Teach Yourself Jazz - online guidebook

For the beginning player, with sheet music samples

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	CHAPTER EIGHT 'THE DOTS' JAZZ AND COMPOSITION
	With the Oliver-Armstrong triumphs in Chicago, we have reached a milestone on our jazz road. Here we must pause to think a little, since the tourist guides are not in agreement. Some say we can go straight ahead on the same road; others maintain that from this onwards, no real progress is to be made—we can take the road if we want, but it only curls back and goes round in circles. We have described the duet cornet breaks of Oliver and Armstrong as the co-ordination of two improvising virtuosi with split-second timing. Since the players were not controlled by the printed score, nor by a conductor's baton, this extraordinary precision must have been due to some kind of telepathy. Now, telepathy is an intimate art, and one that not all of us have the gift of. It can, as we have seen, take place between two gifted and sensitive musicians. But it is hard to imagine it occurring in the atmosphere of a bigger orchestra of a dozen or more players. Again, Extra-Sensory Perception has its practical 47