Jazz techniques

On Wednesday, September 20th at 7pm, I attended a music jazz concert at Las Hadas in Reseda, CA. It was inside of a vintage mexican restaurant, though to me it kind of looked like a lounge. In the audience, a few people were dressed in formal attire but majority of people were dressed in casual attire. While the band would play, couples would get up spontaneously to dance. On the other hand, the instrumentalist were set up like an orchestra but located in the direct center of the restaurant with…

American is an amalgam of American folk music formed by the confluence of the shared and varied traditions that make up the musical ethos of the United States, specifically those sounds that are merged from folk, country, blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and other external influences. Americana as a radio format developed during the 1990s as a reaction to the highly polished sound that defined the mainstream music of that decade. The AMA grew out of the format as an effort to bring all…

These are three are the famous musicians in Mississippi as a child I heard my parents speak about and still can remember some of the music being played by a few. They seem to be household names and more places than St. Louis. These three people are BB King, Muddy Waters and Bessie Smith. All from the state of Mississippi. BB King, is still playing the blues even though he’s past the age of 87. His birth given name is Riley B. King. In 1949 he began to be a well know musician, although he got…

What is “blues,” really? It is a genre, yes, but some could argue that it was more of a movement, a feeling. The “sound” of blues varies vastly, changing from person to person and from era to era, as do all genres. Though, in comparison, it could be said that blues might be one of the most multi-faceted genres we’ve had to date. This could have something to do with its incipient nature of self-expression, having deep roots in African-American work songs, and spirituals. Essentially, the blues is…

Sammy Goldstein is a singer and piano comedy actor from Paris Tennessee. The information about when he was born and when he lived in Paris seemed to be removed from Google’s indexing. Maybe he doesn’t want people to know his personal information. When he was 20 years old, he moved to Los Angeles and became a singer/pianist at a piano bar.He did this to try to support his acting career. However, he found a second career that he found had great success in. Over the next few years he worked around…

term “jazz” is freely used by many people around the world to describe a particular category of music. Every person will have their own definition of such a broad category of music. However, attempting to set boundaries and limit the definition of jazz to a simple “Google-like” definition is not only an injustice to the art of jazz, but also to listeners’ ability to appreciate the vast meanings and interpretations of jazz music. Prior to taking a semester long course on understanding jazz, I too…

and he adopted a three year old boy named Clarence. Clarence was mentally disabled and lived with Armstrong his whole life. While all of this was going on he was also becoming a very popular jazz player throughout New Orleans. Louis Armstrong later moved to Chicago to join Oliver Kings band called the Creole Jazz Band. On April 5, 1923 he got his first solo record deal where he played the song “Chimes Blues.”…

Drug addiction has contributed to a large portion of cultural foundations in The United States. Throughout the decades, the use of drugs has sculpted the principals of life in a majority of all ethnic backgrounds. “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin, conveys a first person view of the effects of drug addiction and the recovery processes power to bring family back together after an immense amount of hardship. Throughout “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny has been released from jail and is dealing with…

West African musical influences can be found throughout the rest of Africa and across the globe. These influences can be found throughout various genres of music, including jazz, blues, and electronic music. A modern example I discovered that demonstrates West African musical styles was M83’s Midnight City, an electronic song. Firstly, and prominently featured throughout the song is the synth pattern, or ostinato that is repeated through a large majority of the song. It is a simple four note…

In ‘Respect’ there are many different musical lines that bring together the piece. In the intro of the song it is just the brass, guitar, and drums playing for four measures until Aretha Franklin starts singing. The back-up singers and the piano’s entrance is about a half of a beat after Aretha’s entrance. At this point all of the instruments are in full swing. The brass has a solo about half way through the song; the saxophone having the melody and the trombone and trumpets playing the harmony.…