A crash of a symbol rings out through the stereo: “Did you hear that?” asks Dr. Shuey, “that was the most important break in jazz history.”
Dr. Trent Shuey directs the ASU Jazz Ensemble, and he’s talking about Miles Davis’ “So What,” which is playing.
Shuey is a percussionist, which means he ends up playing a little bit of everything. Tonight, he’s on the congas.
The ensemble returns to the House of Fifi DuBois and will appear monthly, but this isn’t any old concert; it’s a jam session.
He’s getting his house band ready on the stage at Fifi DuBois, while the music students make their final preparations, sliding their horns together, fiddling with reeds, and flipping through “The Real Book.” Now, the real book is actually a fake book, but I’ll explain that later.
Guests get up and sign-in on the sheet: at the Jam Session, after the ASU players wrap up, they step aside and let the next crew on. Bring your own instrument.
There are similar traditions in every music genre, but they hold a unique weight among jazz musicians. There are “famous jams” that are talked about like great battles of old, where groups that would go onto greatness formed accidentally late at night, at some bar.
“You need an open mind,” says trombonist Eli Bibeau: “Things are in exchange on stage; you come in with a plan, and it can get thrown out the window quick.”
You never know at these events. Someone might not show up, and suddenly you’re thrust into service as a backup for a group that you end up playing with for the next few years. Another reason why it pays to know more than one instrument.
The improvisation is the important thing in these jams — Bibeau says that the best way to learn is to dive right in.
“Just pull up Spotify, find some good playlists, and give it a try,” he said, “Honestly, I don’t even follow the chords. If it fits, if it doesn’t fit, I change it up.”
Everybody gets a turn to make their own riffs, harmonies, and progressions on top of the original song. The “head”, or the beginning of a song, followed by the chord progression that makes up the middle.
This is where the musicians take turns, each soloing on the original chord progression. And quickly you realize that the chord progression itself will probably lend itself to new melodies:
John Coltrane might turn a happy showtune like “My Favorite Things” from Rogers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound Of Music” into a spooky, even kind of moody 14-minute odyssey of saxophone insanity, his smooth alto saxophone producing strange accordion, reed, flute, and even violin sounds.
Drummer Tony Navarro sees the influence of Jazz in almost every genre. It used to be pop and dance music after all.
“Rock comes from jazz and blues, it’s all the same DNA,” he explained, “especially when you get into the heavy metal in the 80s where you have a lot of guitar solos. That’s the same tradition.
“You just listen to the chords and try to solo. That’s it
“A lot of people might see it as daunting, but it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.”
You Can Do It, Too!
So where do you start if you want to play Jazz? The best thing is to get a copy of “The Real Book,” and begin by working through it, and listening to the thousands of different recordings of these standards throughout the years.
“The Real Book,” and its many versions and knockoffs, are a foundation of American music tradition. The one I’m looking at is spiral bound, and well thumbed.
On each page you get a summary of the song with the name, melody, chord progression, and rhythm.
Symbols might give you a hint, but the rest is up to you. “The Real Book” lists 400 songs, as of the Sixth Edition, with titles like “Autumn Leaves,” and “Freddy Freeloader.”
The name is tongue-in-cheek, because these aides to playing were first known as “fake sheets.”
They originated because, back in the day, working and studio musicians had a problem: if you were a musician recording three sessions that day — and maybe a couple of gigs after that — how are you supposed to learn everything in time?
This is where the fake sheet became a necessity, conveying the essence of the song quickly. At the very least, everyone would be on the same key.
They called them “fake sheets” because it was not considered one of the “proper” ways to learn a song, which would be by ear, or through sight reading and practice.
Sometimes the fake sheets were inaccurate, starting out typed out on index cards, and then scribbled in notebooks and passed around.
They might not have quite the right chord, not quite the right phrasing. This is part of why they were looked down on by the purists of the day.
But the need still existed for this short cut. Students at the Berklee School of Music decided to make a real fake book.
This publication was illegal, printed and pirated.
But it was too late, it was a major survival tool for working musicians, and, it became the go-to for a new type of musician: the Jazz Improvisor.
This new creature didn’t always play the exact same note every time, and they didn’t always keep it in the same key, either. They liked to bend the notes and play the unexpected.
But what about that break we heard in Miles Davis’ “So What”? What makes it so special?
The song opens with a slow, painfully-cool intro, with soft piano, warm upright bass, and a super gentle drumbeat. But then, drummer Jimmy Cobb smacks that cymbal way harder than he wants to, right before Davis solos.
“It’s become iconic because it’s just the right sound,” says Navarro. “But when the guy played it, he thought he had made a huge mistake. Just goes to show you that, there’s no wrong notes in Jazz.”
