Jazz Exam 1

Joe "King" Oliver

cornetist, used mutes, discover Louis Armstrong, helped popularize the exodus from N.O. to Chicago (Dippermouth Blues 1923)

Jelly Roll Morton - "King Porter Stomp"

early jazz, piano

James P. Johnson

"Father Of Stride Piano" (Play "Carolina Shout" from Canvas)

Chicagoans and Bix Beiderbecke

- Bix Beiderbecke, was a cornet player with a distinctive bell-like tone that would help him become a jazz legend. Beiderbecke and Armstrong were the two most important cornet players of the 1920s. - Listening to the original New Orleans players, a second generation of jazz instrumentalists fashioned their own improvisational and group styles. These players are collectively known as the "Chicagoans" and epitomize what has been called Chicago jazz. - Possibly the deepest influence on the Chicagoans came from a cornet player born in Iowa in 1903, who received his earliest musical experiences in Chicago—Leon Bix Beiderbecke. (Bix was his given name, not a nickname.) In contrast to the virtuosic flamboyance of Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke had developed a style marked by introspection and refinement. Contemporaries strove to pinpoint Beiderbecke's restrained and uniquely lyrical sound

Ragtime - Scott Joplin

- Legend has it that the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition (a kind of World's Fair) in Chicago marked the beginning of the popular fascination with ragtime. For the first time, thousands of Americans heard a new type of music associated with black, itinerant piano players. Adapting African polyrhythms to piano, these players developed the use of syncopation that would become one of ragtime's central features. - Ragtime is an African American musical genre that flourished from the late 1890s through the mid-1910s and is based on constant syncopation in the right hand often accompanied by a steady march bass in the left hand. Associated now primarily with piano music, ragtime was originally a method of performance that included syncopated songs, music for various ensembles, and arrangements of non-ragtime music. Scott Joplin was ragtime's most famous composer. A strain is a section of a ragtime composition. - Scott Joplin and other ragtime composers would formalize the genre to create the works we now call "classic ragtime." The overall form of the classic rag usually comprised three or four 16-bar sections called strains and was borrowed from the march (and other multiple strain forms of the time).

The Blues - Bessie Smith

- The addition of blues to ragtime helped create jazz. More precisely, ragtime—both in its classic piano form and in songs and marches "ragged" by ensembles—gradually metamorphosed into jazz. It did so through an internal evolution in addition to the infusion of the blues. Because the addition of this final ingredient was so significant, some claim that to improvise with authority and passion in the jazz tradition requires the ability to play the blues well. o The blues is an African American folk music that appeared around 1900 and exerted influence on jazz and various forms of U.S. popular music. - Bessie Smith: The most beloved singer of the 1920s, the richness and breadth of her tone are evident even on her oldest recordings. o In the performance of "Back Water Blues," we can point to three features of Bessie Smith's style that will remain characteristic of subsequent jazz singing: ▶ Loosely constructed phrasing ▶ Offbeat, syncopated placement of notes and lyrics ▶ Use of slides, blue notes, and other vocal embellishments

The Preservation of African Traditions (5 main points)

1. Metronomic sense: African musicians tend to maintain a steady, underlying pulse throughout a performance. The regularity of the beat can be compared to that of a metronome, a mechanical device that enables musicians to maintain a steady beat while practicing. The dancers' motions generally show the pulse. 2. Call and response: In call-and-response, a solo vocalist sings one line (often improvised), and then a group responds. In African traditions, the group response tends to overlap the original solo part. 3.Off-beat Phrasing of accents - syncopation: This is the unexpected accenting of weaker notes within the melody, or what many scholars describe as syncopation. 4.Dominance of Percussion: In African music, percussion instruments are plentiful and used more widely than melodic ones, with some exceptions. The melodic instruments themselves are sometimes played percussively. 5.Polyrhythm - different layers of rhythm at the same time: This is an intricate web of rhythms heard among the different parts.

AABA 32-bar song form

AABA have been a mainstay of music. Presents the melody in four sections labeled A, A, B, and A, each section eight bars long, for a total of 32 bars. The term head describes the A section or principal melody of a song; bridge describes the B section.

