The exact definition of an artist can be hotly debated, but when it comes down to it, an artist is someone who creates. An artist creates what they create because they enjoy creating and want to share their creations with the world. I am an artist, and my creation is in jazz. A key concept of jazz is creation. This creation is rooted in improvisation—the art of playing in the moment over well practiced and memorized chords. Sometimes this spontaneous playing can be a challenge, and that’s where plagiarism comes in. As modern jazz players, one of our favorite methods of original creation is outright plagiarism. Stealing ideas from the diseased, as morally corrupt as it sounds, is often the best way to improve at improv. As the idiom goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Stealing from the legends of our art shows the utter respect and complete admiration that we have for them. …show more content…
The challenge inherent in jazz improvisation is what makes it so impressive. Being able to create something from nothing is both incredibly difficult and incredible impressive. This challenge is paralleled in many aspects of my life. I expose myself to challenge in academics, my arts, and my social life. Then there’s the idea of rehearsing chords prior to performance in order to improve the quality of the solo. In my life separate from jazz, this is my education. Learning from and about the past provides an important basis on which to create. Without knowing its history, there would be no art and no creation. Strategies such as studying history, reading about past literature, and using old techniques in math and science show these aspects of preparing in my other
When I think of the word artist, I think of someone who is innovative, original and someone who has style and a sound all their own. One artist that comes to mind is Janet Jackson; they simple don’t make artist like Janet anymore. Unfortunately, she was the last of her kind. You can see her influence in most of today’s artist. I grew up on Janet’s music and I simply love each era of her work. To me Janet is more than a singer, she is a true artist. She not only writes most if not all of her music, but ...
The music of jazz became an important aspect of American culture in the early 20th century. The crisp syncopation of ragtime and the smooth tunes of the blues seeped into American mainstream music through dance halls and saloons and later through ballrooms. Instruments like the piano, trumpet, trombone and clarinet became important and symbolized the “swing-feel” of jazz because of their capability to syncopate and improvise precisely. With the help of the booming recording industry, musical geniuses were discovered and their talent and contributions to the emergence of jazz spread throughout the entire country. Such musicians include composer, arranger and pianist Jelly Roll Morton who heavily influenced the development of early jazz by his unique piano style, his “invention” of musical notation for jazz, and his compositions that have become the core in the jazz repertory. Because the style was new and different and so successful in drawing in large audiences, musicians around the world tried to mimic it. Furthermore, Morton’s masterpieces were the first to show notation for complicated jazz music and thus, formed the basis for standard notation in jazz compositions today.
Improvisational jazz is always changing, it is creating something new and also taking risks without being afraid. I believe that taking risks in life is a good thing and can help you be more successful. Sometimes when you take a risk it does not work out, but that does not mean you should quit or never take a risk again. When I see something that can make me more successful, I go for it. I am not afraid of taking risks.
Jazz musicians wanted to stand out from the rest of the crowd in the 1920’s. With the new genre emerging, as an artist, getting lost
During its early days, jazz was seen as a “forward-looking art, incorporating new techniques, more expansive harmonies and melodies” ( Otherbook).
The process of establishing Miles Davis in the field of the jazz music has many different aspects. The story of his professional development is very interesting and unstable as it has its breakthroughs and setbacks, and indeed, all turning points in his life has made a significant impact on the evolution of the jazz music sound. In this essay, I am going to discuss how Miles Davis affected every stream of jazz and how jazz affected him during his all life.
The evolvement of jazz throughout the years has been an interesting one. Blues and Ragtime are just two simple innovations that has allowed for many variations in the jazz genre. Both of these genres have their similarities and differences in how they influenced jazz music through: improvisation, syncopation, and experimentation.
