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The Development of Free Jazz



All music has to develop into something new and by the late 1950's jazz was ready for a slight turn. A musical style called free jazz emerged with slight differences that has influenced most improvised music to this day. Some people despised this music's lack of set form. They found it difficult to listen to because of the missing order and lack of pre-planed notes. Others embraced the new music and it's emphasis on random feelings of emotion. For the men that developed free jazz it was a journey to find the "ultimate" expression in music.

There is no set definition for free jazz. "In free jazz, musicians improvise freely without adherence to time keeping patterns, conventional solo versus accompaniment roles, or the preset arrangement of harmonies (a chord progression) that commonly guided improvisation in earlier styles.("Free Jazz" Encyclopedia Britannica Online)"

Ornette Coleman, one of the leading men in free jazz, when asked the definition of free jazz said "In most music the composition determines the song, in free jazz, however, the song determines the composition." By this he means that in free jazz the song depends on what is going on around the musician instead of already determined notes. People could say that that is true with improvised music in general but in much of improvised music there are set chord progressions that limit the notes that can be played at certain times. Free jazz brought about a more open and natural type of improvisation in music.

There are a few major common elements in free jazz. Some times the music is based on the moment. The musician would play based on the mood in the room. He would ignore the chords and rhythms of the piece and use the energy in the room to make the piece best for that particular time. Sometimes there is collective improvisation in which some or all of the musicians are improvising...