just knocked each other out because we had no idea it was gonna turn out as good as it did.” Armstrong would go on to list “West End Blues” as one of his favorite records, but he never seemed to speak or write too much about it. This is a shame, especially since Gunther Schuller published Early Jazz in 1967 when Armstrong was alive and well. Would it have hurt him or some other musicologist to actually ask the man himself about what was going through his head when he played that cadenza? Then again, to Armstrong it was probably just another session, a brief respite from his daily gig with the Dickerson band (though, of course, he had to know how special “West End Blues” was).
Armstrong’s song must have hit the jazz world like a meteor as other versions began popping up almost immediately. So for now, we’ll leave Pops and focus a little on some of these other recordings. First up, here’s Ethel Waters singing Clarence Williams’s new lyrics to the tune, recorded August 21, 1928, less than two months after Armstrong’s version.
Fortunately, what follows is still pretty magical. Armstrong plays Oliver’s lead in harmony with Jimmy Strong’s clarinet as Fred Robinson’s trombone lends a foggy bottom to the proceedings. Armstrong maintains the dignified, somber feel of Oliver’s record, until he gets to bar seven, where his reading of the melody begins to grow more airy and ornate. At the 12-bar chorus, he spins another arpeggio up to a high concert Bb and then takes a breather, handing the ball over to Robinson to take a short solo. Robinson was no legend and on many of these 1928 sides, he doesn’t hold a candle to Armstrong, but even he seems inspired on this one, taking his time and moaning the essence of the blues on Oliver’s written second strain. He gets delicious backing by a Zutty Singleton shuffle beat with his hand cymbals and a steady, nearly 12-bar tremolo by Hines.
The feel of the record shifts in the third chorus, as Hines and banjoist Mancy Carr simply pound out the melody delicately over quarter notes behind clarinetist Strong’s chalumeau take on Oliver’s next strain. Every phrase Strong plays in answered by some of the most sober wordless vocalizing ever contributed by Armstrong. I hesitate to call it scatting because usually the word “scat” sounds happy and joyful and Armstrong is anything but that during “West End Blues.” There’s not a trace of gravel in his voice and he phrases up high, just like his trumpet, though it’s so relaxed, he sounds like he’s listening to the radio. There’s not a trace of a laugh or a grin; it’s just some very pretty singing.
On the Oliver record, the sober mood was broken by the ridiculous clarinet playing. On Armstrong’s version, the fragile nature of the Armstrong-Strong duet is temporary upset by Earl Hines’s dazzling piano solo. However, unlike the clarinet solo, this is not a bad thing. Hines was one of the most innovative pianists to ever sit behind a keyboard and his virtuosic display on “West End Blues” is one of the record’s most memorable features. Singleton and Carr drop out, leaving Hines all alone but he makes the most of it. His left hand is consistently shifting; part stride, part descending and ascending octaves and tenths, all mixed up the occasional jarring, off-the-beat accent. And that’s just the left hand! The right hand plays a lot of those “trumpet style” octaves, but there’s and a lot of single-note runs, too, leading to the solo being equal parts melodic and flashy. All of it is mesmerizing; just listen to the ascending chordal run he plays with both hands simultaneously for a second at the 2:28 mark for a short example of Hines’s brilliance.
With 51 seconds to go, there’s only enough room for one chorus and a coda. Again, this comes off so perfectly, I don’t think anyone could write it off as being completely spontaneous. Almost like an arrangement, Robinson and Strong harmonize, Strong holding one note while Robinson discreetly accents on the first beat of every bar, hitting a blue note in bar for. Meanwhile, Hines and Carr comp dramatically, surging together as the song begins to sweat. And on top of it all, the celestial being known as Louis Armstrong, holding the most dramatic, throbbing, high Bb in the history of recorded music. He holds it for four bars (12 seconds), with just the right amount of vibrato to send the hairs on one’s neck to rise to attention. It’s such a genius move, because he basically takes the original motif from Oliver’s melody, and inflates it into something much more bold and stunning than anything those original 12 bars suggest
But he’s not done yet! After four bars of the held note, Armstrong unleashes a furious series of descending runs off an Ab7 chord - Bb-Db-Gb-Eb, four notes repeated five times in five beats before Armstrong turns it inside out and hits a high C for a second. He continues onward, phrasing with a flair that does indeed suggest opera, especially with the upward, almost scalar, run he plays towards the very end of the chorus, as well as the little turn of a phrase that ends it.
Then it’s on to the coda, or the final resolution, to continue my movie analogy from earlier. I think if “West End Blues” had a cute little Lil Hardin ending, it might have taken some of the steam out of it. But instead, the actual ending, with Hines’s descending inversions and the final melancholy statement by the horns, delightfully maintains the mood of the entire record. In the noes to a Time-Life LP box set on Hines, the pianist remembered now the ending came about:
“Now how the ending was going to be we didn’t know. We got to the end of it and Louis looked at me and I thought of the first thing I could think of, a little bit of classic thing that I did a long time ago and I did it five times and after I finished that, I held the chord and Louis gave the downbeat with his head and everybody hit the chord at the end.”
