1. Cool Jazz, is a style of Jazz that originated from the United States of America in the late 1940’s, after World War 2. This genre arose in popularity, as its slow subdued approach was much different compared to the other contemporaneous jazz styles. Lester Young first brought Cool Jazz up with his more relaxed style, lagging his beats behind. He was also more interested in exploring melodies, rather than rhythm. Miles Davis, one of the most famous figures, solidifies the genres by using lighter and relaxed sounds. Cool Jazz is mainly consistent of relaxed tempos and lighter tones. Its typical instruments include drums, piano, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, and the double bass. Cool Jazz was a blending of Jazz and Classical music; classical …show more content…
Miles Davis was an American Jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is one of the most influential figures in the history of jazz. This is because of his interest in different styles, allowing him to come up with new ones, such as Cool Jazz. Davis started studying trumpet in his early teens. He played with Jazz band growing up in St. Louis area before moving to New York City to study in 1944. At school he skipped many of his classes, and was schooled through personal practice with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Charlie Parker’s bebop quintet was Davis’ professional debut as a trumpeter. This lasted from 1945 to 1947. Davis’ early playing was not always in tune, but his imagination to find new melodies and rhythms outshined his technical flaws. He didn’t copy or mimic the style of. This is what made him such an important figure, as he was the basis of forming new genres that carried out and effectively influence the whole world of …show more content…
The sounds can be clearly heard with no instrument outshining any other, apart from the soloist. During the intro, the piano and double bass play simple chords very softly, mostly at mezzo piano level. The soloist’s first instrument, the trumpet, plays at normal level, which gradually increases during the song up to a mezzo forte level, then adds on during the end of its solo become louder with more accented notes. When the soloist instrument increases so does the accompaniment, rising slowly but gradually. During the break the volume of the music, falls back down to mezzo piano. The next instrument, the saxophone, plays exactly the same as the muted trumpet, however it plays louder during more parts than the trumpet. The final instruments solo, is the piano, which breaks off its chord progression to start playing its own melody at a very light tone. Its noise usually resides around mezzo piano, the same level it was playing the intro, as after the trumpet plays over it with louder and more stressed notes. During the outro of this piece, the instruments all fade out, leaving only the drums to play the final
Among his many great compositions, his piece “Chant, Op 12, No. 1 "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" is one that has influenced many individuals. The form of the song starts softly with the low pitches of the piano and then the violin accompanies it. Around two minutes into the song, the pitches of the violin changes to very high pitched for about forty seconds, and then the song goes back to its normal texture until the song ends. The texture of the song is polyphonic. As the violin is the instrument that is the main instrument in this piece, the piano accompanies it with its harmony of low and high pitches.
Miles Davis was an extremely talented African American trumpet player from St. Louis who changed the way of Jazz between the 1950s and 1990s. Being one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles was the first jazz musician after the hippie era to influence many listeners in his jazz and rock rhythms. From Miles’ career of almost half a century he received countless awards for his outrageous talent and the music he had produced throughout his lifetime. Miles Davis was a successful Jazz Musician with a loving and supportive family; even though his career ended he is still known and remembered to this day.
Lastly, the bass would not be as popular and important instrument if it were not for the famous Jazz artists that used it to create some of the most prominent songs of this era. Charles Mingus, Jimmy Blanton, and Oscar Pettiford are some of the highly regarded musicians who significantly contributed to the evolution of jazz through the bass. Jimmy Blanton, for starters, was well known for his bass playing. He probably played more string bass than any other man in the Jazz field. Blanton was known for his incredible speed and supple phrasing.
What made Miles Davis’ band special was his uncommon additions to a jazz band they called “Birth of the Cool”. His band featured french horn, trombone, and tuba which was a real surprise to his audience and was also what made Miles unique (Miles Davis Biography.com). Miles had an ascending career up until his addiction to heroin that put a damper on his
Miles Davis, one of jazz’s most influential musicians with career that expanded six decades. Davis was known for his always changing style, from bebop to rock. He had been part of the bebop, cool jazz, hardbop, modal, rock-fusion movements, and shortly before his death working with hip-hop fusion. Throughout his entire career, Miles Davis preferred the audience recognize him for what he was doing then, not what he had done in the past. Over his sixty-year career he had earned several nicknames: The Sorcerer, the Prince of Darkness, and the man who walked on eggshells.
