Jazz Song #3 - So What

@Kehaulani said in Jazz Song #3 - So What:

it seems to me it can be expressed in plain language absent micro-analytical verbiage. Just a personal preference?

This is an open site. You're going to have everything from people that talk like Scooby Doo to people that are doctors in electrical engineering that may have an analytical tinge to their talk. However, if someone says something that you find cumbersome and you have a better easier way to say it, please share your words as it may help others understand.

Dr GO

@Kehaulani said in Jazz Song #3 - So What:

@Dr-GO said in Jazz Song #3 - So What:

That's only a part of the equation (Minimal Structure Theory on jazz improvisation)

Dr. Go, some of my comments are more philosophical than about Minimal Theory, itself. Can you give me a good internet source for Minimal Structure Theory as applied to improvisation that summarizes this technique? The only thing I can find is doctoral-thesis length. I've never heard of it or it's value. Thanks.

Gary, did you read the article I posted on Minimal Structure Theory. I have posted the initial description and it was not a thesis. It was an article published in an international journal written by two senior faculty at their perspective colleges. Please, read that article carefully and you will understand.

Hi Dr-GO,
Here's a snippet from the article you posted to hopefully help.
First improvisation
A working deﬁnition of improvisation may be taken from jazz music, where it entails composing and performing contemporaneously. Within organizations, it can be described as the conception of action as it unfolds — acting without the beneﬁt of elaborate prior planning (Cunha et al. 1999). It is generally understood in terms of fortuity, serendipity and the unexpected discovery of solutions, often in times of crisis. Some commonly cited examples include: Honda’s success in introducing 50cc bikes into the US market (Pascale 1984); the actions of crew members to save a ship whose navigation system had broken down (Hutchins 1991) and the rescue of Appollo XIII by NASA scientists working with unfamiliar concepts (Lovell and Kluger 1995).
Improvisation and Minimal Structures
‘You can’t improvise on nothin’, man. You gotta improvise on somethin’. (Charles Mingus, bassist/composer. Cited in Kernfeld 1995) All music, including jazz, exists within a certain musico-structure which deﬁnes such performative basics as harmony, melody, rhythm and tempo, and, more fundamentally, form and composition, as noted above. Unlike other musical forms, which rely on a tight script and/or conductor, jazz contains few if any constraints on performative style and interpretation. As Hatch (1999) has argued, jazz differs from other musical forms ‘in the improvisational use it makes of structure’, where musicians ‘use structure in creative ways to enable them to alter the structural foundations of their playing’. It is important therefore to understand the constitutive elements of this structure and how it actually works in practice. All that jazz needs in terms of structure is a set of consensual guidelines and agreements which we conceptualize as ‘minimal structures’. This section seeks to isolate such a structure from our understanding of jazz improvisation. In order to clarify the logic that holds it together, we assess the literature that has so far grappled with this concept. Weick (1989: 244) suggests that the value of a minimal structure is that ‘small structures such as simple melody ... , general assumptions, and incomplete expectations can all lead to large outcomes and effective action’. Eisenberg (1990: 154) has observed that ‘improvisational freedom is only possible against a well-deﬁned (and often simple) backdrop of rules and roles’. As such, he sees the process of ‘jamming’ which jazz musicians engage in, as ‘a kind of minimalist’s view of organizing, of making do with minimal commonalities and elaborating simple structures in complex ways’

Kehaulani

Thank you.

I guess my mind just doesn't work that way. That is, in expressing in more precise, technical terms what can, to me at least, is just self-evident and doesn't need such wordy and intellectual expression.

I'm not saying that it might not be beneficial for others, our minds don't all work alike. But for me, this is obvious and doesn't need such a description.

Hi Kehaulani,
Very well said. Not all minds work/process the same way. As for me, I'm the egghead in the room. As for Dr-GO, he's the egghead in the room with a bigger brain and a nicer trumpet (I can't say how pretty his brain is but his horn really is nice looking!)