In today's class I will be researching about the Brazilian musician Tom Jobim and also I will analyse one of his music piece called wave.
Tom Jobim influenced many artists around the world and he is considered one of the best composers of all time. "Rare for a South American composer, he influenced American jazz and pop at least as much as anyone else in the second half of the 20th Century. His passing has a special impact upon artists in the jazz and mainstream pop communities" (Heckman, 1994).
Tom Jobim were responded to popularize Bossa Nova around the world, a genre he helped to create by mixing influences from samba and jazz. "Garota de Ipanema" also know as girl from Ipanema is Jobim's most recognizable song. It's the second most recorded song in the world, only behind Beatles' yesterday. The most famous version of this song is the one Jobim recorded with Frank Sinatra in 1963.
The piece I will analyse today, Wave, starts with an introduction in D dorian (the second Greek mode), using a common dorian vamp going to the first chord Dmin7 going to the 4th chord of the scale G7. This song has a really interesting chord progression, there are unconventional modulation and great uses of borrowed chords. After the introduction the song modulates to D major. The structure of the song is atypical and unique, unless most popular songs it does not have verse and chorus, it follows an ABAB jazz structure, which means this piece intercalate between 2 different parts.
Beside all the modulations and borrowed chords another element that cast my attention is the great amount of chords used in this song, there's 21 different chords being used, which is totally unusual in popular music. For instance, songs such as something on the way and horse from no name use 2 just chords.
I chose to research and analyse this Tom Jobim's piece because it has quite interesting chord choices, and an exotic chord progression that brings me ideas and takeaways to use in my own composition. For the pieces that I 've been writing i intend to use long chord progression and Tom Jobim is a specialist when it comes to music harmony, so that I will try to incorporate some of the techniques used to write this piece into my own music vocabulary.
You have written about the piece of music but you are quite vague about the details of Jobin and instead of stating that Jobin popularised bossa nova and merged this with jazz creating a new sound in the 1960s you have said he had as much influence as anyone else, I would suggest that this was quite specific. You need add more here that explains this music in context with the world and how it is an essential influence to the music you are creating plus you have just one reference which is not research you need at minimum three which you use well
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