Comment by beezlebroxxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by beezlebroxxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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beezlebroxxxxxx

Another recommendation is jazz music. Modern music, and especially modern pop music, is incredibly harmonically simple. You rarely hear anything beyond a 7th chord. But step into jazz and all of sudden you're hearing augmented, diminished, and other more complicated chords and sounds that in just a raw way sound more complex and interesting than a lot of modern music. (Classical is even more out there, but that's a harder sell in 2026 unfortunately)

I love jazz, but my problem with newer stuff is a lot of it feels like the composition is second to the players showing off their chops. Maybe I just listen to bad playlists, but often it will be a 7-8 minute track where everyone takes turns vaguely riffing on the melody. That's cool from a technical perspective, but doesn't interest me compositionally.

Compare that to some of the older stuff like Take 5, Giant Steps, or any of the big band stuff from the 50s. Sure, there was a lot of incredible skill on display, but the music itself didn't seem to take a back seat.

One of my favorite albums of the last couple of years was Against the Fall of Night by Sungazer. Whalefall, the first or second track is probably my favorite song on it - there's still a lot of technical skill, but the composition is also on display. So you get this conversation between the song and soloists, instead of a backing track with a few skilled players. Moon Hooch and Fox Capture Plan are also in this same vein IMO.

So... Any recommendations of newer groups like that? Would love to find more like it.

Didn't know Moon Hooch but made me think a bit of The Comet is Coming, possibly James Brandon Lewis? Fox capture plan are different to, but possibly parallels with Bill Laurance, Aaron Parks, Gogo penguin?

Try Lewis Cole or The Comet is Coming

I hadn't heard much Sungazer, though I'm familiar with Adam Neely. Have you heard Knower? Not purely jazz, but superduper tight riffs and the vocals of Genevieve Artadi are ridiculous and catchy, and drummer Louis Cole is outstanding. Sometimes Snarky Puppy is just too damn tight and well-oiled for me to truly appreciate (same with Vulfpeck) but they have some wonderful songs and impressive group interplay.

TBH most of the best jazz/jazz-influenced/-adjacent music coming out in recent years has fully absorbed the "gridification" this thread bemoans, and plays with the tension in the continuum between lockstep and loosey-goosey. TBH what makes ?uestlove unique/influential as a drummer is not his chops or expressiveness, but his ability to sound exactly like a programmed/sampled Dilla beat, and then go on to more human-sounding grooves. Sorry I can't find the link but there are videos of master drummer Nate Smith, whose sense of time is so machine-y tight that he can make a metronome sound like it's off time. Yussef Dayes is another fantastic drummer whose groups have interesting sounds and genuine interplay. Anything involving drummer Chris "Daddy" Dave is worth a listen, too.

I'm impressed with the composition and chops of guitarists Julian Lage and Molly Miller, both of whom know all the fancy theory but prioritize communicating with their fellow musicians and the audience. Not newcomers but guitarists John Scofield, Bill Frisell, and Pat Metheny continually re-invent themselves every few years and have fantastic compositions that aren't just jam vehicles. Everything I've heard from Charlie Hunter since coming out in the '90s, same thing.

TBH I am less impressed by the majority of the latest generation of jazz horn players, can't really say why. Not strictly jazz, but Alabaster dePlume builds on the tradition of "spirit jazz" a la Alice Coltrane or Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra in terms of making sure that everyone in the room, onstage or off, has a real human experience together.

Heavy recommendation for jazz, also.

I'll take it all a step further: even better if you can find a place to take in some live jazz. Also, on your point about classical: live classical music is also incredibly moving.

While Kansas City isn't necessarily "special" in this regard, it's where I presently call home, and we have an amazing live jazz scene here, and the symphony at Kauffman Center has amazing classical music performances - both of which I cannot stress enough to check out to break apart from the "boring" of the gridified music this essay discussed. Find some live music in whichever locale you're based.

Granted, I'm biased... as I was already jamming out to some jazz when I hit your comment.

