I think you want @John_Dikeman

 

Hopefully he’ll chime in.

 

This was inspiring...

Of course, Lonely Woman is a classic which I'm sure you are aware of.

 

First time I see Flea not half-naked.. xD

 

If you feel like breaking some stuff:

 

Love the cadenza. Reminds me of Bird on Night in Tunisia.

 

No real need to start with anyone else.I'd say start with a feeling or mood you want to express. Laughing, crying, playful, curious, angry? Its about starting with the inner and letting it come out. You expressing you...

 

Evan Parker Electoacustic Ensemble recordings are great way to think about technology and traditional instruments used together.

Any late Coltrane from around Sun Ship onwards.

Ornette with Prime Time.

Sam Newsome if you’re considering solo language.

There’s so much great stuff right now.

 

Yeah I'd definitely check out Lonely Woman.

But of course free jazz is a movement that's about 60 years old. There are myriad compositional approaches.

May I ask why you want to compose a "free jazz composition"?

Just a few others to throw out...

ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO Theme De Yoyo

Henry Threadgill ‎- Too Much Sugar For A Dime (1993) [Full Album]

 

Yeah I'd definitely check out Lonely Woman.

But of course free jazz is a movement that's about 60 years old. There are myriad compositional approaches.

May I ask why you want to compose a "free jazz composition"?

Just a few others to throw out...

ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO Theme De Yoyo

Henry Threadgill ‎- Too Much Sugar For A Dime (1993) [Full Album]

Hello- I want to make a free jazz tune because I like to challenge myself to write styles and haven't in this one yet.

 

Ornette Coleman and Pharoah Sanders are definitely some of my favorites but it is hard to ignore Coltrane.

 

PUNKT.VRT.PLASTIK "Fraustadt"

PUNKT.VRT.PLASTIK "Fraustadt"from the Album "Somit"Kaja Draksler - upright pianosPetter Eldh - bassChristian Lillinger - dumsComposed by Kaja Draksler Filme...

youtu.be

 

Sun Ra. Lots and lots of Sun Ra.

 

John Coltrane later work with Alice (Stellar Regions et al), also Ascension
David S. Ware,
Suzie Ibarra (drummer)
John Zorn and Masada
John Surman
Steve Lacey
Liebman specially during his soprano only period -- check his work with my buddy Scott Cutshall
David Mott
Josh Sinton
Matts Gustaffson
Marilynn Crispell (pianist) and anybody she play with (that whole Catskils - Woodstock collective) - Compositionally - her work is very rich
David Murray
Evan Parker
David Holland - conference of the birds, He works with Evan Parker as well
Anthony Braxton
William Parker/ Noelle Leandre -- bass players but they work with some good horn players. also Mark Dresser. Charlie Haden also
Catherine Sikora - Young welsh saxophonist
Our very own John Dikeman
Peter Brotzman
Oliver Lake
Tiszjii Munoz -- guitarist -- also part of that Woodstock collective
Also listen to conduction work by Butch Morris. Dino JA Deanne (I worked with him ) - Conduction is free form big band. I have his (Morris's) book. Really a good read specially for composers
Dewey Redman
Jack Wright (I have worked with him )

You can check out my soundcloud channel and see what we have here in Santa Fe and Albuquerque NM.

 

George Garzone and The Fringe have a weekly Monday hit at The Lilypad in Boston. They’ve been going for 50 years.

 

For melodic inspiration check out the Rova Saxophone Quartet. Not sure they are jazz (though record companies may want to categorize them as such), but lot’s of nice textural ideas.

Question - what does free jazz mean? Play a tune (precomposed) then improvise without regard to any form? Or are there constraints on the improvisation too? I mean, I have jammed freely with various folks over the years, sometimes it came out sounding like Ornette and sometimes it came out sounding like the blues.

 

Question - what does free jazz mean? Play a tune (precomposed) then improvise without regard to any form? Or are there constraints on the improvisation too? I mean, I have jammed freely with various folks over the years, sometimes it came out sounding like Ornette and sometimes it came out sounding like the blues.

