What separates the good Jazz ending from the bad Ending

[jazzpiano88]

We all know the cliche ending to 72.1% of all jazz compositions.... after everyone on the bandstand has solo"d 24-48 bars and it"s time to put the beast down, the general agreement is 'ok here we go boys'..... C E F F# G A B C ........ C..................... crash.

 

When they are a practiced unit and execute it crisply, it comes across ok. No one"s the wiser for a scurrilous abdication of taste.

 

A local Pick up Band will usually crash and burn due to at Least one player paying more attention to the lady bartender, and the audience is too drunk to even notice any error.

 

But what about the true professionals. What sets their taste apart that makes it real Jazz? Is it all about the final chord extensions and the tasty cymbals?

[EricBarker]

God, I love a good ending (for any genre) that changes direction and offers a completely new little ear worm at the end. Maybe it modulates into a minor mode, or slows down into a different theme. After 5 minutes of improv, nothing shows a band's chops than a big unified shift in direction. I feel a lot of greats did that, particularly in the late-60s and 70s. I agree, no one gives a crap about those cliche trad endings unless the track is playing off pure nostalgia or genre mixing (like Enter Sandman as a big band tune). I've always said the ENDING is where you can get creative. It's where the listener expects repetition, fadeouts, and cliches, but if you can give them something unique, you make an impact. I do a lot of arranging these days, probably more than composition. For almost all my endings, I take the music somewhere else, maybe I tag a different tune from the artist's repertoire, maybe I compose something entirely new based on material from the piece. There's often a tempo change or shift in feel involved.

 

Endings developed new problems with the advent of radio and the need to switch from one song to another quickly. Often DJs would chop off endings even if there was one recorded. This lead to artists giving up and feeling like their endings didn't matter, so why bother being creative? It's too bad, because the ending is your final stamp. I think those days are largely over, with people streaming full tracks in, and not usually a lot of fading done by the services/devices. That means that this is the time composers can really own their endings again. If the old white german guys did anything right... holy crap did they own their endings (maybe to a fault!)

 

Oh, one final idea, I notice this with Weather Report in particular: they'll have an intro that's unrelated to the main head and material, and then for the ending, they'll come full circle and tag it with the intro again. Havona is a good example. This has the advantage of shifting gears, while still drawing on material from the song, even though the listener has largely forgotten about it.

[stoken6]

I agree that an ending needs to offer something new, and not rely on cliches.

 

I arranged this for big band last year:

[video:youtube]

My ending picks up the hook "you're the best thing" (E E-E C) as a Basie-style piano interjection, in an attempt to allude to the cliche, and simultaneously subvert it.

 

Enter Sandman as a big band tune

By coincidence, I'm in the process of arranging Sandman as a Stevie Wonder-style soul mashup, including quotes from his tunes (with the 5 flattened). "Everybody scream from the darkest recesses of your soul!". Still needs an ending.

 

holy crap did they own their endings (maybe to a fault!)

Check out this David Bruce video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7FTB95uccM.

 

Cheers, Mike.

[Tusker]

In addition to a typical tutti climax ... you can decide "who will have the last word" in a song and let that person work out how they want to close the song. It gave us a vocabulary of playfully screwball endings to contrast with the big endings.

[Docbop]

Typically in a jazz situation use the last 4 or 8 bars of the tune as a vamp to end on.

 

Other forms of music some has arranged ending if it fits okay, but don't have ending because the recordings were just a fade. So that leaves band stuck live on how to end a tune. As my friends and I would call it a "Beach Boy's Fall Apart" ending, seems popular and a lot of groups follow the BB model. I don't think it's a big deal some way to get out of the tune should be agreed on, but don't need anything fancy just get out and move on.

[SamuelBLupowitz]

Slight tangent: when I saw Leon Russell back in 2014 or so, he seemed to be having a real laugh with the band by ending every single song, regardless of tempo or style, with the similarly cliche "blues ending" (C Bb A Ab G, C). He could get away with it, because he was Leon Russell, but I definitely got the sense that it was a bit of an inside joke rather than a lack of creativity.

[jazzpiano88]

One of my all time favorite endings is Shearing/Nat on "Pick Yourself Up" @ 2:35

 

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[MathOfInsects]

Not exactly original or mature, but in the group I play(ed) with the most, trolling the singer with how we end the song is basically the national sport. It's gotten (it had gotten) to the point where the ultimate troll became ending the song exactly as someone would expect, and making her wonder when and if some other troll was coming.

[MAJUSCULE]

But what about the true professionals. What sets their taste apart that makes it real Jazz? Is it all about the final chord extensions and the tasty cymbals?

 

 

I think you're looking for words like "vocabulary", or "language", or maybe "idioms". The fluency sets the pros apart. Not the mfkn flurries, as Greg Hutchinson would say.

[MathOfInsects]

To be honest, I can't imagine doing the 1-3-4-4#-5 etc ending non-ironically, except maybe to end straight blues, or Purple Rain, and even then he mucks around with it. If someone launched into it, sure we'd jump on, but as comedy more than comity.

[Baldwin Funster]

In addition to a typical tutti climax ... you can decide "who will have the last word" in a song and let that person work out how they want to close the song. It gave us a vocabulary of playfully screwball endings to contrast with the big endings.

 

 

I had a drummer a few years back that tagged the end of almost every song with haircut and a shave. Pretty annoying after awhile. Occasionally it would be some other thing. Once a night is amusing. 10 times a night isn't. Eventually he and the singer got into a fight about something else and it was over.

