Jazz improvisation in the technique of pop singing

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Jazz improvisation in the technique of pop singing

Jalilova K.I.

Abstract

Vocal improvisation has become an integral part of jazz performance. Jazz has its own peculiarities of singing. The vocalist must masterfully use his or her voice, understand and feel the piece of music, its overall mood and rhythm. The human voice is the same musical instrument, the most ancient on Earth. Learning to use it is the main task for performing jazz. Of course you need to learn the basic styles ofjazz including swing, blues. The stylistic features and fundamentals of jazz rhythm will help you better understand the very basis of vocal improvisation.

Keywords: jazz, performance, music, vibration, glissando, voice, time, vocal, singer.

ДЖАЗОВАЯ ИМПРОВИЗАЦИЯ В ТЕХНИКЕ ЭСТРАДНОГО ПЕНИЯ

Джалилова К.И.

Аннотация: вокальная импровизация стала неотъемлемой частью джазового исполнительства. Джаз имеет свои особенности пения. Вокалист должен виртуозно пользоваться своим голосом, понимать и чувствовать музыкальное произведение, его общее настроение и ритм. Человеческий голос - такой же музыкальный инструмент, самый древний на Земле. Научиться им пользоваться - главная задача для исполнения джаза. Конечно, вам нужно изучить основные стили джаза, включая свинг, блюз. Стилистические особенности и основы джазового ритма помогут вам лучше понять саму основу вокальной импровизации.

Ключевые слова: джаз, исполнение, музыка, вибрация, глиссандо, голос, время, вокал, певец.

The specificity of jazz vocal in comparison to academic singing is manifested in different requirements to the voice, technique and aesthetics of performance. Among the skills needed for a jazz singer, we must necessarily name the ideal sense of rhythm (jazz has a very specific and difficult phrasing), the ideal sense of harmony, which allows improvisation, as improvisation is the basis of jazz, mobility of the voice. The jazz voice tends to be open, deep, with reliance on abdominal and diaphragmatic breathing, yet agile. In jazz vocals, there are often experiments with the use of different resonators, including the nasal, the use of falsetto, glissando, vibration, perhaps a sharp forcing of the notes. In jazz singing, there is no division of voices by timbre and tessitura characteristics. A distinction is made between high, low, male, female. Jazz vocalists usually have a wide range of voice but not necessarily. In jazz, there is talk about having a specific "jazz timbre" in the singer, but the lack of it is not a sign that the singer is unfit for jazz singing. Low female voices are considered more acceptable, for example, but singers with light, high voices also make it to jazz, such as Barbra Streisand and the vocalists of RealGroup. The timbre of the vo ice that is not suited to academic singing can be used in jazz, which has Jazz vocal improvisation, on the other hand, is characterized by the imitation of instrumental methods of performance. In simple terms, copying the sound and technique of the various instruments of the jazz band. Hence the high demands placed on the skills of the jazz vocalist. Jazz vocals presuppose a moving voice in the singer, capable of accurately repeating the part of an instrument and correctly intonating. its own laws of beauty. The hallmark of jazz is improvisation. First, it was instrumental. With the favored musical instruments of the saxophone, banjo, clarinet, trumpet, piano, and percussion. Over time, vocalists became organically integrated into jazz bands.

In general, the jazz vocal itself depends to a greater extent on the individual qualities of the performer. This can include the characteristics of the vocal timbre, the range of the voice, the manner of performance. Having the approximate text of the song in hand, the j azz vocalist performs it using not only words and phrases, but also individual syllables. This is phonetic improvisation, it gained popularity with the light hand of Louis Armstrong, the father of jazz. And certainly speaking of vocals as the most important source for the development of jazz, to the history of which great contributions have been made: Billie Holiday, Natalie Cole. Such great masters of "scat" as Sarah Vaughan, John Hendrix, the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald, and of course the great "empress of the blues" Bessie Smith. After all, of all the genres of vocal art, it was the blues that had the most significant influence on the formation of jazz.

First of all, jazz is vocal improvisation of 2 types: the first one using variations of verse text, and the second one using scat, that is singing on certain syllables. The purpose of the scat is to imitate the voice of a musical instrument by reproducing its characteristic phrasing, rhythm, and melody. Since scat is most often used when improvising on fast jazz themes, it is more convenient to use syllables, but not any syllables, but certain syllables.

The second difference is the sound itself: the frequent use of vibrato, rich, quite soft, "timbre" sound in the low and middle registers and light, often heady - in the upper (especially when improvising) and sometimes middle (when vocal white).

The third distinction is the characteristic rhythmic manner of singing, called swing, when the vocalist sings as if behind the musical accompaniment, with a slight lag and accentuates the weak lobes. An exception is latinjazz, where swing is not used when singing bossanova and samba.

Although jazz is derived from a song form such as the blues, it is still a purely instrumental art. The mentality of jazz is characterized by intervals and articulation that are difficult for the singer to execute. That is why it is so important for the jazz singer to win the argument with the instrument not through loudness and virtuoso passages full of jumps and chromatisms, but through a paradoxical sound, and in this the voice has no rivals.

