Jazz study guide

Chapter 1: Listening to Jazz

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An Overview
A. How Jazz came to be
1. Grew from heartfelt expressions of American slaves, then to
music of the church, then to the dance hall, American
academy, and finally the concert stage.
2. Came from different artists experimenting
3. Needs the rich African oral tradition of the Negro slave culture
and European musical tradition of schooling practices
B. Elements of Jazz
1. African singing
2. European instruments
3. White and black church music
4. Songs of Tin Pan Alley
5. Roaring Twenties Marching bands
6. Hopelessness of slavery
7. Religious fervor of the Great Awakening
What to Listen for in Jazz
A. Sounds Associated with Jazz
1. Instrumentation: the instruments that are being played
2. Rhythm section: drums or piano that keep the rhythm of the
music
3. Vibrato: growls, bends, slurs
4. Chord: two or more notes that compliment each other
B. Improvisation and Composition
1. Jazz idiom: Expression in jazz that are results from African
American musicians interjecting African music into European
music
2. How the music is played is more important than how it is
composed
3. Was criticized as illegitimate and dangerous
4. Jazz composition can be balances between improvisation and
composition
a. Most composed composition is completely notated and
performer is expected to play exactly as written.
Example: Member of trumpet section of big swing band
play his part
b. Performer may play melody that is accurate reflection
of notation but in distinctive interpretive style by
bending notes, adding vibrato, altering the rhythm, and
so on. Example: Blues singer interpreting familiar
melody

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c. Performer makes so many changes in the melody that

it is barely recognizable. Example: Swing soloists often
made use of this type of improvisation Usually not
written down, only created by performer
d. Performer plays over the chords of a song, but not try
to include given melody at all melody created by
performer
e. Performer may create entire musical performance
without any reference to musical melody
f. Performers can improvise collectively to create new
musical performances
5. Improvisation: Composing on the spot
6. Duke Ellington was the guy that found the right balance
between improvisation and composition
C. Rhythm Syncopation
1. Emphasis on rhythm
2. Jazz was considered primarily dance music
3. Steady, unbroken beat is necessary for developing emotional
pitch
4. Syncopation: rhythmic treatment which places accents
between the basic beats in the music
(1)Responsible to great extent for the swing feel
D. Syncopation and Swing
1. Accents: Stronger notes that make the notes stand out
2. Delayed notes and accents give the performance swing
3. Swing is considered by many to be an essential ingredient in
jazz
E. Form
1. Describes the overall structure of a musical composition
2. Phrases: musical section that makes up a form
3. Repetition: presentation of the same musical material in tow
or more parts of a composition
4. Contrast: introduction of different musical material
Listening Guide:
A. Melody:
1. Parts with jazz interpretation
2. Parts improvised
3. All parts improvised
4. Uses blue tones
5. Ornamented melody
B. Tempo
1. Slow
2. Moderate
3. Fast
4. Extremely Fast
C. Meter

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1. 2/4
2.
3. 4/4
Rhythm / Style
1. Ballad
2. Medium Swing
3. Fast Swing
4. Latin
5. Bossa Nova
6. Shuffle Swing
Harmony
1. Relaxed (not complex)
2. Slow moving
3. Uses IV to I (funky)
4. Tense (comples)
5. Fast chord progressions
6. Modal
Texture
1. Vertical (homophonic, harmonic)
2. Horizontal (polyphonic, melodic)
3. Both
Instrumental Color (Solo spots)
1. Banjo
2. Clarinet
3. Cornet (trumpet)
4. Guitar
5. Percussion
6. Piano
7. Saxophone
8. String bass
9. Trombone
Form
1. 12 bar blues
2. AABA
3. ABAB
4. Free
Size / type
1. Small (one or two players with rhythm section)
2. Chamber ensemble (three or more with no doubling)
3. Large, with sections
Mood:
1. Frantic, driing
2. Happy
3. Low Key, understatement
4. Rough, aggressive
5. Soulful

6. Sweet, calm, smooth

7. Detached
K. Jazz style
1. Dixieland
2. Swing
3. Bop
4. Cool
5. Hard bop
6. Third stream
7. Free
8. Fusion (Jazz/rock)
9. Latin
10. Neoclassical
Chapter 2: Jazz Heritages
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African and European Influences

