Not that I can't be persuaded, but I'd like to have a discussion on this.

My current contention (or at least perspective), is that freestyling as its typically done (stringing together cohesive rhyming statements that make sense on the fly), requires farr too much formal or concrete thinking to ever allow the full excape into abstract state of mind necessary to really be considered truly a musical improvisation.

Yes the good freestylers rhyme on beat and happen onto various patterns, but the rhythmic and sonic portion of the performance is typically secondary to making sure you're saying something that makes coherent literal sense. Such literal thinking stunts the rhythmic and musical potential of the human speaking apperatus.

Thus, the closest thing to a truly musical improvisation rappers could reach would be to either do away completely with expectations of literal meaning (speak dope-sounding nonsense), or perhaps reading something already written (not necessarily a rap verse) and playing on-the-spot games with the syllables in front of you.

Or maybe something else. These are just thoughts, but I do find that seeing any other kind of musician (trumpet, piano, singing, sax, drums, etc) improvise on their instrument is a completely different thing than seeing someone freestyle. Both can "black out" and hit some kind of "zone", but one zone is abstract and form-centric (colors, shapes, sounds, patterns, lines), the other is literal and formal, focused on making sense.

>Thus, the closest thing to a truly musical improvisation
>rappers could reach would be to either do away completely with
>expectations of literal meaning (speak dope-sounding
>nonsense)

I've always felt that the way SV approached lyrics.. with obvious focus on form over content was similar to at least scat type jazz vocals... though i wouldnt call their lyrics nonsense, the actual words are less import than syllabic and rythmic execution

plenty of rappers approach verses with a rhythm first method, before and after them

__________________________________________
CHOP-THESE-BITCHES!!!!
------------------------------------
Garhart Ivanhoe Poppwell
Un-OK'd moderator for The Lesson and Make The Music (yes, I do's work up in here, and in your asscrease if you run foul of this

before I could even begin to unpack the analogy.

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

and yet we don't (for the most part) think of those cats as engaging in musical activity... why is that?

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The man who thinks at 50 the same way he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life - Muhammed Ali

>and yet we don't (for the most part) think of those cats as
>engaging in musical activity... why is that?

that's why. rhythm and timing is an important aspect of poetry regardless of whether you're a slam poet or not. slam poetry typically attempts to overemphasize that aspect in an attempt to merge with the music culture they feel marginalized their efforts.

now what separates rapping from that and draws it directly to music is that it was born out of the rhythms of music not in an emulation of them. As such there's an adherence to rhythmic 'rules' from science which don't have to apply in poetry.

In poetry you do not have to keep a standard time because the words are providing the beats and they can thus be placed where emphisis is deemed necessary. with rapping at teh fundamental level the patterns must fall in time with the beats provided by the music in order to achieve one's poetic license to go off the beat. but even while going off the beat rappers still follow the beat while poets create it.

another less observed and studied relationship between rapping and music is the microtonal relationships between the voice and the accompanying relationship. in poetry these could be understood as inflections which are used to denote meaning usually culturally inherent. and while there's an aspect of this in rapping as well, there's also the microtonal relationships.

When an MC is recording their vocals to a beat, they can rapp all the words succntly in time and still it feels off because the microtonal relationships between what they say and how it fits in the music is off. It's not the same as keeping in key, far more subtle but none the less important. There's also a license thing which happens with that because traditionally those intervals are really small (even for microtones) but as mc's become more experienced they experiment more with where they can go with the internal microtonal relations, in particular to how they change with the dynamics of the beat.

In this aspect too it's very much related to the musical accompaniment. in a lot of early hiphop when only the drums were left in during the verses, the rapping was clearly meant to be the melody. and ultimately really strong rapping is definitive of its melodic character. if i started humming the lyrics to ladidadi to any head familiar with it they would be able to pick up on what i was humming just based on the melody (with its microtonal relationships) and the rhythm sans lyrics.

if that's a satisfactory explanation for you then i'll be pleased to move on to addressing the OP's analysis of freestyling in relationship to jazz improvisation.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"lodi dodi" microtonal melody while focusing on punchlines, that girl over there's bracelet, what rhymes with dandylion, tying it all into how dope i am, etc

very few ever acheived all of that and still had enough RAM left over to really black out tonally and rhythmically...almost always its impressive when you just get something halfway rhythmical beyond ending a line on beat or hitting some 16th notes. The musical expectations of freestylers are far lower than, say, a person scatting.

