2002 Lateral Innovation - Not Harmonic
newt
are doing is changeing the textures by using different
instrumentation. For example: tablas or electronic trumpets. While
the textures are new the music is really not innovative. It's just a
lateral kind of development - moving sideways. Notice jazz evolved
from Armstrong through Bird, Miles and Coltrane without any
instrumentation or textural changes - more conceptual in nature
(opposed to aural). Since the late 60's players have just been
changeing instrumentation - there's this fascination with sounds now.
Before the fascination was conceptual and intellectual. Eventually
music will become defined by the quality of the sounds. A better
timbre will be the defining quality of a musician not their
harmonic/melodic innovation.
Marc Sabatella
> I haven't heard any innovation since around the 70's. What players
> are doing is changeing the textures by using different
> instrumentation. For example: tablas or electronic trumpets. While
> the textures are new the music is really not innovative. It's just a
> lateral kind of development - moving sideways.
I'm not sure why you consider harmonic innovations more valuable than
any others, but in any case, I'm don't agree with your assessments, and
suspect you haven't actually heard much of the creative music of the
last thirty years, because there has been a lot going on other than
experimenting with different instruments.
First, though, when I think of the developments in jazz over the last
century, relatively few of the them have been based on harmonic
innovation. Swing was not more harmonically innovative then Trad - it
was largely a timbral and rhythmic development. Nor was bebop as
significant an advancement on swing harmonically as it was melodically
and to a lesser extent rhythmically. Neither hard bop nor cool jazz
added anything significant harmonically. Early modal jazz changed
things, to be sure, but in that case, it was by borrowing from music of
500 years ago, not by doping anything new. Some of the later
modal/non-tonal music of the 1960's was indeed a chiefly harmonic
innovation - although even much of that had already been around in the
classical world for decades. Going to atonalism was a natural and
predicatable step as well given what had already happened in the
classical world, but it's tough to "advance" on that. Of course, plenty
of musicians over the last thirty years have already begun to leave the
twelve-tone tempered scale behind entirely, but this usually involves
out of necessity timbral changes too - you can't play a seventeen-tone
scale on a piano.
So I'm not sure what sort of harmonic advancement you expect of jazz
musicians, but I see a number of developments in that regard that are at
least as significant as flatting an occassional fifth. See, for
instance, Steve Coleman's cell notations, any of Anthony Braxton's
various constructs that he has developed over the last forty years (yes,
some came before 1970, but not all), or the types of structures employed
by folks like Myra Melford, Dave Douglas, Marty Ehrlich, etc. Some of
these structures are harmonic in nature, some are timbral, but a good
many can best be described as structural, and that is a field that has
been ripe for exploration ever since the head-solos-head format became
codified around the 1930's.
> Before the fascination was conceptual and intellectual.
And I think you'll find with all of the players I just mentioned, and
hundreds more besides, one can say the same.
--------------
Marc Sabatella
ma...@outsideshore.com
Check out my latest CD, "Falling Grace"
Also "A Jazz Improvisation Primer", Sounds, Scores, & More:
http://www.outsideshore.com/
RChurgin
<ma...@outsideshore.com> writes:
>"newt" <miksc...@csun.alumlink.com> wrote:
>
>> I haven't heard any innovation since around the 70's. What players
>> are doing is changeing the textures by using different
>> instrumentation. For example: tablas or electronic trumpets. While
>> the textures are new the music is really not innovative. It's just a
>> lateral kind of development - moving sideways.
>"Marc Sabatella" wrote:
>I'm not sure why you consider harmonic innovations more valuable than
>any others, but in any case, I'm don't agree with your assessments, and
>suspect you haven't actually heard much of the creative music of the
>last thirty years, because there has been a lot going on other than
>experimenting with different instruments.
While I don't disagree with Marc's post, I think the main thrust of "newt"
<miksc...@csun.alumlink.com> post was that there has not been a radical
transformation in concept like the one's initiated by Armstrong, Parker, and
Coltrane in recent time (since Coltrane). This is not to say that there hasn't
been great music nor innovations. This is also not to say that there have not
been new conceptions. However, there has not been any individual with the
enormous influence and paradigm shifting ability of the above three. It would
seem like someone is due.
In a parallel field, movies, I feel that the excitement, innovation, rethinking
and testing of limits of the accepted conventions that were rampant from the
late 50's through the early '70's in cinema are gone.
I suppose this is not a time of artistic rethinking and reflexivity. Perhaps
the intense creative ferment of previous years is going into different areas
that we are so swept up in that it is impossible to see. Modernism in art,
music, film, and literature has e challenged the unspoken assumptions in the
traditional arts, revealed them to the audience, and then ran out of steam.
It's as if the content of modernism consisted of forcing us to look at
traditional art forms in a new way, and once we had, it lost its energy.
I think there is a lack of innovation that is transformative. Perhaps this is a
period of consolidation and elaboration.
Ron
Charles R. Bond
> While I don't disagree with Marc's post, I think the main thrust of "newt"
> <miksc...@csun.alumlink.com> post was that there has not been a radical
> transformation in concept like the one's initiated by Armstrong, Parker, and
> Coltrane in recent time (since Coltrane). This is not to say that there hasn't
> been great music nor innovations. This is also not to say that there have not
> been new conceptions. However, there has not been any individual with the
> enormous influence and paradigm shifting ability of the above three. It would
> seem like someone is due.
>
> In a parallel field, movies, I feel that the excitement, innovation, rethinking
> and testing of limits of the accepted conventions that were rampant from the
> late 50's through the early '70's in cinema are gone.
>
> I suppose this is not a time of artistic rethinking and reflexivity. Perhaps
> the intense creative ferment of previous years is going into different areas
> that we are so swept up in that it is impossible to see. Modernism in art,
> music, film, and literature has e challenged the unspoken assumptions in the
> traditional arts, revealed them to the audience, and then ran out of steam.
> It's as if the content of modernism consisted of forcing us to look at
> traditional art forms in a new way, and once we had, it lost its energy.
>
> I think there is a lack of innovation that is transformative. Perhaps this is a
> period of consolidation and elaboration.
>
You make some interesting points, and the analogy with other art forms is worth
close examination. If you stand back from the 'arts' in general over the last few
centuries, you see an early trend toward formalising the medium, and a later
relentless push to assert individuality by breaking rules -- or at least pushing
the envelope. The trend has been from order to chaos, by degrees. That is, the more
degrees of freedom you allow, the less restrictive and 'controlled' the result.
The problem with all that is simple. At some point the result is so free of
restriction that it is not comprehensible to any but trained observers -- and
eventually not even them.
In painting, the Impressionists gave way to cubists and eventually Jackson Pollock.
It appears to have become so 'liberated' that it has lost its original appeal to
many. (Not all, mind you, but a significant body of art lovers.)
In classical music, Bach gave way to Chopin, to Brahms and Wagner, to Stravinsky
and Schoenberg and eventually to John Cage. Here, we might want to consider whether
the trend has simply gone so far toward chaos that it ceases to be rightfully
called music, and ought to be regarded as controlled noise.
In jazz the early boom-chat rhythms and simple harmonies eventually led to bop and
then to Coltrane and Monk and Ornette Coleman. This has been a liberating
experience, but if jazz moves too close to chaos, it will lose its appeal, and at
that point it may be necessary to stop an reflect on the 'big picture'.
Personally, I'm all for innovation and experimental music. The trouble with it is
that it isn't always successful, and the mainstream may be the best place to swim.