I didn’t grow up listening to “jazz.” My son studying drum set now. He got me exploring all these various tributaries… I like the term ‘Jazz’ less and less. This music is just wild. It rocks!!!
I have such a difficult time explaining to people why I love this. The best I can come up with is that music like this validates how I feel at the moment I am listening to it. I feel like I have "explained" myself after hearing this.
I was told by someone a while ago to look up free jazz. Never herd it before but I like how the it all falls together and then separates and than falls together again... It sounds well... jazzy!
Many People dont understand that this is about energy, is always in expansion, it can go to any direction, imprevisible, too many posibilites Just like the expansion of the mind, the expansion of the universe... You Just have to let the energy flow, you have to concentrate on every detail and every perspective... Sorry for my bad English
This is really really weird for me from the first minute I listened to this but I kind of get it. It's not something I'd listen to but I appreciate it.
It is certainly music. It speaks to, and feeds, the soul. It confuses for a moment, then amuses, then leads the way to ....... wherever it -and you- agree upon. This is real music. This is real adventure.
Coleman is so amazing. Whatever he does, you can still hear the blues tradition within his playing. Also the whole Harmolodic Concept I find a very original and fresh approach to improvisation. One of the greatest Jazzmusician of all times!
Absolutely riveting music and so well crafted. For all with ears that can atune this is a masterpiece. I can enjoy opera, pop, jazz and free jazz in equal measure. This is music of real merit for all to be inspired by; as great as Bach or Coltrane or Hendrix - just different.
Why do so many listeners of this type of music like to signal that a kind of openness of taste can't we just enjoy stuff without this bullshit signalling. It does more harm than good to the music
Appreciating a cacophony like this reminds me of a good people watching session. Everybody's life is playing a different tune and we can sit and hear them all and forget ourselves or simply home in on one at a time. There is beauty in everything.
I do not mean to advocate experimenting with drugs - in fact, I'm more inclined to say that you probably shouldn't. But I will say that Ornette Coleman's music made much more sense to me - and gave me a lot more enjoyment - when I heard it on LSD, and that enjoyment has stayed with me ever since. In other words, this music is different enough that you really have to be able to come to it with fresh ears and an open mind to appreciate it. Maybe I could have gotten to that point without the aid of the psychedelic substance, but the LSD certainly made it a lot easier.
The weirdest thing about those negative comments is that people have so much excess time on their hands that they can spend time listening and writing about something they can't stand. It's actually amazing. I wonder, although I seriously doubt it, if there are jazz guys that go to pop music posts and spend this kind of time complaining about some shitty music they shouldn't have wasted their time with in the first place. For those who actually care about what led them here, this is historical and important because it was the springboard for Shannon Jackson and Blood Ulmer and Bern Nix to take us into new territory that saved us from what fusion jazz was deteriorating into.
Maybe they are like me and are trying to come to the other side. I personally don't like free jazz but I am trying to see if I can finally find some tunes that change my mind on the subject. Some of us actually want to try and give this style a chance.
Yup! That's Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring at the beginning -- the opening bassoon solo (Do-Ti-Do-Ti-Sol-Mi-Ti-La) -- in elaborated call-and-response! Nice!
The "I Could Do That" school of populist criticism goes way back. It's what the small minded say about new art. It's what dopey people said about impressionism, rock and roll, and jazz - art they don't understand. Instead of saying "I don't understand it" and following up with a bit of inquisitiveness, they say "that's just noise" or "that's out of tune" or "I could do that." But they don't. They don't do it. They don't make art. They just consume.
As a bassoon player who was switched from sax (and is now back on sax cuz I couldn't afford a bassoon, tragic); it's definitely quoting it in a different key.
I think ornette said that you don't get enjoyment out of arguing what music is or defining it but by listening to it. So listen, If you like it good, if not go find something you enjoy and listen to that' don't waste a second writing a comment here.
All my life, I studied music theory, read all the books, attended all the lectures. Then I listened to Ornette Coleman one time and I realized everything I was taught in music school was a lie.