[16251]

Keith Jarrett is the master of the understated endings. Here's a random example I quickly found on YT.

 

[zephonic]

Good Jazz never ends

[MathOfInsects]

I had a drummer a few years back that tagged the end of almost every song with haircut and a shave. Pretty annoying after awhile. Occasionally it would be some other thing. Once a night is amusing. 10 times a night isn't. Eventually he and the singer got into a fight about something else and it was over.

 

Speaking of which, this just showed up on one of the music groups in our local social media feed. I thought it was one of those clips that had been floating around forever, for a whole lot of reasons, but today I found out it is local and from last year! Packed with LOL's. I'm amazed no one got more hurt than they did. And the bass player who just keeps playing...all of it is made of win.

 

EDIT: The beginning of this video was originally posted with the caption, "Singer tells drummer to stop dragging." It stopped right when they both hit the ground. Now I see they've got the full clip. Apparently it's one drummer fighting with another. Still, though...

 

[video:youtube]

[CowboyNQ]

Speaking of which, this just showed up on one of the music groups in our local social media feed...

 

Josh you are a legend!

 

The shorter and cropped version of this clip has been sent to me by about half a dozen mates in the past week. I had been very curious as to the wider context and whether or not the whole thing was staged (as sadly so many amusing internet videos are).

 

Questions answered, I look forward to referring my friends to this longer clip and getting some massive meme cred.

[MathOfInsects]

Here is his whole explanation on the feed. (Just a FB group for local musicians.)

 

I wanted to clear something up here:

Here's the original footage of a video that's going around that has a caption about a singer getting in a fight with a drummer. This happened in El Cajon.

That is not a singer, that's a drummer.

They were fighting over who gets to play drums. This was an open mic on Sunday (The Rockin' Al open mic) at the Landing Bar in El Cajon two weeks before the shutdown last year. The shorter guy was angry at the drummer because he set up his drums at the open mic and wasn't getting a chance to play.

I was there that night. I usually play the bass until the other guy plays bass for the last set, then I switch to keyboards, but I was tired that night so I left early. We still play on Sundays.

The guitarist and bass player are in a band called Tequila Mockingbird. They play Hard Rock and Classic Rock.

It's a violent scene, and someone could have gotten killed, but fortunately other than some bruises nobody was hurt and we are all getting along fine. Now we have this hilarious video that is going viral.

[El Lobo]

I can't follow that video ...

 

I was going to say that my favorite ending is to just stop.

[Spider76]

Is that even possible to have a good jazz ending?

Totally serious question, where for "jazz" I mean group improvisation.

I know well that jazz is not only improvisation, and much stuff is pre-arranged and written, especially intros and endings. But the first post seems to suggest he's asking about improvised endings, like in a blues jam situation or such. In my opinion, in such situation is simply impossibile to have a good ending, for the plain reason that a good ending cannot be improvised. Maybe in a very good duo or trio with tons of experiences playing together, but once you have 4-5 musicians or more, who possibly haven't even rehearsed...forget it.

In such situation the blues ending, or a plain "1-2-3-4-STOP!", it's the best possible result...and even that usually comes after prolonged random noodling where everybody is looking lost and wondering what will happen next.

I fondly hate that situation, and it's one of the main reasons of my hate for jam sessions and jam bands. They are self-indulgent situations made for the musicians, not the audience. The intro and ending are the most important moments of the song, and honestly the only ones that the audience will remember. Anything in between may be improvised, but at least intro and ending must be well arranged and rehearsed, IMHO of course.

[Reezekeys]

They are self-indulgent situations made for the musicians, not the audience. The intro and ending are the most important moments of the song, and honestly the only ones that the audience will remember. Anything in between may be improvised, but at least intro and ending must be well arranged and rehearsed, IMHO of course.

 

You obviously aren't talking about a jazz jam session, since the whole point of those is to showcase what a player does in between the intros and endings! But also.... really?? That's why musicians should go to a jam session, to impress the audiences with their tight intros and endings? It's a bunch of musicians who may have never played together or maybe even met each other - that's why it's called a JAM! The intros and endings are insignificant bookends to the real purpose for the musicians being there - wanking on their instruments! And what is this "audience" you speak of? With most jams I've been to, the only audience are other musicians waiting their turn to wank! (I say this as one who's wanked a-plenty at my jazz jam session - but I was lucky to be in the house band with two exceptional musicians, and we had a repertoire of tunes with endings we knew very well).

 

"They are self-indulgent situations made for the musicians" â completely agree there! That's the point, isn't it?

[Baldwin Funster]

In more than one band I've been in the agreement was play the chorus 4 times and end. Every song. Yeah its repetitious and awkward in some tunes but it's easy to remember and you always have a sense if what's coming up. And NO ONE ever came up to us and said what's up with the endings.

Ok I've never been in a jazz band but I'm sure some version of this strategy exists in jazz, like hand signal and end with a V7.

[Reezekeys]

End with a V7? That's an interesting concept. You may be on to something!

[MathOfInsects]

End with a V7? That's an interesting concept. You may be on to something!

Wow! We could have had a V8!

[stoken6]

End with a V7? That's an interesting concept. You may be on to something!

"Shave and a haircut - two."

 

Cheers, Mike.

[area51recording]

At least on swing tunes, I get a ton of mileage out of the Count Basie lick to end songs. One night we're doing Fly Me To The Moon and at the end I look over to the sit-in drummer and say "Basie ending"......trainwreck. When we went on break he came up to me and said, "Sorry about that man....I had no idea what a "basic" ending is...."