Talk:Jazz standard

Fake books

Its not clear what is meant with the inclusion of the following line:

However, time spent working through a respectable 'fake book', such as The New Real Book, will help in such situations.

There are a number of 'fake books' available. There is a collection, known as 'The Real Books', which were produced without permission of the copyright owners and which are also often regarded as having many errors. Sher Publishing has released a series known as 'The New Real Books', which do have appropriate permissions and are regarded as being more accurate.

-Yes, the Real Books do have some questionable changes- however, they are universally accepted as the standard gigging books to carry. I smell astroturfing in the above comments!

When was the last time you went gigging? The Chuck Sher books are the standard these days--Giggidy 00:44, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

The sentence is a bit vague - perhaps you could spin out a new page about 'fake books', so that they can be mentioned without further discussion being needed on the range available and their relative merits. Basswulf 11:22, 5 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Take the A Train is now listed on List of jazz standards along with a list of performers and is thus redundant, but it can stay here for now. Hyacinth 02:39, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Link

The second link is not working anymore???

This is the answer I get:

"

Forbidden You don't have permission to access /ea/jazz/standards.html on this server.

Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.music.sc.edu Port 80

"

Ggonnell 11:00, 06 Feb 2005 (CET)

Definition

Well that sounds a lot better already. A wider discussion about standards should be held so that the corrections and changes could be done. For example List of jazz standards is a very mixed combination of adapted tunes, bebop era tunes and Davis` repertoire.

I suggest that the List should be very limited and for the definitive songs only. Therefore another list should be also made: for example List of famous jazz tunes.

--

An alternate definition of a jazz standard: A song, originally from a genre of music other than jazz, which has been adapted to be a vehicle for jazz improvisation. One example is "Lady Bird." Original jazz pieces, such as "Take Five," are not jazz standards under this definition.

I think that the definiton of a 'jazz standard' is not clear, however it Should Be.

As musician and a student, I think that a jazz standard is (only) a tune from the Broadway musicals and popular tunes in 20's and 30's, such as Some Day My Prince Will Come.

This would mean that all the standards existed already in the 40's to 60's when Mr. Davis and Mr. Hancock wrote their repertoire.

Nevertheless, I think that a strict definiton for a standard is needed, because with the current approach we will find ourselves putting every song of the New Real Book (vol. 1, 2 and 3) to the list. It cannot be like that...

-a Finn

I have some sympathy with this, but I think giving a strict definition would be misleading. I think a lot of jazz musicians would identify "Take The A-Train" or "Round Midnight" as "jazz standards" because they're "standard tunes that jazz musicians learn and play", even though both were created as jazz compositions. I don't think they'd necesserily be mistaken in doing that.

Probably there are quite a few jazz musicians out there who don't really know (or care) whether a particular tune was written for stage, screen or bandstand. It might, however, be worth discriminating these two senses in the introduction if others agree.

On another note, I think the list of tunes should go in a separate page. That way how long the list gets doesn't matter so much. Any thoughts?

Ornette

Yeah, the list should be merged into List of jazz standards, and maybe put a few sentences with examples in the article.

I also think that the strict definition is not the whole story, but it should be mentioned more clearly, preferably with a book cite. - mako 02:37, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Not Bebop

The following tunes listed as bebop standards are not bebop:

Giant Steps: too advanced to be bebop ? Taking bebop further Milestones: definitely not bebop - this is Modal jazz

Round Midnight and Well you Needn't are Hard Bop jazz standards, I'd have thought.

Anyone like to disagree with me ? Maybe I'm splitting hairs but if noone complains, when I get the time I'll do a thorough list on a separate page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.44.79.145 (talk) 19:25, 1 February 2007 (UTC).

Some changes made

I've done some pretty big changes here so I might as well explain myself. First of all, List of jazz standards was way too big, and it's going to get even bigger, so I split it in four. The articles are List of jazz standards (before 1930), List of jazz standards (1930s), List of jazz standards (1940s) and List of jazz standards (1950s and later). Now, I know what you're thinking: "Didn't we just merge all the lists together from List of swing jazz standards etc.?" Yes, but the list size was getting out of hand, and at least this way it can be objectively decided which tune goes where (I hope). I also want to change the not-so-informative table format into text format, and have done so with List of jazz standards (before 1930). This will in turn further increase the size of the lists. I plan to do this with the rest of the lists as well, but it'll take some time. I've also made List of jazz standards a redirect here, and made this article a summary of the different lists. As always, feedback is most welcome on the proposed textual format and the article split in general. Jafeluv (talk) 21:25, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Saw the changes, and really liked the split.

(I'm only going to watchlist this article and the Template:Jazz standards though, for time and IANAJE (iamnotajazzexpert) reasons).

As for the table format, it was a bit cleaner to read, but hellish to edit for most people, and because of the unsortable nature of the column-spans, I'm happy to endorse moving to a plain list format instead.