A. Early contributions of jazz was not recognized
1. One race was white and the other was black and together
they created jazz
2. Western tradition is predominantly literate and reflects
interest in its performance practice
3. African tradition works through an expressive language typical
of the oral tradition
Interpretation and Content
A. European and African cultures interacted to create new music
1. Offered different resources that generated new way of
arranging musical elements
2. Learned different ways of expressively performing them
B. Jazz
1. Hybrid of musical traditions
2. Blend of musical elements
3. Western musicians like to write and notate their music
African Influences
A. Music was the form of expression in the life of Africans
1. Everything was done to the rhythm of music
2. Passed down by word of mouth from one generation to the
next
B. Most activities were accompanied by pulse and beating of drums
1. Served as one fundamental means of coordinating
movements and aided hunting parties
2. African slaves were brought from Africa to America which
became mixed with the new cultural context
C. African Rhythms
1. Emphases on rhythm
a. Religion is very important in the cultures of Africans

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b. African religions are greatly oriented toward ritual forms

of expression
c. African rituals have always involved dancing
2. Moorish conquest
a. Spain was once conquered by Moors from North Africa
b. Slaves in America heard something from their past in
particular branch of European music
c. Changed music of Spain, Portugal, and southern France
D. Call and Response
1. This pattern can be traced directly to African tribal tradtions
2. Ritual in which a leader shouted a cry to which a group
responded
3. Trading Fours: two improvising instrumentalists play solo parts
on alternating four bars
4. Responding to each others musical thoughts
European Influences
A. Vocab
1. Diatonic Scale and chromatic scales are used from European
composers
2. Harmonic: sense of harmony - Africans had pitches in their
drums and reeds, but this is like pitch and harmony that came
from Europeans
3. African Americans wanted to sing gospel music and work
songs to imitate the rich European melody and harmony
4. European music could not compare with Africans oral sonority
and the rhythmic vitality of their music
African Americans in the Early Colonies
A. Latin planters were not concerned with activities of slaves as
long as their work were done
1. British Protestants tried to convert slaves to Christianity
2. Slaves had to hide pagan music
B. Field Hollers (Cries)
1. Functional music used for work, love, war, ceremonies, or
communication
2. Slaves could not talk while working, but singing was permitted
3. Communicated with each other by field cries, something that
whites could not understand
4. Something constantly used in jazz
(1)Bending of a note simply over exaggerating use of slide
or slur
(2)Could bend down up to different tone or pitch
(3)Not available in European music
C. Work Songs
1. Sung without instrumental accompaniment and were
associated with monotonous task
2. Sprinkled with grunts and groans inspired by physical effort

3. Later became distinguishing feature of both vocal and

instrumental jazz
4. Contribution of work song to jazz was the emphasis on rhythm
and meter
D. Minstrels
1. Dan Emmett formed group of white actors called Dan
Emmetts Virginia Minstrels
2. Performed European folk songs
3. Minstrelsy was going to become most popular form of
American stage music
4. Traveling minstrels shows were main form of entertainment
for both races
5. Cakewalk was popular dance that was featured at minstrel
shows
6. It was the first dance to cross over from African American
culture to mainstream white society
E. Creole Music
1. Creoles were people with Negro and French or Spanish
ancestry
2. They were ostracized from white society and joined the
African Americans
3. Had the rights and privileges of whites, which included
conservatory training for musicians
4. They had the musical training along with being raised in the
improvised oral tradition of African Americans
5. Contributed harmonic and formal structure to early jazz music
6. Congo Square: large field in New Orleans where slaves were
allowed to gather on Sunday to sing, dance and play their
drums
(1)Gave this original African music a place to be heard
(2)Where it can be influence and be influenced by European
music
F. Marching Bands
1. After Civil War, African Americans were able to make
instruments and buy pawned and instruments
2. Marching bands began to influence their music
3. Every secret society or fraternity had a band
4. Early jazz players started their careers in such bands, playing
marches, polkas, quadrilles
5. Marching band started to play for funerals
(1)First they would only play drum beats
(2)Then after the burying, they played a merrier tune, like
when the saints go marching in
(3)Traditional funeral music was for mourning, and then the
more rhythmic music signified that the departed was going
to a happier place a cause for rejoiceing

