Jazz musicians are significantly overrated.

[Lonesomedave]

+1

What the OP is doing is pulling out some exceptions to the norm which prove his argument. If you compare MOST jazz to MOST rock, jazz is much more difficult to play well.

OP - listen to some Charlie Parker, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis and then come back.

Mingus

 

[Jostein]

There is room for both, and then some!
I dont always listen to music because I want to dance,
and I dont always listen because I want to cry.
Sometimes I want music to make me think,
others I want it to teach me what its like to die.
There are times I want it to wake me up,
and times I want it to take me away.
Often times I listen while getting ****ed up,
and somtimes only it can ease my pain.

This is so deep. Well said.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I've seen jazz guitarists completely screw up funk music by trying to force 5 note chords in where a simple three note stroke worked perfectly. Or simply sounding bored with music that wasn't more complicated.

Over the years I've seen accomplished (in their chosen genre) players who suck at anything outside of that. Sometimes from a disdain for a "lesser" genre, more often just because they honestly couldn't get inside the music.

So once again "better" is largely contextual. The right guy for the job may not be the most "skilled" on paper. It'll probably be the one who actually "hears" the music.

Steve Morse, Sharon Isbin and Jimmy Raney are all great guitarists. They all have the ability to get what is in their "internal ear" (imagination, whatever you want to call it) out into the air so the rest of us can hear it without the instrument being any kind of impediment. But they all sound different, they all hear differet things, they each are involved in the music they are involved in for different reasons. What was important in music to Jimmy Raney wasn't important to Steve Morse and vice versa.

THERE IS NO MUSICAL HIERARCHY. Within each style of music that exists there are people who can touch that universal moment of truth and beauty. And there are many many many people within each style that have no ****ing clue.

Two excellent posts that deserve to be re-quoted. All I can add is the emphasis added in bold.

At this point I consider myself a relatively "accomplished" jazz player. I know guys who play funk and bluegrass on what I consider to be very, VERY high levels who would want no part of subbing for me on my gigs because what I do isn't a big part of their passion or their skill set. But by the same token, I'd also have the exact same amount of NO EARTHY BUSINESS thinking I could walk in sub for them with any hope of holding up my end of the bargain the way they did, because that skill set is different, and because the passion AND skill they bring to the music wouldn't be there. It's not about the style, it's about the combination of skill pertaining to and passion for the music held by the players.

 

[lucas vigor]

Tupac you still missed the point about improvisation. Imagine if Canibal Corpse played that tune in your OP with the 2nd and 3rd verses different EVERY time they gigged.

or imagine if the band leader suddenly decided to play the song in a different key, because a guest singer stepped up to the bandstand and could only sing it in a certain key. And here is the rub: The whole band does not have the time to detune to make the riffage easier and the same. Now you have to find whole new fingerings to play the song!

That is what jazz guys do.

I noticed some of the jazz examples people are suggesting the OP listen to. Ella Fitzgerald? Art Tatum? Mingus? Monk?

I love them but no 17 year old metal head probably would.

Better off with John Schofield, Mike Stern, Al Dimeola, Alan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin. Definitely.

 

[pnchad]

As an immature player one wants to categorize everything and emulate the 'best' which is great.

But, music is not a sport or competition. Some of the most beautiful music is relatively simple. It's the expression of emotion.

Miles said 'you don't need to play ALL the notes, just the pretty ones.

To be honest the extremely exclusive clique nature of jazz coming into the 70s probably destroyed it's popularity. The players started playing for each other & to impress - they lost their audience.

So you're the fastest bassist on the planet - guess where you gig? Youtube

 

[lucas vigor]

As an immature player one wants to categorize everything and emulate the 'best' which is great.

But, music is not a sport or competition. Some of the most beautiful music is relatively simple. It's the expression of emotion.

Miles said 'you don't need to play ALL the notes, just the pretty ones.

To be honest the extremely exclusive clique nature of jazz coming into the 70s probably destroyed it's popularity. The players started playing for each other & to impress - they lost their audience.

So you're the fastest bassist on the planet - guess where you gig? Youtube

while I don't agree with everything you just said (I think jazz was always filled with a lot of competition, especially during the bop era)...

your "fastest bassist on the planet" might be the most sig worthy quote EVER!

