millions
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I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on Nov 9, 2019 12:26:52 GMT -6
There are points for or against the idea that Holzworth was really "jazz" or something else.
Pros: He played with other jazz players His music was improvisational and instrumental (for the most part) His music was harmonically complex
And then, the cons: He did not quote or use much from the traditional jazz idiom, like riffs or changes He was not a "world music" guy; he was very British, very insular, no latin or "world" influences I can see He tended to play streams of notes which were evenly divided and did not "swing"
What do you think? BTW, I absolutely LOVE Alan Holdsworth, but I see him as totally unique.
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Post by xmiles on Nov 9, 2019 17:00:49 GMT -6
I don't see how not having latin or world influences or being British stops you from being a jazz musician.
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Post by JaySee on Nov 10, 2019 6:10:32 GMT -6
I think "totally unique" sounds about right.
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Post by jacofan on Nov 15, 2019 7:47:47 GMT -6
I just want to know what Jazz is, sometime, since I sure wouldn't know how to define it despite past gigs as a musician and journalist, I'm all about Duke Ellington's definition of the two kinds of music and that works for me.
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Post by GeorgeX on Nov 15, 2019 9:17:36 GMT -6
I just want to know what Jazz is, sometime, since I sure wouldn't know how to define it despite past gigs as a musician and journalist, I'm all about Duke Ellington's definition of the two kinds of music and that works for me. I've always scoffed at that quote, because it's meaningless. It's totally subjective what sounds good, obviously. It's just a cop out because he didn't like to define a genre. All these dudes who don't like genre tags, and would just have you throw everything into some homogeneous blender, are annoying though. Genre tags exist for very good reasons. They're a helpful guide post to what you do and don't want to hear, and when they're wrong, it's annoying. I hate when I see a record advertised as fusion, and then I get it and it's just an instrumental prog cd, or worse, a guitar hero/shred disc.(although there can certainly be good recordings in either of those genres) Are you seriously trying to say if someone told you, 'you need to hear this guy Jack Spratt. He's amazing', that you wouldn't ask what the music is like? Clearly, the fact that they're recommending him says that they think he's good music and not bad music, so you wouldn't need to know anything more? Not buying that for a second. I mean, for you, good music could be both, Pig Destroyer and Flying Machines. Would you not find it a tad irresponsible recommending them both to just anyone? Or would you want to know that whoever you pointed one of them to would be amenable to it? Knowing what to expect is important, and genre tags provide that.
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Post by funkle on Nov 16, 2019 13:32:13 GMT -6
First of all, I'm a big proponent of genre tags & other descriptors, but they are really no more than a starting point, and a way to categorize, sort & discover. The key to a genre tagging system working is consensus. Here we're all pretty aligned, but not so much in more public circles. The insanity of it is rather than simply establishing metrics, most people would rather argue about it, blindly insisting their definition is correct. Before categorizing foods, scientists first agreed on how to categorize fruits, vegetables, legumes, grains etc. They don't argue about it, because they have agreed upon the definition. I realize music is more nebulous, but it is still possible to establish a set of definers, and mutually agree to try to stay on the same system. I've given up on arguing about genres in the absence of consensus, and moreso, the lack of any desire for consensus.
Holdsworth may seem like an outlier, because his approach to song form & harmonic approach is very much consistent with the definition of jazz, but his language is almost completely devoid of established motifs & vocabulary. But I wonder if Bird and Coltrane elicited the same reaction initially. They were a departure in many ways, and purists probably balked.
Approach aside, he also pretty clearly incorporates rock elements. And for me, he falls squarely (definitively) into the fusion category. I don't consider fusion to be a sub-genre of jazz, but rather a hybrid. Jazz elements/influence? for sure. But not within the genre IMO.
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Post by jacofan on Nov 18, 2019 17:10:11 GMT -6
My main response is - who cares if Allan Holdsworth is playing jazz or not? This is why the quote is spot on.
Honestly, I think that we are more or less all agreeing here since this all stems from a subjective inquiry - one cannot possibly answer the question posed (it was almost trolling). Categories are generally a lazy way out and in today's global musical community, genre is so blurred to the point of being meaningless. Didn't Run DMC make all of this a joke when Aerosmith came on board (or with the release of She Watch Channel Zero from It Takes A Nation....)?
If I want to know about what something sounds like, give me some descriptive terms or some other touchstones for reference (I always want to know artists). They will always be oversimplified or likely not really spot on but at least I can decide for myself. For example, if someone asks me about Sleep, I'll tell them that this falls within the stoner rock arena in the mold of Black Sabbath. As for something like Richard Hallebeek, I'd throw out guitar based instrumental music with a heavy influence of Allan Holdsworth that leans closer to jazz than rock. I'm not saying the genre alone should be tossed out, what I'm saying is that things are not black and white so the beauty is in the eye of a beholder. In other words, it's either pleasing to you (good) or not (the other kind). Note that I am also not going to irresponsibly recommend Jack Spratt (though he shreds, dudes!!) to just anyone without qualifiers.
Suffice it to say that as for my server (and several iPods), I have six categories. Rock, Jazz, Fusion, Metal, R&B/Soul and Classical. As Sven says, it's a starting point.
PS Other than his trumpet playing for the first 8 or so years of bring in the public eye, I wish Wynton never felt the need to express himself, especially opening his mouth as to what jazz is or is not. It's certainly helped foster these kinds of dumb discussions.
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Post by GeorgeX on Nov 18, 2019 18:45:37 GMT -6
I have six categories. Rock, Jazz, Fusion, Metal, R&B/Soul and Classical. My media player is showing 64 genres tagged on my files. Nov 18, 2019 17:10:11 GMT -6 jacofan said: I am also not going to irresponsibly recommend Jack Spratt (though he shreds, dudes!! Ok, that was funny!