Well, almost everybody. As everyone held their final chord, Zutty Singleton unleashed a somewhat strange “clop” from his cymbals. I’ve always liked this sound because, to me, it sounds like someone closing a time capsule on the amazing brilliance that just occurred in the previous 200 seconds. But Hines explained that Singleton had a little trouble with his simple duty: “Zutty had this little clop cymbal...and he clopped it wrong. So then we had to start all over again...We spent hours in there with the hot wax.” Thus, we can be fairly certain that “West End Blues” wasn’t a completely spontaneous performance. No alternate takes survive but I often do wonder that if they did, would each one of them contain the exact same cadenza?
The musicians were justifiably proud of their efforts, as Hines attested to. “When it first came out,” he said, “Louis and I stayed by that recording practically an hour and a half or two hours and we just knocked each other out because we had no idea it was gonna turn out as good as it did.” Armstrong would go on to list “West End Blues” as one of his favorite records, but he never seemed to speak or write too much about it. This is a shame, especially since Gunther Schuller published Early Jazz in 1967 when Armstrong was alive and well. Would it have hurt him or some other musicologist to actually ask the man himself about what was going through his head when he played that cadenza? Then again, to Armstrong it was probably just another session, a brief respite from his daily gig with the Dickerson band (though, of course, he had to know how special “West End Blues” was).
Armstrong’s song must have hit the jazz world like a meteor as other versions began popping up almost immediately. So for now, we’ll leave Pops and focus a little on some of these other recordings. First up, here’s Ethel Waters singing Clarence Williams’s new lyrics to the tune, recorded August 21, 1928, less than two months after Armstrong’s version.
Y13 A2 Jazz: essay plan
My notes, apart from the "Satin Doll" parts in the box, which came from All About Jazz
Plot the development
of jazz formations from the five instrument combos to the big band. Refer to
specific bands and pieces of music in your answer
·
New Orleans Jazz – King Oliver’s Creole Jazz
Band, Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five – Alligator Hop, Sugar Foot Stomp, West End Blues
·
New York bands – Duke Ellington – Mood Indigo, Jungle Nights in Harlem
·
The Swing era of the 30s – Duke Ellington – Take
the A Train, Satin Doll
·
The big bands of the 40s – Glenn Miller –
Moonlight Serenade, In The Mood
Development – 20s Dixieland/New Orleans -
small groups with each player doing their own thing, often leading to
complicated heterophonic textures...... West End Blues
New York – gradual change – more players, more
arranged..... Jungle Nights
30s Swing – more players, complicated harmonies and
rhythms, less scope for improvisation .... Satin Doll
40s Big Band – larger again, more sophisticated, popular
arrangements.... In the Mood
Jungle Nights
Performed by Duke Ellington in the infamous Cotton Club –
night club where black musicians played to white audiences. Jungle. Minor key
depicts the Depression era.
Head – rasping trumpet solo with chromatic sliding unison
saxes. Trumpet solo starts with trill again rasping and emphasising flat 5th.
Clarinet takes the next solo with rapid chromatic scales. Tenor sax has the
next solo, followed by a repeat of the head. Ending has an organised
ritardando, followed by all playing a final minor chord pp-f-pp swell.
Satin Doll
Duke Ellington – later swing style composition. Duke
Ellington himself plays the opening piano intro and the solo which follows the
head. Much more sophisticated arrangement
Intro – head – piano – tenor sax – head with added
trumpet improvisations – quieter version of head – second piano solo, based on
B section of head, making a lot of use of added note chords – head, fades to
piano, drums and bass – head. Composition is longer through the repetition of
the head section in different forms, rather like the baroque ritornello form
|
Musical analysis of “Satin Doll”
|
|
|
Original Key
|
C major with
temporary false key changes to F major and G major during the bridge
|
|
Form
|
A – A – B – A
|
|
Tonality
|
Primarily major
|
|
Movement
|
Almost completely stepwise; only
occasional skips
|
|
The repetitive “A” section melody
sounds suspiciously as if it began life as a “riff” or background figure that
section players use as accompaniment to a soloist (similar to an ostinato).
Section “B” is a bit more developed, based on a scale pattern that descends a
fourth and then ascends back up a fourth.
The chord progression of “A” is
interesting because it starts out with a harmonic sequence often used as a
“turnaround” at the end of a tune–ii7 – V7 – ii7 – VI7. The fifth and sixth
measures of “A” almost defy analysis. If a composer following the classical
rules of voice leading had written the harmonic progression here, it would
have been II7 (or ii7) – V7(#9)– I (D7 or Dm7 – G7(#9) – Cma7 in the
original). Instead, the chords used seem completely coloristic and yet
disguise the voice-leading function definitely present when looked at
closely. In the fifth measure, the first chord written is Am7(b5)/Eb (which
could have been written as an Ebø7–and actually is), which proceeds to the D7
– the II7 we would expect to find there. The next chord, however, is Abm9,
which resolves to Db9. Under normal circumstances, one would think of this as
a ii7 – V7 – I in Gb, but really what has happened is that the Abm9 has been
an embellishment of the “Neapolitan” chord (in the key of C, a Db7) which is
nothing more than a tri-tone substitution for V7. Indeed, proper
voice-leading technique is still present, albeit disguised almost beyond
recognition.
