NURMI explores pattern use in bass lines from two iconic jazz bassists. I greatly appreciate the detailed analyses in the study. In a fascinating demonstration of the effect of analysis type, Figures 3-7 clearly show how various measurement details radically alter the percentage of notes that start a pattern. However, Nurmi’s conclusion that “earlier studies … may have overestimated the role of pattern use in jazz improvisation” (p. 51) seems problematic considering that the earlier studies cited did not analyze bass lines. Indeed, the author notes that “differences in pattern length, instrument, the use of different methods of measurement to analyze both bass lines and solos, and the length of analyzed bass lines and solos may all influence the results. These differences preclude the direct comparison of results between studies using a different pattern length or different method of measurement, between studies analyzing double bassists and musicians playing other instruments, and between studies analyzing jazz bass lines and jazz solos” (p. 51). The second statement appears to conflict with the initial conclusion as the author so carefully points out that the current results really cannot be compared to earlier studies. In addition to these methodological issues, comparing bass line pattern use to saxophone solos is really like comparing “apples to oranges.” Not just because the bass lines serve an accompanying role but because the typical note length in bass lines is quarter notes but eighth notes in medium to up-tempo instrumental solos.
In my 2022 study with Corpus Linguist Ute Römer (Norgaard & Römer, 2022), we compared pattern use by eight iconic jazz artists. The dependent measure was percentage of notes that start a four-interval pattern that occur twice or more times in the corpus (PNBP2). We used solos contained in the Weimar Jazz Database (WJD) creating eight corpora, one for each artist. Importantly, we matched the length to the shortest artist corpus; the combined solos by Wayne Shorter which contains 3815 notes. For example, the combined solos of John Coltrane in the WJD contain 19,428 notes. Here we created a 3815-note Coltrane corpus by simply concatenating solos alphabetically by song title. Of course, to get a corpus of exactly 3815 notes, the last solo was only an excerpt. Not surprisingly, PNBP2 for all of Coltrane’s solos (63.4%) was very different from PNBP2 for the first 3815-note corpus (47.2%). Interestingly, comparing the first 3815 notes with a corpus made up of the last 3815 notes (out of the total 19,428 notes) had a very similar PNBP2 measure (47.2% vs. 47.4%). Importantly, we compared PNBP2 for similar length corpora from each of the eight artists. Interestingly, we found that Michael Brecker and Charlie Parker use more patterns comparably and Steve Coleman and Dave Liebman the least. Importantly, here the improvisation setting (improvised solos – not accompaniments), the measurement, and the corpus length were exactly matched.
Two general themes emerge from the discussion of pattern use: the issue of pattern coverage as a general feature of a musician’s style of improvisation and a potential value judgement that may be associated with pattern use. Similar to much of my work, Nurmi focuses on shorter patterns. As Nurmi also notes, in a putative model for musical improvisation, Pressing (1988) conceives of musical improvisation in any style as a process of concatenating short musical gestures. As an example, he lists a three-note figure and suggests how the figure could be expanded by concatenating other similar length gestures. Just like words in language that contain concatenated phonemes, shorter gestures of 2-4 intervals could be considered “musical words.” Having a vocabulary of words allows a speaker to express creative thoughts even if those thoughts have repeated words. Is a larger vocabulary necessarily associated with more creative thoughts? Opposite, does the use of shorter patterns in musical improvisation result in a less creative solo? Pressing argued that the short musical gestures in his model were underpinned by associated motor movements. In a study with advanced jazz pianists, we also show clear associations between musical patterns and related motor movements (Norgaard et al., 2023). Therefore, I would argue that Charlie Parker is just as “creative” as Steve Coleman despite the different PNBP2 values. Short patterns may be essential to the movements underpinning improvisation and improvisation may not be possible without stringing together known sub-movements. With this in mind, evaluating the creativity of jazz improvisations based on the use of short patterns seems inappropriate.
[1] Correspondence can be addressed to: Dr Martin Norgaard, Georgia State University, School of Music, 75 Poplar Street, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA, mnorgaard@gsu.edu.
Norgaard, M., Bales, K. & Hansen, N. C. (2023). Linked auditory and motor patterns in the improvisation vocabulary of an artist-level jazz pianist. Cognition, 230, 105308. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105308
Norgaard, M., & Römer, U. (2022). Patterns in Music: How Linguistic Corpus Analysis Tools Can Be Used to Illuminate Central Aspects of Jazz Improvisation. Jazz Education in Research and Practice, 3(1), 3–26. https://doi.org/10.2979/jazzeducrese.3.1.02
Pressing, J. (1988). Improvisation: Methods and models. In J. A. Sloboda (Ed.), Generative processes in music (pp. 129–178). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198508465.003.0007