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Listening to jazz: Different approaches


Gheorghe

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It took me much time to decide if I want to start that topic and even was not sure in what category it might fit in: 

In the course of many music discussions here on the forum both with musicians and not playing music lovers I would like to UNDERSTAND, how people who just love the music but don´t play it ore don´t know musical details , well.....how they listen to albums or to live music, how they enjoy it. 


This might also be very helpful for a player to understand how he can touch the ears of a listener. 

In my case: If I first hear a tune I hear in what key it´s done, what form it has and that I hear the form in the solos and know where they are at and at the same time I enjoy what they do, how they might develope their solos, what mood they are in..... well ..... as other musicians would listen. If it´s a so called "free  jazz recording" I still think I can hear where they are at and what they doin and how moods, sounds , certain patterns, modulations are happening. 

And this is nothing theoretical or analytic, it´s just happening automatically, like if I see a house or a landscape and know what kind of house it is, or what kind of landscape it is. You realize what it is and at the same time you enjoy lookin at it. 

And now I would like to hear also from you fans who don´t know about musical forms, numbers of bars, or in what key they playing and all that: Is it mostly the rhythm, is it the "sound" or the "mood", is it like a tone poem, or how do you enjoy the music. 

I hope it is not a dumb question, but I just want to know how people who are not musicians are listening to music. 

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I'm not a musician, though I can play a little blues piano. In my experience you don't have to be a musician to be able to hear the structure of choruses, recognize changes, anticipate phrases - in short, know where the music is going. That said, I realize that many - perhaps the majority - of the audience members at gigs I go to don't even have this rudimentary knowledge. I was somewhat amazed when Greg Abate said that he'd failed to teach a prolific organizer of gigs in these parts to recognize when a chorus ended and another began!

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Forgive me if I am not completely the guy you’re looking for. I did play saxophone between my 7th and 13th year. They said I had some natural talent but I was/am lazy and did not practice enough. I do have some music theoretical knowledge but nothing advanced and its been a while. I surely can’t hear what key something is. I do hear if a guy isn’t very skilled in improvising and trying to stick to blues scales and stuff (that’s what I did too). Some solos in well known pop songs tend to irritate me for that reason. I remember a video of Oscar Peterson duelling with Keith Emerson and Keith is clearly showing he could play from charts but couldn’t improvise at all.

When I started listening to jazz, technique and skill was all that mattered to me. Now here comes the cliche: now I don’t care for it anymore. Now it’s mostly about feeling, emotional depth and originality.  Bird, Newk, Stitt and Tatum: those guys could still make me crazy (in a good way) with their supernatural skills. But those skills aren’t a necessity for me to enjoy. I don’t analyze music technically or something like that. It’s just a click I’ll have that is not really to be put down in words. I have it with Billy Harper and Mal Waldron. It’s like feeling every sentence they want to tell. And I still have it mostly with Coltrane who of course also is a very skilled player.

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So you both KNOW at least something about form. I don´t mean technical skill, but musicianship. But the form and the chord progressions is not a thing that I have to analyse, it is there anyway. 

About keys if somebody knows or doesnt know what key it is. I heard that there is something what people call perfect pitch and I don´t like that expression because I don´t like the word perfect, but each key is like a colour for me. As if I look at an obiect and can tell what colour it has, I can say this is in Db or Bb or plain C ...... all them keys ...., I don´t know else but would be interested if people who don´t recognize keys in the way I do, how they get their impressions....... and sure they get....

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When I first started listening to jazz (in college), I was limited to a very few albums — so repetition of listening was the order of the day (and really my only option). I’ve told this story several times, but for the first month or two, I listened to just four albums over and over, by Miles (KOBNefertiti) and Joe Henderson (Mode for JoePower to the People).

Initially I was intrigued by them, but with repetition, I began to be able to anticipate things, or at least the framework of the songs — the chord progressions and baselines — all became more and more familiar. And more and more they worked and really ‘wormed’ their way into my head.

And as I got more to listen to, I was initially limited to just those 8-10 albums for a couple more months (I only remember the first four titles).