The changes to this main article are even better. Much needed and well produced, with room and structure for expansion. Great work again, Jafeluv. Much thanks. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 18:37, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! I've listed List of jazz standards (before 1930) for peer review in order to get some input before changing the rest of the lists. Anyone who'd like to participate can add comments here. Jafeluv (talk) 08:22, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The peer review has now been closed. Jafeluv (talk) 11:00, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

Start of "The Jazz Age" and The Great Depression

"The Jazz Age" didn't start at the end of World War I; it started in 1925; the music from 1918-1924 is not part of this era; it does have a specific name which I cannot recall, but it is different from its predecessor "Ragtime" and the Jazz Age that started in the mid-1920s.

Furthermore, The Great Depression didn't start the instant the New York Stock Exchange had its famous crash; The Depression actually started two years later; it took that long for the effects of The Crash to ripple through the economy; I am sick-and-tired of people claiming that the instant the market crashed, The Depression started; this simply is not so.

Lastly, "The Jazz Age," musically, lasted until 1933; stylistically, this music continued on until then, much as "The 60s" really ended in 1973-74.

Jazz Age music, at that point, started to evolve into "Swing" which essentially finally defined itself by the spring of 1935; it had great rivalry from "Sweet" music that started in parallel with the depths of The Depression.

In fact, it wasn't until 1936 that Swing "won" this battle with Sweet Bands for the soul of American popular music.

Where people get all this nonsense stuff from is a total mystery to me; I'd love to give this portion of the article one helluva an edit!!!

Satchmo Sings (talk) 14:40, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I'll try to take a look at the points you mention and see if I could sort them out. In any case, you're certainly welcome to edit the article and make improvements yourself. Jafeluv (talk) 20:45, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

External links

These items were all removed today.

• Jazzstandards.com - catalogue of over 1000 standards, ranked by the number of jazz artists who have recorded each one; also historical and biographical information
• Real Book Chord Charts - Transposable charts of Jazz Standards with midi backing track.
• Learnjazzstandards.com - play alongs, pdfs, and recordings to help jazz musicians learn tunes.
• MyRealBook.com - Over 1000 jazz charts, coming from the three Real Books, in clean PDF format, for C, Bb and Eb instruments (legal, no melodies).]
• Exhaustive Searchable Jazz Standard Index - Find out which book the Jazz Standard is in.

I'm not sure if any of them should be replaced? I'm leaving the list here, for future reference, or others to discuss. –Quiddity (talk) 20:35, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

I removed them, firstly in accordance with our guideline 3. Links in the "External links" section should be kept to a minimum, but secondly and perhaps more importantly because:

Material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked. Linking to websites that display copyrighted works is acceptable as long as the website has licensed the work, or uses the work in a way compliant with fair use. Knowingly directing others to material that violates copyright may be considered contributory copyright infringement.[2] If there is reason to believe that a website has a copy of a work in violation of its copyright, do not link to it. Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work casts a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors.

While I haven't checked all those links, the first one I did check took me without any difficulty whatsoever to the score of All Blues, which is by Miles Davis and thus quite definitely still in copyright. I suggest that it may be advisable to err on the side of caution here, particularly as anyone who wants these links can find them in 10 seconds using Google. I'm not sure how good an idea it was to copy them to this page, either, by the way. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:21, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

While I haven't checked all those links [...] - That's the problem! Baby/bathwater. Minimum EL quantity is good, but expunging everything because one site was bad, is bad.

Feel free to remove any actual problem sites, from the list above, once checked. :) –Quiddity (talk) 20:53, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

The only actual problem site that I can see is JazzPla.net, which includes plenty of copyrighted compositions with no indication of permission. Realbook.us and Myrealbook.com only display chords and not melodies, so they're okay copyright-wise. iGigBook only displays page numbers in published fake books for each tune. Jazzstandards.com doesn't display any copyrighted compositions, but having it in the external links section is probably unnecessary since it's already linked several times in the references. Not sure about Learnjazzstandards.com – they link to a lot of Youtube videos but I haven't checked whether it's problematic copyright-wise. Jafeluv (talk) 07:51, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that looks more or less right (Learnjazzstandards.com is a commercial site, iGigBook looks more like an ad for a smartphone app than anything else). Not one of them adds anything whatsoever to our understanding of what a jazz standard is. They are merely links to lists of tunes, or indeed not even the tunes (and whatever a jazz standard is, it isn't just the changes: I Got Rhythm is the standard, and the changes are, well, rhythm changes). There's no reason for a WP:LINKFARM here; there was no baby in that bathwater. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I've expunged the link to the copyvio site from the list above. I just wanted to make sure that a review had been made of each site - I've seen too many valuable links get thrown away by well-meaning editors, simply because 1 or more other links in a linkfarm were problematic. –Quiddity (talk) 22:25, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough, and thanks for removing the link from this page too. Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 22:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I've restored the link section. 1 has a valuable look up for what book a song can be found which means an interested party can purchase that book or review it in a library. The other two have chord changes to many Jazz Standards which can be a useful study aid. Wikipedia is about making information available and that is why I have restored this links. BrazenOwl (talk) 02:51, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

That is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. However, other editors also have an opinion on this topic, and do not agree with you. If you look above you will see that this matter has been discussed and that a WP:Consensus has been reached. So please don't add those links back into the article again without further discussion here that leads to a change in that consensus. By the way, do you have a personal or professional connection with any of the sites linked to in those links? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 09:08, 16 November 2013 (UTC)