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6. Marching Bands usually consists of cornet, trombone, clarinet,

tuba, banjo and drums
7. Buddy Bolden first leaders of a jazz marching band
Religious Music
A. Spirituals
1. Church was a central contributor
2. Much of musical content are taken from white spiritual
tradition
3. In 1800, America had a religious mass movement known as
the Great Awakening
4. Spirituals: hymns with a beat created by Protestant African
American slaves on America soil
5. Liturgical: rhythmic emphasis to biblical music taught to them
6. European influence of more melody and harmony than on
rhythm
7. Call and Response pattern in spirituals
8. Contributed development of the popular song and to vocal
jazz
(1)As well as forms and techniques of European art music and
conserved the traditional characteristics of African tribal
influences
9. Slave Songs of the United States
B. Gospel
1. Thomas A. Dorsey was inspired by gospel singers, he devoted
his life to composition and singing of gospel music
2. His 500 gospel song became popular and he became known
as The Father of Gospel Music
3. By 1940, gospel music became popular that these
professionals went on tours
4. Gospel song have techniques used by individual soloists
5. Spirituals contained symbolic references to the railways or
rivers that led to freedom or to heaven.
6. Polyphonic: voice lines that were invented independently of
each other
(1)Carried over to Dixieland music and was later employed in
more contemporary jazz styles
(2)Makes use of two ore more melodies that work well
together but seem independent of each other
7. Homophonic: singing a harmonizing melody to an existing
melody
(1)Both melodies are essentially the same only at different
pitches
C. Mahalia Jackson and The African American Church
1. Started to express Gospel music as an art form
(1)Only sang songs that she believed served her religious
feelings

(2)Became one of the most stirring, most sought after singers

in the world
(3)She died of heart disease on January 27, 1972
Chapter 3: The Blues
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The Origin
A. African and European music began to merge
1. Slave sang sad songs about suffering
2. Singing was in unison
3. No chords or form
4. During reconstruction, slaves could perform their music more
openly, then blues began to take on more specific form
B. Blues started
1. With three vocal phrases (AAB)
2. With 8 musical measures (4 beats)
3. Each song varied between 8, 12, and 16 measures most
popular was 12
Blue Notes
A. Blue tonalities: Was influenced from Western Europeans
pentatonic scales (Lower the 3rd and 7th)
1. There are no keys on piano that correspond to blue tonalities
or blue notes so pianists play these two keys at the same time
2. Flatted fifth (Lowering the 5th note in the scale)
Field and Prison Hollers
A. Work Song that had solo hollers or cries that were used to make
calls across open fields
1. Traced back to West African groups
2. Holler meant social interactions
3. Some hollers were wordless but full of expressions and
feelings
B. Hollers associated with songs sung by prison inmates
1. Contributed to the type of vocalizations now associated with
blues singing
C. Nobody considered bending notes on instruments
1. Before field cry with bending of notes
2. Blue tonalities and note bending can be heard by early jazz
brass bands
3. Blue notes heard in work songs, spirituals and styles of jazz
D. Embouchure (Mouth position) can change the pitch slightly
1. Slight adjustments could create pitch that falls between two
notes on the piano
2. Out of tune-ness helped create that blue note feeling
Blues Lyrics
A. Iambic Pentameter
1. Blues meter

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2. Has 5 accented syllables that alternate unaccented syllables

3. Fill ins: areas with strains, filled in by an instrumentalist
4. Breaks: fill ins grew longer so that soloists can solo
Country and Urban Blues
A. Blues migrated to cities like Chicago
1. Robert Johnson unique vocalizations
2. City Blues more rhythmic, more crisp than country blues
3. Blues singers accompanied themselves on guitar when urban
usedmore elaborate accompaniment
B. Ledbelly was discovered on a prison
1. Learned 12 string guitar and since he was from prison, he
knew work songs
Big Bill Broonzy
A. Transition figure in the development of urban (city) blues
1. Fiddle player who learned guitar
2. Showed ranges of his personal style
3. Influenced many others
Tin Pan Alley
A. Printed outlet for music
1. Sheet music industry
2. Important song publishers were located in such cities as New
York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Milwaukee and San
Francisco
3. Union Square of New York City became center of largest
concentration of song publishers
Singing the Blues
A. Blues Singers
1. Bessie Smith
2. Ethel Waters
Contemporary Blues
A. Tradition all on its own
1. Still undergoing development
2. Blues references in work of Miles Davis, john Scofield, Mike
Stern and Michael Brekcker

Chapter 4: Piano Styles: Ragtime to Boogie Woogie

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The Birth of Ragtime

A. Ragtime Music
1. Considered to be outside of jazz tradition
2. It is completely composed before performed
3. Pianists not used in Dixieland bands (which evolved from
marching bands)
(1)Developed a solo style of playing
4. Piano player had to learn how to play full band sound

