This has been bugging me all day... What is the difference between jazz/swing/big band? I'm just now getting into these three types of music, and I want to know.... Is there even a difference between these genres? I know this is probably the dumbest question, but I just want to know the answer...
Jazz is a kind of music played by guys in tennis shoes and Richard Simmons hair in which every person plays a different, challenging piece of music entirely lacking in melody, harmony or counterpoint - until someone snorts a rail of coke and starts playing literally ANYTHING as a solo for the rest of em to catch up. Swing is something played in three three time while a gravelly voiced black guy tries to sing out his nose like a trumpet played with a toilet plunger. Big band - think Johnny Carson's theme tune.
big bands are generally big brass orientated jazz ensmbles, swing is 3 for style sinatra kind of thing, whereas jazz covers a reeeaallly wide variety of stuff.
Hahaha yes there are lots of differences between those styles of music. I myself love jazz fusion and I have studied all those styles of music as a guitarist so I will tell you the actual differences in the eyes of the guitarist. Jazz is formed mostly over modal progressions. The object for the guitarist in jazz is to play chordal tones and modes built over top of the said chords while mixing in tension. For the person who said jazz lacks melody and harmony check out John Scofield. Swing is actually a way to describe different forms of music such as country, rockabilly, jazz etc. in which the rythem of the piece is played in a swing feel. Swing itself can be used to describe jazzy rock or jazzy country. Finally big band is self explainatory since all you have to do to qualify as a big band is to have many members. A big band can play anything and since it will use a large variety of instruments it gives a very powerful and solid sound.
Bigband and Swing are played by the same ensembles, but the music is different. When I think of swing, I usually think of one of three things. Benny Goodman's stuff, All those vocal numbers as performed by Frank Sinatra, or that really naff commercial swing like Glenn Miller. Bigband is the name of the ensemble that plays Swing music, but the name also lends itself to a slightly separate genre where the band take on the role of an orchestra not playing dance music (which is essentially what Swing is), but more involved intellectual stuff featuring lots of complex harmony and arrangements and long virtuosic solos. Jazz on the other hand, can mean anything these days. It's really an umbrella term, like classical. When you say classical you don't usually just mean the Classical period, and it's the same with Jazz. When you say Jazz you don't usually just mean New Orleans jazz which is really just an extention of ragtime. It'll cover a number of things. But I don't like to count Swing as jazz. In fact I think vocal jazz is an oxymoron as well. There's a place for it but I don't call it jazz, I call it swing. Unless it's a vocalist with a small ensemble, and then you can't really call it swing either. But I don't view it in the same way as I do instrumental jazz, as it always centres on the vocalist and you don't get a lot of solos and the whole thing is confined, as singers generally are, but the form of the song and by the lyrics. A typical bigband lineup will be 4/5 Trumpets, 4/5 Trombones, 5 Saxes (usually AATTB - with saxes often doubling up on other woodwind instruments as well), and a rhythm section consisting of Kit, Bass, Guitar, Piano and Latin Percussion.
