>he was still good at playing it
well that sounds familiar, where did i read that before? oh yeah my post, #3: >I will agree he is a talented guitarrist
>easily understood term
perhaps my aversion is to categorizing music. once you pigeonhole yourself into a corner, just how creative are you being?
>When you hear smooth jazz, you think clean guitar and long phrases with a catchy tune played a little more excessivly than most forms of jazz.
no, when i hear smooth jazz, i hear uncreative shitty elevator music that couldn't engage a pea musically. it only exists because, god forbid, there are people in the world who like boring music
>but it's all jazz at it's core
then maybe we use different definitions of jazz. what i think of as jazz is music that challenges me in some way. what is the point of improvising when the listener can anticipate all of what's being improvised? yes, of course there exists familiar elements, but when the whole thing is familiar, it ceases to be jazz to me. from the one sample i heard, i can conclude that "gypsy jazz" is a fancy name for playing a normal traditional song really fast. but then all the player can do is blow me away with his playing ability, and then i go off looking for something worth listening to.
and yes the dictionary and most of society is inclined to agree with your definition, but jazz to me has always meant something more than just "improvising over a basic pattern"
>Jazz is just so varied and modified with the same principles that musicians found it easier to make sub-catagories in a broad musical language.
not quite right. music in general is so varied and modified etc etc, sure, but once you apply a genre to it, it ceases to become so varied. real jazz artists, to me, are the ones who easily and readily break genre barriers.
so using your language analogy, tell me which you think is more interesting: supermarket romance novels, or a piece of original literature written by, say, Margaret Atwood (off the top of my head, feel free to disagree)