Section “B” is more orthodox
sounding: ii7 – V7 – I in F and G major. Transition back to section “A” is
accomplished by dropping the middle three voices of the G7 chord a half-step,
creating a vii˚7/ii in the original tonic key of C major.
|
|
Conclusion
Bands got bigger
Arrangements became more complicated, less improvised haphazard
Solos stopped being a free for all and became part of an
overall, controlled structure
Solos became the only place for improvisation
Gradual change to a more popular, sophisticated style as
jazz became more acceptable
Y13 A2 Jazz Notes: Jelly Roll Blues - Jelly Roll Morton
This is an example of more technical, less fanboy writing about jazz from Richard Trythall. I've done, and will give you an annotated copy of the score
The following manuscript of Jelly Roll Morton's "Jelly Roll Blues" was transcribed from the Smithsonian Library recordings made in 1938 by Morton. The original recording is available commercially on Rounder Records' "Jelly Roll Morton, The Library of Congress Recordings, Volume 2, tracks #8 and #9". I completed this transcription (along with 16 others) in order to facilitate my own performance of Morton's piano music ("Jelly Roll Morton Piano Music", Richard Trythall, piano, Musicaimmagine, MR 10047). These transcriptions are, therefore, closely intertwined with performance practice. In them, I have attempted to indicate as exactly as possible not only the notes Morton played, but their effective duration and release - a vital element in determining the performing gesture. I have also given detailed attention to the nuance and accentuation with which they are performed and indicated unusual dynamic relations between the simultaneous lines. There are additional indications, in words, regarding "swing" (which I take as a term indicating both a rhythmic and dynamic inequality between the two 8th notes in a beat) and Morton's unique use of the thumb of the RH. All of these indications, and the following observations as well, are intended to help the pianist approximate Morton's own performance practice.
The formal plan for "Jelly Roll Blues" is simplicity itself - a set of variations over a 12 bar blues. Morton's piano realization, however, is anything but obvious. Conceived as if an arrangement for a jazz band of the epoch, he has created a fascinating textural mosaic which alternates florid solo "breaks" with rhythmic chordal responses while yet maintaining the original song's melodic line. (Morton also sings this blues on track #9 of the Library of Congress recording).
The concept of the imaginary jazz band is fundamental to the interpretation process since it clarifies the polyphonic nature of this music and suggests the importance of "orchestrating" every moment of the score. The score lives and breathes in countless little details which project the flux and flow of a group of individuals "conversing" - at times individually (see the solo "breaks" in bars 29-30, 35-36, 41-42, 47-48), at times in homophonic blocks (see the ritornello figure of bar 14-15, 26-27, 38-39, 50-51), as well as in a number of other homophonic textures (some straight forward, others with contrapuntal voices added) which carry out Morton's rich orchestral dialogue. Each of these situations requires a different pianistic touch and weighting - suggested essentially by the orchestration which the pianist imagines. Color and attacks need to be adjusted to suggest clarinet lines, trombone lines, tuba lines, etc. Similarly the homophonic tutti sections need to have a homogenous dynamic, attack and color suggesting performance by a single instrumental "section", while other moments (such as bars 9 - 10) require a variety of dynamic, attack and color in order to clarify the heterogeneous elements of the texture. Particularly important is the projection of the contrast of the tutti material with the solo material. The 3rd chorus of the blues (bar 29-40) provides a good example. Here staccato, tutti chords - dense, wide register sonorities performed by the full "band" - accompany the "clarinet's" solo. The pianist needs to convey both the weight and attack of the band's chords and the fragility of the soloist's trill figure. This contrast prepares the stage for the tutti's explosion on the second line of the blues which, in turn, sets up the contrast for the next clarinet solo (bars 35-36), and so on.
