opus 2, no. 2: musician and theory

Hello. I am sick (as of 2/28), which is why I am currently at home. Perhaps I should have gone to school, but then I might have infected the entire gifted program, so I played it safe.

Since I am home, I have some extra time to do stuff. Like catching up on my genius blog posts. So here, for the first time so far, here is this week's musician bio!

musician bio number one

Alright, so admittedly, while choosing this week's musician, I kind of cheated. Ragtime is more a precursor to jazz than it is jazz itself, so Joplin ~technically~ isn't really a jazz pianist. (I also lied about this in my history post. Sorry).

But since he was so important to ragtime, and since ragtime was so important for jazz, then, by the transitive property of equality, Joplin was very important for jazz. And since I just learned about the beginnings of jazz and ragtime, I thought it would be nice to learn a bit about someone who wrote so many famous rags.

This is how I will show Joplin:

I am so, so sorry for my terrible art skills. I can't draw people.

I apologize for my inability to draw people, but this is probably the best I can do. T_T 

By the way, I am using this website for the information here.

Sometime around 1868, Scott Joplin was born. He would have 5 siblings (eventually). Their family was located in northeastern Texas.

His mother's boss had a piano, and Joplin used it to learn piano. His teacher was Julius Weiss.

I don't really know if the picture I found was the actual Weiss, since he never really became super famous, but I think this was him. Anyways, Weiss was pretty important because he tutored Joplin free of charge, and also influenced him towards ragtime.

Teenage Scott Joplin began travelling the country. At one point, he visited Tom Turpin, a fellow ragtime musician.

Around this time, Joplin was playing a huge variety of music styles. He liked to combine western music with traditional African music.

Then, 1893 came along, and with it, the incredible Chicago World Fair.

Now, you may have heard about this fair. My summer reading book was actually about it, and it's fairly interesting - the fair involved a mass murderer, an assassination, a burst of new technology, and a vital moment in Scott Joplin's career.

At the fair itself, Joplin played cornet with a band outside of the fair. He also met Otis Saunders, who encouraged him to write down his music.

In 1894, Joplin moved to Missouri. Eventually, he pursued formal music education there, and learned to write down his music. He published several original pieces and collaborations during this time.

Then, in 1899, Joplin's famous 'Maple Leaf Rag' was published by John Stark, a local music shop owner.

Later on, two years later, Joplin moved to St. Louis, where Stark and several of Joplin's collaborators had already moved.

In St. Louis, Scott Joplin focused on teaching and writing music. He was praised and respected by music critics everywhere. However, due to his race, he faced many obstacles: he was still excluded from white society, and he struggled to publish many of his less-famous and longer pieces. His family suffered great losses as well.

New York, c. 1900

Joplin moved to New York City in 1907. He worked very hard on his music, but struggled financially. Treemonisha, an opera that he worked for years on, was not able to gain enough money for a full production.

He died April 1, 1917 in New York City, poor due to his lack of financial backing.


Today, Scott Joplin is known as "the king of ragtime writers" due to his huge number of well-known rags. His work would eventually heavily influence jazz.

this week: writing jazz melodies

Since it seems kind of sad to end this post with death, here's the jazz theory I've learned for this week. (Note: I have skipped a lot of notation stuff because a, I already know most of it, and b, it's kind of boring. If you want to learn it yourself, the link is here).

WRITING JAZZ MELODIES
Making melodies is really important in jazz - not only for the obvious reason of writing songs, but also for improvisation. Although rhythms are usually pretty strict (as I learned last week), melody patterns vary from person to person, so there aren't any real 'rules' to them. 

hermione granger is back 

Alright, well, that's kind of a lie. There are some rules, otherwise I wouldn't have very much to research.

The main secret (not really a secret, though) in jazz melodies are found in riffs - kind of like themes from last week, but not really. Riffs are usually a lot shorter, and they make up themes.

Riffs are typically around two bars length-wise, and are repeated as many times as needed to fill up a certain part. They were always important, but they were the most most important around the 30s and 40s for big band jazz.

There are several different types of riffs that I will cover below.

a comprehensive list of different types of riffs

• very basic riffs
• slightly less basic riffs
• slightlier less basic riffs

So, let's begin. I've learned (kind of) the art of organizing blog posts, so I should probably begin that right about... now. I'm going to be reusing my highly overused PPAP analogy, sorry.

Very Basic Riffs: These riffs are, as you have probably already guessed, very basic. There is one riff, and it's repeated word for word, over and over again.

This is very simple (hopefully you can tell), but it can still sound great. Take, for example, Jumpin' at the Woodside by Count Basie.

this is repeated throughout the 'A' theme.

Slightly Less Basic Riffs: These riffs repeat over and over again, but every once in a while, change very slightly. It might have a slightly different chord background, or a different ending note to switch it up.

Slightlier Less Basic Riffs: These have the same slight changes, but pretty much every time the riff is repeated. So the repeated section is very similar, but overall still different.

Alright! That's it for jazz theory this week. It's a lot shorter than last week, but as I mentioned before, I'm not feeling the best so I really don't want to drag it out for too long (also, I'm reasonably sure no one actually reads all the posts I make, since I make way too many).

I'm not going to have any actual playing this week (I have to practice for a classical music contest, which is on Sunday. RIP Jasmine).

Instead, I've got an update: as I said I would, I've chosen a shorter jazz piece to work on before I start the final project: Moon River.

If you haven't heard it, it is right here:

I've gotten the sheet music for it. Currently, I've got two versions of it, since I can't make decisions. They are here and here.

They're both pretty simple pieces, but realistically speaking I don't have time to commit to a large piece (otherwise, I'll never start the final project).

That's it for now!

moon river. haha

Okay, that was kind of long. Now I remember why I like to split up my posts.

This week I've commented on Ellie's blog, Olivia's blog, and Evan's blog.