Sounds like the jungle.. You can pan and focus on different parts that are all playing at once. I was going to say think of what Jackson Pollock is to the whole field of painting..that's what free jazz is to music. Not sure how far that analogy goes and stays truthful but.. I heard a musician say she liked playing fretless instruments because you had to 'find' the right tone/note within a composition and a fretted instrument didn't allow that continuous adjustment by ear. I mean that's quite interesting to me and makes sense. I think the really congested busy nature of this piece would put most people off listening further than a couple minutes..
DrRicharddym It may sound like the jungle to you, and you do make some good points but "free jazz" is like a fine wine whose taste has to acquired. There is structure and format here. It's just not for everyone.
Thats James Blood Ulmer on guitar on Ornettes right. Bern Nix on his left The instruments are perfectly in tune. Ornettes music does not use traditional chord changes, all the instruments play separate lines that are related by harmony, not melody. It can sound out of tune to the uninitiated. Thanks so much. This is the first footage of this early incarnation of Prime Time I've ever seen
I used to play stuff like this for my kids before they went to bed....they developed odd attitudes but society nixed that through various interventions...what a world...they won't let you make your kids into freaks...I have my values too, and they're as good as anyone else's...
Dude this definitely is jazz and actually pretty important he disposed of chord changes and time signatures all together and created a new type of collective improvisation based on the melody of the tune. They let the music take them where they felt it should go.
This piece is not 'Free Jazz' the composition (it's 'Sleep Talk' which was released on 'Of Human Feelings') and nor is it Free Jazz the style, but a 1970s development of music which Coleman called Harmolodics, which as the word suggests is a form devoid of hierarchy between rhythm, melody and harmony (to simplify). Just listen to it all at once and it will become clear, like a good conversation between a group of rowdy but smart friends.
"..out of tune " ?? ..in who's dogmatic range or inbetween which frequencies of acceptance then ? to me, this is an out of the box eargasm : 'The Act of Creation' (as Arthur Koestler explains how humans become most creative when rational thought is abandoned during dreams and trances). THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THESE UNIQUE UPLOADS, BOBJAZZ11 !!
this is a discussion as to what is free jazz? the fact that Coleman uses Rites of Spring as a springboard, a framework for the improvisation is what jazz is all about. Coleman of course takes it to his level with the introduction of harmolodic theory.... What might be a nightmare to some, is beauty to others...It all has to do with the constraints ones intellect operates under. Some of us have a much more liberated definition of what is art, what is beautiful. Reality or Silicone?
Back In The Day, As A Young Musician I Had A Hard Time Trying To Understand The concept and the arrangements of the note patterns He created. I Still Have Problems.
Am I right to assume that most of "free jazz" is just an expression of feeling through an instrument and since feelings don't always have structure,hence the really loose sound of free jazz?
I hit the vote up on accident was trying to reply, so don't get excited. Dude this is free jazz, there is no organization, yet it all fits. This is just an expression of the vastness of jazz. To say one is jazz and not the other, I feel you are missing the point of jazz. But you are free to have your opinion
@onlyjoetee -In the 60's in London, when the beatles were becoming big, Paul Mcartney was famously checking out all kinds of Avant garde stuff-Stockhausen, and Albert Ayler are both mentioned-Albert Ayler is another free jazz exponent who came after Ornette. Lou Reed/Bowie/Tom Waits have also name checked Ornette. Ornette also started off playing in blues bands in the 50's
Most jazz bores me but I like free jazz and space Jazz a lot. I like the more experimental and expressionistic. There's a more complex order happening here also. Most people will leave a room if a band plays like this... dirty Philistines.
@ghillielover Nah. They're just consciously trying to evade the logical construction of music. Sometimes us as musicians get caught up too much on playing straight or playing swing or playing on the beat or playing the respective scale that we forget that music is not about its logical cleanliness but how it affects the listener and the player. Its the Dionysian vision of art.
In Val Wilmer's book 'as serious as your life' that he plays on a plastic sax as he found that metal ones contain the sound too much. This is probably a large aspect of his sound