This essay is a discussion of how the way jazz trumpeter Miles Davis changes his way of improvising, looking at two pieces from different times. The solos in the pieces were transcribed by myself and then analysed in detail. From these analyses, several conclusions on the style of improvising were drawn, and then the conclusions from the two pieces were compared. The piece ‘New Rhumba’, showed how Davis was using his technical ability to create an impressive solo, but was also leaning towards a more sparse and spacious form of improvising, where the times he doesn’t play are just important as when he does play, and the solo in ‘So What’, showed this new style in full. The analyses of the two solos also showed Davis’ ability to improvise solos in a way that it seemed as though he had already composed them. They were full of melodic tunes. This was also emphasized by the fact that Davis often would think of a motif, and would then repeat this, developing on it, creating variations of it. This all gave the solo a sense of unity. When people in the audience heard the solos, they would recognize things Davis was playing late in the solo, as variations on themes he was playing earlier on. On a more technical basis, it shows the difference in the two solos, of the amount of time Davis spends on notes outside the chord. In ‘New Rhumba’, the earlier piece, his use of extensions is greater, and there are far more times where he uses flattened, or sharpened extensions. The later piece, ‘So What’, is less active in this area. This essay reveals some of the aspects of Miles Davis’ style, which made him such a legendary, and influential jazz trumpeter.
Art is defined as the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. Jackson Pollock does an amazing job creating art. Pollock’s works are not as big as some of the other artists like Monet’s paintings but his works are still large enough to engulf the viewer.
This influence would lead to Fitzgerald giving the era its name, “The Jazz Age.” The draw of jazz was its unpredictability due to improvisation; the great jazz musicians were able to play to the mood and the spirit of the crowd. This meant that no two performances were ever the same. Because of this, jazz musicians drew great audiences and inspired new dances. The wildness of the music sparked a new feeling among those who listened and danced to it.
In conclusion, I think the art of improvision and scat singing played a major role in building up a beautiful jazz music. Louis Armstrong did a great job on his improvising music where he create swing feeling and slow bluesy in doing so. I also think that Louis Armstrong also has a god gifted vocal and he was able to use it to make his music melody more attractive. I really like the scat sing, even without words he was able to create beautiful melody and warm rhythm for his song. The song “my heart” itself was a beautiful song that Armstrong and his friends play. The band was able to use improvision technique and play very logic at every chorus and repeat chorus.
Jazz music was America’s first big contribution to the musical world; it was new and exciting. In the past, music was always particular and meticulous, with set beats and phrasing, while Jazz music was felt and required immense improvisation skills. The swing and syncopation that Jazz is known for can not be put into musical notation. Jazz musicians would improvise melodies and solos, and would even create new tones called bent notes, which were created by bending a guitar string or sliding between notes on a
“Jazz, and other African American musical forms, utilizes the horizon of the future only as an excuse for its insistent emphasis on the present. Though not without its own form of entanglement with the past and the future, jazz is the music of the present” (Barnhart 2013:16). For about century, jazz has been influencing people around the world with its infectious nature and passionate emotion. The birth of jazz can be traced back to New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th century, where a need for live music and entertainment sparked the creation of this genre.
Almost all styles of jazz consist of a combination of both predetermined and improvised elements, with the proportion of one to the other differing greatly. Mastering the skill of improvisation is in the ability to create an unplanned and spontaneous musical excerpt, with the level proficiency being dependent upon prior knowledge; a musician must have a set of learnt skills that enable their music making. The study of improvisation does, however, present obvious difficulties. Through the theoretical frameworks of cognitive science, many researchers and scholars have attempted to investigate the characteristics of a musicians’ knowledge and how they use it within the context of improvisation (Goldman, 2013; Nettl et al., 2013). To fully understand the practice of improvisation, we must establish the concepts behind improvisation, why we learn and are intrigued by improvisation, whether its practiced patterns or learned procedures, and whether or not changing from a familiar key to an unfamiliar key limits ones’ ability to
The true definition of plagiarism is “Using someone else’s ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness.”[2] There are many different ways of remedying this problem.