[piano music]
Hi! Pete Malinverni here, Chair of Jazz
Studies at Purchase College and along
with The Performing Arts Center Director Seth
Soloway I'm co-curator
of Jazz at The Center.
Welcome to the fifth and final
installment of
What's Going on up There, where we talk
about
the various elements of music and how
they relate to what goes on in a jazz
performance.
Many of you have listened to jazz and
been fans and supported us over the
years - for which we thank you -
and this little series has been my
effort to kind of let you know what's
actually going on
when we're up there on stage improvising
for you.
We've talked about four other elements
previously, we talked about
melody, rhythm, harmony, and texture.
And you know, just a quick note here,
while we can talk about these various
elements separately and kind of tell you
how we address each of those, it's
important to remember
that when you're thirsty you don't want
somebody to hand you
a bottle of two, of
two parts hydrogen and another bottle of
one part oxygen,
you're still going to be thirsty until
they're blended and we have
water. And it's just like that with music
sure we can talk about the various
elements,
and and how we address each of those, but
it's not music
until we put all the elements together.
We talked about melody and how that uh
sort of addresses the heart,
you know how when you hear a melody it can have an emotional tug on you,
you can remember wistfully some
moment in your life because of
melody. We talked about rhythm and how
that really relates to the body and how
it's that rhythmic sense that really I
think draws
us in as listeners,
sort of really more overtly joins us
with the performers as a
feeling, breathing, moving unit
in the room and it's that kind of
connection
that we jazz musicians really prize and
and go for.
We talked about harmony and how uh each
voice
as it goes along in a piece of music
is sort of like a school of fish, right,
we have each
voice whether it be soprano, alto, tenor,
bass, or
trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass,
and drums, right, and how all those things
each uh person doing those has his or
her
own job to do and like that school of
fish
moves along separately, but then when the
shaft of sunlight comes down we see
where everyone is at that moment
and if we're talking about notes, melodic
notes, or,
you know, tones, then we can determine
what the harmony is.
And then we finally we talked about
texture and how we can play high notes
and we can play low notes or we can have
a bass
player playing pizzicato or arco, we can
we can hear a drummer playing with
sticks on the cymbals or brushes on the
snare drum.
We talked about how the trumpet
player or the trombone player can use
various mutes to change the sound
and over time I've recommended that you
might listen to various
uh instruments and musicians to hear,
just the different sounds, you know, we go
back
always to Miles Davis and his use of the
harmon mute
on his trumpet and what a really
individual sound that
that gave and we talked about how
in texture where you might play really
dense
chords you know,
[piano music]
or we might play real simply with the same chords but
[piano  music]
Right? So that's just texturally
different and it's up to the
jazz musician, who we've said over and
over again is
composer and performer at the same time,
how to utilize these various
elements to express and hopefully evoke
in our listener
real human emotion. Today we're going to
talk about
uh the final element of music which is
form. You've you've
seen jazz performances where you'll see
each
player or singer be sort of in the
spotlight for a moment taking his or her
solo
and, I don't know, maybe you've wondered
well how do they  know when they're
when they're done and how does everyone
stay together
you might hear a drummer take a break
take a little solo
or there will be exchanges between the
other instrumentalists and the drummer
and you may say well, gee,
how does everybody know when to come
back? Well it's the form.
And we'll we'll take a quick look at
form.
Form is basically you take uh
you take the rhythm and let's say we
have various
numbers of measures, right, we talked
about the beats and how they're
organized into measures, so
one, two, three, four, one, two, three,
four, one, two, three, four, et cetera.
Well those I just counted three measures
in four-four. Let's say we're in three - 
one, two, three, one, two, three, one,
two, three, well that's three measures of
three, right?
And, so, in these forms, the most well-known form
is the American popular song form,
AABA it's called, so you have an eight
measure section, eight bars,
uh we call that the A section, right, so
that happens
then it repeats, and then there's an
entirely new
B section also eight measures long and
then again a repetition of that
first A section, so A
A B A. Each of those four
sections being eight measures in length
leaves us with 32 measures.
Most American popular songs are of
that form and so
we can, let's say on the bandstand,
uh let's say we we're looking at that 32
bars, right?
And so after we play it or sing it or
whatever happens, then it's time for the
solos. A
trumpet player may take a chorus which
is
one circuit through those 32 measures,
right? The
trumpet player may play two choruses
but towards the end of each of those
choruses we're all keeping an eye on
each other to know,
okay, the trumpet player player's done now
so now it's let's say the saxophone
player's turn to take
a chorus or two or however long and
so on and so forth, and it's the same
thing with the drummer.
