Guybrush

Yup, it's free jazz week. As far as I can tell, free jazz has no strict definition as the term usually describes something the music is not or does not do, such as follow typical jazz conventions.

Wikipedia says :

One album which is generally regarded as important to that whole free jazz thang is Coltrane's album Ascension which was released in 1966. Here's a taste!

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clutnuckle

Without doubt my favorite subgenre of jazz.

Obligatory, sure, but Al's playing is always beautiful.

Anarchic.

Favorite jazz album of all-time. Only fair that it gets its place. Its free-ness is debatable, though.



This one needs a lot of time to unfold, but it grows into something wonderful.



Really cool to watch; the sound quality is sort of low, but just seeing how they react to one another is wonderful in itself.

And of course, Ascension is necessary. I second it.

Gavin B.

I bought Ornette Coleman's 1959 (finally released in 1961) album the Art of the Improvisers as blind purchase at my local second hand vinyl shop when I was a teenage fanboy of mostly sixties psychedelic bands and early protopunk rockers like the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, and the Ramones. I had no idea of what Ornette sounded like or what free jazz was. Nothing had prepared me for the inspired chaos and sublime fury of Circle With the Hole in the Middle. The urgency of the music hit me with the force of a sledgehammer.

Circle With the Hole in the Middle the first song on the album, opened my eyes to an entire realm of musical possibilities that I was previously unaware of.

Strangely enough, not a single of the millions of YouTube members had posted a copy of this song so I went ahead and posted it myself so you could hear it.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Burning Down

Double post, I know - but they've already managed to block it!!!

Burning Down

Free jazz is not my favourite sub-genre (I think it's sort of an acquired taste), but I still listen to it from time to time. I have to be in the mood for it

I also don't know a whole lot about it, and it was sort of skipped over in my Jazz history class. It wasn't even an essay topic! But here are some pieces that were included on the CD's that came with the textbook:

Sun Ra - Distant Stars


Eric Dolphy - Gazzelloni (there's some pretty cool flute in this piece too! )


Albert Ayler - Spirits

someonecompletelyrandom

Sound Grammar is the most recent Ornette Coleman record and it's pretty fantastic. I think it won a Pulitzer, actually.

s_k

I'm never sure when Jazz is 'free'. It's a thin line between free and 'regular' jazz.

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Burning Down

I know that one of his records won a Pulitzer, but I'm not sure if that was the one. Correct me if I'm wrong. I do know that it was the first and only time a Pulitzer was awarded to a musician.

Jazz in itself doesn't have many strict guidelines either. I think free jazz, for all intents and purposes, was (or is) a sort of a break away from the more established sub-genres of jazz. Like when Coltrane started making more avant-garde records. But you're right, sometimes it is hard to tell them apart. I just think of free jazz as being more modal, in terms of harmonic structure, as opposed to using more traditional scales and chords found in "regular" jazz music.

clutnuckle

To me, it all has to do with the style of improvisation. After all, the most fundamental aspect of jazz is its improvisation. Some styles of jazz (modal, bebop) had very secure and defined styles of improv, use these scales, revolve your tonality around the rhythm section, etc.

Free jazz proposes a much more limitless kind of improvisation. The general 'avant-garde' jazz actually often has very ridgid and well-defined scales or patterns that the soloists follow, but free jazz is a quantum leap forward in that respect. The actual ability for musicians to play off each other, and to come off as rational and not just random, is key.



It's not the freest thing that Al did, but it's among the most impacting; it's the first track in 3 years that I 'loved' on Last.fm within my first listen. Absolutely captivating playing.

Gavin B.

The differences are fairly clear but brilliant players like Trane, Mingus & Miles frequently blurred the categorical distinctions between regular (traditional) jazz and free jazz. Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra & Eric Dolphy are more firmly entrenched in the pure free jazz tradition. All of the above mentioned players were all masters of the traditional jazz form, regardless of their inclinations toward the free jazz form.

The differences between traditional jazz and free jazz are as follows:

• Traditional jazz is built on a framework of established song forms, such as the 12 bar blues, or the 32 bar form of a popular ballad. In free jazz, the dependence on a fixed and pre-established form is eliminated, and the role of improvisation is correspondingly increased.
  
• Tradtional jazz uses clear defined meters and strongly-pulsed rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz retains rhythms but often swings without regular meter. The rhythm of free jazz frequently accelerates or slows down depending on the improvised musical direction.
  
• Traditional jazz follows conventional harmonic structures. Free jazz, by definition dispenses with harmonic structures, but free jazz frequently employs combinations of the diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrasing of traditional jazz. In free jazz you may hear dissonant off key playing but it's not because the players are tone deaf...free jazz has a different set of tonal & harmonic ground rules.
  
• The most striking element of free jazz harmonics is the use of Eastern atonal harmonics and polyrhythmic structures that characterize African tribal music, Arabic music and classical raga music from India.

In reality free jazz is not a modern musical form, rather it's an exploration of ancient and more primitive musical forms that predate the more refined and conventionally structured traditional ballad, dance song or 12 bar blues. Many of the ancient forms of free jazz come from tribal cultures that existed long before the discovery of America.

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis is the ultimate traditional jazz theorist and has made the controversial argument that jazz ended when jazz musicians abandoned the conventional American blues and ballad form & began the free jazz experiment. It's a conservative cultural perspective, but there is some logic behind it because traditional jazz was built on traditional American music forms while free jazz is built on more exotic music forms from Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. For Marsalis, traditional jazz died at the end of the bop era; and free jazz, fusion, & post bop traditions are musical mutations of jazz but not valid forms of traditional American jazz.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt