To anyone who plays an instrument and has played Jazz. What's the difference in playing your instrument for Jazz compared to playing it for other styles?
Jazz and rock are both pretty broad genres, but I'm assuming that's the comparison you're trying to make when you say "other styles"? Generally speaking, your chord and scale vocabularies need to be a lot better for jazz than for your typical rock stuff. Many would say you need a better understanding of music theory too, but I think there's a point where some people overemphasize that, mostly the academic types. They like to study the music as much as play it. Theory's a big part of that. If you're comparing it to country, country's closer to rock. A lot of it is fairly simple from a structural standpoint. Again, broad genres - lots of ground covered, lots of exceptions to everything.
^^ When I refer to Jazz I'm talking more about the traditional styles like swing or Bebop. I was wondering because I've always heard of Jazz being "intellectual". This gave me the impression that Jazz was more complex than other styles. I was also wondering if having Jazz experience makes you a better musician when going into other styles of music?
One famous Jazz musician is a mathematician, and when you listen to his work you can practically hear him write on the chalkboard. For me, Jazz is math, but so is language, so it gets confusing.
