“Jazz music is a lifestyle. It’s not notes, chords and arpeggios. Today’s improvisation is too based on the knowledge of chords and the way they practice the chords. It’s not a melodic thing anymore like the older days. It was much more important to play shorter and to play more variable, valid stuff. Today, a lot of solos are long and uninteresting and the influence usually comes from John Coltrane’s group. He himself was a master musician, but he put so much emphasis on chord knowledge and technique, and now the kids want to show how fast they can play. This is the same with piano players and most instrumentalists—it’s speed. That’s gonna change again and hopefully the kids who are now 16 and 17 years old have a little more sense and maybe some more stories to tell.”

— Joe Zawinul

Reflecting on the new generation's take on jazz music
Prasad interview (1997)

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Joe Zawinul 7

austrian composer and pianist 1932–2007

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“The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them…I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

About the new modal style. Interviewed by The Jazz Review, 1958; Quotes in Paul Maher, ‎Michael K. Dorr (2009) Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis, p. 18.
1950s

“This guy, he just taught me chords and stuff. And after a year, I thought, I can't be bothered having lessons. So I just decided to figure out my own stuff. I never wanted to play all those fast solos. I just thought, I'll be like Pete Townshend of The Who. I'll do what he does and play powerful chords and stuff.”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

On how he learnt Guitar, Guitar School magazine, "Rock n' Roll high school" February 1996.
Interviews

“It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticized for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is.”

Angus Young (1955) Scottish Australian guitarist

Interview with the Atlanta Gazette in May 1979

“I'm constantly thinking melodies. Now, to add interest to those melodies, obviously you have to know what things can be superimposed over a chord, and I will think of extended arpeggios and the upper estensions. If I'm playing very vertically, I will invariably start to include certaing passing notes which imply certain scales -- like a melodic minor scale against a C minor chord, or diminished scales, something like that. But I'm not thinking of a scale at that specific moment. I'm thinking of the notes as surrounding that chord -- because I know how each of the twelve notes in music sound against a C minor seventh, for instance.”

Lee Ritenour (1952) American jazz guitarist, session musician, and composer

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 114, 0-679-74275-1]

“So, if you played a C major chord to pretty much any person on the planet, they'd say that it sounds "harmonious" (or pleasing, or happy, etc, etc). But now when you want to put chords and melodies in an ordering and make a larger piece called a "song", then that is a much more difficult process, and gets very subjective. At that point, it's not just the chords, it's the lyrics, rhythms, instrumentation, tempo, intensity, any number of other things that goes into a song… so many variables that it's almost impossible to predict how a song will affect a given person.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

“I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.”

Charlie Parker (1920–1955) American jazz saxophonist and composer

c. 1939 quoted in Masters of Jazz

“I spent a lot of time teaching myself theory and harmony so I could be free to express myself on the instrument. I learned what relatives and substitutes could be played against a root of a chord, like E minor related to G, and so forth. I've also gathered all this knowledge because for ten years all I've done is play jazz, every day.”

George Benson (1943) American musician

[Denyer, Ralph, The Guitar Handbook, 2002, 115, 0-679-74275-1]

“Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Hallelujah" - 1984 performance http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3rwo0_leonard-cohen-hallelujah_music · Montreal Jazz Festival 2008 performance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FpwjQLZTTs
Various Positions (1984)
Context: Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

“Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure
Thrill the deepest notes of woe.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Sensibility How Charming, st. 4
Johnson's The Scots Musical Museum (1787-1796)

“There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.”

Terry Pratchett book Soul Music

Source: Soul Music

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Joe Zawinul 7

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