There are a lot of great suggestions in this thread. A couple topics I wanted to talk about though. This is a long post yet way too short at the same time...

"free jazz" is certainly a vague term and not one used or really accepted by many of the main practitioners. I was speaking recently with William Parker and Hamid Drake and they don't like that term. They don't even like the term jazz which originates from a slang term describing African Americans having sex. To be honest, I don't remember what terms they do use for their music, I think they just avoid genre specifications.

Be that as it may, we can speak of "free jazz" as a sort of genre based on music that's happened since the late 50s. Of course Lennie Tristano, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh experimented with fully improvised music in 1949.

The freedom in free jazz can reflect many things. The most shocking initial difference between free jazz, and why Ornette angered so many folks when he showed up on the scene, was the lack of precomposed chords one had to follow while soling. Some of his compositions did have chords for the melody, but after the melody everyone was free to move forward as they saw fit. The thing people don't realize here is just because no chords were written doesn't mean the music was atonal or the people played whatever they wanted. Much of Ornette's playing is diatonic and heavily influenced by the blues. You hear a strong connection harmonically between Charlie Haden and Ornette, or Don Cherry. This, in my mind, is kind of one category of free jazz. Improvising very much in the jazz idiom. Often the music swings and there is a pretty clear tempo, though it may switch suddenly. However, when it does, the band follows. This music is all about listening and interaction. You really need to hear harmonically what everyone is doing to follow, contrast, whatever you decide. Rhythmically it's mostly a similar approach where you have freedom to go anywhere, but it's about going there organically as a group

Then you had someone like Albert Ayler who was stretching beyond harmonic implications of notes and really moving towards playing with pure sound. Anthony Braxton speaks of saxophone pre and post Ayler as this really signified that split from playing notes to pure sound. Timbre, dynamics. There's still an incredible sense of interplay but it's more gestural than finding harmonic ideas together as a group. Sunny Murray is also pivotal in that he completely freed up the drum set from it's role as a time keeper. Here, as well as his work with Cecil Taylor, is where you start to hear truly non metric music.

Cecil Taylor and John Coltrane also largely made music based on specific harmonic ideas. There is a great transcription in the Lewis Porter book of, I forget, Venus? From Interstellar Space where he shows the specific harmonic ideas being clearly outlined by Coltrane throughout the piece. There is nothing random, or even atonal here, he's bringing all of his harmonic knowledge from his life as a musician to improvise a piece. There approach to time is an interesting one. Rashied has a wonderful way of providing pulse without a clear metric time feel. I'm told he claimed he played time. I was just speaking with a fantastic British drummer, Andrew Lisle, about Rashied. I should talk to him more, but basically he was saying Rashied had a wonderful way of playing with so many layers and time implications that basically anything Coltrane could play would fit and he'd be able to connect.

DDGsax mentioned Braxton's compositions and suggested they were minimal and abstract. Graphic scores and the like. While that is true in some cases, Braxton employed just about every compositional tool imaginable, many novel, to find new ways to explore music. He has a LOT of fully notated compositions. I'm talking hours and hours and hours of thoroughly notated, almost unplayable, difficult music. Some of it sounds like aleatorical music, some stems directly from jazz, ie the language of Charlie Parker or Lennie Tristano. With our Amsterdam based collective Doek we did a collabopration with Braxton for his 80th birthday and I was lucky enough to play a concert of his music along with the other Doek members and 10 members of his collective Tri-Centric. I was relieved to be playing baritone as the alto and tenor parts were extremely challenging. Not quite Fernyhough, but a good few steps more difficult than the Omnibook. The altos and tenors included Michael Moore and Ingrid Laubrook and they were struggling... However, Braxton didn't mind the result at all. As a matter of fact, on this fully notated piece we were also encouraged to play in any transposition we chose. Of course, I doubt anyone with those super fast, tristano through a meat grinder lines, attempted to play it in another key... But that was encouraged. Another piece was fully notated but done so in a way it was basically impossible to keep track of what was your line and what was someone elses. In rehearsal we were all a bit anxious, trying to figure out how to play it "correctly". We'd start a section, muddle our way through to the pause. Sit there in confusion, ashamed we couldn't figure it out just to hear Anthony say "oh wonderful, wonderful!! just beautiful! Ok next section".