It happened a lot back in the 90s. A FUCKING LOT. It's just barely existent today and that's a shame. But that does not make what's hot today the definition of the practice.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

sonically sophisticated gibberish, then i'm with you

truth be told, i'd welcome that. more musicality, more variety

maybe i'm wrong, but i don't think that's within the bounds of most people's definition of freestyling

once you start hunting down real words and meanings, you've at least partially abandoned the form-based mode of thought where music exists

is that the words come easy. Like there's little to no effort to put the words together, so the work is happening elsewhere. That everyone has been conditioned to pay attention to the words and ignore everything else is in essence what has been the biggest detriment to the art of rapping.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

focusing for a long time on the words part

or just coming to the table with a strong left-brain, aka not being one of us "whats that word, umm, u know...tip of my tongue" people

regardless, freestyling for most people is about the words more than it is about the musical qualities. Which is still just as amazing. At its height, its virtually MAGICAL imo.

If you put 2 emcees in a cypher with a crowd of spectators also circled around, and one emcee just dropped hot line after hot line, paying only enough attention to the beat to end his lines in an expected place...then you had another emcee who just rapped gibberish, but he did that shit like he was Tito Puente or Louis Armstrong, the first dude would be considered a freestyle ace, while the second dude, if really dope, might get some people to relieve their sideways looks long enough to appreciate what they're hearing, but I doubt he'd be thought of as freestyling.

I'm the king of freestyling gibberish. Well, I mean I'm pretty good. I don't freestyle that much any more and basically suck at it now, but I still like to "freestyle" right after I make a new beat so that I can try out some different rhythms and flows and see what sounds good to the beat. If I actually say something, hit on some good words or sneak a line of coherent thought in there, then I'll use it when I write the song. For the rest of it, I'll use the flow, and rewrite the lines to match the rhymes, rhythm or whatever.

I know it's nothing new, but I have come pretty close to 100% gibberish. I just comes from freestyling and not paying attention at all. Like using 8% of my ability, but still trying to sound good. It definitely works for me. I end up with a lot of good sounding lines, whereas if I just write from scratch they all sound kind of flat. It also gives me a few, "what the hell am I actually saying here, but screw it it sounds good" lines that I end up keeping, a la Slum Village.



>sonically sophisticated gibberish, then i'm with you
>
>truth be told, i'd welcome that. more musicality, more
>variety
>
>maybe i'm wrong, but i don't think that's within the bounds of
>most people's definition of freestyling
>
>once you start hunting down real words and meanings, you've at
>least partially abandoned the form-based mode of thought where
>music exists

.

https://chriswind.bandcamp.com/track/massage

"You can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the African"
Afro-Americana/Afro-Caribbana/Afro-Latino unite. We are ALL Black!

however, if the musical qualities of a slam performance is more incidental or rote than consciously chosen for its own value, than i'd say its about as musical as a train or flushing toilet

not universally so, but more often than not

as opposed to freestyling, which imo, is more often NOT musical in nature because it demands too many focal resources on non-musical functions. Only the best of the very best reach any depth whatsoever with patterns and rhythms because its not prioritized.

If you write your words ahead of time, especially if you have it memorized well so its not a big task to recall, then when you spit, you can focus on delving into the rhythmic and tonal qualities of your performance, as it relates to the music playing or just the music you're making with that acapella (like a drum or guitar solo). You can go off the top with these musical elements or premeditated or a mixture.

Also at some point (both during the writing process and after) you can spend a much greater deal of creative focus and energy on those abstract and sonic elements in the verse (syllable sounds, pauses, volume dynamics, pitch, etc, etc)

But yeah, a dope rap verse, to me, is akin to a sick instrument solo.

