Revision:Popular Music and Jazz
From The Student Room
TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Music > Popular Music and Jazz
Black Americans
- Slavery/abolition
- Blues
- Guitar, voice, harmonica – acoustic
- Improvised
- Call and response
- Melody uses minor pentatonic scale
- Blue notes – flattened 3rd, 5th and 7th
- Personal
- Gospel
- Like blues but religious
- Block harmonies in vocals – primary triads like African vocal music
- Call and response
- Signifyin’
- Ragtime
- Piano imitation of marching bands, very syncopated.
- Stride – Bass, chord, bass chord
- Jazz
- Trad., Dixieland, New Orleans.
- Trumpet, clarinet and trombone
- Banjo
- 2 bass notes per bar (tuba, sousaphone)
- Swing.
- 12/8 feel dance music.
- Walking bass, 4 in the bar, usually up and down scales.
- Boogie woogie
- Piano style. 8 notes per bar in the LH, swung or straight.
- Bebop
- Very fast, often semi-quavers (16th notes) instead of swung quavers.
- Extremely chromatic, not pentatonic
- Very discordant
- Intellectual, not entertainment.
- Aggressive, challenging
- Virtuoso
- Reggae (separate development in Caribbean)
- Usually political
- Spanish influence on rhythm and brass (Spanish trumpets in thirds).
- No blue notes.
- Off beat stabs on guitar/organ (Ska)
- Short notes leaving lots of space to hear complex rhythms.
- Bubbling Bass
- Rhythm & Blues
- Amplified blues.
- More aggressive rhythms
- Guitar, harmonica and voice can now balance a brass section (often trumpet, tenor sax & trombone).
Urban (Chicago)
- Soul
- Black American pop style based on R&B and Gospel
- Love songs but not as raunchy as blues.
- Usually voice led.
- Often brass section and backing vocals
- Signifyin’
- Funk
- Pop style based on Jazz/rock fusion.
White Americans
- European classical
- Hymns
- Folk Blues
- Country (Hillbilly)
- 2 in the bar
- major pentatonics
- 9th hammers rather than blue note bends
- Rockabilly
- White bands tried to imitate R&B bands but cleaned up the lyrics and gave the music a more country feel.
- Rock & Roll – generic term for 50’s pop including
- Rockabilly
- Doo-wop – vocals imitating instruments using nonsense syllables.
- 12/8 ballads
- Latin rhythms esp. quavers accented 3,3,2
Louis Armstrong
Trad, Dixieland, New Orleans (See above) – Chicago, hot jazz
West End Blues – Joe (King) Oliver, 1928
- Trad instrumentation:
- Trumpet
- Clarinet
- Trombone
- Piano
- Banjo
- Drums
- Bass
- Opening trumpet solo fanfare followed by cadenza in G minor pentatonic.
- Main melody [bar 7]– trumpet. 12 bar blues in Eb
- Clarinet harmonises with melody, trombone holds long notes often with slides.
- Rhythm steady 4 crotchets in a bar – (cf. marching band)
- Chorus 2 [19] – trombone improvised solo. Boc-a-da-boc in rhythm.
- Chorus 3 [31] – clarinet ('chalumeau register) echoed by scat vocals (voice used as an instrument singing nonsense syllables). Slight disphoning (distortion) on voice – Louis Armstrong’s trademark).
- Chorus 4 [43] - Piano solo (Earl “Fatha” Hines) Stride (10ths in left hand. Classical influences in right hand scales. Octaves at [47]. cf. Duke Ellington.
- Chorus 5 [55] Trumpet solo with support from clarinet and trombone. Piano cadenza [63] (classical). *Freetime ending led by trumpet. (Amen)
West End Blues
- Armstrong trumpet solo at start: fanfare-like but immediately containing an element of swing. Divides into two halves: 2nd half dotted rhythms, close to swing semiquaver triplets. Chord on final note: Bb augmented (Gb is enharmonic note for F# which leads into the G natural at start of main tune.
- Note 12 bar blues harmonic structure I,I,I,I7,IV,IV,I,I,V7,V7,I,I. (note underlying chord sequence in jazz is known as the changes) With occasional use of substitution chord (eg 6th bar of trombone solo Ab minor)
- Theme based on motifF#-G-Bb. Use of blue notes.(eg flat 3rd F#/Gb & flat7th - Db) Trumpet and clarinet in 3rds at first, trombone more of a bass line, banjo and bass providing a solid foundation to play against.
