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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
your second point I agree with. The first point however, is a bit off. "cool jazz" is melody based on modal scales, not tonal scales. I did not mean to say that a specific melody had to be followed, but that it was the basis of the improvisation. How to get from note A to note B and do so in a new and never before heard way
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Big Bands have everyone keep a set groove and they improv in their individual bits. It depends on whether the jazz is intended as dancing music or listening music. dance music needs to have a set beat and rhythm for the dancers, and jazz/jass originated as dancing music, like the blues.
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I know what you meant. I'm sorry if my response somehow confused things, or if I gave the wrong impression.
I didn't think you were saying that a specific melody needed to be followed, because with "Cool Jazz", that's not the case at all, and you clearly know enough to know that.
Without getting too wrapped up in technical concepts, or bringing fugue and polytonality into the discussion, I think we both understand how melody is used in Modal Jazz as compared to, say, "big band."
When I think of cool jazz, or try to explain what it is, I usually refer to songs that exemplify the style. Songs like "So What", (which is an example of the point you're making about melody) and "My Favorite Things", which is a perfect example of what I'm saying about standards and traditional numbers being a major part of this era of jazz.
In cool jazz period, modal renditions of melodies from "pop" standards were often used as unifying themes and launching points for modal compositions. Coltrane's quartet wasn't covering "My Favorite Things", or even playing through the song's set chord progressions.
The band played within the larger parameters of the parent mode of the song, rather than the notes and chords of the original, giving the vamping and comping players more to do, and allowed for simultaneous improvisation. This gave the song a much broader range, and allowed the soloists to venture far beyond the tonal limits that would be imposed on a Big Band. In essence it was a new piece of music almost entirely. The familiar melody from the Sound of Music would pop up and slink in and out of focus, and that's what I mean when I stress the importance of melody in Cool Jazz. Original or rendition, the melodic component allows the piece to resolve, or take a breather,
. It's easy to confuse these with "covers" but they're not.. for many reasons, but particularly because the musicians were not comping on the set chord progression of the original song, but were, instead, extending into the parent mode. So, the song would start with a familiar melody, and then splinter off into different keys, creating what amounts to a completely new song.
In bebop, and in big band, the melody was repeated a great deal more, but my gods was it boring for those poor bastards backing up whoever had the solo.
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Jam bands like Phish and such use such improvisation and so does a lot of latin music, especially stuff like salsa and bossanova, but it is not jazz per se.
Ornette Coleman's early free jazz work consists of the group playing the set melody for about 15 seconds and then going off into free improv of all instruments at once.
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1. I've always liked Phish because I can hear jazz in their music. The lyrics may be idiotic, but some of their songs would fit a scholar's definition of jazz. They're amazing players.
2. Yes! Ornette's (RIP) free jazz was like a deconstruction of a deconstruction. like Cool Jazz changing from Bruce Banner to the Hulk.
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And all I was saying about improvisation was that not all sub-genres of jazz used improvisation as fundamentally as cool jazz and free jazz did. Improvisation is not necessarily a stylistic requirement of making jazz music. I'm just not particularly interested in any form of jazz that doesn't include it.