Hey what's up it's brent so today i'm gonna be surfing youtube to find some videos where people
are making fun of jazz or attempting to play jazz after all i'm a professional jazz musician who
makes his living off of performing and teaching jazz so i should probably be a little bit more
in touch with what's going on out there all right let's dig into it all right so this first video
is from this guy nick nocturnal and it's titled metal guitarist tries learning jazz let's check
it out okay so one thing i used to do a lot when learning how to just play like metal and guitar
in general was using backing tracks so maybe that's going to be a better route for me ima
dude i don't know what the chords even are okay i'm just going to guess the key oh that's so funny
i mean i can totally relate to this guy when i first started learning how to play jazz i also
was from a rock background and whenever i saw like a nine at the back of a chord i was completely
lost or like b7 alt like what the heck does that even mean so i'm kind of feeling for him right now
that doesn't sound too bad actually
oh man i can totally tell that this guy is a dream theater fan both because he has uh the
dream theater logo on his guitar so it must be uh dream theater by the way is like a prague metal
band and um also like he's doing some very john petrucci s stuff just by with his playing anyways
whoa i'm just literally gonna start adding random notes and i think it's gonna make it jazzier
i love describing it as random notes
that actually worked bro i know how to jazz
okay sweet picks doesn't doesn't sound as good on jazz it's just luck that's all jazz is
it's just luck that's all jazz is i love that so it's actually not luck so the thing that
jazz musicians are doing really what he was going for there is he started playing chromatic notes
right and honestly that was kind of my first like guesstimate of jazz i remember when i was trying
to mimic jazz not really knowing anything about it it's just playing chromatic notes like the notes
in between because that's kind of what our ears hear when we're not really trained to listen for
jazz or know what we're actually doing but the thing that makes jazz musicians sound so good
playing you know quote-unquote random notes is that they're able to play notes
that aren't actually in the key center or in the scale or whatever have you but they're
able to effectively resolve it especially when they're resolving to chord tones within chords
to really outline the chords that's really what professional jazz musicians are doing and that's
what makes them sound so good so not really playing random notes at all and it is totally
not luck whatsoever if you want to play jazz at a high level oh my god so this next video is is
i really like this guy he's a really awesome youtuber charles burton or charles bertoud
so good this one's called when you hit a wrong note in classical versus jazz let's check it out
so good
all right i already see where this one is going so he's like emphasizing how clearly he's hitting
wrong notes playing classical and it's like a shocking thing but let's keep watching
yo but we have to stop for a second because charles burton sounds
so freaking good like you should really check out his other videos because
not only are they super funny like this he's such a good bass player
stop stop stop what the hell was that nonsense look what you've done to them i'm sorry i just
got nervous you were the chosen one charles you were supposed to bring balance to the music
not throw it into darkness i think there's this thing about classical versus jazz that people
always really like to show the difference is like it seems like jazz has like no rules or whatever
in classical it's like we really have to stick to the rules we have to stick to what's really going
on with the music you can't break the tradition of the music but really in actuality there's a ton of
rules within jazz it's just again to the untrained ear it would seem like that's not so charles does
know this but he's obviously poking fun at it what are you talking about i just made some mistakes
your mistakes resulted in some of the darkest sounds in the universe
chromatic approaches altered scales in the interval that must not be named tritone
don't say the name don't say the name and now winston's dead and his blood is on your hands
i am so sorry i had no idea no wonder you have no friends you sad worthless waste of space
no wonder you've never achieved anything in life and wake up as a youtuber as someone who creates
content online i really have to hand it to charles like he knows how to create real edutainment
and his videos are super amazing uh so way to go charles every morning wishing you were someone
else you my friend will die sad and alone and there'll be no one there at your funeral
terribly sorry went a little farther at the end um perhaps
try jazz white jazz trust me you'll be great at jazz see told you
yeah we get the point yeah so again this idea of playing wrong notes in jazz like again what
is a wrong note really anyways i think that's kind of the point he's trying to make there are
technically no wrong notes in music and especially in the style of jazz as long as you resolve them
to notes that are quote-unquote in the key right that's what makes it sound so good so
yeah no wrong notes in jazz my friends all right this next one
is from lexi zulkey and it's called when classical musicians
try out jazz let's check it out reading from some jazz charts oh okay cool i love jazz
where's the rest of it like the rest of it this is just one sheet of paper you're telling me i'm
supposed to play a four-minute long song from justice oh man yeah this is something that i
notice in a lot of our members in our inner circle who come from a classical background
it really can be a difficult thing for classical musicians transitioning or trying to play some