- Trumpet gradually becoming more virtuosic., clarinet drops to more simple part in its chamaleau range (rich sounding bottom register) -piano and banjo play in a style called comping -the rhythmic playing of chords as a backing to a solo.
- 2nd 12 bar section trombone solo, high (tenor range), melodic and using slide techniques, other front line players drop out but joined by milk bottle.
- 3rd 12 bar section clarinet solo, deep in chalumeau register, Armstrong scat sings in antiphonal imitation, breaking away to greater degrees of improvised freedom.
- 4th 12 bar section: Earl Hines piano solo, mellifluous right hand, wide stretched left hand similar to stride piano style, becoming more rhythmic and using 8ves and tremelandi, imitating wind players sustain.
- Bar 55 wind players enter playing chords (homophonic) but trumpet crescendos on high note showing Armstrong's technical skill, especially as he stays up high for a long melisma.
- Little coda provided by piano at first on a descending set of chords over Bb dominant pedal and finally instruments enter and produce a jazz cadence B7(enharmonic) - Eb6 (highly chromatic plagal cadence)
- Note the way each frontline player has had a solo: a procedure largely introduced by Armstrong (previously most solo work was done by the lead player) but this became the standard approach afterwards for most types of small group jazz.
Duke (Edward) Ellington
Swing, (See above) big band, dance band – composer, New York.
Black and Tan Fantasy – Duke Ellington & Bubber Miley, 1927
- Instrumentation – Big Band:
- Trumpets x 2 (later 4, now 5)
- Trombones x 2 (later 3 or 4, now 4 or 5)
- Saxes x 5: 2 altos, 2 tenors, baritone
- Piano
- Banjo (later guitar)
- Bass
- Drums
- Ellington’s “Jungle” style – for “African” cabarets at “The Cotton Club”
- Opening melody “The Holy City” in Bb minor (Victorian religious ballad – classical music joke cf. ending – Chopin’s Death March).
- 12 bar blues.
Black and Tan Fantasy
- Early big band music from New York clubs combining saxes and brass.
- Opening material based on white religious ballad "The Holy City" but here transformed not only by the pulsing rhythm section behind the melody instruments but also by the tonic minor key and the instrumental slides and mutes.
- Choke cymbal barl2; leading to:
- Alto solo showing interesting cross rhythms and standing out over background chords from rest of section.
- Descending chromatic break, alto solo completed leading to:
- Trumpet solo full of growling tones and using plunger mute: characteristic of Ellington's jungle style: interesting to compare with Armstrong's style eg after long opening Bb falls to a more comfortable range where the growling would be more effective.
- Piano solo with stride left hand.
- More growls in muted trombone solo: note - high notes for a tenor trombone. The scoring of high trombone not taking the bass line was a new technique used a lot by Ellington. eg in music such as Mood
- Indigo and in the following little...
- Coda Section - music derived from the famous Chopin funeral march, perhaps bemoaning the fate of the black man in American society at the time
- ElIington was an important figure in the development of big band jazz. His contribution was to give the developing art from respectability amongst the more traditional classical composers through clever scoring and daring experimental harmonies. Ellington and Armstrong were very different in their styles. Armstrong improvised on the written music of others and his inventive performances excited all who heard them.
- Ellington however wrote original jazz works and scored them for "jazz orchestra" becoming perhaps the first "composer" of jazz. Others tried even more crossover styles such as Gershwin who combined African and Jewish music with European classical techniques eg Rhapsody in Blue.
Miles Davies
Bebop, highly intellectual (see above)
Four – Miles Davis 1970
- Head played twice – trumpet lead, then abandoned.
- Several improvised choruses using experimental instrumental techniques:
- ½ valving
- split notes
- bends
- disphoning
- stopping
- Very fast walking bass.
- Drums playing mainly on cymbals, with tom fills and bass drum “bombs” dropped.
- Piano ‘comping – chords stabbed in between trumpet phrases
- Substitution chords
- Chromatic not pentatonic.
Four
- Small group jazz. A reaction set in after the 2nd world war against the Big Band music as many black musicians felt their invention (jazz) had been stolen by the white musicians (Glen Miller, Benny Goodman).
- There were still black Big Bands around (Count Basie) but far fewer and the musicians wanted a return to the more aggressive and spontaneous sounds from the old days. A more economical style evolved with piano, acoustic bass and drum kit as a rhythm section behind lead players such as Miles Davis. The Bebop style evolved which featured a more complex harmonic language, a much more complicated rhythm section backing, freeing the drums from merely playing a constant metronomic rhythm, and a fast accented improvised lead part. Once the tune had been played once (the head) the various players took turns in improvising long and daring solos. They would usually use 32 bar song form and players would become familiar with the structure and harmony knowing when their turn was coming up.