So we might trade sections. I might say
okay, I'm going to improvise for eight
bars and then the drummer gets eight
bars.
Well the drummer is playing on that
second A.
When I come back it's the B now and then
the drum roll play on that last eight.
So we now have played one whole chorus
and this just keeps on going, and that's
how we stay together.
So let's take a look at, for example,
this song...
[piano music]
All right that's eight measures, it
repeats. [piano music]
Different words but ...
[piano music]
All right, so now we've got 16 measures,
now it's time for that new information,
the bridge.
We call it the bridge.
[piano music]
Where troubles melt like lemon drops...
[piano music]
Right? So now that's 24, we've got eight
more bars
[piano music]
So that's one whole chorus. Now we go to
improvise on that
see if you can follow the form as I
improvise
[piano music]
Second A
[piano music]
Now here comes the bridge...
[piano music]
...a way above the chimney tops...
[piano music]
..birds fly..
...why oh why can't
I?
Okay so that's one chorus
of me improvising melodies over the same
harmonies
that repeat each time, right?
So now maybe I'll take another chorus
if I feel I'm feeling it that day, you
know, and and maybe
time is not a concern, perhaps I'll take
another chorus and then maybe the bass
player will take a chorus, right? That's
basically it.
There's another form I want to talk to
you about which is
truly, truly American. It's the
blues. Right, we talk about the blues and
when I say the blues you may be
thinking about,
you know ,an old guy with a guitar
playing the blues or singing the blues,
right, and that's
that's true, but it's also become a form,
a, a very much a codified form
of 12 measures, and the blues
instead of the AABA being four sections
of eight measures in length,
the blues is three sections of four bars,
right, so each chorus is only 12 measures
long.
And it's a really cool thing it, and it
and it comes from a
verbal tradition, that goes along with
the rule of three which i'm sure you've
heard of before.
You know everyone knows the rule of
three, you know, if you,
if you're telling a joke, right, and 
the Irish guy does one thing, you know,
and the Italian guy does another thing, and
then the
the the joke comes when the third guy,
whatever he is,
does something funny, right? So the first
two are used to
set up what you expect and then the
third is the punch line,
right? And it's like that with the blues.
So you might hear
"Sent for you yesterday, here you come
today" - that's four bars
"Sent for you yesterday, here you come
today" -  now here's the punch line -
"You can't love me baby and treat me
that way" Right? So that's 12 bars. That's
a chorus of the blues.
So we have four bars then we repeat
melodically, but it's a different set of
chords, right, slightly different chords
for that second four bars, and then the
release or that final four bars, right?
And the blues is just as you know, I
mean that's been part of
uh the American music scene,
and of course it comes, as as all American
music,
originally from the African-American
tradition.
But it's worldwide, I mean the Beatles
when they first started for example, you
know, they were
they were looking at Chuck Berry and all
those great blues artists, and well
Elvis Presley and all those you know,
all those those people that became
famous were basically
using that 12-bar blues form
which was begun long ago. 
So here I'm going to give you a
little blues tune, 
written by the great Thelonious Monk,
great pianist composer, and he called
this one
Blue Monk so
[piano music]
That's four bars. Now it happens again.
[piano music]
Right? That's eight total, now here comes
the last four.
[piano music]
That's 12 bars. So now I'm gonna play it
for you, and I'll play a couple of
choruses and then I'll repeat the melody
at the end, okay?
[piano music]
That was 12 bars.
[piano music]
That was a chorus, here's another one
[piano music]
Yeah, so that's a 12 bar blues, and I
played the melody one time, right, which
was 12 measures,
then I took I think two choruses of 12
bars each,
and then I came back and reprised
the melody. So there you have it. Form.
So we talked about it and I want to invite
you to go back and look at our whole
series. We talked about melody, then we
talked about
rhythm, and we talked about harmony, we
talked about texture, and today form.
Five elements of music and when you put
them together
and respect each of those elements and
then
use them to purposes of expression and
evocation of
human feeling
then you have music. And when you do it
on the spot,
you have jazz music. It's been really
my great pleasure.
I'm I'll be doing some little things for
The PAC which we'll pass on to you,
little performances I'll play, give you
five or ten minutes of music from,
you know, from my home here every now
and then, and
and we will, we'll post those
on The PAC
site. But for now I want to thank you
very much, you've been
really lovely. I've been getting some
terrific notes from people over time
that have appreciated our series.
We're doing the best we can.
We want to mount a season for you, and we will, before too long at The PAC of great
jazz music.
But until then this is what we can do.
And we're sending our love and we're
sending our good wishes. Stay good.
Thank you.
you