But I think repetition is the key to getting into classical music too. I took a 200-level “Intro to Western Classical Music” class midway thru college, and much of it all sounded the same to me at first — but repetition of a few things allowed the specific themes to come out. The class had a a couple weeks of modern classics, and I’ll never forget how alien and bizarre Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire sounded. But I used to play it for other people from time to time (“oh, you think that sounds weird, wait until you here THIS!”). But then, in a couple years, the first couple short movements of even Pierrot Lunaire began to sound very familiar to me — and since I was a singer, I could even ‘speak-sing’ along — as a sort of bizarre parlor trick. But then, just a couple short years later, I genuinely liked it!

ANYWAY, anything can become considerably more familiar, and “aurally understandable” with repeated exposure — and I think my limited choices of listening material at first (when it came to jazz) certainly helped there.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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"most people" have been conditioned to have very limited spectrums of their senses. whether or not this conditioning builds on natural instincts or is in fact a brainwashing of sorts to keep people "in line"....I don't know for certain. Maybe both?

Any way...my "project" the last few years is to figure out what it is about stuff that most people like that I can't stand. And almost inevitable, it comes down to, do I feel an expression, or are people just playing notes to make a familiar sound. I've learned a lot doing this, including that even people who are just making "product" with no real sincerity other than to get  that product out can and sometimes do have a real skill set for doing exactly that. Call it "quality bullshit". Listening to contemporary country is prime fodder for this. I can spot the various "triggers" in the music and scourn them while at the same time digging the way the record sounds, all the production decisions and such. and then...shut that crap off.

As for jazz....like i said most people have a pretty small range of comprehension about things like harmony and rhythm. Even tone, I man if you can't tell, say, Grover Washington on soprano from Kenny G....how can that be except you just either don't have or haven't developed some pretty basic discernment skill.

And how I listen to jazz now combines a lot of things, but I start with rhythm and tone/sound. That's where I start from. After that, I'm happy/"happy" to be able to get into the technicalities once that test is passed. But sometimes, fuck it, just let me enjoy it first.

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Jazz (that I like) is simply a feeling in the music that I enjoy. "Blues and Swing" may be Marsalis-speak, but it will always describe the music I enjoy. I know nothing about keys or structure and 30+ years in, I couldn't tell you when a chorus is going to end to save my life and I do not see how it could change my enjoyment one iota.

(Then again I have a recording of Sammy Price's Two Tenor Boogie in which it is unmistakable that Percy France "lost track" because Leonard Gaskin's bass solo started while Percy was still going on his solo, and he just sort of let it peter out while Leonard took center-stage. Was Leonard early or did Percy F-up? I guess if I sent it to Jim he could surely tell.)

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Participating in the BFT's has opened my approach to listening to "jazz," but I realize I'm still very much a novice with this music and hope to keep that sense growing in terms of recognition/knowledge of all aspects of this idiom. It's a struggle to articulate my thoughts on those songs, but that's a challenge I want to get better at because letting it rest at "this song is good" or "I like this" seem shallow and rather dismissive and maybe disrespectful at times. 

No idea what key songs are in for any genre. Rudimentary music ability as I've only had few years playing an instrument and that was long, long ago. I would say my literacy level for sheet music is still at that middle school level, but I had a very good teacher back then. I can follow the notes if reading while hearing a song, but bass clef and percussion sheets confuse me a bit. It's my own regret in life that I didn't stick with playing for a longer period, but I had to make a decision at about 12 years old and well, 12 y/o kids don't make the best decisions. One has no real grasp on how that will basically affect the rest of your life when your 10 - 12 y/o self is making that determination. Oh well. Thankfully others made different decisions and put things on tape. 

I listen to a lot of genres fwiw. Outside of "jazz" I dig reggae and most any JA music style the most. While those styles aren't technically difficult, there's still an enormous amount of feeling & emotion that I connect to; and dabblers and interlopers can be spotted real quick, mainly due to drummers not being able to carry the swing in that syncopated beat, but there's other factors at play too.