- In Four after a drum solo the music begins with a restless forward movement through chords coming in before the beat, each being emphasised by the three note melody. (in Bebop melodies were often made from little motives like this) The second 8 bars are more chromatic and the semi tonal nature of bebop harmonies comes through. The second 16 repeat the first but there is a solo trumpet break at the end leading into the first improvised chorus. Note walking bass starting in 15t chorus pulse becomes clear.
- In his improvisations Davis explores a wide range of trumpet techniques: high notes (especially in the 3rd chorus), double tonguing, glissandi and note bending through changing embouchures and lip vibrato. The first three choruses are mostly long scalar phrases, covering over the structure of the music and setting it free. In the third chorus Davis explores some widening intervals - 4th, 5th, 7th placing the notes to cleverly undermine the metre.
- Note: the wavy line in bar 1.15 indicates a fall-off - a short downward slide
- The bracketed note in bar 2.1 is a ghost note - a deliberately weak and almost inaudible note. The diamond headed notes in bar 32 are marked 12 v referring to the use of half-valving the partial opening of a valve to give a note of thin tone and uncertain pitch, in this case having the effect of ornamenting the main note.
Chester Burnett (Howling Wolf)
R&B (See above)
I’m Leavin’ You
- 12 bar blues
- Vocal lead - disphoning
- Personal – about relationship breaking up.
- Heavy swing rhythm accomp.
- Guitar fills minor pentatonic
- Harmonica fills ditto
- Vocal “wolf howls”
I'm Leavin' You
- Whilst the jazz movement was born in New Orleans from a combination of ragtime and marching band music, the blues roots of jazz in the Mississippi delta area developed separately and adopted the guitar and voice as its main instruments. Although the blues style proper larger remained in this region other blues musicians followed the direction the jazz players took and went north to Chicago. Here the influences of city life, the invention of the electric guitar and the interest of the growing record companies gave birth to a new, faster and more exciting style of blues music, which became known as Rhythm and Blues. Also the invention of the microphone had a big influence on the way lead singers could communicate with the audience. Howlin' Wolf was one of the most famous exponents of this electric blues and was known for his powerful vocals, along with Muddy Waters at Chess records. In I'm Leavin You the characteristic shuffle rhythm is provided by rhythm guitar and vamping triplet-feel piano combined with a throbbing bass guitar line providing a basic root note and drums accenting the offbeats.
- The electric lead guitar and harmonica, played by Howlin' Wolf adds interesting lead lines between his vocal line. The harmonica part is short. The instrument became less popular in later Rhythm and Blues.
- The vocal line is growling and aggressive. It is repetitive using the same notes to emphasise the message and highlighting the notes of the blues scale.
- The lead guitar part uses bends and hammer-ons that are more effective on an electric instrument. There are lots of slides up to notes and chords, indicated by straight lines, and even mordants and acciaccaturas sliding up frets.
- The piano is largely improvised and uses the G minor pentatonic scale G-Bb-C-D-F.
- In verse two the stop chorus adds further to the strong sense of rhythm, particularly the on-the-bar accents and the triplet build in the last of the four stop bars, launching us into chord IV. The term fill in bar 17-18 indicates a short improvisation.
- The music finishes with a fade out, a technique more common to recorded music than live performance.
Carl Perkins
Rockabilly
Honey Don’t
- Shuffle rhythm – more heavily dotted than swing.
- Slap (slap-back) bass – country style. Gives the bass more rhythmic snap.
- Flattened sub-mediant chord change – E to C.
- Stoptime verse
- Boogie bass in chorus.
- Limited improvisation in guitar solo. Mostly rhythm playing.
Honey Don't
- This music represents early Rock and Roll and is a different branch of musical development than Rhythm and Blues music. Instead of the black electric blues from Chicago we have a music that traces back to the country music of the southern states, Hill-Billy and Rock-a Billy styles and white cowboy music. The style is also traceable in skiffle music in the UK.
- The country style of course combined with the blues l2-bar structure and blues scales to produce Rock and Roll and had a more acoustic instrumentation and a less aggressive delivery than Rhythm and Blues.
- Carl Perkins music was seminal. It was covered by Elvis Presley and the Beatles and this example shows the raw acoustic slapping style. Teenage society is reflected in its energy and lyrics (love problems, comments on clothes and Saturday night out) and teenagers were now serious purchasers of records.