The fact that the roots of this music are found within the band tradition suggests a number of additional points regarding the "nitty gritty" of performance. The phrasing, for example, should be considered from the wind player's point of view, from the necessity to breathe, and from the natural attack and decay patterns of notes and phrases as performed on various wind instruments. Perhaps the clearest example of this has to do with the way Morton interconnects his phrases. Like a wind player, his hand frequently "bounces off" the last note in a phrase (cutting the phrase slightly short), takes a quick "breath" and alights firmly on the "goal" attack of the next phrase unit. Examples of this gesture are found throughout his music. In fact, he does it three times already in the four bar introduction of "Jelly Roll Blues": between the & of 4 /bar 1 and the & of 1/bar 2; between the 1/bar 3 and the & of 1/ bar 3; between the 1/bar 4, and the 3/bar 4. This sort of "bouncing" or "springing", from shortened release-over a rest-to solid attack, imparts an elastic, buoyant quality, a kinesthetic feeling of expectation and fulfillment allowing Morton to interlock his phrases in a particularly visceral way. Another telling example of this can be found in the RH between the & of 4/bar 20 and the & of 1/bar 21. Here both the "bounce" chord (on the & of 4/bar 20) and the "goal" chord (on the & of 1/bar 21) are accented. Additionally the arrival chord is longer, more dense and dissonant creating an explosive, syncopated "landing". What is particularly important in this gesture is the feeling of charged expectancy given to the space in between these points, the moment of "suspended free fall" which is then released by the following attack. For pianists, the breath is drawn with the finger and wrist "lift off". When a natural hand gesture is found, the phrasing and the proper feel come automatically.
Along the same lines, the flow of breath throughout a phrase should be traced in the dynamic shading assigned to each phrase. Like the voice, the sound of a wind instrument is in constant movement reflecting, principally, the amount of breath at disposition at any given time. Frequently (though certainly not always) the volume is slightly higher at the beginning of a phrase, when the player has just drawn a fresh breath, and slightly lower towards its end - as the player is running low on breath. (Examples which might use this shading include the phrases in bars 7, 8 and the ritornello figure of bars 14, 15) This is not so much perceived as a "decrescendo", but as shading and as a sign of the life cycle of the phrase itself. There are, of course, many other breath patterns as well. What is important is that the performer finds a vital, organic shading for each phrase, one that underscores the character of that particular phrase and that fits within the context of the larger "conversation" (phrase structure) which constitutes the entire composition.
A similar dynamic variety, attributable to tonguing and breath patterns natural to wind instruments, is also found within the phrase at the micro level, in the swing beat. In this pattern, the second eighth of the two eighth note swing beat (which places the second eighth of the figure very late in the beat - more or less on the third eighth of a triplet) is performed less loudly than the first note - meaning that the second eighth is both qualitatively and quantitatively weaker than the first. In the piano realization of these passages, Morton generally employs musical devices such as density, harmonic and/or registral stresses to underscore this strong-weak tendency. In bars 7 and 8, for example, the first two longer, "on the beat" notes of the pattern are non-chordal accessory tones which move to chordal tones on the weak portion of the swing beat; in the first 2 beats of bar 14, the longer portion is occupied by dissonant, 5 note chords which move to dyads on the weak portion of the unit. In passages such as these, little, if any, additional accentuation is required to project the swing unit since the stress pattern is suggested so clearly by the harmonic movement and by the hand position itself.
In his more vigorous scansions, however, Morton also uses heavy performance accents to reinforce these stresses. In these cases, the dynamic inequality between the two notes in the swing unit widens exponentially until the short-weak portion of the beat practically disappears in comparison to the long-strong (bars 9-10, 21-22, 33-34, etc.). Occasionally he may also reverse this pattern by placing a strong accent on the shorter part and de-emphasizing the longer part of the swing eighth unit (as in bar 32). This sort of "high relief" accentuation confers a jaunty, "gutsy" quality to these passages. Not surprisingly, it is precisely in these passages that Morton abandons his contrapuntal bass line and resorts to a rudimentary "oom pah" figure in the LH. By clearly marking the beat with this figure (its band origins are clarified by the name itself), he intensifies the feel of the underlying quarter pulse and reinforces the visceral presence of the "beat" against which the heavily swung melody is working.
Seen on a larger formal plane, such heavily accented, "beat intensive" swing passages serve as orientation points for the surrounding material. In this particular case, for example, the first line of each chorus of the blues (bar 5-8, 17-20, 29-32) has the feel of an extended upbeat to the downbeat provided by the vigorous opening of the second line in bar 9, bar 21, and bar 33 respectively. The "release" that the second line brings in each case is palpable. In the latter two choruses, this effect is even stronger since it comes following a solo break. Here the arrival of the swing beat is as much a change of mental attitude and spirit as it is of musical texture. The vital difference here is in the quality of the feeling communicated by the material which is "swung" and that which is not. In "Jelly Roll Blues", the solo breaks are not played with a swing beat. These solos are composed of rapid ornamental filling - trills, scales, arpeggios - made up of equal weighted notes performed in a smooth and regular fashion. The rhythmic regularity of such a material is not well adapted to expressing a strong beat, let alone expressing swing hence it falls in sharp contrast with the material which is performed with the swing beat.
This contrast between swing and non-swing material allows Morton remarkable possibilities for characterizing his musical material. By juxtaposing these opposites, he can achieve extremely dramatic effects locally and by controlling the amount of swing, he can also underscore a larger sense of form. Most of his pieces are constructed with an ever increasing sense of swing in mind - often concluding with a final "stomp" section. In "Jelly Roll Blues", for example, this heavy, swing scansion characterizes all of the variations of the second strain (in Eb Major). Essentially Morton "telescopes" his variation form so that each successive variation communicates greater rhythmic urgency. In turn this increasing excitement gives a sense of progression and ordered form to what easily might have been simply a succession of events.