Other genres I dig are funk, rap, hip hop, R&B...but also mainstream pop (there's some really good funk-influenced tunes being produced on the charts these days), "smooth" jazz and soft/yacht rock...all kinds of "world" music - the list goes on. Country and classical are outside of what I typically enjoy, but there are oases in those deserts that I've been able to find. 

But back to "jazz," I tend to concentrate on overall composition and the conversations that I can pick up along with some true feeling being expressed. My antenna isn't always in tune so I return to things I may be challenged with so maybe the frequency can be picked up better. The SGQ was like that for me. Couldn't connect at all at first, but kept coming back and it finally hit me, and I'm glad it did. 

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When I first began to listen to and enjoy jazz I had no understanding of any of the technical issues, but it was the feeling I got from the music that grabbed me.

Over many years of listening I gradually gained knowledge of harmony, rhythm, tone, phrasing, chord changes, choruses, etc. I also learned to understand how to identify the underlying tunes when jazz musicians played originals based on those changes.

So it all comes down to  countless hours of listening experience that has enhanced my appreciation of jazz.

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Countless hours of listening experience. Yes, that's it, as well as playing experience. 

I've had a little bit of musical education and I have come to understand song structure, and the components of a performance. But they really don't consciously appear as major factors in my listening to jazz.

What first drew me to jazz was the instrumental nature of it and the fact that it wasn't a bunch of pop stuff marketed towards "someone my age." 

And a lot changed for me a few years later when I was returned to the States from Africa and then Miles Davis' "New Directions in Music" seemed to offer something more global than the US and British pop radio and drew me in with its moody expression and adventurous rhythmic nature. After that, in order I think to understand and unravel what I liked about it that was so different I went back deeper into the jazz that came before that from Miles and his sidemen and those Miles admired. . . and I think I developed the way to listen to it that allowed me to obsess.

And after years I find many ways to listen to jazz. . . sometimes for the emotional content, sometimes for the joy of the ideas streaming along over the pulse, sometimes for the pulse, sometimes for the color and sound itself. And sometimes for the history, the history that spins with it, the world's and my own.

Edited by jazzbo
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2 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I know nothing about keys or structure and 30+ years in, I couldn't tell you when a chorus is going to end to save my life and I do not see how it could change my enjoyment one iota.

This is me, over a similar timespan but with different listening habits

I initially respond to an overall feel which often manifests itself in some ways as "having soul" by which I don't mean Aretha, Otis or Luther but an intangible realness, a communication of investment and intent, 'meaning it'.  I can hear this both in MJQ and Brotzmann and much in between.  Conversely, I struggle with "all technique and no feeling" (a favourite phrase of mine) and I hear this in Michael Brecker, Peter Evans (but not recently), Michel Petrucianni, Chick Corea and Chris Potter to name a few.  Once the overall sound has hooked me then I'm engaged and listening to the dynamics and relationships between the musicians. Tunes and groove can be important too although much of what I have listened to doesn't have too much of either.

Whilst I can distinguish Grover from Kenny (and pass the Jsngry test) I am bad at distinguishing individual voices generally, hence my pitiful BFT performances.

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I, to my later regret, did not pursue playing a musical instrument when I was young. Later in life I tried, to little avail. When I’m listening, it’s for the rhythm, the beat, and I try to focus on what the soloist is doing, where’s he’s going. Since I, unlike Gheorghe, don’t know “how to drive,” it’s a bit more rudimentary to me. I probably know more than I can express in written words, if that makes any sense. 