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5. Left hand was used to play both bass notes and chords and
right had free for syncopated melodic lines
6. Extreme difficulty cause academic piano players to oppose
ragtime
7. Played on offbeats (2nd and 4th beats)
8. Ragtime players were employed at fairs and carnivals
B. Scott Joplin
1. Most prolific ragtime music
2. Maple Leaf Rag
C. Jelly Roll Morton
1. Ferdinand de Menthe
2. Best known ragtime piano player
3. Claims that he originated jazz
4. Performed with variety of bands
5. Established many bands
6. He was an arranger: Person who put music together for bands
Ragtime and Dixieland merge
A. Dixieland and ragtime began to merge when piano players began
to play with other instruments
B. Melodic concept of rags was change
C. Rhythmic accentuation to the rags was carried into Dixieland
1. Rhythm of bands changed from four four to two four
Ragtime Lives On
A. Tack piano: piano that is altered to sound much older than it is so
ragtime sounds more authentic
1. Put thumbtacks in the felts of piano
2. Frequently heard on piano but can be heard in band music
B. People played ragtime more quickly and aggressively that the
normal tempo became slow and relaxed
C. Stride playing became more popular
Boogie Woogie
A. Piano style that was important to development of jazz
1. Self descriptive
2. Feeling created by playing eight beats to the bar
3. Came into prominence during economic crisis Great
Depression
4. Fully style of piano playing
B. Ostinato Bass
1. Ostinato: a melodic figure that recurs throughout the music
2. Structural device that helps hold a piece together
3. Always the bass
4. Walking bass: outlines the chores in a melodic fashion
5. Measure is 8 over 4
6. Main feature is the rhythmic virtuosity
7. Left hand and right hand have to work hard and it almost
sounds like two distinct pianists

C. The Players
1. Had European influences
2. Some musicians couldnt read music so they just developed
their own style by listening instead
(1)Peat Johnson was boogie woogie pianist in Kansas City
D. Origin
1. Was developed from guitar technique used in mining ,
logging, and turpentine camps
E. Later Developments
1. Left hand rhythm developed into shuffle rhythm which was
later used by swing groups and imports the energy and eight
beats to the bar feel
2. Rhythm and blues artists used in early rock
3. Boogie woogie can also be found in original swing period in
the dance center
Stride Piano
A. Not bound by original construction of rags
1. NO longer compelled to play alone
2. So in order to play with big bands, they needed to change
their style
3. They need to play across the whole keyboard for the FULL
band sound
4. They played popular tunes of the day
5. Faster and much more drive than relaxed ragtime players
B. James P. Johnson and Fats Waller
1. Considered to be father of stride piano - Johnson
2. Fats Waller was a student of Johnson
C. Art Tatum
1. The best surely the most versatile piano player in history o
of jazz
2. Stride was one of his favorites
3. Usually played alone
4. Almost completely blind
D. Later Stride Pianists
1. Basie and Ellington went into authentic stride piano during
improvisation

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Chapter 5: Early New Orleans and Chicago Style Jazz

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Early New Orleans Style

A. New Orleans
B. The Oral Tradition
C. Storyville
D. Instrumental Obligations

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E. The King
F. Sidney Bechet
G. Out of New Orleans
Louis Armstrong (1901 1971)
Chicago Style (The 1920s)
A. The Roaring Twenties
B. The New Orleans and Chicago Styles
1. Chicago
2. Bix Beiderbecke
Later Developments

Chapter 6: Swing
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Beginnings of the Swing Era

Jazz Arrangements
A. Fletcher Henderson
New York
A. Chick Webb
B. Jimmie Lunceford
C. Duke Ellington
Kansas City
A. Mary Lou Williams
B. Count Basie
Southwest Bands Early Basie
Swing Becomes Accepted
A. Paul Whiteman
The Swing Bands
A. Glenn Miller
Big Band Soloists
A. Benny Goodman
B. Coleman Hawkins
C. Lester Young
D. Charlie Christian
Swing Singers
A. Billie Holiday
B. Ella Fitzgerald
Swing Combos
The Demise of Swing

Chapter 7: Duke Ellington

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Washington to New York

The Cotton Club
Touring
The Swing Period
Billy Strayhorn

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New Additions
A. Jimmy Blanton
B. Ben Webster
Johnny Hodges
A Period of Transition
Late Ellington
Individual and Group Expression
Innovations
Repertoire
Chapter 8: Bop
The Shift to Bop
The Developing Mainstream and the Jazz Canon
Bop Arranging
Musical Expansion
The Bop Rhythm Section
The Performers
A. Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie
B. Charlie Parker
C. Bud Powell
D. Thelonious Monk
E. J.J. Johnson
Bop and Progressive Big Bands
A. Billy Eckstein
B. Stan Kenton
C. Gillespies Bop Band
Swing to Cubop
The Mambo and Cubop