It is, of course, ultimately up to the interpreter to find the proper manner to project Morton's irresistible energy and unerring sense of form. In my notation of his music and in these observations, I hope that I have supplied indications helpful in confronting both challenges. Morton's music is a demanding music - composed by a first class composer and a virtuoso pianist. It provides the definitive pianistic statement of a vital epoch in American popular music, but it goes beyond this as well. Like Scott Joplin's music, in fact, Morton's music transcends the vernacular "ghetto" and like Joplin's music, it is destined to become a vital part of the larger twentieth century piano repertoire.
The following manuscript of Jelly Roll Morton's "Jelly Roll Blues" was transcribed from the Smithsonian Library recordings made in 1938 by Morton. The original recording is available commercially on Rounder Records' "Jelly Roll Morton, The Library of Congress Recordings, Volume 2, tracks #8 and #9". I completed this transcription (along with 16 others) in order to facilitate my own performance of Morton's piano music ("Jelly Roll Morton Piano Music", Richard Trythall, piano, Musicaimmagine, MR 10047). These transcriptions are, therefore, closely intertwined with performance practice. In them, I have attempted to indicate as exactly as possible not only the notes Morton played, but their effective duration and release - a vital element in determining the performing gesture. I have also given detailed attention to the nuance and accentuation with which they are performed and indicated unusual dynamic relations between the simultaneous lines. There are additional indications, in words, regarding "swing" (which I take as a term indicating both a rhythmic and dynamic inequality between the two 8th notes in a beat) and Morton's unique use of the thumb of the RH. All of these indications, and the following observations as well, are intended to help the pianist approximate Morton's own performance practice.
The formal plan for "Jelly Roll Blues" is simplicity itself - a set of variations over a 12 bar blues. Morton's piano realization, however, is anything but obvious. Conceived as if an arrangement for a jazz band of the epoch, he has created a fascinating textural mosaic which alternates florid solo "breaks" with rhythmic chordal responses while yet maintaining the original song's melodic line. (Morton also sings this blues on track #9 of the Library of Congress recording).
The concept of the imaginary jazz band is fundamental to the interpretation process since it clarifies the polyphonic nature of this music and suggests the importance of "orchestrating" every moment of the score. The score lives and breathes in countless little details which project the flux and flow of a group of individuals "conversing" - at times individually (see the solo "breaks" in bars 29-30, 35-36, 41-42, 47-48), at times in homophonic blocks (see the ritornello figure of bar 14-15, 26-27, 38-39, 50-51), as well as in a number of other homophonic textures (some straight forward, others with contrapuntal voices added) which carry out Morton's rich orchestral dialogue. Each of these situations requires a different pianistic touch and weighting - suggested essentially by the orchestration which the pianist imagines. Color and attacks need to be adjusted to suggest clarinet lines, trombone lines, tuba lines, etc. Similarly the homophonic tutti sections need to have a homogenous dynamic, attack and color suggesting performance by a single instrumental "section", while other moments (such as bars 9 - 10) require a variety of dynamic, attack and color in order to clarify the heterogeneous elements of the texture. Particularly important is the projection of the contrast of the tutti material with the solo material. The 3rd chorus of the blues (bar 29-40) provides a good example. Here staccato, tutti chords - dense, wide register sonorities performed by the full "band" - accompany the "clarinet's" solo. The pianist needs to convey both the weight and attack of the band's chords and the fragility of the soloist's trill figure. This contrast prepares the stage for the tutti's explosion on the second line of the blues which, in turn, sets up the contrast for the next clarinet solo (bars 35-36), and so on.
The fact that the roots of this music are found within the band tradition suggests a number of additional points regarding the "nitty gritty" of performance. The phrasing, for example, should be considered from the wind player's point of view, from the necessity to breathe, and from the natural attack and decay patterns of notes and phrases as performed on various wind instruments. Perhaps the clearest example of this has to do with the way Morton interconnects his phrases. Like a wind player, his hand frequently "bounces off" the last note in a phrase (cutting the phrase slightly short), takes a quick "breath" and alights firmly on the "goal" attack of the next phrase unit. Examples of this gesture are found throughout his music. In fact, he does it three times already in the four bar introduction of "Jelly Roll Blues": between the & of 4 /bar 1 and the & of 1/bar 2; between the 1/bar 3 and the & of 1/ bar 3; between the 1/bar 4, and the 3/bar 4. This sort of "bouncing" or "springing", from shortened release-over a rest-to solid attack, imparts an elastic, buoyant quality, a kinesthetic feeling of expectation and fulfillment allowing Morton to interlock his phrases in a particularly visceral way. Another telling example of this can be found in the RH between the & of 4/bar 20 and the & of 1/bar 21. Here both the "bounce" chord (on the & of 4/bar 20) and the "goal" chord (on the & of 1/bar 21) are accented. Additionally the arrival chord is longer, more dense and dissonant creating an explosive, syncopated "landing". What is particularly important in this gesture is the feeling of charged expectancy given to the space in between these points, the moment of "suspended free fall" which is then released by the following attack. For pianists, the breath is drawn with the finger and wrist "lift off". When a natural hand gesture is found, the phrasing and the proper feel come automatically.