 

[evanatch]

Two excellent posts that deserve to be re-quoted. All I can add is the emphasis added in bold.

At this point I consider myself a relatively "accomplished" jazz player. I know guys who play funk and bluegrass on what I consider to be very, VERY high levels who would want no part of subbing for me on my gigs because what I do isn't a big part of their passion or their skill set. But by the same token, I'd also have the exact same amount of NO EARTHY BUSINESS thinking I could walk in sub for them with any hope of holding up my end of the bargain the way they did, because that skill set is different, and because the passion AND skill they bring to the music wouldn't be there. It's not about the style, it's about the combination of skill pertaining to and passion for the music held by the players.

+1

What you enjoy in music is a personal thing, but there's no point in putting down other types of music you don't enjoy. If it doesn't appeal to you, it doesn't appeal to you. Jazz doesn't appeal to me. But there are some seriously talented people that play it and lots of people enjoy it. Good for them. I don't have to enjoy jazz, and they don't have to enjoy metal, but that doesn't mean you can't appreciate styles you don't enjoy.

Hopefully that makes sense. People make the kind of music they want to, and you don't have to like it to respect it. Saying what's "better" is pretty pointless, as it's all down to personal taste.

That applies to people that say progressive rock/metal musicians are better than jazz musicians and people that say jazz musicians are better than progressive rock/metal musicians. There's a lot of jazz music that most progressive rock/metal musicians couldn't play and a lot of progressive rock/metal music that most jazz musicians couldn't play. As Chris Fitzgerald accurately said, the skill sets and passions are just different.

 

[chancletarock]

i think if we spent more time looking at (read: teaching, cultivating an apprecation of) music in terms of communication - i.e. language, syntax, and very importantly, idiom, we could avoid these sorts of discussions. they're flawed from the get-go.

would you ever say that spanish was a seriously overrated language in comparison to french? or that british english was seriously overrated in comparison to american english? i mean i've met some brits who've argued otherwise, but i think we recognize that such a conversation was inherently moot. this sh*t is like saying "man picasso has NOTHING on van gogh:" you're missing the damn point.

sadly i think through some sort of cocktail of influences we end up with these ideas that things are about biggerfasterharder. in some ways i think that can be appreciated, but it's naive to think you might ever understand the mechanics of what exactly biggerfasterharder is to other people.

these conversations to me are manifestations of much larger problems with the way we approach music, because they imply that genre is sacred, and reinforce the notion that one person's chosen way might be inherently better than someone else's, at which point we've already been brainwashed.

 

[BioDriver]

To sum up this thread:

Jazz and rock are two very, VERY different styles. Adam Clayton, P-Nut, Flea, Matt Freeman, and Less Claypool would be just as lost and out of place in a jazz environment as Tony Grey, Stanley Clarke, Chris Wood, and Peter Washington would be in a rock setting. Sure, there are exceptions (Nathan East comes to mind) but they're such outliers that it's almost unexpected. I know that when I have to go into a rock gig I really have to focus and practice much harder than I normally would, since it's such a different sound and feel that what I'm used to.

 

[carlthegroover]

But, music is not a sport or competition. Some of the most beautiful music is relatively simple. It's the expression of emotion.

Miles said 'you don't need to play ALL the notes, just the pretty ones.

+1000. If music was a competition, I just wouldn't play ball. Simply. I'm not playing music to beat someone else, I play for myself and (in a near future) to inspire and entertain others. I and I think (or hope) I'm not the only one.

I guess what with all this wealth of info already posted to answer a flawed argument to begin with... /thread.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Classical and Jazz are the only two type of music considered when going to college or university. Both have a language very complexe and on another level than many other style of music.

The other thing with jazz is, when playing a bebop song like Dona Lee at 300bpm and solo over that ... you have to think FAST and have something to say ... it isn't the same thing as compose a song in stupid time sig that change only to make the music wierder and it is the same night after night.

Last thing ... what you hear in any others genre than classical and jazz is already been done by those two styles of music.

 

[Duckwater]

This thread is great. I wish I could troll this well.