The word music comes from the Greek mousikê (tekhnê) by way of the Latin musica. It is ultimately derived from mousa, the Greek word for muse. In ancient Greece, the word mousike was used to mean any of the arts or sciences governed by the Muses. Later, in Rome, ars musica embraced poetry as well as instrument-oriented music. - Wouldn't rap qualify as music, if poetry was included in the original definition?

An often-cited definition of music is that it is "organized sound", a term originally coined by modernist composer Edgard Varèse (Goldman 1961, 133) in reference to his own musical aesthetic. Varèse's concept of music as "organized sound" fits into his vision of "sound as living matter" and of "musical space as open rather than bounded" (Chou 1966a, 1–4). He conceived the elements of his music in terms of "sound-masses", likening their organization to the natural phenomenon of crystalization (Chou 1966b, 157). Varèse thought that "to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise", and he posed the question, "what is music but organized noises?" (Varèse and Chou 1966, 18).

not sure i agree totall but i dont wanna talk outta my ass so ill judt ssy good stuff

well, ill ask one uneducated question, do you think this is different depending on if an improvised jazz solo follows changes a la bebop vs modal or free jazz soloing?

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whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

first of all, i'm not talking so much about *purity* of mode as i am about a significant dominance of mode

even a free jazz artist is still probably dipping into a tiny bit of concrete thinking, to execute their instrument perhaps

But I think even the chord changes in bebop for example, are more like spatial parameters than literal problems (unless you're still learning the chords)...like, my understanding of right-brain/left-brain difference is that the right side of the brain is responsible for spatial relationships while the left side is responsible for accessing your database and dictionary. So, in poetry, the left side is your personal librarian helping you to quickly find and comprehend the words you have stored up there, while the right side of your brain is responsible for arranging the words into patterns and checking back with the left side to make sure the arrangement makes literal sense. Or something like that.

So, as long as you already have a grasp on the chords and changes, that's like seeing big exciting shapes on your canvas waiting to be engaged. Then you can remain strongly shifted in that spatial mode and go off with abstract expressions of form, volume, tone, pattern, etc. To my ignorant self, bebop to a well-versed participant would offer MORE playground for the abstract mind than free jazz, which is formless. I'm not quite sure what your doing in free jazz.

Conventional Freestyling, on the other hand, requires that librarian to go into hypermode for you, while you simultaneously try and throw some very basic bones at the spatial side (to speak the words in the proper order and remain basically on-beat, but usually not really really playing with rhythm, patterns, tone, delivery beyond the basics), but the primary "trick" is the speed of verbal reference. Rhythmic and tonal flair is optional.

It's music without a *preset* form*. Rather, the forms are created in real-time. If you are well-versed in this music, it's not too hard to hear the things being played as a continuous, developing form rather than formless chaos. It can manifest itself in many different ways though and that's the great thing:all the best musicians had their personal ways of creating forms. The "motivic chain association"-proces in Ornette Coleman's early solos is probably the one most easy to latch onto since he was playing over a steady beat and quite conventionally melodic-even a bit square-and bluesy in his phrases; the outthere aspect comes from other factors (=the lack of preset metrical form, tonality etc.)

*form here can be interpreted in many ways. It could be an absence of a pre-set metrcial form (a 32 bar AABA structure or 12-bar blues or whatever) and pre-set chord-changes while the music otherwise is quite conventional; where to determine where modal-jazz ends and free-jazz begins can be quite difficult at times. On that topic, many free soloists were frequently playing almost strictly modal (clearly a form) whereas the rhythmical backing was "free" and "formless". Other times, it was the opposite: a perfectly pre-set backing whereas the soloist went out. And of course, drumming plays a big part as well; Elvin Jones was frequently on the brink of freedom but since you can generally count 1-2-3-4 and put even his wildest playing in a "bar"-context, there was still some remnants of tradition.

Basically, free-jazz is essentially an umbrella-term for a wide variety of musical approaches whose common trait was that they in one way or another went beyond previously established ideas of jazz.