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I play (sax) a little, but I don't hear keys or chord changes well at all although I do know blues when I hear it and I at least used to be able to improvise on a blues or two chord vamp and make the changes without having to think too much about it.  I like to think I can recognize players by their sound and phrasing.  When listening for pleasure, I focus on sound, mood, and dynamics - I like to hear the players interact and respond to each other.  I like to hear ideas develop and like things that gradually morph from one thing to another.  I love blues and swing, but there are lots of different ways to play with feeling.  I like folks that got their own voice, I respect but don't love professionalism, versatility, and being a utility player.  I love Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Lester Young, Professor Longhair, Muddy Waters, Lee Morgan, Miles Davis, Otis Redding, early Stax in general, Willie Nelson, Burt Bacharach, Beatles, Stones, Blue Note from the first note but not the new note, Smokey Robinson as both a singer and a writer, basically anything I can hear the humanity in.  Oh, and Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Elvis and doo wop in general.  But I can be quirky - I draw 'the line' between Jeff Beck's Truth which I love despite the complete lack of songwriting, and Led Zep which I consider utterly empty bombast.  I love folk, as in traditional anonymous songs of the Anglo Celtic sort and others too, but have little use for most 'folkies' who write their own and don't really see them as the same sort of thing at all. I was once a pretty big Bob Dylan fan, but he lost me long ago although I do still enjoy most of what I bought when I was a fan.  I struggle with most recent music of any popularity, but love talking with my daughter about it.  I dabble in classical and prefer chamber generally.  I think I listen to jazz basically the same way as to other things, but not totally.

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Thank you all for your great comments and I really apreciate your participation.

As for playing an instrument. 

A piano was in our house long before I was born. My father could play some classical tunes like Beethovens Moonshine Sonata, I was still in ....wait a minute....dictionary...."napkins" ...that´s how you say, and got under the piano just to hear that deep sound. When I was about 2 or 3, my father got me up on his lap and showed me the keyboard and playing the notes and said "look, this is a C, this is a D, this is an E  ..... and so on. Then the flat keys and this went on for serveral days until he told me to get off the piano and not look at what he plays and hit a note and asked me which one it is. 
And somehow step by step I´d start to finger out things and would try to play the theme of "Moonshine Sonata" by ear, just with the limitations of my little hands. 
So I remained a piano player for the rest of my live, but I never got formal training and reading sheet I only can read a single line, not a whole partitura or piano music and of course chord progressions. 
Later I got some money after my grandma died and bought a bass fiddle and started fingerin around on it until I could fill in on bass when there was no other bass player around.

So music was something that I feel naturally. 
It´s compareable with the dance talent of my wife: She got some medails and if she sees some special dance she will do it imeadiatly  like I would play something by ear after one listening. So we both got our talents. 

And yes, very much about the first listening experiences at ages like 13, 14 always will remain key experiences. In my case, my first jazz album was Miles´ "Steamin´" and my second was "The Great Concert of Charles Mingus". Those were key figures for me, because Dolphy let me to Ornette and New Thing and tunes like Mingus´ "Parkeriana" or Miles´ "Salt Peanuts" and "Well You Needn´t " would let me learn about Bird, Diz , Monk and so on...., and Miles led me to electric jazz. So very very shortly after those 2 albums I enjoyed listening to bop, hardbop, modal, free and electric and I think that´s about the styles I still prefere.....

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Another question in the same context: 

I have noticed that some of the board users listen for days or even weeks to certain kinds of style or musicians, like

  @HutchFan     he listens for longer periods to female singers like Carmen McRay and others, before that for a longer period to latin music . So my question: Do they decide that they want to listen for longer periods to music under a certain motto ?

I tried it that way a long time ago, to listen to let´s say all BN recordings of Lee Morgan or Hank Mobley or Jackie McLean or other BN artists, or once around Bird´s Birthday to all the Bird records I have......but I stopped it. First of all because I don´t have the time to listen to many records, or if I have time I sit down and play myself or my mood switches from one day to the other so I don´t want to fulfill a series of listening to one artist or one style, if I´m just in the mood to listen to somethin else. 

I might listen one day to let´s say "Ascension live" and decide the next day I will listen to some other more open Coltrane like "Village Vanguard Again", but the next day I come home and might say hey now I want to listen to some Mr. B and the Band (Billy Eckstine in the 40´s ) and say well tomorrow I listen to this or that, but then I feel another way and decide to listen to some easy stuff like "Soul Station" or something like that....

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6 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Another question in the same context: 

I have noticed that some of the board users listen for days or even weeks to certain kinds of style or musicians, like

  @HutchFan     he listens for longer periods to female singers like Carmen McRay and others, before that for a longer period to latin music . So my question: Do they decide that they want to listen for longer periods to music under a certain motto ?

