aves room for the saxophone and the violin to take the lead as theimprovisational instruments. The presence of a violin is especially rare in todays popularmusic and can be compared to the introduction of instruments such as the French hornduring the cool period of Jazz during the early fifties. Often the melody lines are played inunison by sax and violin before having Tinsley and Moore each take a turn at animprovisational line, this closely resembles the Bop styles of artists such as Dizzy Gillespieand Charlie Parker. See the first example, Ants Marching, call and response between thesaxophone and violin can be also be heard in this example, this type of style was madepopular in Jazz but originated in African tribal traditions. Improvisation has had a large impact on the Dave Matthews Band and other popmusic. While improvisation holds its roots in classical music it was rather obscure, and ittook Jazz to make it a popular musical style. Improvisation is very obvious whencomparing two recordings of the same song Two Step in examples two and three. Another example of the influence Jazz had on the Dave Matthews Band is thesinging style of Matthews. Dave commonly uses a wordless style of singing which involvesthe substitution of real syllables and nonsense words in the place of an instrument. ManyJazz artists are prolific in this type of scat singing. Louis Armstrong was the first torecord this type of singing in 1926 in a song called Heebie Jeebies. Matthews can beheard using a scat type of singing in examples, four, Minarets, and five, #36.A popular definition of Jazz includes the idea that the music swings, again thesong #36 (example number six) shows this trait.Better than any of todays popular bands The Dave Matthews Band finds thebalance between composition and improvisation, which is really what Jazz is all about. TheDave Matthews Band combines the influences of many different types of music creating atruly undefinable style...