Note however that a lot of modal- and post-bop did this too and I feel that in many cases, it's the "temperament" of the music that makes the difference in how people experience it

EDIT:And I still don't really understand why Bebop would offer more freedom for the mind; the soloist still has to meet the "Deadline" of a certain chord which is defined by the form which was frequently based on standard-progressions that the soloist many times had no part in creating. Miles Davis even mentioned this numerous times as the reason for his change on "Kind of blue"; he wanted to be able to create melodies without being forced to fit them into a preset scheme. While it's obviously not free-jazz, that record still shares a lot of common traits with the "genre" (obviously, the temperament is radically different from the cliched way of defining free jazz); "Flamenco scetches" in particular is VERY close to a free-jazz composition in terms of structure...

also, as for free-jazz, i'll take your word for it. My frame of refrence is tiny, and mostly based on this old jazz drummer i knew who invited me over to jam with him and instructed me to resist all conscious inclination to create something with form or pattern, avoid all that and be as "free" as possible

i had no idea what i was doing lol

it's not. it takes a different type of coordination, and mental dexterity. to black out is way easier when you're high than it is when you're completely sober.

one could argue that you can reach that abstract place of left-right sync-braindedness easier, when you're is high. it's easier to play along to a beat than it is to flow rhythmically and rhyme and actually stay on beat and rap something coherent that makes sense.

t3 does it at the end of "fall in love" just rhythmic vocals more so than something that sounds like a pure freestyle like on "pregnant."

"pregnant" sounds like he really freestyled that and it's extra funny because i always figured he got excited because he felt the flow and was in the zone. "what's that shit i said? damn that shit was fresh! i had a little flow that was dope as hell..."

but i did have a friend that could consistently freestyle and not kick any prewrittens and genuinely freestyle. and it was damn good and i used to flip whenever he did. i only met one other person who was that good, and it was when i was in la for some ascap festival.

he was on the streets freestyling like biggie. he even called me out as i was walking up to him, and i was lookin at him like whatever, he ain't goin off the top of his head. but he read my mind just as i was about to brush him off. somethin that was so in the moment and kept going off of it, that there came a point when i knew i had encountered some freestyle master.

jazz and improvising to me is really amazing when they tear off creamy licks. jimmy on "red house" and "voodoo chile" or freddie king "have you ever loved a woman." carlos santana does it for like eight minutes straight on "europa live 2000." (that's a great youtube video.) and i recently learned about jim campilongo. those aren't really jazz folks, but im sure their virtuosity would allow them to play in both worlds.

getting high first...but then again, i had a friend who would blow everyone out of the ocean, could freestyle for hours on end, get real patterns going, talk about stuff relevant to his day or the moment, make references and cross-references, double meanings, without end

and he never touched weed or anything else (by now, he has, but back then, he was clean as a whistle)

but i think many, if not most, people are helped greatly by it

i "spelt" jimi wrong turrible....

First of all the best freestylers most definitely practice sans words. Everyone from Black Thought to Freestyle Fellowship has admitted as such. It's part of the rehearsal process.

Coltrane used to practice scales and intervals religiously. While others were trying to perfect their solo chops, he was practicing scales and intervals for his solo chops. IN doing this he knew at any moment how to get from point a to be which enabled his ability to improvise the space in between with a free fluidity.

In traditional jazz iimprovisation there are three factors: sense of time, relationship to the head and originality (which incidentally can include original use of quotes from other music, as well as be something as complex to grasp as tone). Strong improvisors practiced all of thsoe things deliberately so that they could flow fluidly in and out of solo improvisations.

Now when you get to rapping you can still apply all of those but the relationship to the head gets redefined more around theme or content than the melodic relationship in jazz (though i won't go over it more here the microtonal stuff definitely plays a role too see my reply above for more).

Relationship to the head in jazz means knowing what key you're in, all of the available notes within that key, what that key can transition into how to get back to that key when you've gone out, what the melodic relationships created in that key are, if it has multiple parts the different sections of the head etc.

With happing the head is far more conceptual: what is the major theme for the audience (ie battle ish, rappin for da bitches, spiritual lyrical miracle, etc), what are the recognized phrases with in that theme, what are the rhyme relations to those phrases, how can those relations lead you off the head (ie off topic) and how to navigate your way back, awareness of the surrounding circumstances, etc.