Gheorghe,

I just go where my nose leads me.  :P   Sometimes, I get wrapped up in a certain sound, and I'll circle around it for a while before moving on to something else.  Over time, I'll almost certainly come back to it again later.  

Often, while I'm doing focused listening like that, I'm reading books about the topic, whether it's jazz singers or Latin Jazz or whatever.  But there's no real "rhyme or reason" to it -- other than my own curiosity. 

I've found that sort of focused listening helps me gain a foothold on styles that are less familiar to me.  It's a sort of immersion, like learning a new language. 

But I also sometimes go on benders for the opposite reason:  I'll listen to Ellington for two weeks straight precisely because it is so familiar to me; I already understand his idiom.

My jazz blog projects are just another form of "circling around" on a given topic -- a way of sharing what I already know but also pushing further outward as well.

 

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On 21/04/2022 at 7:34 AM, BillF said:

I'm not a musician, though I can play a little blues piano. In my experience you don't have to be a musician to be able to hear the structure of choruses, recognize changes, anticipate phrases - in short, know where the music is going. That said, I realize that many - perhaps the majority - of the audience members at gigs I go to don't even have this rudimentary knowledge. I was somewhat amazed when Greg Abate said that he'd failed to teach a prolific organizer of gigs in these parts to recognize when a chorus ended and another began!

I certainly can't tell what key music is in, Gheorghe, but there may still be hope for me.

This morning I heard a single note from the piano in the next room and I thought "That's a C". When I went in I found that my 4-year-old granddaughter had placed a small toy figure on the C key 2 octaves below middle C! :)

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I had a good friend who would pull all the records he had by a specific musician - for example  Hank Mobley or it could be a rhythm section player such as Paul Chambers. He would then listen to then all in a row, even though it was over a number of days.

I never really preferred to listen like that. One of the things I enjoy about jazz is the large diversity of musicians and styles. So it is not unusual for me to mix up my listening a lot. I may choose to listen in these artists one after another - for example - Art Blakey & Messengers, Stan Getz, Pee Wee Russell, John Coltrane, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bud Powell, Eddie Condon, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Sullivan, Dizzy Gillespie, etc.

And to add to the mix, I also throw in classical music recordings, especially string quartets by Haydn and Beethoven. 

 

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3 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

I had a good friend who would pull all the records he had by a specific musician - for example  Hank Mobley or it could be a rhythm section player such as Paul Chambers. He would then listen to then all in a row, even though it was over a number of days.

I never really preferred to listen like that. One of the things I enjoy about jazz is the large diversity of musicians and styles. So it is not unusual for me to mix up my listening a lot. I may choose to listen in these artists one after another - for example - Art Blakey & Messengers, Stan Getz, Pee Wee Russell, John Coltrane, Lightnin' Hopkins, Bud Powell, Eddie Condon, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Joe Sullivan, Dizzy Gillespie, etc.

And to add to the mix, I also throw in classical music recordings, especially string quartets by Haydn and Beethoven. 

 

Sounds like me, Peter. On my phone (my current listening source) Mark Sherman is rubbing shoulders with Professor Longhair and the Jazz Couriers.

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Thank you all for your interesting answers. 

Now I understand better, why some listen to a certain musician in a row for several days. It´s possible I did similar things when I was very young and just a listener or starter until musicians who would let me play with them, first of all "Allan Praskin" told me it´s not necessary to have "all Dexter records" to understand the style of Dexter, you don´t need to have all of Buds recordings, until you have to learn as well about the past and also to contemporanious musicians (he mentioned Athur Blythe whom he admired )....

Now I just don´t have the time for listening in a row. I have to manage a very demanding job, have a family live and sometimes play a gig.

I noticed that some who really are deeply into jazz, also listen to classical music. It´s strange but that´s not really my biggest point. 

In my case, for me myself it´s jazz with all aspects, I can feel and do so much with so called "jazz". But if we listen to something else or watch it on TV, it might be a ballett like "Swan Lake" or some opereta by Lehár Ferenc or some italian compositions, or just "german or italian shlager" on TV. 

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