International Society for Jazz Research

1. There are no systematic, scientifically exact investigations and analyses of the instruments used in jazz. This is easily verifiable in the literature of instrumentation, musicology and jazz. The instruments of jazz are European. Their history is easily told. But special research has so far only covered the analysis of historical instruments; equally important, however, is the careful study of contemporary instruments, including those of jazz.
2. In the lecture there follows now a number of examples showing mistakes in the musicological literature of instrumentation and in that of jazz, with particular reference to the trumpet and the saxophone.
1. Curt Sachs, the founder of instrumental science, thought as late as 1940 of the singing saw as a typical jazz instrument: "the singing saw whimpering under the gentle strokes of a hammer or bow ..." Similarly of the Hawaiian guitar: "... the Hawaiian guitar gliding amorously from note to note ..." And as a summary: "All these instruments produce ready-made sentimentality based on excessive vibrato and glissando."
2. Jan Slawe called, as early as 1947, for an instrumental science of jazz. One look at the literature of jazz shows, however, that it has not captured the size and implications of research into instrumental science. Many authors have devoted chapters in their books to the "jazz instruments", but what they describe are not the instruments but the players (L. Hughes, J. E. Berendt, J. Viera a. m. o.). A good description of the trumpet is offered by Jan Slawe in his Louis Armstrong monograph of 1953. He describes the choice of mutes, stresses the"practical identity of the two sound tools" trumpet and cornet and gives an excellent survey of Armstrong's art of phrasing. In 1963 Friedrich Körner referred to the specific technique of attack, of phrasing and of sound formation in the work of Miles Davis.
3. Two main points ought to be covered by any systematic research into the instruments of jazz:
1. scientific methods of research in instrumentation and
2. the specific technique of playing the instruments of jazz.

The author then tries, in the case of the trumpet, to show how this might be done: the instrument will have to be classified into a system of instrumental research; technical terms will have to be established; all makes and models used will have to be ascertained (it is not the same thing for the specific sound of jazz whether Miles Davis plays a Martin trumpet or a Conn) and covered with photos; precise descriptions with measurements and sketches will have to be drawn up; key, tone colour, sonagram and phonogram, exact measurements and material of the mouthpiece must be established. This ought to be followed by special research into the technique of playing the instrument.

After a while the various stages of research could be assembled in a "Handbook of Jazz Instruments"; a "Collection of Instruments" ought to extend our knowledge of these instruments so that one of these days a complete survey in the form of an "Instrumental Science of Jazz" ought to be at our disposal.