A thing that's critical to both which gets understated is that there's a lot of preparation on both parts. Lots of practice makes better. Also there's a lot of set up. A jazz player may have found a particular phrase during practice which is unnique to them and as such they'll build their solo improvisation around leading up that phrase and coming out of it to get back to the head. Similarly rappers may have a line or multiple lines that they want to throw down and as such they are trying to work their words to set up and come out of those lines. Its still improvisation despite the preparation but it can't go overstated how much practice and preparation goes into it.

That said there are naturals. that go right into what you are looking for uninhibited. I've seen a few. Myka 9 is one of the best. He can literally rap gibberish in ways that will have you swearing he said something, but at the same time he can freestyle words that you'd swear are gibberish which when broken down are so coherent it's insane. Unfortunatley these types aren't very popular especially in the post-URL era. But they exist and to see them go off is amazing. They can tell complete lucid stories etc completely off the dome without losing the other sensibilities of rapping.

Point being there's just as much musical work going into freestyle rapping as there is in jazz improvisation. It's only when you isolate one to say that's not music that the arguement can be made. BUt if you accept that trane studying scales is the equivilent of a rapper figuring out how many words they can rhyme with bad successively, well then it's clear as day.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

________________________________________________________________
whenever you did these things to the least of my brothers you did them to me

do both require practice? yes

do rappers practice sans words? sure. i know i do.

but even given allll that practice, the degree of attention given to flow and all the other MUSICAL elements of rapping during the vast majority of conventional freestyles i've ever heard is greatly limited by the attention given to verbal thought. And it shows. When a cat is really spitting impressive verbal lines (not scatting gibberish like Micah 9 might do sometimes), he's RARELY doing anything notable in terms of flow and delivery. RARELY. Because that's not the point. CAN you freestyle for vocal first? Sure. But typically, people are freestyling for verbal first.



>Relationship to the head in jazz means knowing what key you're
>in, all of the available notes within that key, what that key
>can transition into how to get back to that key when you've
>gone out, what the melodic relationships created in that key
>are, if it has multiple parts the different sections of the
>head etc.
>
>With happing the head is far more conceptual: what is the
>major theme for the audience (ie battle ish, rappin for da
>bitches, spiritual lyrical miracle, etc), what are the
>recognized phrases with in that theme, what are the rhyme
>relations to those phrases, how can those relations lead you
>off the head (ie off topic) and how to navigate your way back,
>awareness of the surrounding circumstances, etc.
:
Right. Exactly. That's my point. The former is about the relationship between abstract forms (chords, notes, harmonies, patterns, tempos). Music. The latter is about concepts and vocab and verbal coherance. NOT spacial. NOT about the music. Totally different state of mind. I'm not saying less impressive, I'm saying its not musical soloing. It's verbal street magic.


>A thing that's critical to both which gets understated is that
>there's a lot of preparation on both parts. Lots of practice
>makes better. Also there's a lot of set up. A jazz player
>may have found a particular phrase during practice which is
>unnique to them and as such they'll build their solo
>improvisation around leading up that phrase and coming out of
>it to get back to the head. Similarly rappers may have a line
>or multiple lines that they want to throw down and as such
>they are trying to work their words to set up and come out of
>those lines. Its still improvisation despite the preparation
>but it can't go overstated how much practice and preparation
>goes into it.
>
>That said there are naturals. that go right into what you are
>looking for uninhibited. I've seen a few. Myka 9 is one of
>the best. He can literally rap gibberish in ways that will
>have you swearing he said something, but at the same time he
>can freestyle words that you'd swear are gibberish which when
>broken down are so coherent it's insane. Unfortunatley these
>types aren't very popular especially in the post-URL era. But
>they exist and to see them go off is amazing. They can tell
>complete lucid stories etc completely off the dome without
>losing the other sensibilities of rapping.
:
I'm not saying freestyling is unimpressive, or not requiring hard work and preparation. I'm just saying its an entirely different thing.

