MUH 271 Jazz History

1. MUH 271 Jazz History Some Notes from Chapters 1 & 2

2. Musical Elements and Instruments • Goffman notes the inevitability of an observer’s influence in an encounter: • . . . although kibitzers may be officially tolerated on the assumption that they will conduct themselves so as to have no real effect upon the outcome of the play, they are likely to be an integral part of the social-psychological reality of the gaming encounter; they are participants, not players, and can have a leading role in the gaming encounter while having no role in the play. • Erving Goffman. “Fun in Games,” in Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961), 15-81, p. 37.

3. Timbre in Jazz • Timbre – tone color or quality of sound • the distinctive sounds of each instrument/voice • differences between 2 people • manipulation by a performer • Mutes • used by brass instruments to change timbre • Individuality – the need to find one’s “own sound.”

4. Roles within an Ensemble • In a small group: • soloist(s). • typically primary focus of attention. • provides melody. • improvised solos • rhythm section. • typically piano and/or guitar, bass, drums. • provides rhythmic and harmonic foundation. • Big Band (or larger ensemble). • horn sections/rhythm section. • typically more focus on composition, arrangement, ensemble performance.

5. Swing Feel: • From The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: "A quality attributed to jazz performance. Though basic to the perception and performance of jazz, swing has resisted concise definition or description. Most attempts at such refer to it as primarily a rhythmic phenomenon, resulting from the conflict between a fixed pulse and the wide variety of accent and rubato that a jazz performer plays against it. However, such a conflict alone does not necessarily produce swing, and a rhythm section may even play a simple fixed pulse with varied amounts or types of swing. Clearly other properties are also involved, of which one is probably the forward propulsion imparted to each note by a jazz player through manipulation of timbre, attack, vibrato, intonation or other means; this combines with the proper rhythmic placement of each note to produce swing in a great variety of ways." • From the Oxford Companion to Music: "1) The quality of jazz performance that distinguishes it from ‘straight’ music and gives it much of its physical motivation (cf. Duke Ellington's It Don't Mean a Thing (if it Ain't got that Swing), 1932). The criteria of swing appear to be fundamentally indefinable, but they include the unequal performance of short note-values as well as the use of timbre, rubato, attack, and other means to achieve a propulsive effect."

6. Form • Almost always “strophic” or a cycle, similar to multiple verses of a song. • each cycle called a chorus. • choruses have a specific length (number of measures). • choruses have a specific chord progression (or chord changes). • Popular song forms: • AABA (32-bar pop or standard song form). • AAB (blues). • “Rhythm Changes” – the collection of songs that have the same form and chord progression as Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.”