diff between jazz/blues?

this may sound dumb

but what exectly is jazz? and what exactly is blues? what are some good examples of each?

are there jazz scales? i have only heard of blues scales.

cheers

 

jazz is more random and crazy

blues is more steady- and has a certain pattern.

tis difficult to explain. download some tracks and you'll get me

 

Nope... wrong there. It can be either for both.. fusion is "random and crazy"... other jazz forms can have a pattern... and if you want to hear non-steady blues, just listen to Stevie Ray Vaughan or Jimi Hendrix... or even back to Robert Johnson.

Jazz is what I call "light blues"...

 

Alright, Ill se if I can do this question some justice...


Blues is a vocal based style with a more simplistic/traditional approach to harmonies, melodies, rythems, progressions, ect. usually guitar is prodiminent in the songs though piano can take the lead instrument roll also.

Jazz tends to be a more instrumental style focusing on extended harmonies, oddly phrased melodies, and untraditional timing, this freedom often does create room for the random crazy aspect referenced earlier.

Keep in mind these are general discriptions, most music will not fit neatly into any one genre, and my personal knowledge of music may taint the quality of the discriptions.

To me the blues tend to be concrete, describing a ceartin situation or instance while jazz is trying to capture and convey an emotion or mood without a story or words, much more abstract, thats how I look at it.

For Blues...

BB King
Leadbelly
Stevie Ray Vaughn

For Jazz...

Miles Davis
Thelonious Monk
Medeski, Martin, & Wood (modern, electiric, very hip jazz)

 

I'll also toss in Albert King and Buddy Guy for blues... Joe Pass, Scott Henderson, and Wes Montgomery for Jazz... also Django Reinhardt.

 

Blues is more of a faster thing i dont know.. IT created rock.. HMM.. Jazz is like the more low beat with the trumpet and shit haha.. I dont know.> music is music to me no categories

peace
chickens

 

It could also be said that Blues evolved from a tradition of rural folk music, where as Jazz has always been very urban and more resmeblant of the classics in it's composition and theory. Infact those are, as I see it, the only fundemental differences.

 

I don't know to much about the theory, but I think they are two closely related types of music. In jazz phrasing you can see and hear the blues in some of it. Blues is more structured with set patterns so your playing scales that correspond to the cords . the basic blues prog is the 1-4-5. I think ya gotta have the blues to play the blues ya really got ta feel it. As for Jazz it's the best because anything goes, unique melody's any range of chords and scales that can create harmony and tension. It's great for improvising alot of chords are two,three.four string chords or muted where you play the base string and the other notes. You can take jazz to so many unique places it's amazing, it's like what ever ya can think up.I play guit and keyboard hope this helps ya.

 

there really aint to much differences in alot of jazz songs they do the natural blues using 5ths.

 

Before you look into jazz, consider this: Miles Davis is the king, and despite what the idiot potheads say here, Phish suck goat taint.

Edit: And in jazz, trumpet, not saxophone, is the mouth of God. Then again, as a trumpet player, I'm a little biased.

 

Miles Davis can blow me. screw horns... try it on a guitar. http://home.no.net/alteinum/Scott-like.mp3

 

One other important difference between Jazz and Blues is that in Jazz you tend to hear alot more syncopation.

 

JAZZ IS NOT A STYLE OF MUSIC!!! its an enormous category that blues(a jazz style) fits into. blues is kind of a subdivision. Jazz could be broken into categories such as blues, swing, be-bop, (in all those 8th notes are swung) funk could be jazz, bossa novas and sambas are often jazz, but those are different than the rest because the 8ths are straight, um even modern rock could be jazz. its so broad. Blues is strictly a style and is usuall associated with the blues scale with scale degrees that are 1,flat3,4,sharp4,5,flat7,8. Blues can very much be instrumental and jazz can very much be vocal. It has no difference of tempo or feel. most often the "random" things you hear are from the improvised solos which are very often found in jazz. styles such as funk and Latin-jazz are known to have heavy accents that are not placed traditionally. it is true,there is alot of syncopation, but it doesnt really define jazz or blues because alot of styles and categories of music have syncopated rhythms.


if the question was, what is distinct about blues, it would definitely be the blues scale, if you play those scale degrees you will KNOW its blues and you can never miss it.

theres nothing distinct about jazz, its so broad.

Alot of famous jazz artists include miles davis, dizzy gillespie, louis armstrong, thelonious monk, chic webb, john coltrane, duke ellington, dexter gordon etc. theres so many.

 

it all really began with the slaves playing rythims on drums to communicate, it then took a new level when people like Duke Ellington came around and took classical background with his southern, black roots in music and fused them, there are so many styles of jazz today. DUke started with basic blues, but also wrote a whole lotta great other stuff, a 2 feel swing train sounding tune, "Happy go lucky local" then on to a salsa type feel of tunes like "Purple gazell" he wrote many ballads, such as one great one called "isfahan" and also took rhapsody in blue, George Gershwins symphonic masterpiece and made a jazz version. It is amazing. People like louis armstrong and others started all playng waht back then adn is still known as a basic "blues" feel 12 or 16 bar pieces repeated over and over, with scales based off the major ones,but with different notes to make them sound more "bluesy" or hip. In the late thirties and forties, composers started incorporating larger sections of instruments into what was the Big Band era, the time of swing. these charts were longer, pretty fast, and fun to dance to. In the 50s, and early 60s jazz was a little more free form, with many solo artists taking the stage, such as miles, chet baker, mulligan, etc.

in the 70s jazz got a lot more funky with elements of rock, and bands like JACO PASTORIOS (sorry about spelling) and weather report. now, jazz can be anything, from free form, acid, to psychedelic,
jazz is the illicit love child that spawned rock and roll, and all good jam music today. jazz is not easily defined, but more a feeling when you hear it, you know it, you feel it, i smile. the swing, man, when it hits, it makes ya wanna dance. hope this helped,
im a sax player, so Mulligan, Lovano, and Parker, Rollins, are my heros
But phish is damn good too, and the state one fo their major influences is sun ra, a tremendous jazz drummer. the dead aer the same, any jam band comes from the basis of free to do what you want, improvisational jazz.
that was tiring.

 

No, really. You're a fucking idiot.

 

i like bojiglin and mr. palmer's answers a lot....
i might add that the familiar 12 or 8 bar blues progressions w/ I-IV changes followed by a 5-4-1 turnaround are what i think of w/ the median blues song. in jazz, i think of long, complex strings of chord changes utilizing II-V-I progs and key modulations... but i also consider the grateful dead to be jazz sometimes when they're just changing between 2 chords. i usually groove more to jazz and bounce more w/ the blues, too. both genres make use of "standards" but their standard songs are different--gershwin, miles, coltrane tunes for jazz and traditional or robert johnson stuff for blues...whatever. it's all good if the band's tight, and the music doesn't stop.

 

I really couldn't give less of a flying fuck, not only that, but I can't believe you're pathetic enough to even still have that .jpg.

 

seems like nobody even knows about don cherry and ornette coleman, you cant say you know shit about jazz until you hear them, cherry will smoke miles davis on trumpet, and they started the whole fucking free/advant garde jazz shit in the 50's anyway.

 

you wanna hear something funny

i just went into this thread, thinking it was brand new cus it was at the top of the page. i read the question and thought, wow what a dumbass. yet the replies seemed oddly familiar. then i thought...wait a second....who the hell asked this question to begin with

 

Scott Henderson...


And Stangs Swang by Stevie Ray Vaughan... I just recorded a cover of that tonight.