Along the same lines, the flow of breath throughout a phrase should be traced in the dynamic shading assigned to each phrase. Like the voice, the sound of a wind instrument is in constant movement reflecting, principally, the amount of breath at disposition at any given time. Frequently (though certainly not always) the volume is slightly higher at the beginning of a phrase, when the player has just drawn a fresh breath, and slightly lower towards its end - as the player is running low on breath. (Examples which might use this shading include the phrases in bars 7, 8 and the ritornello figure of bars 14, 15) This is not so much perceived as a "decrescendo", but as shading and as a sign of the life cycle of the phrase itself. There are, of course, many other breath patterns as well. What is important is that the performer finds a vital, organic shading for each phrase, one that underscores the character of that particular phrase and that fits within the context of the larger "conversation" (phrase structure) which constitutes the entire composition.
A similar dynamic variety, attributable to tonguing and breath patterns natural to wind instruments, is also found within the phrase at the micro level, in the swing beat. In this pattern, the second eighth of the two eighth note swing beat (which places the second eighth of the figure very late in the beat - more or less on the third eighth of a triplet) is performed less loudly than the first note - meaning that the second eighth is both qualitatively and quantitatively weaker than the first. In the piano realization of these passages, Morton generally employs musical devices such as density, harmonic and/or registral stresses to underscore this strong-weak tendency. In bars 7 and 8, for example, the first two longer, "on the beat" notes of the pattern are non-chordal accessory tones which move to chordal tones on the weak portion of the swing beat; in the first 2 beats of bar 14, the longer portion is occupied by dissonant, 5 note chords which move to dyads on the weak portion of the unit. In passages such as these, little, if any, additional accentuation is required to project the swing unit since the stress pattern is suggested so clearly by the harmonic movement and by the hand position itself.
In his more vigorous scansions, however, Morton also uses heavy performance accents to reinforce these stresses. In these cases, the dynamic inequality between the two notes in the swing unit widens exponentially until the short-weak portion of the beat practically disappears in comparison to the long-strong (bars 9-10, 21-22, 33-34, etc.). Occasionally he may also reverse this pattern by placing a strong accent on the shorter part and de-emphasizing the longer part of the swing eighth unit (as in bar 32). This sort of "high relief" accentuation confers a jaunty, "gutsy" quality to these passages. Not surprisingly, it is precisely in these passages that Morton abandons his contrapuntal bass line and resorts to a rudimentary "oom pah" figure in the LH. By clearly marking the beat with this figure (its band origins are clarified by the name itself), he intensifies the feel of the underlying quarter pulse and reinforces the visceral presence of the "beat" against which the heavily swung melody is working.
Seen on a larger formal plane, such heavily accented, "beat intensive" swing passages serve as orientation points for the surrounding material. In this particular case, for example, the first line of each chorus of the blues (bar 5-8, 17-20, 29-32) has the feel of an extended upbeat to the downbeat provided by the vigorous opening of the second line in bar 9, bar 21, and bar 33 respectively. The "release" that the second line brings in each case is palpable. In the latter two choruses, this effect is even stronger since it comes following a solo break. Here the arrival of the swing beat is as much a change of mental attitude and spirit as it is of musical texture. The vital difference here is in the quality of the feeling communicated by the material which is "swung" and that which is not. In "Jelly Roll Blues", the solo breaks are not played with a swing beat. These solos are composed of rapid ornamental filling - trills, scales, arpeggios - made up of equal weighted notes performed in a smooth and regular fashion. The rhythmic regularity of such a material is not well adapted to expressing a strong beat, let alone expressing swing hence it falls in sharp contrast with the material which is performed with the swing beat.
This contrast between swing and non-swing material allows Morton remarkable possibilities for characterizing his musical material. By juxtaposing these opposites, he can achieve extremely dramatic effects locally and by controlling the amount of swing, he can also underscore a larger sense of form. Most of his pieces are constructed with an ever increasing sense of swing in mind - often concluding with a final "stomp" section. In "Jelly Roll Blues", for example, this heavy, swing scansion characterizes all of the variations of the second strain (in Eb Major). Essentially Morton "telescopes" his variation form so that each successive variation communicates greater rhythmic urgency. In turn this increasing excitement gives a sense of progression and ordered form to what easily might have been simply a succession of events.
It is, of course, ultimately up to the interpreter to find the proper manner to project Morton's irresistible energy and unerring sense of form. In my notation of his music and in these observations, I hope that I have supplied indications helpful in confronting both challenges. Morton's music is a demanding music - composed by a first class composer and a virtuoso pianist. It provides the definitive pianistic statement of a vital epoch in American popular music, but it goes beyond this as well. Like Scott Joplin's music, in fact, Morton's music transcends the vernacular "ghetto" and like Joplin's music, it is destined to become a vital part of the larger twentieth century piano repertoire.
