Oakley Dance and James Patrick point out, prior to the 1950s it was standard practice to record four tunes in a three-hour recording session.19 Up to forty-five minutes then, on average, could be allotted to the recording of each three-minute tune. Such generous amounts of time, however, could be diminished by in-studio rehearsal, by false starts and mistakes, or by decisions to change repertoire or modify arrangements. Alternatively, Robert Palmer (1985) suggests that the high quality of recordings on the Blue Note label in the 1960s was due to the label’s policy of financing two to three days of rehearsal prior to each recording session.20
These examples make clear that one cannot definitively say whether an individual recording truly represents a first-time, improvisationally brilliant performance.21 For those writers interested in locating such performances, the use of commercially released live recordings is not a viable corrective, for such releases are as subject to post-performance manipulation as studio recordings. When artists like Joshua Redman and Joe Lovano made their live recordings at the Village Vanguard in the 1990s, it was likely as apparent to other audience members as it was to me that these were not typical performances. Intricate networks of wires and cables ran from the stage to other areas of the club and up the stairs to large mobile recording units parked in front of the club on both occasions. If that weren’t evidence enough, the musicians took care to inform us in each case that the evening’s performance was being recorded for commercial release.22 Moreover, as is standard with studio recordings, some recorded material, such as the intervals between songs or “extraneous” audience noise, didn’t appear on the final releases. Finally, audience applause was recorded on separate microphones to be mixed in later, and the individual tunes chosen for inclusion on the final recordings were sequenced in a manner that didn’t replicate their order on the evening(s) of performance.23
Where musical analysis is concerned, the process of transcribing those same recordings strips dense sonic phenomena of all that cannot be translated into a particular notational system, discourages study of musics not easily transcribed, and privileges the aspects of sound that researchers dependent on Western notation have been trained to emphasize (Tagg 1982, 41–42).24 Consequently, through notational dependence the analysis of jazz has come to resemble the analysis of Western concert music (see Walser 1995, 170–71, for a strategic use of notation-centered analysis). As a result, the majority of jazz analytical work concentrates on the improvised solos of historically prominent musicians, with most writers being content to focus their attention solely on the structural and melodic parameters of those solos.
Following Potter (1990), one can loosely group the analytical approaches to jazz in the categories represented in table 1. Analyses mapping pitch onto harmony or mode examine, moment to moment, what pitch choices are common or idiomatic for a particular improviser. Those analyses classed as “thematic/motivic/formulaic” have attempted to show how specific improvisers such as Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, and John Coltrane developed themes or motives in individual improvisations or consistently used the same melodic shapes (formulae) over specific harmonic progressions. Schenkerian analyses have been applied to show that “instantaneous composers—improvisers … think in long-range terms” (Potter 1990, 66) similar to those of the concert music composers on whom Heinrich Schenker based his work. The schemata under reductive techniques/pitch-class set analysis apply the implication-realization models of Eugene Narmour and Leonard Meyer or set analysis to melodic entities. Although reductive analyses attempt to show that certain melodic moves require or imply their own continuation, pitch-class set analyses reveal the relations between vertical or horizontal collections of pitches. Those studies termed “linguistic” have explored parallels between spoken language and jazz improvisation and have borrowed linguistic techniques and concepts, such as generative grammar, competence, and performance. The stylistic category encompasses analyses that are essentially descriptive, aimed at elucidating stylistic parameters such as harmonic or melodic usage. Studies of performance interaction focus on the ways in which performers interact with each other in the course of performance, particularly through their manipulation of harmony, rhythm, timbre, and other musical parameters.
TABLE 1 ANALYTIC APPROACHES
| Analytic Framework | Representative Examples |
| Relation of pitch to harmony or mode | Published transcriptions in Down Beat, listed by Koger 1985 |
| Thematic/motivic/formulaic | Williams 1958; Schuller 1958; Owens 1974;Tirro 1974; Gushee 1981; Kernfeld 1983; Smith 1983; Spring 1990; Van der Bliek 1991 |
| Schenkerian/harmonic | Owens 1974; Stewart 1979, 1982; Larson 1993, 1998, 2009; Martin 1996; Julien 2003; Waters and Williams 2010 |
| Reductive techniques/pitch-class set analysis | Pressing 1982; Williams 1982; Block 1990, 1993 |
| Linguistic | Perlman and Greenblatt 1981; Steedman 1984; Suhor 1986 |
| Stylistic | Williams 1982; Wildman 1985; Strunk 1979; Stein 1977; Koch 1985 |
| Signification—derived from the work of Henry Louis Gates Jr. (1988)* | Murphy 1990; Floyd 1991, 1993, 1995; Walser 1995 |
| Performance interaction | Katz and Longden 1983; Porter 1985; Stewart 1986; Rinzler 1988; Bastien and Hostager 1991; Washburne 1991; Jackson 1992; Berliner 1994; Monson 1996; Borgo 2005; Benadon 2006; Butterfield 2000, 2006, 2010 |
* Gates reaches into the African past to ground his concern with “Signifyin(g),” and, like Houston A. Baker Jr. (1984), he sees the African American vernacular as a source of new tools for literary criticism. “Signifyin(g)”—Gates explains his spelling of the term on page 46—defined as “repetition, with a signal difference” (1988, 51), is for him the master trope of the black English vernacular: “Black formal repetition always repeats with a difference, a black difference that manifests itself in specific language use. And the repository that contains the language that is the source—and the reflection—of black difference is the black English vernacular tradition” (xxii–xxiii). The importance of “Signifyin(g)” for literary criticism is its naming of a kind of intertextuality: “All texts Signify upon other texts, in motivated and unmotivated ways” (xxiv). Noting that “one does not signify something … one signifies in some way” (54), Gates delineates a number of ways in which Signifyin(g) is used by African American speakers, writers, and musicians, especially through the repetition, revision, blurring, and inversion of formal structures; pastiche; parody; and reinterpretation. In addition to numerous language-based examples, Gates provides music-based ones to support his assertions: “When playing the blues, a great musician often tries to make musical phrases that are elastic in their formal properties. These elastic phrases stretch the form rather than articulate the form. Because the form is self-evident to the musician, both he and his well-trained audience are playing and listening with expectation. Signifyin(g) disappoints these expectations; caesuras, or breaks, achieve the same function. This form of disappointment creates a dialogue between what the listener expects and what the artist plays. Whereas younger, less mature musicians accentuate the beat, more accomplished musicians do not have to do so. They feel free to imply it” (123).
To some degree, the analytical projects outlined above have been important in convincing an older generation of scholars that jazz was indeed worthy of study. But because of their intentions or target audiences, many of those researchers privileged (and privilege) categories, concepts, and methodologies drawn from the study of Western concert music and derive their research questions from them. One might gain useful knowledge from such strategies, but it is clear that they might fail to engage other important issues. Indeed, much promise for the future of jazz studies and jazz analysis lies in developing analytical schemata that are more capable of accounting for what is distinctive about jazz (see Walser 1995; 179; Butterfield 2000). Studies based on ethnographic fieldwork and performance interaction, though in their infancy, seem to be positive steps in that direction.
Such studies require a more direct engagement of the scholar with music, performers, listeners, and the cultures and contexts that support their interaction. The perspectives gained through fieldwork and personal knowledge are, of course, not inherently superior to other perspectives, but they open a space for improving