- The break bars, the shuffle rhythm, the use of dominant ih harmonies and blue notes all come from Rhythm and Blues but in this song there are departures from the standard 12 bar blues. Notable is the chord of the flattened 6th (in this case chord C in E major). The bass guitar was often an acoustic double bass played pizzicato in this style. In this piece it is often doubled by the lead guitar when this is not involved in more specific lead parts eg the opening riff. This is based around the dominant note and uses the open B string to produce interesting effects. The lead guitar solo is nice and simple involving notes based on 4ths that would be easy to barr. Perhaps the writers wanted teenagers to have a go at playing the music themselves!
- The rhythm guitar is again acoustic.
- Rock and Roll was now a reality and Bill Hailey and the Comets took the style across the Atlantic to the UK. The consequence was the "First British Invasion" when UK bands were the favourites in the US. These included groups such as the Rolling Stones (more interested in Rhythm and Blues) the Beatles and the Kinks.
The Kinks
Pop, Britpop
Waterloo Sunset – Ray Davies, 1967
- Influenced by the Beatles:
- AABA verse form
- Line-up – 2 guitars, bass, drums – all singing.
- Anecdotal lyrics
- Backing Vocal harmonies – doo-wop, falsetto
- Chord Sequence based on descending bass scale.
- Structure: Strophic
- Intro
- Verse1
- Chorus
- Verse 2
- Chorus
- Verse 3
- Bridge
- Ending – repeat and fade
- Double tracked vocals (lead). Two recordings interact to produce a phase effect (telephone quality).
- Lead guitar playing vocal melody NOT improvising. E MAJOR pentatonic scale.
- Suggests descending bass chord sequence cf. “A Day In The Life”
Waterloo Sunset
- This music is from the "middle period" of the Kinks output. They started out in the heavier rock style with parallel harmonies drawing heavily on blues riffs but gradually adopted a more acoustic sound and richer harmonic language.
- Their lead singer and songwriter Ray Davies became interested in social issues and caught up with the changing fashions of the swinging 60's along with bands such as the Who.
- Waterloo Sunset describes a walk across Hungerford Bridge in London and a view across to Waterloo. The song starts with an introduction starting with dominant harmonies, and then introducing the main to on lead guitar. This is constructed from a falling sequence of a motive of five notes.
- The intro leads into the vocal through the sub-dominant chord, a characteristic of much of the Kinks style of this time. After a repeat of the first 4 bars the next phrase takes us through the supertonic minor (F#min) and the melodic phrasing is less concentrated.
- The first four bars return and lead us to the middle section of the song, mostly based around F# major with again the use of the subdominant and this chord (B) then reverts to its normal function as the dominant of the home key E major and is used in an extended section to delay the return of the main theme (bar31-34).
- Verses are an AABA structure (bars 9-24) Bridge is bars 17-20 middle eight is bars 25-32; (this modulates to the dominant-B maj). Throughout the music the backing vocals have added interesting contrapuntal lines with imitative phrases (waterloo sunset's fine) and new sounds (Oos and Las) and some singers holding long notes whilst others sing short note phrases against them.
- Note the lead singer is Double Tracked ie recorded twice to reinforce the sound and give a slight chorusing effect. Also of note is the interesting bass guitar line which is released from its function as a rhythm instrument and sometimes plays high notes in a more melodic way.
- Guitar licks (short solos eg bars 11 &15) often decorate the ends of the vocal phrases. The harmonic style (use of subdominant and secondary chords) together with the comment on contemporary society a features of the Kinks style to be found later in the music ofthe "Britpop" bands such as Oasis and Blur.
The Beatles
Rockabilly to Britpop
A Day In the Life – Lennon & McCartney 1967
- Descending Bass chord sequence
- Experimental recording techniques
- Heavy reverb on dreamy main theme. Bridge dry (no reverb) to suggest reality.
- Use of orchestra (George Martin producer – “Baroque & Roll”).
- Piano chord at end.
- Loop of Musique Concrete – fragments of recorded sound spliced together, forwards or backwards, and played in a continuous loop.
- 6 track recording
- Sfx
- Drug references.
- Anecdotal
- Bridge in jazz revival style, walking bass.
A Day in the Life
- The Beatles' roots are very diverse but they came more from Rock and Roll and country music than the black Rhythm and Blues that influenced their main rivals at the time: The Rolling Stones.