 

[Roy Vogt]

To sum up this thread:

Jazz and rock are two very, VERY different styles. Adam Clayton, P-Nut, Flea, Matt Freeman, and Less Claypool would be just as lost and out of place in a jazz environment as Tony Grey, Stanley Clarke, Chris Wood, and Peter Washington would be in a rock setting. Sure, there are exceptions (Nathan East comes to mind) but they're such outliers that it's almost unexpected. I know that when I have to go into a rock gig I really have to focus and practice much harder than I normally would, since it's such a different sound and feel that what I'm used to.

Having seen Stanley play with Keith Richards, Ron Wood, Ziggy Modeliste and Ian McLagan in The New Barbarians I can vouch for the fact that Stanley can Rock Out convincingly.
Different requirements, mindset, gear, etc. I can agree that when I switch from Jazzbo to Rocker I have to adjust my attitude as well. One size definitely does not fit all...

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Yeah yeah, I'm interested in hearing what you guys would consider quality jazz music.

That's pretty much prog. Although even in prog there's a great amount of compositional effort to sound good, as with any other music. Tech death is pretty much the closest to as hard as possible to be complex, which actually does sound interesting believe it or not.

You should check out Serialism ... a mouvement in classical music ... it uses a complex system, listening to taht kind of music you will hear where the influance of band like Brain Drill comes from.

 

[spade2you]

Granted we're being trolled and somewhat Lowner'd, the OP's posts don't suggest he has been playing very long and isn't very old.

Given that he judges music based on speed being the gauge of difficulty, I'm guessing he's not a college student. His listening experiences are almost entirely listened to metal and the various genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres. (As in, he LOVES to educate people on the differences between Swedish progressive metal and Swedish progressive death metal)

People spend a lifetime trying to learn and better understand jazz. How long does it take to play metal? Hand sheet music to a jazz player and what do they do? Play it. Hand sheet music to a metal head and what do they do? Leave the room.

 

[fdeck]

Granted we're being trolled and somewhat Lowner'd, the OP's posts don't suggest he has been playing very long and isn't very old.

Given that he judges music based on speed being the gauge of difficulty, I'm guessing he's not a college student. His listening experiences are almost entirely listened to metal and the various genres, sub-genres, and sub-sub-genres. (As in, he LOVES to educate people on the differences between Swedish progressive metal and Swedish progressive death metal)

People spend a lifetime trying to learn and better understand jazz. How long does it take to play metal? Hand sheet music to a jazz player and what do they do? Play it. Hand sheet music to a metal head and what do they do? Leave the room.

You just revealed a secret. The sheet music isn't really for reading. It's for tricking guitarists into turning down.

 

[spade2you]

You just revealed a secret. The sheet music isn't really for reading. It's for tricking guitarists into turning down.

LOL!!! If we're in a revealing secrets mood, an unlined fretless 6 or 7 string bass is like Kryptonite to even the noodliest guitarists. Normally, they'd pick up a bass and go slappity, tappity, pop pop pop. With an unlined fretless with too many strings, they just walk away with their tail between their legs.

 

[Roy Vogt]

One other thing to think about here:
The most technically demanding Speed Metal and Prog Metal Bands (Meshuggah, et al) are for the most part performing composed music of a very highly demanding and technical nature. They have more in common with a virtuoso Classical Violinist like Itzhak Perlman than a master improviser like Dave Liebman or the late John Coltrane or Michael Brecker, who perform music of a very highly demanding and technical nature, but are also spontaneously composing melodies and parts that must fit with a complex harmonic background. It's a whole different ball game, IMHO.
That said, here's my opinion:
"What's a more complex and demanding musical form, Prog Metal or Jazz?"
"Yes!"

 

[spade2you]

Being a lot less diplomatic, if we're really measuring difficulty, I find it humbling that there are people in their 50's and 60's who have been playing guitar longer than many of these "technically superior" metal heads have been alive AND they're still learning.

 

[Tupac]

People spend a lifetime trying to learn and better understand jazz. How long does it take to play metal? Hand sheet music to a jazz player and what do they do? Play it. Hand sheet music to a metal head and what do they do? Leave the room.

I hope you aren't implying the bands I posted (or other people posted) are unable to read music. Do you not see what ridiculous things are going on? You're in no position to compare it to jazz if you can't.