As for not losing the rhythmical and other non-lyrical sensibilities of rapping while you freestyle, that's different from FOCUSING EVERYTHING WITHIN YOU on them and catching musical lightning in a bottle. Its almost always about catching literary lightning in a bottle.



>Point being there's just as much musical work going into
:
just as much work, yes...not musical work. concepts and subjects and coherant verbal points is not musical.

>But if you accept that trane studying
>scales is the equivilent of a rapper figuring out how many
>words they can rhyme with bad successively, well then it's
>clear as day.
:
I accept its the work equivalent, but certainly not musically equivalent

i want to say from the onset you're emphasizing the modern battle rap definition of a freestyle where the words used to get at your important are of the utmost importance. but let's not forget the cipher tradition of freestyling where there's less adversity and the entire practice is really about style display. of course there were word stylers there as well but the stars of the show were the ones that catered to the various aspects of rhyming to complete the musical package.

>but even given allll that practice, the degree of attention
>given to flow and all the other MUSICAL elements of rapping
>during the vast majority of conventional freestyles i've ever
>heard is greatly limited by the attention given to verbal
>thought.

Then you need to see more where thought is completely lost in the process. I'm not sure if they still happen but man alive I've witnessed some great ones. in such a scenario the only value placed on the words is the effort not to run out of them. it doesn't matter so much which ones you use they are all at your disposal but the goal is to keep them going. then it becomes how the MC is actually weaving those words in and out of time.

When I (we) talk about a run its a string of words that rhiyme together connecting phrases. In such cases the logic of the words is secondarily important it's about how you put them all together, the internal rhyme patterns that link them not just the on the beat enunciation of a rhymes with a. you can look to the degrees of difficulty in producing runs as evidence of how unimportant the actual content in. the more difficult the run means the less words available to actually rhyme *and* the less likely those words are actually related. Getting through a rnn of 10 rhyming words in four bars is less about what those bars are saying but how they are being said to make them fluid.

Going back to Coltrane he also emphasized that his practice was around finding a lyrical approach to jazz. What he meant by this was an ability to make the notes flow together. It becomes lyrical when these notes in their phrasing and timing seem to work together as a unit. The notes themselves don't matter its more about how they connect with one another. That's of course a direct parallel to what I'm expressing with the run.

Now I can understand where you're coming from for sure. But me thinks you'r putting limitations on the definition of music based on common ideas which traditionally aren't thought to apply to rapping. BUt because you cannot apply the same terminology does not mean that it is not music, it may just mean that the terminology is too limited. The current vocabulary of pitches is far to limited to dissect the microtonal melodic relationships of rapping. Doesn't mean those relationships aren't musical. Similarly its a hard leap to accept words as musical, but when you think about them in the context of rapping it's not the word but how its phrased, how it is sounded out that brings it to musical life. After all music is just a creative use of sound.