- This track is fairly late in their output and by now they have incorporated many influences from eastern meditative music to western classical arrangements. It is the last track on the Sergeant Peppers album, which at the time was revolutionary in its approach being a concept album which included a fancy sleeve and various cardboard handouts to make the consumer believe in the magic of the fictitious Edwardian brass band. The opening album tracks merge into each other and include crowd noise and excitement.
- A Day in the Life emerges out of the reprise of the opening track Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the solo acoustic guitar at the start heralds a change in the mood from the noisy public sound of the band to a more personal story in the first person. The piano and bass come in emphasising the chord C (subdominant) - just like the use of this chord in Waterloo Sunset.
- The music is cleverly put together by using multiples of 10:
- The first section is made from two phrases 4 bars + the same extended to 6 making a total of 10.
- The second section is a repeat but cut down from 10 to 9 bars to move the music on.
- The third is basically 10 bars long but this time massively extended by the long orchestral interlude.(more on this later)
- The fourth is new. Set in the submediant major (Emaj) and much more lively: actually written by John Lennon rather than Paul McCartney. The phrases are made from five lots of2 bars (4+4+2) and with repeats this leads us to the magic 10 again.
- There follows a dream interlude made from two lots of5 bars (=10)
- The opening material returns and the big orchestral build returns to take us to the end where there is a huge crash chord of E. ( after this on the vinyl there are some strange spoken noises and the record is cut in such a way as it doesn't finish but rather just loops.
- There is much to comment in the music apart from the form. Paul McCartney's melodic bass playing and Ringo's genuine percussion parts - a bassist and drummer freed from just time keeping- contribute much to the varying textures and fluid movement of the music. In this piece the piano is the instrument that is more responsible for keeping things together. The psychedelic orchestral crescendi come from techniques in the electronic music field, from composers such as Stockhausen.
- The album, from which Day in the Life is perhaps the most experimental track led to even more daring arrangements and helped not only establish the Beatles as serious music composers but influenced many other msucians working in all genres.
Desmond Dekker and The Aces
1970 – reggae
You Can Get It If You Really Want - Jimmy Cliff
- Pop reggae with Soul influence.
- Political message.
- Off beat Ska on guitar and organ
- Pop bass
- Drums around top of kit.
- Spanish trumpets
- Soul brass bridge (“Think” by Aretha Franklin)
Van Morrison
Wannabe soul, celtic rock
Tupleo Honey – Van Morrison
- Flute in intro – Irish folk influence
- Repeated chord pattern with improvised vocals and fills – soul, gospel – signifyin’ cf. Ray Charles
- Guitars improvise simultaneously (folk) – major pentatonic
- Vibraphone not in score
Oasis
Neo-britpop
Don’t Look Back In Anger – Noel Galagher
- Heavily influenced by the Beatles.
- Imagine Intro
- “Descending Bass” chord sequence cf. “A Day In the Life”, “Waterloo Sunset”
- Structure
- Intro
- Verse 1
- (link)
- Chorus
- Verse 2
- (link)
- Chorus
- Bridge (guitar solo on chords from link)
- Chorus
- Coda
- George Harrison guitar licks
- Guitar leads mainly major pentatonic – rockabilly, white American folk blues.
- Strings – George Martin – “Baroque ‘n’ Roll”
- Guitars imitating strings at end.
Don't look back in anger
- Tribute to the beatles and in particular John Lennon. Opening piano chords similar to opening of imagine with the lead guitar entering where Lennon's piano part assumes an additional melodic content. Also evidence of quotes from Lennon's lyrics (eg revolution a song which uses a similar heavily distorted guitar)
- The song uses 4 bar phrases. Verses are constructed from 2 ideas- firstly the chord pattern established in bars 5-8 and secondly a contrasting 12 bar pattern staring at bar 13 and formed from 3 four bar units.
- The opening pattern returns in bar 25 where it supports the new melodic material of the refrain giving as ABA form to the entire verse. The predictability of this scheme is offset by cutting the main pattern down to three bars in bars 29-31, which launches us into a lead guitar improvisation. A quite reflective coda, using the chromatic subdominant (Fminor) concludes the music.
- The heavy guitar distortion and the very low bass guitar- mostly on the bottom string thicken the texture and the driving drumbeat gives the music a strong impact. Oasis were particularly successful commercially, partly due to their talent at composing memorable melodic material and catchy hooks. Use of the pentatonic scale in melodies is common and chord progressions using chromatically altered but basically simple and direct harmonies added to their appeal.
Comments
Originally written by Fletch on TSR Forums.
|
|