The point of all this is "free jazz" can mean anything. It's just about finding ways of breaking out of the rules and creating new music. Creating the music you want to make. Some musicians work very hard to avoid any harmonic implications, some musicians seemingly try to avoid having their instrument sound like their instrument, while others are happy to groove, go into a blues, whatever. Playing with William Parker and Hamid Drake is a challenge because they are some of the very few people I know in the music that are totally free to go anywhere. They can play as abstractly anyone then suddenly slip into a reggae. It's all music and the boundaries are imaginary.

 

For saxophone - You can get really free if you do not have a chordal instrument unless you have a free form pianist, An angular guitar player can free the whole vibe as well but usually guitar players restrict the free portion of it. Very challenging and rewarding is duo with a drummer. But that drummer better be good. Rashid/Milton Graves/Elvin -- someone that can really be free

William Parker ensemble work is great and he lays down awesome groundwork for horns section as well. Usually the key is not planned before hand.

Compositionally Butch Morris and his conduction work is a great study. I've also worked with electronic, ambient, sound design and noise artists. Also fun to work with edgier string players who are well versed in extended techniques. Also texturally, extended techniques (multi phonics, growling, controlled squeaks, slaps and altissimo ) is nice to have. Effects is something that one can add.

 

The idea of "composing" seems antithetical to free jazz, but free jazz "composers" (I'm thinking mainly of Anthony Braxton) seem to use a minimal abstract concept (a theme, painting, diagram, a meditation, object, equation, etc.) and give artistic free reign to the musicians to create spontaneously.

Performance Practice — Tri-Centric Foundation

tricentricfoundation.org

 

The idea of "composing" seems antithetical to free jazz, but free jazz "composers" (I'm thinking mainly of Anthony Braxton) seem to use a minimal abstract concept (a theme, painting, diagram, a meditation, object, equation, etc.) and give artistic free reign to the musicians to create spontaneously.

Performance Practice — Tri-Centric Foundation

tricentricfoundation.org

I agree with this sentiment. Back when I was studying at university doing my final year composition, I had some pieces that had "free" sections, and they were largely made up of written text describing a mood or a scene, or in some cases a couple of scales or collection of tones that should be considered to be emphasised.

From a composition point of view, where there is more structure, I think of the composed parts as not free jazz but to be used as inspiration for when the music moves into a free section. Tunes like La Pasionaria on Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra album spring to mind.

 

Some thoughts on the subject…Way back when, I really enjoyed Ornette. When Coltrane came out with Ascension, he kind of lost me, too chaotic…although I did see Coltrane perform live a little after that, playing free with a large band, and was blown away (he did use some recognizable fragments of Afro Blue, etc.)...I have participated in more than a few “free” sessions over the years, and usually there were no written parameters…To some extent, the idea of “writing“ a free jazz piece is self-contradictory…I feel that a good “free jazz” performance is really the most meaningful in the time and place that it occurs.

Great discussion starter!

 

Catherine Sikora’s solo playing is free but with a strong sense of organization / structure: Winter Solos, by Catherine Sikora

 

Hey Noelpaz, you know my old friend Stefan Dill? I think he's in Albuquerque now. He's the first improviser I had a chance to play with as a 15 year old kid in Wyoming. I convinced a local music camp to hire him as a guitar teacher and we spent a pretty intense week playing music, talking about Cecil Taylor...

 

If you look at the scores listed on the Tri-Centric site on this page you get an idea of the broad range of techniques Braxton uses to notate. Often pieces that appear to be a graphic score, once you open the pages, you see a great deal of notes...

Print Music — Tri-Centric Foundation (tricentricfoundation.org)

Composition No. 63 (for two soloists and chamber orchestra) — Tri-Centric Foundation (tricentricfoundation.org)

 

I love Tim Berne

 

The Dutch also have a long history of innovative ways of mixing composition and improvisation. ICP or Instant Composers Pool, more or less exhausted the possibilities over their, what 40 years or so together. As well as the Willem Breuker Kollektief and many, many other groups.

- YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

www.youtube.com

 

Wow, I am getting a lot of great responses and stuff to listen to! Thank you!

 

You might listen to "Ornette On Tenor".
All of it, and here's one to get started.
Got a copy when it was first released as a young Tenor boy.

Would play it or Bach's Art of the Fugue ....
at max volume...... to chase my male buddies away when they disturbed my practice.

Speak Low.... or something similar, if it was a Gal ....... which set me up for Autumn Leaves at a later time.
Win some, loose some.
Love is a Waltz..... and nothing is free.

 

If you are writing it down, it's not free. Or maybe it's just in the nomenclature.

 

Without digressing the thread...I don't agree with this.

If we take 'conventional' Jazz as something like this:

a song, with a melody structured in a way : head, bridge, intor, outro, ending, whatever...with a chord progression which after playing the melody, the musicians then take turns 'soloing over' then perhaps trading fours or such...it has a chart, it has a form which usually repeats.

"free jazz" IMHO...doesn't follow this sort of convention. Leave it at that, I think.

Free Jazz can certainly have a chart, or a form, or even in a pared down state simply some sort of preconceived 'road map' written down...and be Free Jazz, methinks.

Saying "it isn't free if there's a composition involved"...is a very, very narrow definition to employ.

As I understand what you wrote, by your definition...a tune which has a melody, or some sort of head, or even just a theme or phrase - be it melodic or even just rhythmic - which the player thought up and 'occurs' in the tune now and again, or in the case of rhythm occurs regularly throughout - yet the players are playing/soloing notsomuch following any sort of chord progression but rather just 'playing off of each other'....doesn't quite meet 'free jazz' because there was a preconceived something (on paper) given to the members.

I would say that position is debatable.

Apologies for digression. I understand where your opinion comes from. I just think it's too rigid.

 

A subject dear to my heart, although I am nowhere near as knowledgable about the subject as many of the posters on this thread, but have always been fascinated by this end of the music.

As has been detailed by others, there are almost as many approaches to this topic as there are improvisors. Some of what I have experienced and what I have learned from discussions with improvisors that I respect greatly boil down to some common themes regardless of approach. The key to this style of music is listening, Ellery Eskelin once told me that when he is improvising he listens for what the music needs and tries to do that. I experienced that once in a large group setting where the music was sort of meandering and, in my mind, was getting boring (the last thing you want), so I just honked out two low Bbs on my tenor then followed with overblowing on some upper left hand notes and kept repeating the pattern. Some others picked up on the pattern and things took off in an interesting direction that got everyone more engaged and I thought it turned much more successfully than where it was heading.

Another time when I was very new to the concept of freely improvised music I was discussing composition with Dennis Gonzalez (who unfortunately passed recently) and how he integrated melodies into his pieces. I am paraphrasing as this was a long time ago, but the essence of what I recall was that he would have a melodic fragment in his mind and he would discuss it with the band members, they would work it out (sometimes on the bandstand, sometimes when jamming together) and see where it went.

Another approach is using conducted improvisation, not exactly composition but improvisors like John Zorn have created complex systems around this approach. I participated in a workshop where we learned aspects of this approach and it can be a lot of fun and works well when there are inexperienced improvisors involved (even better with experienced ones).

These are some of the conductions that I found relating to the Cobra system that Zorn developed.

Not sure I have added anything meaningful to the discussion, but it is an endlessly fascinating area for discussion imho.

 

I'm a big fan of the german (GDR based) Zentralquartett. Especially trombone Player Connie Bauer is one of my heroes. Here's a great free trombone solo followed by a northern german folk song (Dat du min leevste bist), played perhaps a bit how Mingus would had done it. Or like trad. Jazz - playing in a collective around a melody. But it's not free in a way that it misses tonality, pulse, beat etc.

A free jazz composition? Gazzelloni from Eric Dolphys "Out to lunch" comes to my limited mind: A short head (here based on fourths) as a starting point for everybody improvising