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Post by jacofan on Nov 18, 2019 18:51:37 GMT -6
I have six categories. Rock, Jazz, Fusion, Metal, R&B/Soul and Classical. My media player is showing 64 genres tagged on my files. Nov 18, 2019 17:10:11 GMT -6 jacofan said: I am also not going to irresponsibly recommend Jack Spratt (though he shreds, dudes!! Ok, that was funny! Tip of the hat, sir.
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Post by funkle on Nov 19, 2019 11:17:25 GMT -6
My media player is showing 64 genres tagged on my files. Nov 18, 2019 17:10:11 GMT -6 jacofan said: I am also not going to irresponsibly recommend Jack Spratt (though he shreds, dudes!! Ok, that was funny! Tip of the hat, sir. I had to google that. I'm afraid your nursery rhyme reference is still lost on me.
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millions
New Member
I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on Dec 26, 2019 12:17:49 GMT -6
I say that Holdsworth moved closer and closer to jazz, and further away from rock. His later recordings, such as All Night Wrong, were concerned with soloing over changes, and that's a dead ringer for jazz.
I think everybody is being disingenuous when they say "jazz can't be defined," or use the "nothing is black and white" argument. Categories are convenient generalizations, and they reveal gestalt truths about things.
Yes, Holdsworth was jazz. Some elements that weren't:
his sound, which was distorted like rock;
and his lines, which were not concerned with traditional jazz or horn lines but which were essentially guitaristic in nature.
The other aspect of his lines was that they followed complex harmonic changes using different scales, which is very jazz-like and UN-rock-like;
So from that you can see that every characteristic of his playing & approach can be taken in more than one way.
We can go further: there's a rhythmic aspect to his lines, which is even eighth or sixteenths, and does not divide the beat into three, or "swing." That's not really jazzy, but more like a bossa nova approach. Yes, I know bossa nova is jazz, but it morphed the old shuffle feel into even-eighths, for that Latin feel.To me, this is not "primal" jazz but a later morphing, away from swing, away from blues, away from blackness, into the morphed entities we now call jazz, including detective themes, Mancini, and all the rest of the assimilated forms, which is why Miles Davis did what he did.
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Post by GeorgeX on Dec 26, 2019 12:23:49 GMT -6
I think everybody is being disingenuous when they say "jazz can't be defined," or use the "nothing is black and white" argument. Absolutely. It's the lazy guy way out.
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millions
New Member
I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on Dec 26, 2019 18:46:08 GMT -6
I don't see how not having latin or world influences or being British stops you from being a jazz musician. Well, you can't just isolate that one aspect, because it is only one part of my total argument. You haven't made a case for that, if you have a case.
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millions
New Member
I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on Dec 27, 2019 5:30:38 GMT -6
Holdsworth may seem like an outlier, because his approach to song form & harmonic approach is very much consistent with the definition of jazz, but his language is almost completely devoid of established motifs & vocabulary. But I wonder if Bird and Coltrane elicited the same reaction initially. They were a departure in many ways, and purists probably balked. I see what you are saying, and agree somewhat, but there are too many other elements in your counter-example which remain well within the limits of a traditional jazz definition. Parker and Coltrane both played saxophones, and used drums and upright bass, and piano, etc. These are clearly jazz elements. If you want to isolate the harmonic aspect only, I think that's the weakest aspect of Holdsworth's "non-jazz" tendencies, since he was still playing over changes. And Holdsworth's chord changes and chord voicings sound like jazz to me, not rock. The Parker/Coltrane counter-example begins to fall apart for me; Parker was advanced harmonically, but he could be said to be expanding the jazz language. All his riffs and ideas sound very jazzy and idiomatic. So he's out, for me, as an effective example of "similarity" to Holdsworth's harmonic tendencies. Coltrane could be said to have done the same thing, reaching his apotheosis in Giant Steps while still staying within the idiomatic syntax of jazz. It's only in his later recordings for Impulse that he began to go "out" of the traditional jazz syntax. For me, I can "generalize" and use genre terms such as Bossa Nova, Free, Fusion, and World to describe what I recognize as jazz forms, because I put limits on how far it can be taken. How far away from its root does jazz have to go before it is recognized as "not jazz" or, at best, a new hybrid form? When the blues element is removed, it presents a serious blow to jazz's roots. Holdsworth can certainly be said to be "non-blues" in his syntax; in fact, he said he was trying to avoid all guitar clichés. If "rock guitar" exists as a blues-influenced syntax (pentatonic scale, bending of strings, distortion), then in this context Holdsworth is not even a "rock" guitarist in the familiar sense. Holdsworth was an "outsider" artist, completely self-generated and unique. I would hesitate to even call him "fusion," except for his distorted guitar sound.
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millions
New Member
I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on May 14, 2020 15:34:57 GMT -6
I think that things have progressed, since Holdsworth's passing, to unlock the key to his scale conceptions. There is a YouTube video which explores this, using still shots of the big scale charts Holdsworth was using in his instructional video. If they are also in book form, I am unaware. In short, it explores some 8-note scales which are more-or-less "diatonic" seven-note major or minor scales with "added" notes. Anybody want to pursue it? I also Heard in a tribute video that he gave, as a gift, Slonimsky's Thesaurus, so I know he was using that book. In an unrelated Q&A video, he mentions that he was glad Slonimsky did not use key signatures in the book, making it easier for him (a chromatic player). www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASrvMmKpmV0
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