Yogi Berra's Dictionary of Jazz
Jazz:
90% of all Jazz is half improvisation. The other half is the part people play while others are playing something they never played with anyone who played that part. So if you play the wrong part, it’s right. If you play the right part, it might be right if you play it wrong enough. But if you play it too right, it's wrong.
Syncopation:
That's when the note that you should hear now happens either before or after you hear it. In Jazz, you don't hear notes when they happen because that would be some other type of music. Other types of music can be Jazz, but only if they're the same as something different from those other kinds.
Improvisation:
When a jazz musician plays something in front of jazz fans that he don’t know how to play but they all think he knows how to play it because they don’t know how it goes either. In case there’s someone in the audience who isn’t a jazz fan and actually knows how it goes, the musician plays a lot of extra notes to make him forget how it goes too. That’s why there’s bop.
Bop:
That's when you add in exactly one million extra notes to a song that don't need it then you play those notes too fast while drifting in and out of tune to prove you're so good that you don't need to play it right.
Swing:
That’s when you take a song that’s not jazz and make it sound like jazz if jazz actually sounded like anything.
Flatted Fifth:
That’s when you play the fifth note of a chord lower than it’s supposed to be so that it will sound the way it’s not supposed to sound to evoke the proper emotions the song ain’t supposed to have.
Blue Note:
Same thing as a flatted fifth but the reason behind it is that scales sound all out of whack if you play ‘em the way they’re supposed to sound so the classical guys straightened ‘em out by making ‘em sound they way they ain’t supposed to so people wouldn’t plug their ears when they heard it. Then the jazz guys came along and made ‘em all out of whack again and jazz fans loved it so that all the classical guys wasted their time for no good reason.
Hot Club:
Jazz the way the Gypsy guys play it only they don’t have no drummer which is good because jazz drummers have to figure out what they’re supposed to do back there anywhere. They can’t keep time because jazz fans hate that and none of the other musicians would listen to him anyway so the Gypsy guys just figured to get rid of the drummer and let him make no difference in someone else’s band. Chet Baker once said he never heard a jazz drummer who sounds as good as no drummer which is the only thing any jazz musician ever said that makes any sense to me.
Smooth Jazz:
That’s jazz with all the jazz removed so that normal people can listen to it and pretend they’re real jazz fans. Real jazz fans have very acute hearing and hear stuff in music everyone else ignores because it’s annoying. That’s all the stuff that needs to be in real jazz so real jazz musicians can play it wrong otherwise smooth jazz fans would find it listenable and become real jazz fans then real jazz fans would have to start putting annoying stuff back into smooth jazz so they can find it listenable so real jazz should just stay real jazz and smooth jazz should just stay smooth jazz otherwise there would be a lot of confusion.
Free Jazz:
Free jazz is what happens when guys who already play everything wrong play super wrong so that jazz fans will think they’re sounding super right than they were when they were just playing regular wrong to sound regular right now making the regular right sound super wrong.
Cool jazz:
Jazz that tries to sound right without sounding wrong except it was invented by the same guys who invented playing jazz wrong to sound right.
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