jazz to grasp the concept that you're really given like a framework when we talk about a lead sheet
or really a jazz standard and there is so many other things that you can do with that piece
like for example i often hear from people who are like hey why is it that i i see it's an e
minor seventh chord but someone's playing the 13th or the ninth and that's because you can do
whatever you want with jazz as far as adding alterations and extensions to certain chords
again there are rules but they can be manipulated in many different ways and so really in jazz when
we're looking at a lead sheet like she's kind of poking fun at here there's not a ton of
information actually on there it's really up to us to create something creative out of it
okay whatever wait this is it that's easy i could have played this when i was like five
you're supposed to play all of it what do you did you not just hear me play the whole thing
you're supposed to play the harmony yeah so something that's really important to point
out like definitely this is a classical versus a jazz thing if you're reading like a melody
off of like a classical a piece of sheet music right there's you're giving you instructions
about dynamics and accents and all that stuff that great classical musicians really know how
to pay attention to but really a jazz melody is rarely meant to be played perfectly straight as
it would be notated and that's why i often don't actually recommend people learn melodies of jazz
standards off of sheet music because playing for example a jazz standard like autumn leaves
straight the way it's notated sounds completely lifeless so it's really helpful to listen how
many different jazz musicians play a melody to hear how they actually would express that melody
what harmony see these right here what that's my music that's just chord names
okay so i'm supposed to play the notes of the chords correct why can't they just write the rest
of it out they've already got the melody there might as well just write the rest right and again
that's because in jazz like if you were to write out exactly the chords to play it's kind of not
really in the spirit of what the music is about right so just simply having like the chord symbols
above like e major seven well you could add a sharp 11 on there or if you're a piano player
you could voice that in the second inversion or the third inversion there's really never one way
to play it unless you have an ultra arranged jazz tune that someone's composed oh my gosh this one
i this one is an absolute classic spinal tap discusses jazz extremely loud yeah
softer music i found in doing research and listening music like jazz
it's music based on fear yeah the fear what are they so scared of you can't hear it uh i really
love like the idea when people say that jazz is like softer music because i really think that's
up to your perception of what jazz is in the first place like i totally understand like coming from
like a metal or a rock background where the music in general has a lot more noise going on involved
with it it's louder there's more aggression to it and jazz is just a totally different expression
of all those things however like you know i have run half marathons to jazz playlists i've worked
out to jazz like you know put on some brad mill down for me and you can get my heart rate going up
pretty high like i find jazz to be full of energy but again i think it takes some some training to
the listener to really understand that what are you playing so softly for you know it's very
very gentle i've said it before you know look
man up as they say in america man up man up but you know the fact is that jazz is his mistakes
you're playing a song but wrong there it is again the theme with jazz where like you're playing the
wrong notes right i mean again to the untrained ear that could be what it sounds like but uh the
more you get to understand jazz and listen to jazz the more you hear that less i guess play it wrong
play it wrong and then it's like everyone's like oh great art form you played it wrong yeah yeah
didn't get the melody right now a lot of it's a lot of wrong notes and especially people that play
jazz saxophone they're the worst i don't know they're doing it's not even and they teach that
in schools you can get a degree in how to play it wrong yeah oh that's the best light of the
whole video they get it you can get a degree on how to play it wrong i totally got a degree on
how to play it wrong true story all right this next one's from rudy ayub i think i'm saying his
name right anyways he's another great youtuber who does kind of like some parody videos as well
really good musician but let's check it out it's called guitarist discovers jazz for the first time
yo i am totally digging that that is right up my alley like i
actually love metal music i think metal has like a lot of really cool rhythmic
and interesting stuff within the music itself anyways this is this is awesome
listen to those drums right
yes
oh my god yeah yeah uh i don't even know what to say to that one that
one was just freaking hilarious all right let's just leave it at that
great job rudy that was freaking hilarious all right guys just having a little fun today
checking out some of these videos honestly at the end of the day i think it's hilarious to
make fun of jazz because there are a lot of like things that even jazz musicians get about the
criticisms or you know jokes about jazz it's all in good fun and mostly it is just
a lot of fun to figure out how to play and it's something that you learn to appreciate over time
so if you like this video please give it a like please subscribe to the channel if you haven't
already and there's a video on the screen right now that i think you'll might enjoy
as well so go ahead and click on that one next alright and i'll see you in the next video cheers