Y13 A2 Jazz Notes: In The Mood - Glenn Miller
If I don't quote the source for anything I put on this blog I wrote the notes myself. Most of this information below is taken from All About Jazz, which is a very good website, but with some malware problems, so be careful when going there yourself! Anyway, here are the notes:
One Of the Kings Of Swing
While many people argued whether Goodman or Shaw was the better musician, nobody during the Swing Era could ignore that Glenn Miller left both of them in his wake once he hit the scene. Sure, the bespectacled, tight-lipped bandleader seemed more like the leader of a choir than a swing band, but his keen arranging skills and ear for melody ensured that at least every other tune he recorded seemed like the anthem of the age. He was the most popular bandleader of his day, playing the Glen Island Casino during the summer, the Hotel Pennsylvania's Café Rouge in the autumn and winter, and playing at all times and places through radio broadcasts and Victrolas. To many people, Glenn Miller's music is forever connected with a time and outlook in a way that few of his contemporaries can claim.
While many of his songs are classics, with "In the Mood Miller gave the Swing Era its defining moment. With the possible exception of "Sing, Sing, Sing it's the one big band song that everyone seems to know, and generally it's only Miller's original version that gets wide circulation. But it's also one of the best dance songs to emerge from the period, a bouncy fox trot that got the older people on the floor and appeased a younger crowd eager for killer-dillers. There was also the famous fade away section, which never seems to lose its element of suspense upon repeated listenings.
The Sound
Like other bandleaders Miller was a reluctant star who shied from the spotlight; he once said of personal appearances: "I'm so nervous I'd rather go to jail than make one. His perfectionism as a taskmaster was well known; according to one of his former sidemen, Miller would rehearse every bar of every song a thousand times until he was satisfied. He even insisted on a strict conduct code for the bandstand and on at least one occasion mandated that everyone wear maroon socks. Yet Miller's perfectionism created a tight outfit that featured many of the top arrangers and soloists of the day, many of whom were loyal to him despite the fact that they feared being fired at a moment's notice for unacceptable behavior.
However, it was Miller's unique and mesmerizing sound that was the linchpin to so many hits. As Gunther Schuller put it, Miller's sound was "able to penetrate our collective awareness in a way that few others have. The basic ingredients were a lead voice composed of the saxophone section and a clarinet (played masterfully by Wilbur Schwartz) juxtaposed with a muted trombone sound wholly separate from the trumpet section. These palettes of color, as it were, gave arrangers a limited spectrum to work with and unified the band's sound to those specific timbres. It was an arranged that ever since then was copied time and time again, a template for what big band music would sound like.
"In the Mood"
"In the Mood is based on an old jazz riff that had been passed around for a few years in various forms, most notably in a Fletcher Henderson tune called "Hot and Anxious. Joe Garland created a new arrangement using the riff with the cooler title of "In the Mood. Artie Shaw was the first to dabble with it, but never recorded it because it ran eight minutes, too long for a 78 (however, a live version does exist.) Miller, a gifted editor, was able to pare the tune down to its essentials to fit on one side of a record. "Glenn would get the scissors out and start editing, said Ray McKinley, Miller's former drummer and vocalist. "A cut here, a cut there, do this, do that, and he'd cut it down to the meat and potatoes of the tune. Everyone, of course, is familiar with the meat and potatoes of "In the Mood : the famous introduction featuring the saxophones in unison, the catchy riff that anchors the tune, the suspense building ending; all ingredients of the classic Miller sound.
"In the Mood has two built in solo sections, including one of the famous "tenor battles between Tex Beneke and Al Klink. Beneke became a star while with the Miller band, playing a smoothed-out version of Coleman Hawkins' style that nevertheless fit perfectly in with Miller's conception. Many felt that Klink could hold his own with Beneke, but Beneke always got the solos, even when arrangers tried to write in parts for Klink. The other is a 16-bar trumpet solo by Clyde Hurley which leads into the famous fade-away ending, which to this day is a model of suspense and dynamics. Miller was able to control the ending to last as long as he wanted, depending on the audience. Many wondered how the band know when to come back in loud; Miller signaled the drummer to hit a cowbell when the band was to come roaring back in.
Structure
Unison sax intro – head – tenor sax solo: battle between 2 tenor sax soloists trading ideas – trumpet solo – fade out – head. Head based on 12 bar blues
Foxtrot
Fast dance, popular in 1940s, 2 or 4 time
More popular style
Big band music with only 2 solo sections where improvisation can take place. Simple but memorable themes. Use of syncopation and dance style as the music is primarily to dance to. Most famous piece of the big band/swing era, summing up the hopeful mood of the time, in spite of the second world war context.
