Composition in Jazz: An Introduction

Despite the efforts behind modern jazz education, the myth of spontaneous improvisation still dominates the perception of jazz. While it's true that the greatest players are known because of their soloing ability, the idea that the best of the best are able to magically conjure hundreds of measures of originally melody is provably false; one only needs to transcribe the solos of Charlie Parker to find an abundance of material that is repeated verbatim, showing that he'd practiced it thousands of times before the recording date or the gig. On some levels, this myth has been propagated not by the musicians, but the writers who write about the music, who, in their intentions to glorify their heroes, exaggerate aspects they don't really understand.

Simultaneously, people rarely broach the subject of composition when discussing about jazz. If Parker didn't come up with his ideas on the spot, he must have written them out before hand; while not composition on the symphonic level that people are trained to recognize it, Parker's success with this process shows that writing is a fundamental part of jazz – or really, any music – and might even be interchangeable with improvisation. Similarly, why is Thelonious Monk the only player truly able to sound naturally on his songs? Even with the best of players, there tends to be a break in continuity from the melody to the solos. It's simple: the idiosyncratic melodic language of Monk's heads is the same language he fills his solos with.

The next series of articles in this blog will focus on a wide array of the implications and applications of composition in jazz, ranging from the basic development of vocabulary, to the reconstruction of standards, to chromatic harmony and altered chords as they appear in the music of the 50's and 60's, to the use of composition in the process of generating a unique overall musical voice. Hopefully, this will provide some with the inspiration to put down their instrument and sit down at the piano (a difficult process for you piano players: you'll have to forget how to play for a few hours). Not having taken lessons in composition shouldn't stop anyone from writing their own music: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker never had these, and for that matter, neither did Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage, or Milton Babbitt.