There is a level of melodious incoherence with Jazz that I can't get onboard with. I think that's the entire point of it but parts of it start to sound like a Sam Ash music store.

There is definitely some free-jazz that is too much for me as well. But, some of the incoherence is just chromaticism that purposely approaches or plays with our expectations for tension and release.

An incredible player is someone like Chris Potter on the sax ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fvsz8KuD-g ), who has a truly virtuosic control on tension and release. In the video I linked, he (and everyone in the band too) plays with the ballad form over and over, never seeming to resolve perfectly, until they transform into a wild funk sound that is an ecstatic release that is also just wildly dance-able. The incoherence, even some of the screeching, that emerges is like the cows that are finally let out of the barn after a long winter and jumping for joy in the sun.

idk why this idea is so prevalent. sure theres weird avant-garde jazz, but the vast majority is usually relatively simple "standard" with improv over it.

there is a huge amount of jazz now that is using videogame music as the source material.

like early jazz used popular but older songs and reinterpreted them, knowing the source tune really makes it much easier to get into the overall genre I think. no links handy to help you find it but pick a game you like and search for a jazz cover.

I listen to Jazz from time to time.

The thing to keep in mind with genres like "Jazz", "Classical", "Rock"... is that they're more useful for organizing a record store than really knowing if music is good, or something that I'll like.

IE, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis all have very different styles.

Personally, when I've listened to "genre" compilations (~20 years ago) or playlists (now,) they have a few songs from artists that I love, and then a lot of decent songs from different artists. But, when I listen to the other artists (who I don't know well) on the compilations, they tend to only have a few good songs or even end up being "one hit wonders."

Anyway, most of the music that I really like tends to borrow heavily from other genres. For example, when I was younger I really liked Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, who borrow heavily from jazz and rearrange classical music as rock. Yet, when I listen to Reach (Jacky Terrason,) some of it sounds like a demo for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, just waiting to be rearranged for a rock trio with moog overdubs.

> Modern music, and especially modern pop music, is incredibly harmonically simple. You rarely hear anything beyond a 7th chord.

I suspect the same can be said about most "pop" music in the past. (Although I can't pick apart what the chords are just by ear.) When I go back and listen to older "pop" music, a lot of it isn't great. (IE, I poked around Badfinger for a few minutes because Paul McCartney wrote a song for them. They had one hit (Paul's song) and the rest didn't keep my interest. Or I poked around Redbone because Come and Get Your Love was the theme for F is for Family and they also had one hit and the rest didn't keep my interest.)

Or, a different way to put it: Abba, The Beach Boys, and The Beatles were the outliers and many of their contemporaries weren't much better than today's pop artists. I think the difference today is that the great musicians aren't "pop" anymore.

I agree, but I prefer old jazz from before I was born. Modern jazz doesn't appeal to me, it sounds too clean and unoriginal to me (maybe gridification, I don't know, I'm not a musician), with some exceptions. But maybe I didn't find the good modern jazz.

Some good modern jazz I'd recommend (I'm into sax and guitar):

- Chris Potter, I already linked him in another comment but he is a virtuosic post-bop player with incredible improvisational skill. Many people consider him to be one of the best living sax players in that style.

- Shabaka Hutchings, another sax player (he also plays clarinet and flute) with incredible songwriting ability and ability to play over varying genres and styles. It's hard to keep up with all of his projects. A very powerful player and a very gentle player when he chooses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpfpYTmohAk

- Kamasi Washington makes big band style jazz that mixes old school and modern sounds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8WTPgeVPjg

- Some great guitarists:

- Julian Lage, exists somewhat in an overlap between jazz/classical/blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFRVK_1o2cU

- Bill Frisell, no one else sounds like him and his deeply romantic sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpu33a_Y8VU

- Mary Holvorsen, she's much more avant garde and loves using whacky pedals for effects but still has incredible chops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlozC3nHisI

There are multiple comments in here about contemporary jazz musicians, so I'm gonna pick this one to piggyback on and recommend some more for those who might also be interested. OP says they're into sax and guitar, I've got a general penchant for anyone who messes with "time", so swung/off-kilter rhythms (what's up, J Dilla), syncopation, odd time signatures and so on, but I'll also keep it fairly "normal" in that area for a lot of these...