With the four major elements of music, melody, harmony, tone and rhythm, this traditional band had them all. In my opinion, a jazz musician has more knowledge, and understanding of their instrument, then most musicians. For example, the vocalist Paul King, unlike today’s modern music, his voice is just another instrument. The vocalist is expected to have the same control and command over his instrument, as the rest of the band. Rarely, can you find a singer of such quality.
Initially, bebop jazz was characterized by significantly more complex chord progressions and melodies with a strong focus on the rhythm section. Although the irregular and unpredictable lengths of solos and increased sophistication made the music less suitable for dancing, it was nonetheless entertaining. Jazz had gained higher respect from a widestream audience, as it was no longer just dance music. Bebop lasted well into the 1950s, and the next stylistic revolution came during the revolutionary decade of the 1960s: fusion. Jazz fusion came into fruition when musicians combined aspects of jazz harmony and improvisation with styles such as funk, rock, rhythm and blues, and Latin jazz.
Many other jazz trumpeters derived from his style, and tried to emulate it. Miles Davis always drove the frameworks of what were the accepted styles in jazz, and was at the foremost part of this new style. The way Davis improvised was very different from the ordinary set for jazz trumpeters at that time, and this was why he had such an immense impact on the jazz music. His solos were often played in the middle register, where he could achieve the most tuneful melodies. Entering the 1940s, young jazz musicians explored a new jazz against a commercial swing jazz.
Jazz is most often thought to have been started in the 1920s as this explosive movement, but that is in fact not the case. Starting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century many African American musicians have started to explore their taste in improvising, and where better to do that than New Orleans (Anderson). Before the 1920s these jazz musicians have already been going around sharing the unique sound, but up until then, jazz had remained majorly in New Orleans. Interestingly during this period, a common jazz band would consist of a cornet, a clarinet, a trombone, and a rhythm section when at this period of time the clarinet is not commonly associated with being a jazz instrument, it moved into being the saxophone rather. A big
Shortly after his career became well-known he decided to rid his music of bebop's style and to reinstate jazz's more pleasing elements. Davis’ would in turn establish his musical identity separate from Charlie Parker and other well-known beboppers. Davis’ explorations in modal jazz served that purpose. It brought a new feel to jazz, it stirred everyone’s imagination, and thrived in keeping the music
His career spanned almost 50 years, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different jazz eras. The work of Louis Armstrong summed up the achievements of New Orleans jazz style and indicated the way to the later evolution of the music as a solo-oriented art form. The features of New Orleans jazz were collective improvisation and ensemble style. The organization of the New Orleans jazz was a small brass band. Trumpet or cornet, trombone, clarinet, two drums (snare drum and bass drum) were used as the primary instruments and marching band music, ragtime, blues had been played a lot.
Jazz had been evolving for almost a decade before it was recorded. A white New Orleans band called the Original Dixieland Jazz Band beat all the superior Southland black bands to it
• Miles Davis played an important role in jazz. He had been influential in the development of several Jazz aspects and styles including Be-Bop, cool and modal Jazz. I will come back to this artist in more detail afterwards. Characteristics 1.
There were many musical elements heard throughout these pieces and it was interesting to hear how they varied in each song and suite. In Intermezzo, it began with a quieter violin solo melody creating a monophonic texture. Soon after, it became accompanied by the other violins and cellos, then the full ensemble came in creating a moderate, flowing melody at about mezzo forte and switching to a polyphonic texture. Next, there was a harp solo at forte with many crescendos and decrescendos. The full ensemble enters again raising the dynamics to forte before decrescendoing and slowing down to end with a held note and final tone.
Piano and violins are in line with each other while the horn steadily plays offbeat in the ' 'though she feels as if she 's in a play. Through out the song, both string and horns come in without us noticing until the mood