LOL! I’m guilty of having two TB courses in progress right now. The first two of many.
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Yes! This!! This is how I have always felt. Now I’ve received several pieces of good advice here in the B2B community that involve at least learning about some jazz basics.
I need to find the right place in the forums to ask; what artist could someone go with, to find jazz thats a more gentle entry in to the genre? Would love to hear some suggestions on jazz that might come across a bit less discordant, something a rocker could listen to, while easing in to it.
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Aww. This makes me miss having Joe around.
(The person you are quoting there was a long time forum member and friend to us all, who passed away a while back.)
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I am no Jazz aficionado, but have you listened to Steely Dan, Diana Krall (Elvis Costello’s wife), or Tokyo Groove Jyoshi? Steely Dan is not a jazz group, but they incorporate a lot of jazz into their music and have some of the best bass lines. They’re sort of a jazz rock fusion, as are the Zombies
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Yeah, Joe was a good egg
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Not easy to do. While jazz standards often have a fairly straightforward structure and perhaps only a handful of chords, it is often the performance that adds spice to the whole thing. How musicians chose to interpret that chord sequence and melody, how to choose to phrase the melodies and the type of accompaniment they decide on; and then, of course, the solos and the interplay…
So, jazz is really “hard” to ease into - it’s a gradual journey of learning and appreciating what’s going on.
That seems not so tough on first glance, because a lot really isn’t “discordant”, but it depends a lot on what you are able to “stomach”, what your threshold is. Here is a modern standard - Gary Willis’ “It’s Only Music” (performed by other musicians). It’s in 3/4 and has only 8 or so different chords and a repeating underlying structure, but, again, it’s how to choose to interpret it, play it, phrase it, play off of each other that makes it seemingly more complicated… But, really, this is totally mellow and not discordant at all.
Let me know. If that is “not too bad”, I can try and find more for you 
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I’m not a Jazz fan by any means, but one album I keep going back to is Miles Davis - Tutu. There’s a definite 80’s electronic influence in there and Marcus Miller is in the driving seat on bass duties. Might be worth a shot for you.
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Ditto, I miss him too. RIP Joe 
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How about Horace Silver? His “Song for my father” is one of the songs that are taught in the B2B course. I’m no jazz fan myself - and that’s putting it mildly - but I really like that song. It’s fun and easy to play along with as well. He might be worth checking out. Either way, jazz isn’t really a single genre… There are so many different styles.
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As someone who has a love/hate relationship with jazz, I will give my 2 cents, and I am sure I will get flamed for this. Jazz—particularly fusion and free form–is basically a bunch a really really skilled musicians who are music theory nerds trying to out nerd each other and making self-referential variations on licks from pre-existing works. If you don’t know the theory and can’t catch the riff variations, its hard to enjoy. I can appreciate their technical proficiency. …but despite listening to jazz on and off for over 25 years, I have a very hard time figuring out what any of the free form/fusion cats are actually “saying.”
That said, I love brass jazz soloists–Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Coltrane, etc…and nothing relaxes me more than a class of scotch and some melancholy jazz trumpet.
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Don’t worry - there are only two or three people in here with some interest in jazz… and they are too busy learning 7th arpeggios
I am not sure they are saying more or less than other musicians. They enjoy making music and they perhaps enjoy the intricacies of jazz a bit more than an evening of root-fifth
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Well, 7th are actually quite useful for a lot of music 
It’s the chords that are actually longer than words that really freak me out 
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My vote for the original topic threads:
Hardest: Jazz (as has been discussed extensively)
Easiest: Punk
Surprised I didn’t see Punk before? A ton of Ramones and other punk (usually on a punk band’s first album) are 4 notes, chugging along at a fast tempo. I think it’s even easier than country where it’s slower, but you actually are fretting different notes a lot (Root-5th). Blitzkrieg Bop only has four notes and all are played in pairs. I always recommend punk for beginners for a couple reasons: Low complexity, helps build finger speed and endurance and you can skip notes easily and still sound good if your fingers aren’t quite there yet and most importantly it’s fun! Fun = picking up your bass more often.
(Even modern punk/pop-punk groups like Green Day, Fall Out Boy, and New Found Glory have a fair amount of really easy songs - early albums when they had less experience and wrote simpler songs - and popular stuff like 21 Guns or Wake Me Up When September Ends are dead simple to learn.)
Don’t worry - there are only two or three people in here with some interest in jazz… and they are too busy learning 7th arpeggio
Funny…I was attempting (and failing) at a flat7 arpeggio exercise last night
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I have said I dislike jazz before but that’s an imprecise statement. I wouldn’t say I dislike the genre and in fact I do like some for sure. It’s just that I dislike most of the modern Jazz I have heard and am pretty sympathetic to @Old_WannaBe’s take there in that a lot of what I have heard seems like a discordant theory-flex in a lot of ways to me.
Bebop, on the other hand, I can quite enjoy. I know little about it but like it as thematic music. Same for R&B.
And it’s hard to argue with a lot of Jazz singers. Especially on the R&B and funkier side of Jazz.
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I’ll admit I haven’t carefully read every post - so sorry if I’m repeating: I think a lot of folks think of be-bop and fusion when they hear the word “jazz”. But jazz has an enormous range and those two sub-genres can be really difficult to listen to and fusion in particular is an acquired taste - i.e. once you can appreciate Monk and Mingus maybe you’ll get early Weather Report. But ragtime, big band/swing, “pop jazz” from the 40s and 50’s, gypsy, latin, cool school - I think a lot of those are more accessible or enjoyable, and way easier to play - like big band is highly arranged, and the more complicated timing and scales are really bop/modern/modal/free/fusion and not other areas of jazz.
Wow- haven’t listened to gypsy jazz in a while - I’m going to load up some Django Reinhardt!
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Pam raises her hand 
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Yeah, I love big band, swing, and the pop-40s WWII radio jazz. I have may grandparents old Glen Miller WWII send-off concert record. Also love me some smokey-club, red dress crooners.
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I love jazz. I’ve listened to it since I was a little kid.
To say that all jazz is discordant is equivalent to saying that all food tastes like broccoli. It simply is not true.
There are myriad styles, sub-genres and flavors of jazz, and there is an ever-expanding universe of artists who interpret jazz in their unique, individual ways.
Jazz can also be subversive. Many people have long enjoyed a ton of popular songs without realizing they were actually jazz.
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I guess this is - hopefully true - for all of us and pretty much all genres. There is some music we like a lot, and some not so much, no matter what label someone slapped on it. It just so happens for me that more of the music I like seems to be from the jazz neighborhood and less so from the country or punk genres, for example.
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