Do you need to know the rules to break the rules? -- free jazz, improv, noise, etc

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What do I know? I just think it sounds great.

that more or less expresses my attitude towards this thread.

your null fame (yournullfame), Saturday, 14 December 2002 07:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

Where do Asia and Journey fit in this?

Kris (aqueduct), Saturday, 14 December 2002 17:52 (twenty-one years ago) link

Kris - check out the seguue between "Walks Like a Lady" and "La Do Da" on 'Captured live'

dave q, Saturday, 14 December 2002 18:06 (twenty-one years ago) link

I think jack coles comment is OTM. Also, chops or not, improvising with others is a seperate skill that benefits from practice and experience.

Personally I'm a fan of learning your instrument with discipline and then 'forgetting' what you know...everything you have done before on it informs what you play whether you want it to or not (i.e. Coltrane's 'free' stuff still sounds very thoughtful and intentional to me). Also, if musicians who have spent time learning their instrument simply have better control over their tone and know how to get a good sound(s) out of it, and therefore will be more pleasant to listen to no matter what they're playing (and how noisy it is).

Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, 14 December 2002 18:17 (twenty-one years ago) link


I propose that someone has to be enforcing a rule for you to be able to break it. Even if NWW or Harry Pussy happened to be from the Julliard they couldn't suddenly alienate their fan base like the 1966 free jazzers did. So basically I agree with Tracer except to suggest that the "Jazz rules" are just/only as (non)musical as the "Punk Rules".

vahid (vahid), Sunday, 15 December 2002 11:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

"free noise" is such a loaded term -- i've seen it used locally for addled freak-outs and for quite clear compositions with rules, some of which can initially sound like freak-outs -- i think it helps the listener to appreciate concrete things like pitch relationships, the timbre of sounds, the musicians' communication 'protocols' that often emmerge mirage like from whithin some of these compositions -- all these things providing the 'coherence glue', the clues for listeners, hopefully sub-consciously

yes, i think practitioners of this relatively recent trend (art-rock from the premise of existing rationales for some free jazz and 20th century classical practises, or from the premise of 'new' or 'experimental') have to know the 'how' and 'why' of music to be able to aim properly, so they are able to play their instruments maybe oddly, maybe semi-accidentally, but still deliberately -- to arrive at the aims of the musical/noise undertaking by rules or guidelines for the manipulation of sound -- i think it has to sound more intelligible than 'found accidental sound', yeah imho

this stuff has been argued extensively elsewhere -- to really enjoy these musics i think the listener has to be able to ignore the rhetoric whilst actually processing the music -- the music has to stand up for itself as sound, however free-ish or random sounding -- right down to delivering on the title conferred on the music -- from this, i say "free noise" is an easy umbrella term consistent with there being no existing language with which to properly criticise this stuff, ie however you might think the music developing in this way is often in its infancy, the terms of discussion for it are a long way from consensus

george gosset (gegoss), Sunday, 15 December 2002 13:34 (twenty-one years ago) link

where does jean dubuffet's music fit in? he literally didn't know how to play ANY instruments...

I dunno, but his music is great. Wish I could find those Finnadar LPs...

hstencil, Monday, 16 December 2002 13:49 (twenty-one years ago) link

two months pass...
The list isn't really that bad, especially if you're
familiar with hard core prog. I've heard or owned
albums of about 40 of those bands and heard OF 20
more - with that track record I doubt he made any up,
but lack of punctuation and typos (like "Henty Cow")
complicate things.

PS. Vinyl sucks.

Squirrel_Police (Squirrel_Police), Saturday, 1 March 2003 16:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

nine months pass...
Jacques Thollot's Cinq Hops is complete classic.

dleone (dleone), Friday, 12 December 2003 05:55 (twenty years ago) link

tell me abt it.

Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Friday, 12 December 2003 08:34 (twenty years ago) link

Thollot is a drummer (played with Sonny Sharrock, Don Cherry in the 60s and 70s), but this is from 1978 and is a suite of classical art-songs, breaking into pretty out fusion every now and then. The vocalists on it sings in an operatic style, and it kind of reminds me of Magma except that Thollot's writing is a lot more straightforwardly "melodic" and he probably has a better harmonic sense. (He's also a great drummer, but not as flashy as most of the more famous fusion drummers).

Anyway, I had never heard a jazz record like this before. I'm also reminded of very early Weather Report, kind of a spacey, tricky pop at heart here. I don't think it's on CD, I found it on slsk.

dleone (dleone), Friday, 12 December 2003 16:36 (twenty years ago) link

eleven years pass...

http://www.hundredyearsgallery.com/cram-festival/

this looks ok..

xyzzzz__, Friday, 28 August 2015 11:35 (eight years ago) link

seven years pass...

is there a more regularly used improv/free thread? anyway, have really been getting into this album - trim — dominic lash/rachel mission/steve noble/phil durrant.

i’m not a knowledgeable free jazz person *at all* but there’s an almost archaic lyricism here in the improv boundary zones, with a version of space age synths and information distortion. it keeps insistently reminding me, in ways i can’t articulate, of hank jones’ lazy afternoon. this seems absurd on its face but i’m going to go along with it.

good new label too.

Fizzles, Monday, 22 May 2023 17:31 (eleven months ago) link

just post in in the rolling jazz thread imo

budo jeru, Monday, 22 May 2023 21:11 (eleven months ago) link

Or in whiney's thread rolling frankly annoying quirked up random ass sounds glooped onto a DAW 2023

Random Restaurateur (Jordan), Monday, 22 May 2023 21:16 (eleven months ago) link

^ i have no idea what that thread is and refuse to post in it

budo jeru, Monday, 29 May 2023 15:49 (ten months ago) link

your loss

young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, 29 May 2023 17:35 (ten months ago) link


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