Stephen Fitch

Speech

- My name is Stephen Fitch. I am pleased that you could hear my presentation today.

- Mose Allison, a famous jazz musician who was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall

of Fame, once said, “As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation,

melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.” Did you know, that these “essentials

of jazz” are actually used and common in music we listen to today, in various modern genres

that you would hear on the radio? Indeed they are!

(Thesis)- Modern music genres have been drastically influenced through the vari-

ous revolutionary social and musical elements such as syncopation, improvisation, and

instrumentation, introduced by the jazz and blues music genres.

- As the jazz and blues music genres began to appear in the American spotlight during the

early 1930’s, they revolutionized most music that came thereafter, such as Rock and Roll, pop,

Techno, R&B, et cetera. Although blues and jazz as slightly different, because blues is usually

slower and emphasizes a more melancholy subject matter, the musical elements and time period

of both are so similar that I consider them as one main style of music which influenced many

others. To be able to trace the way in which blues and jazz influenced later genres, we can look

at individual features of these genres and then observe their use in modern genres.

- Firstly, as Mose Allison said, melodic improvisation is a very important and prominent

concept used in jazz and blues and also commonly today. Improvisation, which is the creation

and playing of music simultaneously, was and is one of the cornerstone attributes to jazz and

blues. As seen today, most commonly in rock and roll, a musician in a band would most likely

have a solo, or a featured musical passage, which differs from one live performance or practice

to the next, with whatever style or melody the musician wants to play. This technique is ob-

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served in rock and roll usually with guitar and drum solos or just improvised playing through-

out the entire song.

- instrumentation is another feature that jazz and blues music has greatly shaped. Before

jazz and blues music, bigger orchestral settings were more common, with many more musi-

cians, percussionists and a conductor. When jazz and blues music came along, ensemble sizes

became smaller, conductors were commonly left out of jazz and blues bands, and the amount of

percussionists consolidated. This consolidation resulted in the creation of the drum set in the

early 1930’s. The drum set allows a small band to only have one drummer. who, when using

his feet for a bass drum and hi hat, is almost as efficient as a group of percussionists. Today, we

can see these influences in rock and roll bands, since they normally are consisted of no conduc-

tors and a very small group. The utilization of a drum set, which can be observed in even hip

hop, pop, rock, R&B, and many other genres is a direct byproduct of blues and jazz used today.

- Syncopation is another very important technique popularized by jazz and blues. As I

mentioned in my product video, syncopation is the placement of a sound on an up-beat, or a

counter-intuitive place. One example of syncopation is called backbeat, which is used very of-

ten in rock and roll. back beat is replacing the normal strong beats on 1 and 3 in 4/4 to 2 and 4.

Swing is another specific example of syncopation. Swing makes the beat note in a measure

long and short, daa,da,daa,da,daa,da,daa. Syncopation is used today in rock and roll and heav-

ily used in trance, techno, and electronica.

- The blue’s scale, as shown in my product, is a specific set of notes for the blues and jazz.

Some of these notes in the blue’s scale, called blue’s notes, are used in rock and roll, especially

during chord changes and piano or guitar solos.

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- The blues and jazz genres introduced an even and standard chord progression model, in

which a chord, or set of notes making a harmony, would change in a song in a certain order

with a certain amount of beats before changing, whereas previous music styles would have

chord progressions with random suspenseful changes. Rock and roll directly benefitted from

this technique, and it can be observed in nearly all rock and country songs today.

- When the blues and jazz when popular music, a steady rhythm section became common-

place for those bands to support the melody taking place. This rhythm section may be anything

from an upright bass, to a cello, piano, drum set or snare drum, just something to keep the time

as other musicians improvise and play melodies. Today, in rock and roll, country and electronic

or techno music, this concept is commonly used, as a steady rhythm is kept with a drum set or

electronic percussion to keep a steady pulse or beat throughout a song.

- Lastly, the jazz and blues genres have affected some today such as rock and roll in a so-

cial manner. As jazz and blues was one day the pop music of the time, enthusiasts and musi-

cians of the music tended to have a rebellious and scandalous result with partying, promiscu-

ousness, and drug use. The term “Hipster” actually comes from such people. This “party” life-

style of the jazz age parallels what we see with many rock bands in the past few decades and to-

day.

- In my product, I outlined most of these features and juxtaposed their use in a jazz and

blues context with a rock and roll context. Finding research for this project was quite rigorous,

but after determination and making my own connections of smaller topics, I was able to weave

them together to form my paper.

- Today in modern music genres such as rock and roll, techno, pop, R&B, and even coun-

try, the remnants of jazz and blues can be seen in qualities like : syncopation, even chord pro-

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gression, improvisation, the blue’s scale, the social trends, and instrumentation. After closely

examining genres of our past, we can now discern a bit of the source which brings forth the

genres we have today.

-Do you have any questions?

- Thank you for listening to my presentation, and I hope you enjoyed it!