Jazz is just a series of posh mistakes all joined together.
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I use to think the same thing until I learned how to play bass. Once I really learned how to listen to all the instruments and how they all interact with each other in a somewhat individual way, it started to make sense. Kind of like a chef’s salad where all of the ingredients are mixed together but don’t loose their individuality - unlike a cake mix where everything looks the same when it’s combined…
I’m still not good at playing it, but I have grown to appreciate listening to it much more.
Keep on Thumpin’!
Lanny
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I quite like Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band.
OK… let’s kick up some settled dust here. 
Jazz, when it originated from blues, differed from previous Western musical tradition because of its conversational nature (which it inherited from the late 19th century blues it evolved from).
Think of it this way:
Western traditional (classical) music is a monologue from the composer, executed by an assembly of musicians (skilled craftsmen) to ‘read out loud’ from a written score.
Jazz is a bunch of musicians, agreeing on a theme, and then having a musical conversation among each other. Traditionally, jazz is not about the composition and its complexities, but precisely about that interaction between the musicians. The composition can just be a catchy theme, which the musicians will then use as a vessel to … have some fun with, essentially.
Blues, and subsequently jazz, differed from classical music because, for a large part, musicians played it for their own sake, rather than to amuse an audience. This different approach changed the music at its core, appealing not only to the audience (who may or may not have been musically schooled at some level), but also to the sensitivities of the performers. On top of that, the enjoyment the musicians got out of it was diffferent, because they got more of a chance to express themselves, and on top of that, they were part of a less predictable “organism”, in which they would be surprised by what their band mates were doing, and could interact with that.
This doesn’t have to be complex! The opening tune of the One Most Essential Jazz Album Of All Times (Miles Davis – Kind of Blue) underlines this perfectly. A simple theme, used as a vehicle for Davis, Adderley and Coltrane to blow over. While there is some serious sh1t going on here harmonically, to an uninitiated listener, it sounds simple and digestible.
It is often said that if you don’t like this album, you don’t like jazz.
And many people don’t. My wife, for instance, gets acute panic attacks when I play this music.
I’ve often wondered what makes people like jazz, and I think it has, for a large part, to do with early exposure. My wife wasn’t exposed to any music except some marching stuff occasionally. But my grandfather, my mother and her younger brother were deeply into jazz in the late '50’s and early '60’s. Since, due to circumstances, my mother had to move back in with her parents when I was born, I was subjected to a lot of that stuff… and apparently I picked it up really fast. Both my grandad and mum said that, before I could walk, I would spend hours sitting two feet away from a large piece of furniture that would emit music, being completely absorbed in it (something I can still do, by the way: listen to music and immerse myself into it completely).
When my grandson Senna was about 18 months old, we had him over every Saturday. I would use the drive to have him listen to an album called “the Sixteen Men Of Tain” by Allan Holdsworth – very complex under the hood, but not in an intimidating way.
One day, before we went to our place, we dropped off our daughter (his mother) at work, and Senna asked me to put the music on. Thinking there was no reason to give our daughter a migraine attach, I played Tracy Chapman. To which Senna said “no, the OTHER music!”
At age 12, he begged me to please put a pre-release version of a Sebastiaan Cornelissen-track on his phone, so he could listen to it in the car on their way to France.
I think that, when you’re exposed to jazz at an early stage, you develop sensitivities to it that help you to appreciate it. I’ve always been sensitive to (and quite fond of) examples of interplay between musicians – it’s that conversational style that holds a good deal of appeal to me.
At this stage in the course, jazz would be the hardest genre for me to play even though I really like it. That’s not because it’s harder to play than other genres, but because it requires the ability to “speak the language more fluently”. Compare it to learning another language: if you’re learning a new language, reading out loud from a written text is one thing, but actually conducting a conversation, and making up your lines as the conversation goes along, is an entirely different cup of tea. I’m now at module 5, and I’m not nearly close enough. I can play me a workout and a few simple songs again, but taking a theme and running with it like I could 35 years ago? No way. The understanding is still there, but I need to blow a lot of rust out of my technique before I can do that again.
So… yes. Jazz can be very complex too. If you put people like Allan Holdsworth, Vinnie Colaiuta, Jimmy Johnsson, Gary Husband, Steve Hunt and Alan Pasqua in a room, and they’re going to have challenging musical conversations and trying new things, you’re bound to get stuff that is a lot harder to access. These people are challenging themselves, and it takes a huge lot to challenge them. Even Vinnie Colaiuta (who is one of the most accomplished drummers in the world) commented during the recording sessions that he wasn’t sure he was doing a good job on it. Steve Hunt, a classically trained jazz pianist with quite a reputation, immediately said “I’m not good enough for this”, to which Allan said “oh, don’t worry, you’ll fit right in!”. By which he meant “all of us feel that way”.
I have a modest example here. If you feel up to it, I dare you to figure out in which meter this piece, or even the opening “bars”, are:
Hint: Allan, who wrote this thing, once said about himself that he didn’t know about meters, because “I can’t count any further than one.”
(If you want to hear some epic guitar improvisation, stick around – they start at 1:01. Allan was the guy who was fired by John Wetton from UK because he improvised his solos rathen than play the same solos each show.)
