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I wanted to write a jazz instrumental but never studied jazz technique before.  So I dug into jazz theory three weeks ago and began writing my first jazz quintet!

I wrote all the chords and notes and performed the virtual instruments on keyboard. Except drums which started with midi loops that I heavily edited. No AI.

Comments welcome!

Hello @MichaelJohn!

Congratulations for your first jazz quintet. It is amazing when you achieve such a piece after studying jazz theory for only three weeks!

Since you didn’t provide a score I could concentrate on listening. I really enjoyed the relaxed piano improvisation and the swinging rhythm. So, if you did not mention, I would thought that composing jazz is your bread-and-butter profession for a long while.

With a classical (and even more counterpuntual) background, writing jazz music is a huge challenge for me, since my compositions are more „head driven“ and improvising is an art I have never learnt (yet). But that doesn’t matter since one could compose fantastic jazz music „on paper“ without the ability to improvise, the best example is Nikolai Kapustin who wrote outstanding jazz music especially for the piano while using classical or baroque forms or techniques, for example its 24 preludes and fugues or its sonatas in jazz style.

So thank you for sharing, you have inspired me to take a closer look at jazz theory again in the near future.