Jazz is cool, but I still say that alot of it is repetitive. I respect Jazz, I'm not sayin' I don't like Miles Davis, Buddy Rich, Birdland, etc...I'm just kinda put off by the people that listen to it cause' it's supposed to make them feel smarter, or just cause' it's "cool".....

I guess it was the Reverend that said something about it "being popular among intellectuals", and that made me think of all the dorks I used to know that went to this one Jazz night at this wine bar, just to seem cool and hip.....They didn't get it, and sometimes I don't either......I'm a fan of solos and stuff, but alot of the Jazz bands I've seen stick to the same 12 bar blues type stuff and take turns doin' solos. To me, that's boring......

Psychedelic Syd:
Yeah, I might be ignorant when it comes to Jazz, I'll admit that I don't go lookin' for it too much. So I guess I shouldn't say that it's not all that ground-breaking if I don't stay up on it....But I disagree that Jazz had anything to do with metal. You even mentioned that it inspired death metal as well. No way. And as far as complexity goes, I could ask just about any Jazz band to perform a Dillinger Escape Plan song, and they couldn't do it. Guitars in Jazz sound too sweet for me. So while I appreciate Jazz, I don't really like alot of it. If you know of any good Jazz with crazy drummers, let me know......

Try "Cozy" Cole, he's the best!

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Hey dude, it takes a big man to write what you just did (on a lot of other places on the web people try to defend themselves with silly logic).. You stepped up to the plate and corrected yourself.. I respect you big time for that... As far as death metal being inspired by jazz, I should have shown a connection to that better than just stating it.. Death metal (and all forms of highly technical metal) evolved from early forms of hard rock and rock experimentation and then earlier then that from jazz experimentations of people like Coltrane and Coleman.. It is not a direct effect from jazz, but a lot of the technical aspects were first done in jazz (and not on guitars, but on other instruments)... Very few original musical concepts started in rock, but like most or all of you, I like the way rock uses so many styles that came before... I prefer rock music to any other music because it does include so many other styles...
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I too know the snobby jazz lover types,, I just hope I don't come off as one of them (maybe I am,, ohhhhhh noooooo)...


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yeah, me too...a lot of nerds gpo to the jazzclub I vistite all the time, those little snobs, they are really annoying.

I should explain that when I say "intellectuals" I don't mean dorks and nerds and snobs. I mean people who are authors, educators, painters or sculpters or architects, published poets, etc. And I'm obviously not one of them, either.

The interesting thing about such intellectuals is that they often like various types of rock music as well (usually something from the 60s and early 70s, but sometimes they might be fans of a more recent band or artist such as Phish or Elvis Costello). I'm not talking about pretenders with old money and lots of time on their hands who sit around and get smashed to some combo playing doctor office music in a lounge somewhere in downtown whatever.

or some of them are into experimental electronic music, experimental noise and other stuff.

someone probably knows this better, but way back then, jazz was pretty experimental, right? and I think the experimental aspect of jazz is very interesting, big names like Miles, Hancock, Coltrane, etc. but I don't know enough to say more.

From Ellington on, there have always been experimental jazz composers and players. Thelonious Monk, Sun Ra, Coltrane, Miles Davis (in his "fusion" period), and many others are considered experimental and forward looking artists in jazz. I don't know as much about who's "experimenting" in contemporary jazz. If in nothing else, contemporary jazz banjoist Bela Fleck has certainly introduced some very novel approaches to jazz instrumentation.

just a sidenote for homeless cop in regards to the jazz influence on death metal... check out messhugah... i've only got one album... destroy/erase/improve... but it definately took its relative rhythmic structure from jazz... but it doesn't really sound like jazz heheh...

and as far as contemporary 'experimentalists' in jazz i'd say you have to look in a slightly more electronic direction... earlier work by squarepusher and amon tobin have some definite jazz elements while expanding significantly beyond what traditional jazz allowed...

Yeah, I've heard Messhugah, they are pretty good musicians, but I don't like the singer. I don't really like their song structures either. Check out the Dillinger Escape Plan. They crush all bands playing loud and fast. The drummer in Dillinger is sick!!!!!

Your a little mixed up on what a sonata is. A sonata is a three part form that makes up alot of classical music , but defintly not 99% of it. A sonata has a begining part called the exposition where the main theme is presented, after that it goes to a different theme, which is called the development, and then it goes back to the main theme, which is called the recipulation. It is an ABA form. What you were describing was kinda mixed up because scherzo's and Rondo's are particular types of forms. A rondo is when you play one theme and than go to something else and then play the first theme again, and then does something different like an A B A C A D A E kinda form, it keeps on returning to the theme, like blue rondo ala turk. Also jazz isn't just " everyone doing whatever they one being held together by playing in key" or " jazz doesn't have any key changes or movements". Jazz is filled with key changes, no one stays and fools around in just one key. Changing keys is the fundamental part of of jazz. A jazz song might go through 10 key changes in the course of a solo. Jazz is based around playing changes in keys. That why it's so hard to play. If any of you guys play melodic instruments and you've never played jazz you should try and play a solo over a jazz tune, just pick something like donna lee. It's really hard to do because theres three or four key changes just in the first four bars. So in retrospect, jazz is complex because it requires the player to play an improvised solo over several key changes at a very fast tempo, and many rythym section players will throw in new changes without even telling the soloist and the player just has to pick up on them by ear. So Jazz is a really interesting kinda music becuase these musicians in the 50's took all sorts of harmony's from classical music and completly twisted them around into a different way, they changed ways that chords had been voiced and added new harmonies that had only been hinted at by later romantic era composers. Jazz was the fusing of many sophisticated classical type idea's with the roots type blues and swing music that had been created in america. So at the time it was something really revoluntionary because it was like a combination of two musical worlds. That why upperclass white people were drawn to it as well as many lower class blacks. For someone who had mainly listened to classical or for someone that had mainly just listened to blues or folk type music it both had something to offer.