Chris Dave, Marcus King and Cory Henry @ the Blue Note, an absolutely stellar performance from start to finish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woiMRaeimqQ

Pino Palladino, Blake Mills & Same Gendel - Just Wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im-Avcv7deE

Pino Palladino, Blake Mills & Chris Dave - Taka https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6s5JavYgE0

Snarky Puppy - Lingus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XJ_s5IsQc

Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, Derek Hodge & Yasiin Bey, Live @ North Sea Jazz Festival 2019, a really dope combination of contemporary and classic Jazz alongside Hip Hop (Glasper riffing on some Thelonious Monk while trading phrases with Chris Dave as Bey drops some unreleased Black Star is so damn fun) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5QVcYeT74I

R+R=NOW performing Resting Warrior live, time signature is 15/8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmrYWVos0Cs

Nate Smith Live @ Paradiso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pVRd_hproY

Nubya Garcia @ KEXP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7d9T71UWXE

Yussef Dayes - Black Classical Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPXamHHDfNI

Very cool list, I will give all of these a listen!

I just saw Julian Lage a few nights ago here in Seattle - it was so great. I went alone and soaked it in. I'm not even really a jazz fan, but as a lifelong guitarist he is undeniable. He had John Medeski on organ and piano and it was absolutely sublime.

There’s also music outside North America. As an example, South Indian Carnatic has some similarities to jazz but some great divergences (tunings/microtonalty, complex percussion, devotional, etc).

Suno and the AI models are actually better at generating jazz and classical music due to the smoothness of the waveforms.

My classical music friends have unbeknowingly been listening to a lot of AI classical music

I can't comment on classical (I almost only listen to live recordings) but there's a very obvious smoothness, perfection, and lack of surprise, to AI jazz (or as it's often on YT as "chill-jazz") that is immediately apparent to anyone with even a little experience with the genre. Jazz's valorization of improvisation also means there's way more importance put on live recordings and surprise/novelty than on polished recordings which are often considered somewhat suspect even without a whiff of AI.

I've never heard an AI bebop song come even close to a live example, but I'm always open to being impressed.

By extension to jazz, I would include prog rock/metal. There's still plenty of modern prog still being released. The scene is great

also time signatures, most pop music is just 4x4 loops repeating again and again. Jazz is more free form and surprising

Hell, just throwing in some syncopation into a pop song would make it wildly more interesting.

"Triplet-flow" in rap took the genre by storm after Migos and Future popularized it a while ago, and the initial appeal was the rhythmic novelty of it. (It obviously got stale after the novelty wore off.) Pop music in many of the big genres is in general, however, quite reticent to move away from perfectly riding a 4|4. Even using a 6|8 would be interesting.

> Even using a 6|8 would be interesting.

There is a decent amount of pop music in 6/8. I always joke that it's like a hack to making a song better because 6/8 is rare enough that it makes the song sound interesting but common enough to not alienate the listener. It ends up sounding mostly like a hard swung 4/4 but then fills and some melodic lines are just a little bit more rhythmically spicy.

Some examples:

* The Doors - People are Strange

* T. Rex - Hot Love

* Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop

* Depeche Mode - Personal Jesus

* Marilyn Manson - The Beautiful People

* Green Day - Longview

* Oasis - Lyla

* Blur - Parklife

* Living Things - Bom Bom Bom

* Britney Spears - Womanizer

* Goldfrapp - Strict Machine

* Feist - My Moon My Man

* Gotye - Heart's a Mess

* The Black Keys - Gold on the Ceiling

* Paul Kalkbrenner - The Grouch

Pretty much all of those tracks are 20+ years old though. This discussion is more about modern music

> Pretty much all of those tracks are 20+ years old though.

I suspect that says more about me as a music listener than about the overall distribution of time signatures. I'm sure there's newer stuff using 6/8 too, but I don't listen to much pop music these days.

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