The DAWn of a New Fusion: Compositional Styles of Pianist/Producers in the Age of Web 2.0

<p><strong>Jazz is a syncretic and eclectic art form that began with Black American artists and has expanded to become an international movement, integrating influences from diverse musical styles, cultures, philosophies, and other artistic forms. This combinatorial concept is at the forefront of a new branch of jazz music that has emerged in the early 2010s, one that bridges the gap between hip-hop, various types of electronic dance music (EDM), soul, rhythm and blues (R&B), Web 2.0 culture, and music technology and production.</strong></p><p>As the development of fusion music in the late 1960s mixed jazz, rock, funk and other styles in a hybridised rejection of genre consolidation, this wave of contemporary jazz music also exemplifies a musical and cultural departure from the gatekeeping and purist attitudes associated with jazz since the shift towards neotraditionalism. Although no formal term yet exists, I will refer to this contemporary form of jazz with the working title Fusion 2.0—not as an attempt to further categorise and hence relegate the music into the reductive processes of taxonomy, but simply as a shorthand reference term for the purposes of this exegesis.</p><p>The aim of this project is to help formalise and distinguish a current and relevant musical and cultural movement through the research and analysis of Fusion 2.0, and to create a body of original musical works that respond to these findings. The exploration of this topic requires a multi-faceted approach examining contrasting perspectives: formal academic research versus personal experience; using a purely musical versus sociological/historical lens; transcription and analytical methods versus composing original works; and objectively describing a musical movement as a researcher while contributing to it as a composer. Utilising these opposing aspects seems appropriate as an analogy to the many paradoxes inherent in jazz, including the tension between old and new, tradition and innovation, and structure and freedom.</p><p>A core component of this exegesis is the detailed transcription and analysis of 25 musical case studies from Fusion 2.0 pianist/producers, using both ‘traditional’ jazz analysis methods as well as methods more commonly associated with other types of contemporary music production. These analyses are then summarised on a ‘per-artist level’ to identify features salient to the individual artists, as well as on the ‘multi-artist level’, summarising the overall characteristics that contribute to the Fusion 2.0 idiom.</p><p>The final component of this exegesis is an album of 12 original tracks, a significant body of work that creatively responds to the findings from the transcription and analysis of the case studies. The compositional processes I utilised when creating these tracks are discussed in the context of the other artists and compared with their own approaches. Through this practice-led approach, I develop my compositional concepts and provide an original contribution to this new musical movement, whilst also respecting past trends, significant progenitors, and the musical evolution and philosophies relevant to Fusion 2.0.</p>