I think that the fact that I was exposed to jazz ever since the late '50’s has helped me to dig this kind of stuff. I don’t think you should be worried if you find that second bit of music hard – it is, and you need to be ready to not have a clue about what’s going on and still enjoy it. That’s not a capability or a talent – I think it’s something you ‘get’ subconsciously. Like an 18 month old child.
And once you got it, it’ll never leave you anymore.
For me, that is one of the best things that has happened to me.
Of course, this is no longer unique to jazz. Since the ‘60’s, many people have been integrating genres. Jazzrock is just one example. In the late 60’s, Keith Emerson would be integrating baroque-classical themes into rock and jazz, sometimes within the same bar. Artists in the Canterbury Scene drew heavily from jazz too. The track “The Cinema Show” from Genesis’ album Selling England By The Pound, contains an instrumental bit, where the guitar solo is entirely written out (and very craftily so!), but it is played against a backdrop filled to the brim with some of the best, most dynamic jazz style drumming in the history of progressive rock.
And about metal: the number of metal guitar players who will happily admit that they are indebted to Allan Holdsworth (a jazz player) is staggering.
ps: it’s people calling Sade, or worse, Kenny G, jazz is what gives me severe skin rash.
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That is probably the most interesting post on Jazz I have ever read. Thanks!
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Nice post. I feel like jazz and blues are also great for improvisation if you can “speak the language”. I suspect a lot of the best moments in jazz and blues aren’t written down and are probably not easily re-created.
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Great post!
I haven’t been exposed to jazz from early on… unfortunately, I guess!
But, I was lucky to have had music teachers in school that exposed us early (fifth/sixth grade) to Emerson, Lake and Palmer and King Crimson etc. Some of us liked it a lot, many hated it. It got me highly interested in prog rock, and from there - at least for me - it seems an almost “natural”, inevitable path to exploring fusion, jazz rock, and then more “hardcore” jazz.
In the end, many of these labels we are using are crutches at best, especially when trying to sub-categorize and sub-sub-categorize… Great musicians will always be influenced by many things and try to get inspired by many sources.
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Yes, but I got there the other way 'round, I guess. 
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Jazz is a series of ‘posh mistakes’ made by people who aren’t musical.
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That’s one of my jokes btw - don’t take it seriously . . . 
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Nice recovery. I was about to find out where you park your bass. 
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I lived in Amsterdam for a year btw, spring 1983 to spring 1984.
Like everywhere in Europe, it has probably changed quite a lot between then and now, and most likely not for the better, but I loved my time there and I loved the Dutch people.
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The fact is: a language one doesn’t understand sounds like a jumbled mouthful of incoherent sounds. In reality, the spoken word in that language could comprise the most sublime poetry or rhetoric. But before it can be appreciated, one must be able to understand it.
As with jazz, the language in this example doesn’t care one whit whether anyone understands it. Nonetheless, it exists for those who either understand it or like how it sounds and makes them feel.
Other people can choose to learn to appreciate jazz on some level or denigrate it because it seems obtuse to them. Regardless, it exists for those who value it for being visceral, intellectual, and emotional musical art.
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The hardest is country, because you have to listen to country. 
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Oh this is a fun thread!
Hmm 
I don’t think metal is the hardest genre. It really depends on the band and style. Some metal bass players just play the open E / D / B string while other perform a Mozart before your eyes. Think metal does have a lot of very technical cunning and stamina heavy musicians tho.
Jazz is also hard because of improv right? You basically need two skills sets to play jazz.
I’m guessing blues is a bit easier?
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To play jazz, one needs to be a master of ALL scales, and possess the skill to walk from one chord to the next in a stylish manner. I learned this skill at TalkingBass from Mark Smith’s “Walking Bass” course.
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Problem is, what happens at the genre boundaries?
Jazz built on blues, and ran with it. Some bluesy jazz standards are very easy to play.
Some metal and associated music is heavily indebted to jazz. Allan Holdsworth was a jazz cat by nature, but Babymetal’s guitarist Mikio Fujioka was a huge fan, as is John Petrucci and Derek Sherinian, Alex Lifeson, Yngwie Malmsteen and a slew of other rock & metal alumni. There’s Dream Theater noises in which you can clearly hear Allan Holdsworth influences, specially rhythmically. In turn, Allan’s compositions and sense of harmony and time also built on other music he was exposed to as a kid, such as Débussy and Strawinsky.
And Dave Brubeck had a habit of not only using odd meters, but he would also throw in odd scales into bluesy stuff.
And then, a particular piece that player A thinks is difficult, player B might play off the top of his head.
There’s some stuff in there that I don’t find hard to play, but some others struggle with it. That’s not because I’m a better player, it’s because I was listening to complex shit before I could walk – and my mother told me later that I was completely consumed by it. So I’m probably a bit at an advantage.
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Oh I might check that walking bass course. I still got 2 courses I need to finish 
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I totally agree.
Again, it comes back to jazz essentially being its own language. In myriad ways, jazz is a higher order, more cerebral take on Western music theory. All the elements and tenets are within it, but their relationships to each other are stretched, altered, rearranged intentionally to create unique modes of expression - different dialects of a common language.
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Only 2? Rookie.
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