explaining musical terms to someone without theory
Rishan
454 Posts
i used to play piano, recorder, clarinet and drums in primary school, so i used to read sheet music a little, but i never attempted to learn about theory. what is it? can it be explained succinctly? actually what i really would like to know is, since i have listened to jazz so much that i can now 'get' it, and enjoy it properly, what do terms like modal, hard bop, post bop, bebop, straightahead etc etc mean? some i can tell easily, like fusion, jazz funk etc, obviously, but could someone give obvious examples of each style. i'd like to be able to read reviews and critique and understand what they're talking about.
Comments
In a nutshell:
Modal = Kind Of Blue. Meaning jazz that is not based on chord progressions, especially the soloing.
Hard Bop = mid/late 50's Horace Silver. Bebop that is slowed down with a more pronounced blues element
Bebop = Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie. Intricate, fast paced jazz with complex chord structures/harmony
Straightahead and post bop are somewhat vague terms that apply to several styles.
In my experience, we didn't talk about genres or subgenres at all in theory. I think that would fall under music appreciation or musicology.
post bop = after 1960. it's really a time map term without much musical significance
I had a love/hate relationship with theory in school.
Without sounding like a dick, the music student in me wants to add .02. It's true, Kind of Blue is probably the definitive modal jazz record, but the term modal means that the music based on modes. A mode is a scale that starts on a specific note of a specific scale. In the key of C Major, if you started the scale on D and played up to the next D it would be a Dorian scale. If you started the C Major scale on E it's called Phrygian. Lydian would start on F, mixolydian would start on G and so on. Using modes changes the whole sound of the scale. This applies for all key signatures based on intervals.
Playing these modes over their respective key signatures is technically "correct," but what Miles and 'em did was use modes to step outside of generally accepted melodic lines. For instance, "So What" has a pretty simple chord progression. But when he started using different modes he realized shit started sounding a little "out." It's really all in the lines they were playing. You could spatter scalar notes all around and technically be "right," but they way they formatted the notes into different modes is what gave that record the sound it has.
If we talk about John Coltrane for a sec, My Favourite Things and Crescent are different from Giant Steps and Love Supreme. What do these fall into? McCoy Tyner on My Favourite Things, is that modal playing? I can hear similar styles with the John Betsch Society record and lots of other records from around that time. What then does post-Coltrane mean, in terms of sound or style?
I would take Big Band out of straightahead. BB is a genre itself in my book. The arrangements make it so. You want to be using a lot of brass harmony for BB. The tunes are generally slower than straightahead so the arrangements can breathe.
I would personally equate straightahead with bebop, pre mid-60s. Mid-late 60's a lot players were playing modally, it was more out and not as hard-swinging. I stand alone everytime I open my mouth about Miles's band with Wayne Shorter not swinging hard enough for me. I find it too meandering. ESP, Fille de Kilimanjaro etc.
Whether a tune is Modal or not depends on the soloists. You don't have to play modal over the chords, but IIRC (and I am completely self-taught and happy to be corrected here) modal soloing keeps the same intervals regardless of the chord changes underneath, so you are not subbing in/out sharps/flats to put them back in key with the current chord underneath your notes.
As a bassist I could wing it usually but wish I could write something with the colour Herbie and Miles used.
I'd say coltrane was bebop the modal toward the end, although he came with his own sheets-of-sound approach and had that whole Triad thing down like in Giant Steps. That level of playing would explode my head to compute, I am just not clever enough to get it.
Sorry.
I was going to answer this question using my limited knowledge of theory.
Then I read HL's response, and said this is exactly what the op wanted. A way to understand which terms refer to which styles.
It is good to know if the music is blues based or uses modal scales or 12 tone scales, but not necessary.
The other stuff is just categories. They help critics put musicians work into little boxes. They also help us describe what we do or don't like or what some one might sound like. Other than that they have no real or fixed meaning.
Yes, but also not necessary to be able to appreciate and make great music.
- spidey