Sorry lost track of replying inline.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>i want to say from the onset you're emphasizing the modern
>battle rap definition of a freestyle where the words used to
>get at your important are of the utmost importance. but let's
>not forget the cipher tradition of freestyling where there's
>less adversity and the entire practice is really about style
>display. of course there were word stylers there as well but
>the stars of the show were the ones that catered to the
>various aspects of rhyming to complete the musical package.
>
>>but even given allll that practice, the degree of attention
>>given to flow and all the other MUSICAL elements of rapping
>>during the vast majority of conventional freestyles i've
>ever
>>heard is greatly limited by the attention given to verbal
>>thought.
>
>Then you need to see more where thought is completely lost in
>the process. I'm not sure if they still happen but man alive
>I've witnessed some great ones. in such a scenario the only
>value placed on the words is the effort not to run out of
>them. it doesn't matter so much which ones you use they are
>all at your disposal but the goal is to keep them going. then
>it becomes how the MC is actually weaving those words in and
>out of time.
>
>When I (we) talk about a run its a string of words that rhiyme
>together connecting phrases. In such cases the logic of the
>words is secondarily important it's about how you put them all
>together, the internal rhyme patterns that link them not just
>the on the beat enunciation of a rhymes with a. you can look
>to the degrees of difficulty in producing runs as evidence of
>how unimportant the actual content in. the more difficult the
>run means the less words available to actually rhyme *and* the
>less likely those words are actually related. Getting through
>a rnn of 10 rhyming words in four bars is less about what
>those bars are saying but how they are being said to make them
>fluid.
>
>Going back to Coltrane he also emphasized that his practice
>was around finding a lyrical approach to jazz. What he meant
>by this was an ability to make the notes flow together. It
>becomes lyrical when these notes in their phrasing and timing
>seem to work together as a unit. The notes themselves don't
>matter its more about how they connect with one another.
>That's of course a direct parallel to what I'm expressing with
>the run.
>
>Now I can understand where you're coming from for sure. But
>me thinks you'r putting limitations on the definition of music
>based on common ideas which traditionally aren't thought to
>apply to rapping. BUt because you cannot apply the same
>terminology does not mean that it is not music, it may just
>mean that the terminology is too limited. The current
>vocabulary of pitches is far to limited to dissect the
>microtonal melodic relationships of rapping. Doesn't mean
>those relationships aren't musical. Similarly its a hard leap
>to accept words as musical, but when you think about them in
>the context of rapping it's not the word but how its phrased,
>how it is sounded out that brings it to musical life. After
>all music is just a creative use of sound.
>
>Sorry lost track of replying inline.
:
first off, i love your responses, even if we're not totally on the same page.

i've heard and read several respected emcees (including Black Thought) complain about rappers whose freestyles don't make coherant literal sense...so while you and i may appreciate the more abstract approaches, i'm not entirely sure that's the consensus (and, as stated in my OP, i'm talking about freestyling convention, not what's possible when playing with raw syllables, patterns and microtones).

can i accept words as musical? of course. i rap. But its the syllables and vocalizing of them that's musical, not the meanings of the words or the concepts they convey.

About Coltrane being "lyrical", yeah, but that's a play on the word "lyrical" with a different meaning than what i meant.

The way notes connect to one another (their relationship), microtonal qualities, rhythm, syllable sounds, patterns, etc are all the forte of the spacial side of your brain. If audible, they are musical. They are form-based, not literal or conceptual.

Furthermore, the part of your mental process that flips through your total vocab library and calls up the words you're looking for (and their literal meaning) is located on the opposite side of the brain. To my limited knowledge, its very hard, if not impossible, to have opposite modes of thought on FULL BLAST simultaneously. You can use both sides of the brain at once, but few if any people can truly black out on both sides at once.

Coltrane can fully black out spacially (musically). Supernatural, if he's using words, likely can't. And especially if he's trying to make literal sense, it makes it even more improbable.

I've heard a bunch of 90s freestyles (maybe not the same ones or as many as you have), but if zoning out MUSICALLY is possible when freestyling, its definitely the exception to the rule from all my experience.

Just trying to call up any string of words for a minute is, like you said, such a huge challenge in itself, that it causes so much brain power to focus its beams on the left side of the brain. How can you say, if that's what you're doing, that your giving your attention to music? Music is spatial. It exists elsewhere.

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Charles Hamilton really freestyled. but he got hated on until "ya man's was on the coenuh."

or much in the way of feelings (and yes i know there are exceptions)

so no, you wont get a rapper getting 'lost' in his own feelings or thoughts like you would with a guitarist or trumpeter, but i dont see this as being a barrier to improv in the genre

its improv by its own standards

whether i think freestyling is any GOOD to listen to 90% of the time is another matter

i used to think it was the measure by which to judge a rapper but now most of it is just terrible and embarassing and a novelty

i would much rather hear an accomplished musician play the shit out of their instrument than hear rappers freestyle

its like asking a songsmith to make up a song on the spot - how exactly did we come to think it could be good? you wouldnt ask a novelist to make a story up on the spot.

rakim had the right idea. he knew freestyling was a way to make rappers look silly.

a guy like supernatural was good in a sort of fun way, in the way you would admire a comedian on whose line is it anyway for coming up with a few funny observational lines about something right there in the moment, but thats about it