Alex Gardner

Music Appreciation: Jazz

Dr. Kehle

11.15.2018

A Lonely Woman

What comes to mind when I think of a lonely woman is a woman who is in her late 20’s,

early 30’s, approximately 5’7, weighs 195 pounds, and is a brunette who spends most of her

nights in her apartment, sitting on her bed watching Netflix with some baggy clothes like

sweatpants, long/short sleeve shirt (depending on weather), eating some ice cream and more than

likely watching a romantic comedy, to not only give her a good laugh but to help give her some

comfort and also may possibly make her cry to the romance part. She would not be wearing any

makeup due to the fact that she knows she has no plans and would not be having any last minute

plans. Her apartment is a run-down apartment complex, one that is cheap but has many

problems, and her interior is a bed in the middle of the room in front of the TV, with the

kitchen/laundry room in the same area as the main room, but with a wall partially separating the

two areas. Her current time is in the middle of the night, with the moon being ¼ full, so a

crescent moon in the sky, and it looks like it may rain later in the night, but it doesn’t bother the

woman that much. The woman is lonely because all her friends has either moved away or had

shut her out, and her boyfriend of 3 years broke up with her and cheated on her with one of her

bestfriends, so she has some trust issues with people that she once thought she could turn to in

case of an emergency. Almost all of her family members have passed away and she is the only

child from her parents and only her dad is alive, who is hospitalized. Due to all of this, she has

lived a lonely live for the past few months.

 The way that a lonely woman could be portrayed, at least by my viewpoint, is to have the

following instruments: A piano, a saxophone (preferably a tenor), a trombone, the bass guitar,

and a trumpet. There would be more than one player on the trombone to help give different stand

points on the tune, kinda like the jazz combo at Pittsburg State University. The only instruments

to be solo instruments are the tenor, trumpet, piano, and bass guitar. The piano would help set the

tone for the rest of the piece, along with the bass who would help tell that it is the night, the tenor

and trombone would help dictate what is happening/help describe the woman, and the trumpet

for any emotional emphasize support. Also the bass guitar adds emphasis during the beginning

and the ending for the feeling of night. Perhaps the tenor may have a solo to help further give the

musical explanation of the woman and the trumpet a solo to apply meaning to her loneliness. The

tempo of the tune will start slow, and at a mezzo forte as the dynamic. During the solos, the tenor

will have the same dynamic but the trumpet will have a forte dynamic, with some shifts from

forte to mezzo forte. The tune itself will have some dynamic shift during the important parts and

then the ending will have a piano soft sound to help rap up all of this woman for the audience.

With this kind of piece, I feel like there would be no room for improvisation, but if needed, the

tenor solo could do some improve if the player is confident that they could make it sound better

and still describe the woman. The use of the 12 bar blues would most likely be used in this

scenario in the section of the description of the woman to help further emphasize her and her

message.

Ornette Coleman used his music to describe what a lonely woman would be like during

the time he was alive, which was till 2015 so I would say around the mid 1960’s. He keeps the

tune nice and slow, with a few moments of increased dramatization with a dynamic increase

along with the steady snare in the background keeping the feeling of the tune in place along with
drums, which give me a visal of it being night where this woman is. Uses the saxophone and

trumpet as the main instruments during the tune as well as the drums he has playing in the

background and it sounded like an acoustic guitar playing in the background. The saxophone and

the trumpet played the same thing for a few parts of the tune, along with the saxophone having

the solo and then perhaps the saxophone improvising a few parts during which the trumpet did

not play the same thing as the saxophone. Overall, his piece describes a lonely woman great with

the helping give to life the image of a woman with nothing to due with her time, but it only

partially matched what I was aiming for. It sounded like he did use the 12 bar blues with the

repetition of a few lines in the beginning and close to the end, along with having that feeling that

it is the middle of the night during his piece and he used almost similar instruments from what I

would have used. During the middle of it the drums picked up a bit with heavier beats and the

main instruments increased in dynamic tone, which is what I was aiming for in my piece as well.

But our differences are that I am composing a piece for a lonely woman in 2018, and he is

composing a piece for a woman that could possible be in 1960, so it's obvious that there would

be some differences in our pieces, like how I am using a trombone and a piano player in my

piece and he didn’t use either of them in his. We had the same ideas for how this piece would

sound like, but as I will more than likely never hear my piece out loud, his piece is the best thing

to help bring the image, in music, what/who a lonely woman is in society.