1940s Music Research Paper

The Comparability of Sound If you were asked to picture a jazz scene, you would probably point out things like saxophones, trumpets, a big bass, and clarinets. You may think of people dressed in suits and dresses dancing slowly. Now imagine rock and roll. Ripped clothes, tight crowds, tattoos, screaming, and loudspeakers are the first things we think of. These two genres of music are on seemingly opposite ends of the music spectrum- but they are more intricately connected than we realize. Jazz holds a history that spans far, and without it rock and roll may have looked different than it does today. Jazz groups in the 1940’s and 50’s formed a lineup of instruments during the early swing era and were called ‘big bands.’ The lineup of big bands …show more content…
The trumpets and trombones hold melodies, or what we would replace with vocals today, the drummer holds the rhythm, there is a bass, piano, and guitar, along with other instruments such as clarinets and saxophones. Instrumentation had more changes during the 1940s and 50s when bebop became popular. Small groups normally played bebop and the ‘template’ for instrumentation was centered around drums, bass, piano, along with a solo instrument like the trumpet. Miles Davis’s Moon Dreams is a prime example of this. But the 1950s sparked something different as well. A new genre called ‘rockabilly’ was produced and followed the same instrumentation as bebop but was different from jazz. It took influence from the sounds of the blues and was the jumpstart jazz had to rock. Artists like Elvis focused on the lead vocals with a blues sounding instrumentation backdrop. And, finally, the 1960s took rock ahold. Jazz originated the ‘typical’ setup that we see in popular rock bands today. The bands we know such as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, and the Kinks all emerged from the origins of jazz instrumentation …show more content…
Improvising gives a sense of creative expression that seems simple to the listeners, but the underlying process is a complex one. In Pascal Wintz’s piano improvisation in Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now, he uses one hand to play a continuous beat and improvises his solo to fit in with the same sounds of the rhythm. So, although we may think of improvising as being spontaneous, it is a thought-out task. Similarly, rock music follows a set of rules regarding improvising, too. Improvised rock sticks to scales for soloing, with the most popular scales being the pentatonic and blues, as they contain notes that are simple to play. Rock music focuses more on simplicity and precision in the forms of straight beats and solid rhythms rather than the complexity in chord structure that jazz uses. For example, in Lorna Shore’s Pain Remains 1: Dancing Like Flames, the lead guitarist uses the rhythm and melody from the background instruments to progress his solo using the aid of a minor scale

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