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I've been writing music for about 6 months. I've been trying to avoid cliches. But someone (Mark Polishook - a wonderful teacher BTW) suggested I try writing some cliches. And it dawned on me that imitating or (hopefully maybe better) mutating them might be a good learning exercise. All I've come up with - cliche wise - is the old I vi ii V - chord progression. So maybe it would be fun to put on your musical thinking hat or cap of choice and suggest some cliches that you either like, find interesting, or are maybe way too cliched. Thinking as I type here - could a series of ii V's - a harmonic sequence be considered a jazz cliche ? I'm thinking of sophisticated pop like Sinatra. Also jazz standards. If you have any you want to share, please give a youtube example and the approximate time(s) in the youtube vid.
It just occurred to me, the ii V iii Vi ii V chord changes at the end of many jazz tunes is another big one.
Star wars, the emperor march has minor chords at a 3rds distance. It has been used to portray evil since Wagner. It's all over the place in film scores. Subsequently; major chords at a thirds distance has been used to portray heroism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovxbXaJs-90 (at 0:00001)
Last edited by KlinkKlonk; 05/25/1506:58 PM. Reason: clarity
Thanks huge Klink. Or should I call you Mr. Klonk.
I'm going to play around with the descending 7th thing. And the ascending 5th thing. The James Bond rising 5th is so iconic.
But hey, I have Stevie Wonder's Innervisions album in vinyl. When I listened to "Golden Lady" - "Don't You Worry About A Thing" popped into my mind. The descending half step thing. Stevie got mileage out of it. By the way, I haven't listened to any of my vinyl in decades. Will get a turntable one of these days.
The descending 8 #7 7 6 (the top note) starts at the very beginning. Don't You Worry Bout A Thing - by Stevie Wonder https://youtu.be/QkBUx6Zn6mo
- thanks muchly for that - I had a really good laugh.
Ronnie Scott who had an acidic sense of humour chose from a regular stock of one-liners he threw nightly at his jazz club audiences. One of his favourites: "...our food is the best in town, forty-thousand flies can't be wrong".
It makes fun of the idea that popularity and merit are somehow connected.
So, I'm wondering, could this be the best jazz lick ever? Lol!
All of which goes someway towards answering the question; is jazz really a freely improvised music or is to some extent learnt by rote?
If it were freely improvised, would all these supposedly great players really find themselves playing the same lick/s? The mathematicians/statisticians could give a more reliable answer but I have my own suspicions.
If it were freely improvised, would all these supposedly great players really find themselves playing the same lick/s? The mathematicians/statisticians could give a more reliable answer but I have my own suspicions.
This question is for psychobiologists - Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker. According to their hypothesis, the human brain is a computer, consisting of autonomous units. His intellectual part based genetically. If improvisation is required for survival of the individual and it is written in the genes, the total spontaneous improvisation is disadvantageous in terms of evolution and adaptation to the environment; and our genes simply do not allow this to happen - regardless of various slogans; for example of Derek Bailey (non idiomatic improve).
I asked for ideas for cliches. I just wrote a little toon (I know it's tune) filled with II's and V's. I don't really think they're cliches. I think that somehow they're part of the DNA of western music. Applied musical physics somehow comes up with II V I's.
I'm sharing this stuff because I'm viewing this as our virtual living room and we're having a cyber workshop. Hopefully.
I just listened to 2N5 (again). Not sure if I've suggested in past that it sounds sort of like a Herbie Nichols tune. But it occurred to me that it sounds like a 1950s Charles Mingus kind of tune as well. It really just depends on how you hear it and what you've been listening to in the past. But either of those suggestions come, very very obviously, from my listening experience. Mileage and perception will vary according to what you've been listening to ...
However. One might say to the extent that ii-V is a cliche the kind of harmony you're using in 2N5 is very 1950s sounding. In other words a cliche of the 50s.
In the 60s with Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane harmony started to open up and become much less dependent on ii-Vs. Modality became the fashion of the times as well as chord connections that weren't ii-V based. A good place to see this are in the Wayne Shorter tunes in the Real Book. You can hear it in Wayne Shorter Blue Note recordings from that period (the 60s).
I just listened to 2N5 (again). Not sure if I've suggested in past that it sounds sort of like a Herbie Nichols tune. But it occurred to me that it sounds like a 1950s Charles Mingus kind of tune as well.
In the 60s with Wayne Shorter and John Coltrane harmony started to open up and become much less dependent on ii-Vs. Modality became the fashion of the times as well as chord connections that weren't ii-V based. A good place to see this are in the Wayne Shorter tunes in the Real Book. You can hear it in Wayne Shorter Blue Note recordings from that period (the 60s).
Thanks Mark for the observations. The two main things I think learned from this thread I'd say are 1) the experience of writing "2N5" and 2) Herbie Nichols' music. Amazing that every time I read something about him it goes something like like "sadly ignored". I wonder what didn't happen to bring him more public awareness. And he's a very fluent player. He did die at 44 from Lukemia I read.
Oh, and listening to Herbie play "Lady Sings The Blues" I noticed a partial James Bond chromatically ascending 5th, except that he doesn't move it back down. I'm not familiar (need to look it up) with the original version. I suppose it has the same movement.
![[Linked Image]](http://s929.photobucket.com/user/jazzman1945/media/The%20Map_zpsi2gmqpss.jpg.html)
