Hot VS Cool: Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis - Essay Example

Hot VS Cool: Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis Jazz is beautiful in its diversity and complexity reasoned by many authentic styles developed by musicians. There are many outstanding jazz composers and performers; however, Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis are the most popular with people. Their contributions to jazz development are enormous as both of them devoted their lives to music. Even though their thoughts about jazz were opposite in many ways, the mastery of their performances and ability to feel the vibes of their time saved their music for new generations. While Armstrong focused on developing basic jazz techniques and set standards for other musicians to follow, Miles Davis managed to use these standards as a point of departure to new amazing jazz styles, techniques and their combination. Louis Armstrong was the first to become famous and widely recognized in the world of jazz music. He represented swing and hot jazz music which could be characterized by purely entertaining sounding. Fast tempo and joyful rhythms were exactly what other people expected jazz to be (Tamashiro). In many ways, Armstrong made jazz more popular in different groups of people. In crossed the line of purely entertaining music and was considered to be an art form by critics. However, people still perceived jazz as music for dance and entertainment. Armstrong moved jazz away from the simplicity of Dixieland bands or attempts to make it more popular with the help of full orchestration in swing. Solos became the most important part of any performance because they made jazz diverse and more engaging and unpredictable for listeners. Armstrong’s extended solos added diversity and complexity to jazz compositions (Monson 135). Before Armstrong, jazz performances were focused on whole ensembles. However, Armstrong was seeking for the opportunity to express his mastery and reveal it in his performances. Armstrong was one of the first performers of jazz who used his personality and preferences in jazz to develop his own unique music style (Tamashiro). Armstrong utilized all parameters of Dixieland in his jazz; upbeats, tonalities, tempo and rhythmic structure. His music was syncopated and complex; it contained numerous upbeats and changes in rhythm. When is more important, it had enough space for solos and improvisations which allowed to reveal Armstrong’s trumpet technique and make the melody more artistic. In order to foreground his solos, he used call response technique and comping (Monson 44). Call response was represented by the dialogue between different musical instruments in the ensemble. Comping allowed Armstrong performing his solos while other musicians supported his performance by the accompaniment in stable rhythm and agreed tonality. Willie the weeper by Armstrong’s Hot Seven is a good example of Armstrong’s hot jazz style. It is fast and loud with many improvised elements which are supported by linear accompaniment. This piece is entertaining and cheerful. It expressed bright personality of Armstrong on the top of his career when he had great commercial success and almost no opponents to his style in jazz. All instruments have their time for solo. This piece shows how Armstrong wanted to include complicated music elements in the melody. It also reveals call response technique which tied different music instruments together. Armstrong motivated many young jazz performers to experiment. According to Berliner, many people used Armstrong’s recordings or televised performances as tutorials in jazz techniques, improvisation and scenic performance (123). However, Miles Davis was quick to modernize jazz and introduce many new experimental styles to people. For instance, John McNeal who was inspired by Armstrong’s performances to learn how to play trumpet was advised to listen to Miles Davis and his performances to sound better and more modern. Unlike Armstrong, Miles Davis was the representative of new generation of jazz musicians who were more likely to experiment in music (Tamashiro). Miles Davis was only a child when Armstrong was on the top of his popularity. When Miles Davis entered the jazz scene, bebop was the most common style of jazz in the country. Bebop musicians continued the road paved by Armstrong and use solos to show their techniques. Davis found that bebop was not a kind of music he wanted to play. Together with a group of other musicians, he focused on cool jazz which was a total opposition to hot jazz and swing played by Armstrong. In this situation it was logical to expect that Armstrong would not react positively to Miles Davis jazz (Berliner 277). Davis’s cool jazz was relaxing and highly melodic; it had dark sound and minimized vibrato liked by Armstrong (Berliner 277). The musician wanted to make his music flow which was not common for bebop. Jazz players were becoming more and more technical; their desire to impress others by their techniques made melodies uncontrolled, loud and difficult to perceive. Davis offered them something which had no analogues in jazz. Smooth, clear, relaxed and more controlled melodies of cool jazz quickly won hearts and minds of jazz lovers. Experiments in instrumentation also added diversity to cool jazz. Armstrong played in bands which had limited number of instruments. Davis expanded instrumentation of his music by means of tuba, vibes, horn and flute. He tried to master his trumpet technique to sound more like a human voice. He continued Armstrong’s tradition of extended solo, but he paid more attention to accompaniment. Music had to be written and rehearsed properly to achieve some balance between improvisation and arrangement; in this respect, Davis required all musicians in his band to learn their chords (Berliner 71). The album Birth of the Cool signified the beginning of cool jazz era in music. Cool jazz borrowed some features from classical music. Together with classical instruments, it used counterpoint technique to switch from one section of the piece to the next. Counterpoint technique made jazz closer to common understanding of what music had to be; it expanded the role of rhythm section in any piece (Berliner 86). Attempts to remove complexity from jazz and add more structure to jazz composition were extremely successful. First of all, people stopped treating jazz as entertaining music. Second, jazz became popular with people who were not prepared to perceive the complexity of bebop. For instance, Godchild from the Birth of the Cool, has relatively stable rhythm contrasted to bebop. Trumpet remains the leading instrument, but all other musicians are engaged in the composition as well. Music is relaxed; it does not require strong effort to be perceived by the audience. It allows some space for improvisation, but it stressed the importance of piece as a unity removing the impression that jazz is a composition of solos by different musicians. Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong had different attitudes to their art. Armstrong corresponded to the image of typical African American musician (Tomashiro). He played commercial music and was ready to meet the expectation of people. They wanted loud and dance-like music, so Louis Armstrong gave it to them. Miles Davis thought about music in different way. In his historic period, keeping cool was required by historic circumstances. People were tired of loud and complex music; they wanted to have their lives simple and comfortable. It is the reason why slower and relaxed jazz created by Davis was perceived with great success in the USA. When Armstrong was too old to change his music, Miles was ready to continue the work he had started. Moreover, musicians lived in different parts of the USA; Miles represented California while Armstrong was representative for Chicago and the New York City jazz stage. Summing up, both of these jazz musicians deserve deep respect people express when they hear their names. They had different styles and approaches to music, but each of them appeared in the right time and place for their career. Their contribution to jazz is difficult to ignore because they standardized and diversified it. New styles of jazz developed by Davis represented jazz as serious music which was not for dancing only. All in all, people still treat Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong as jazz icons which motivate and inspire many modern musicians to try their luck in jazz. Despite all the differences between these two musicians, their contributions made jazz more popular, understandable, diverse and prospective. Works Cited Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in jazz: The infinite art of improvisation. University of Chicago Press, 2009. Monson, Ingrid. Saying something: Jazz improvisation and interaction. University of Chicago Press, 2009. Tamashiro, Tim. Jazz for Dabblers: Miles Davis vs. Louis Armstrong. CBC Music. 2012. Web. May 2, 2014. http://music.cbc.ca/#/blogs/2012/9/Jazz-for-Dabblers-Miles-Davis-vs-Louis-Armstrong Read More