Y13 A2 - Four Decades of Jazz: Overview
Four Decades of Jazz and Blues
1910-1950
Origins of Jazz
African music –
complicated rhythms, syncopation, call and response, improvisation, blue notes,
slides, polyrhythms, singing in close harmony, using dance and music to work up
to a frenzy or trance-like state
Spiritual –
religious melody originally sung by African American slaves in churches or as
they worked. The melodies were often pentatonic and were sung (often in
harmony) with such fervour that they could lead to a trance-like state. The words,
when written down by white musicians often reflected a “black” way of speaking.
Nobody Knows the Trouble I Seen, Michael
Row The Boat Ashore
Gospel – sung
in black American churches, combines spiritual melodies with blues notes, jazz
rhythms, call and response, improvised parts to make the melodies more upbeat
and allow performers to work themselves up into an almost hypnotic state of
religious ecstasy. Oh Happy Day, We Shall
Overcome
Ragtime –
stride in left hand, syncopated (ragged) melody in right hand. Regular sections
of 16 bars from European dance music. Use of diminished 7th chords
and a tag to introduce the stride pattern. Scott
Joplin – Maple Leaf Rag.
Blues – use of
blue notes – flattened 3rd, 7th and sometimes 5th
– over major harmony. The blue notes give a minor feel, helping to illustrate
the words which are often about unhappy times. Some say blue notes happened
when Africans tried to adapt their pentatonic music to Western melodies. Bends
and slides are often used with blue notes. These can’t be played on the piano,
so the piano imitates them by playing two notes crushed together
(accacciaturas). 12 bar structure: I I I I IV IV I I V IV I V or in the key of
C: C C C C F F C C G F C G. This is such an established pattern that it is easy
for anyone to meet and improvise using it. The lyrics often have the same
pattern – one line repeated, followed by a new line and then the first line
again – AABA. Singing often has a rasping or growling quality. Walking bass
sometimes used. Robert Johnson – Me and
the Devil Blues, Bessie Smith – Empty Bed Blues
Jazz Styles
Stride – the
ragtime left hand leaping from bass notes to a mid-range chord became the
harmonic and rhythmic basis for blues scale improvisations in the right hand. James P Johnson – Pork and Beans, Fats
Waller – Alligator Crawl
Boogie Woogie
– the left hand stops the stride leap and does patterns in the same position
which keep the beat going, often using dotted/swung rhythms, related to trains.
Jimmy Yancey – Yancey Stomp, Meade Lux
Lewis – Boogie Woogie.
Dixieland/New
Orleans/Trad Jazz/Hot Jazz (1920s) – small combo – trumpet, double bass,
clarinet, trombone, drums, banjo, piano. Structure developed by Jelly Roll
Morton is used – intro – head (popular song), followed by a series of solos
before returning to the song melody. Often people improvise different solos at
the same time, creating a polyphonic/heterophonic/pseudo unison texture. Louis Armstrong – West End Blues, Jelly Roll
Morton – Original Jelly Roll Blues
Swing/Big Band
(1930s) – larger combo, big brass section, saxophones. They used professional
arrangements of popular Tin Pan Alley songs. Less scope for improvisation,
texture more straightforward than in New Orleans jazz. Often featured guest
singers. Duke Ellington – Stompin’ at the
Savoy, Glen Miller – In the Mood, Count Basie – Basie, Benny Goodman – Sing,
Sing, Sing
Bebop/Bop/Cool
Jazz (1940s) – smaller groups, more improvisation. Solos often technically
difficult, harmonies more daring (use of 9th, 11th, 13th
chords, quartal harmony), fast beat supported by walking bass, more irregular
rhythmic patterns. Charlie Parker – Be
Bop, Miles Davis – A Night in Tunisa, Dizzie Gillespie – Salt Peanuts
The Influence of Jazz on Classical Music
Classical composers used more syncopated rhythms, blue notes
and jazz instruments/combinations of instruments to make their compositions
more exciting and to reflect the popular music of the time. Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue, Bernstein –
Prelude, Fugue and Riffs, Milhaud – La Création du Monde
Essay Questions
·
Explain the different types of music which
existed in the early 20th century which gave rise to jazz. Refer to
specific composers and pieces
·
Plot the progress of the development of jazz
formations from the five-instrument combos to the big band. Refer to specific
bands and pieces of music
·
Some composers were more closely associated with
music in the European orchestral tradition but still found much inspiration
from jazz. Choose two pieces of music and write about the jazz influences that
are evident
·
Choose two jazz musicians and write about their
contributions to the development of jazz. Refer to specific pieces of music
·
How did jazz influence mainstream music in
Europe during the 20s and 30s? Refer in detail to pieces by at least two
different composers
·
Write an essay tracing the development of jazz
from 1910 up to the beginnings of the swing era in the early 1930s. Refer to
specific pieces of music, commenting on melody, harmony, rhythm and use of
instruments
·
Assess the contribution of one of the following
musicians to the jazz world. Refer to at least one piece of music, commenting
on melody, harmony, rhythm and use of instruments: Jelly-Roll Morton, Louis
Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington
·
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