Jazz Fusion

What is it?

Jazz fusion is a very unique genre of music that not many people are aware of. Jazz fusion, or jazz rock, is a genre that developed in the 60s that combines jazz themes with other genres. The most popular is rock, but it also is combined with rhythm and blues. The reason I decided to explore this genre is because my guitar teacher got a lesson from Mike Stern fairly recently. He very frequently quotes things that Mike Stern taught him in their short lesson and this made me curious about his work. The reason this was also so special is because it was my teachers first formal guitar lesson, which I think is wild considering how talented he is.

Mike Stern

Mike Stern is a jazz guitarist who worked with someone very prominent in the jazz fusion genre, Miles Davis. After listening to their work I was pleasantly surprised. In every song I never really knew what to expect. The song “Fat Time” starts out very slow and jazz like, but farther in the song it feels very different. There is an extremely well though out solo that feels like rock but has simply too many references to jazz to label it like that. It slows down again with Miles Davis on the trumpet and a groovy bass. This isn’t necessarily my favorite sound but I can definitely still enjoy it and learn from it.

Steely Dan

Steely Dan has been referenced many times in my guitar lessons, and after taking a deeper dive into their discography this week I see why. Steely Dan has some of the most talent I have ever heard in every part of the band. Lets start with the vocals. The vocalist has a huge range, and the backup singers are always a wonderful compliment to every song they are included in. There is also a wonderful saxophone in songs like “Dirty Work” and “Dr.Wu”. The chord progressions and guitar solos is where Steely Dan really stands out to me. A prime example of a song with a really interesting chord progression is “Kid Charlemagne.”  There are some really cool sounding chords like Bb13/9 and F6/9. The solo is also incredible, but there is another one of their songs that takes the prize for best solo in my opinion.

This song is called “My Old School“. There are a couple solos in the song, but my favorite is the final one. It combines high speed, artificial harmonics, rock elements, and playing the same lines as the saxophone to add a lot of dynamics to just one solo. Another notable thing about steely dan is their rhythm. One song that really emphasizes the rhythmic talent of the band is a song called “Razor Boy“. There seems to be a tempo switch mid song, which is outstandingly impressive if they can do it live just as fluidly.

This genre is really interesting to me, however I think it is more of an acquired taste. I didn’t like a lot of the stuff I listened to, but the good outweighed the bad in this case.