Jazz vocals have had their ups and downs in history, but have always been revived by the efforts of great musicians. And now a new generation of singers is taking the stage, blurring the line between vocal and instrumental thinking. This is because in addition to their vocal abilities, these musicians are also terrific instrumentalists.

In this regard, we can think of Bobby McFerrin, who in addition to jazz concerts, acts as a symphony orchestra conductor or Diane Krool, who in addition to outstanding vocal data demonstrates a phenomenal command of the piano. This list can be continued by Sting, the professional bassist, Stevie Wonder the keyboardist, Johnny Mitchell the guitarist. Famous jazz vocal improvisers include Al Gerro, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Gladys Bentley, Cab Calloway, Anita O'Day, Leo Watson, Scatman John.

Russian jazz musician Sergey Manukyan - composer, singer, keyboardist and drummer - has the same skill. That's why every jazz vocalist should master at least one instrument in order to better express his musical ideas.

The timbre of each singer's voice is individual. If we add to this the variety of vocal techniques used in jazz singing, it turns out that each singer has at his disposal a huge arsenal of expressive means. They can be divided into three groups according to the following principle:

One of the vocal techniques in jazz is - low intonation, it also came to jazz from the blues, and the blues can be considered an analogue of the Russian lament. And this depressive state is expressed by the fact that jazzmen intonate the melody a little bit lower than on the piano.

Vocal performance in jazz is one of the most important aspects of this music, whatever time we are talking about. The swing era was the heyday of jazz vocals. Almost every big band performed with a vocalist. Among the most famous were Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, who combined playing an instrument with vocals, vocalists Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald. They sang popular pop songs of the time, and later songs written by jazz composers. The vocalists used the achievements of the pre-Jazz era (blues intonation, melodic features, the folk Negro way of singing), as well as the findings of the jazz instrumentation of the traditional jazz era. The latter was expressed in the unique invention of jazz vocals - the scat technique. The emergence of scat allowed vocalists to perform solo improvisations along with the instruments of the orchestra, to use instrumental methods of music-making to the extent possible for a particular singer. With the help of scat, jazz vocalists imitate the sound of musical instruments. The scat improvisational style can be called one of the unorthodox techniques that have emerged in the world of pop vocals. Historically, its development corresponds with the emergence of a significant jazz style of bebop. Bebop is the first trend of the modern jazz era. At the turn of the 30s-40s of the 20th century swing as a jazz style was on the decline as the creative element, namely improvisation, the main priority of jazz art, was being destroyed because of the clichйs that had settled by that time. Charlie Parker, Budd Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and other innovators of bebop music contributed to the complexity of harmonic progressions, rhythmic, and the general improvisational phraseology of jazz music. The body of ideas developed in instrumental performance began to infiltrate vocal techniques over time as well. In the 1940s, scat was greatly complicated by Cab Calloway, giving it a new meaning, the bebop style. Another famous scat performer in the 1940s was Ella Fitzgerald, who was known for her ability to imitate jazz instruments.

In addition to the pronunciation of the main musical text, talented vocal improvisers have used and continue to use the scat to this day. Vocal imitation of an instrument, its articulation and timbre, which Louis Armstrong invented. "Scat singing" is a term that originated at a time when Louis Armstrong was on stage, who sang as he played: the sounds his voice made were very similar to the sounds his trumpet made. He became the first jazz scat vocalist. In those years, scat was seen as an innovation, helped in no small part by the singer's husky voice. Jazz vocals would begin to change and become more sophisticated a little later, when the "bop" style came into vogue. The time of the "bop"-set comes, and the "first lady of jazz", Ella Fitzgerald, becomes the star. In the first stage of the maturation of vocal improvisation, there were wonderful instrumentalist cues next to the black vocalist. We're talking, of course, about blues singers who were accompanied by ensembles - trumpet, clarinet, trombone and rhythm section. It was a great elementary school for the vocalist. On the other hand, a huge number of white singers on stage, in numerous productions, shows, and variety numbers boldly began to use simple syllabic singing, so far devoid of swing and rhythmic complexity. How did this significant shift from conventional "smooth" songwriting to bursts of passionate rhythmic syllabic insertions by the vocalist come about?

There were also numerous vocal ensembles and groups (i.e., trios, quartets, etc., homogenous or mixed) that were not directly part of jazz in the history of 20th century jazz vocals at first. At that time, they were usually bands performing contemporary popular songs. But in the years that followed, the tendency of such groups, to include professional jazz musicians, greatly increased the harmonic essence of their performances. These groups gradually became fully vocal phrasing techniques in the manner of modern jazz, and were accepted on equal footing in jazz circles, while their predecessors were more associated with the field of popular music. jazz improvisation pop singing

With highly prepared literary and vocal fragments, all three vocalists reserved the right to absolutely spontaneous syllabic improvisation and did so just as brilliantly.

References / Список литературы

1. Barban E.C. Djazovie portreti. SPb., 2010.

2. Koryagina A.V. Djazoviya vocal. SPb., 2008.

3. Feyrtag V.B. Istoriya djazovogo ispolnitelstva. SPb., 2010.

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