Migration North

African Americans left the south and moved to northern urban centers such as chicago. 1917 "closing" of Storyville(the red-light district of New Orleans). The exodus of New Orleans jazz musicians was part of a much larger trend known as the Great Migration in which many blacks abandoned rural life in the South for urban life in the North. The most important reason behind the Great Migration was probably the availability of city jobs that paid a fair wage.

Louis Armstrong

After leaving Oliver, Armstrong would go on to become one of the most successful jazz artists and entertainers of the 20th century. Created the concept of swing. He made jazz a soloist's art. He was exciting and thrilled listeners. Defined the notion of the star soloist in jazz. Trumpeter and singer, popularized scat singing, trumpet virtuoso, terminal vibrato, first elite recorded soloist (West End Blues 1928)

New Orleans Jazz - Dixieland - Traditional Jazz

Arguably the birthplace of jazz. Exuberant performances by all musicians. Front line including cornet, clarinet, and trombone. Rhythm section including piano, banjo, drums, bass or tuba.

Duke Ellington and His Kentucky Club Orchestra - "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo"

Big band, guitar, trumpet, American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra

Blues Notes

Blue note is a bent, slurred or worried note. - To the transcribers' perplexity, the singers used pitches between the natural and flatted versions of the third and seventh scale degrees, pitches not heard in the equal-tempered European system. In general, these pitches are often called "neutral" thirds and sevenths; in African American practice, they are called blue notes. A blue note is a bent, slurred, or "worried" note. It most often occurs on the third of the scale, but any note can be made "blue" by varying its intonation in a blues or jazz performance. A pentatonic scale is a five-note set that avoids the interval of a tritone and can be arranged as a series of perfect fourths or perfect fifths. The black notes of the keyboard form one such scale, but others are also used. Also called pentatonic set.

Harlem Renaissance

From roughly 1921 to 1928, the Harlem Renaissance was a period of outstanding artistic activity among African Americans. The movement was centered in Harlem in New York City.

Christianity

Came out of the influence of christianity on slaves, featured call and response, Christian lyrical content, helped deal with hardships. As many African Americans converted to Christianity, they learned Protestant hymns and other religious songs that introduced them to the melodic, formal, and harmonic elements of European music. The first all-black churches appear to have developed near the end of the 1700s, and hymns and spirituals replaced the tradition of lining out psalms.

Sam Chatmon - "Sittin' On Top of the World"

Country Blues, guitar, mandolin, and banjo

Shift of Ragtime to Jazz

Differences between jazz and ragtime became blurred between 1910-1920, and different people used the terms differently. Certain New Orleans jazz musicians always referred to the music they played as "ragtime," while the term jazz became fashionable in northern urban areas. • New Orleans; considered the birthplace of jazz, but more complex then that (Rural areas in the South, Urban areas like Chicago, K.C., NYC) • Origins of the word "Jazz" are uncertain • Became popularized after the first jazz recording in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band - "Livery Stable Blues" (Freddie Keppard) • Complex ragtime forms were replaced with simpler AABA 32-bar song forms and the 12-bar blues form as jazz began to replace ragtime in popularity

European Influence on jazz (4 main points)

Instrumentation: Included the front line and the rhythm section Form: the basic layout of the music Harmony: Chords played simultaneously Arrangements: Learned to read music instead of playing by ear.

Jazz in Europe

England initially but Paris, France became the epicenter for jazz in Europe. Two important early European jazz musicians: guitarist "Django" Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli. Gypsy jazz.

Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli - "Tiger Rag"

European, electric guitar, Guitar, violin, banjo

Art Tatum

Famous Blind stride pianist

Paul Whiteman

Famous big band pianist. Became the most successful American bandleader during this period in part by incorporating jazz elements within an orchestral format. Whiteman's recordings of "Whispering" and "Japanese Sandman" from 1920, the year he came to New York, sold more than a million copies.

James P. Johnson - "Carolina Shout"

Harlem stride, piano, ragtime piano into jazz

Harmony

Harmony is based on skips between notes. We can create a simple harmony by taking a scale and playing every other note for three or four notes. If we play them simultaneously, we hear a chord, the basic unit of harmony. A chord is a group of three or more notes played simultaneously and acts as the basic unit of harmony.

call and response

In classic call-and-response, a single voice or instrument states a melodic phrase—the call—while a group of voices or instruments follows with a responding or completing phrase—the response.

Dynamics

In music address the volume of sound from very soft to very loud.

Inside/Outside

Jazz musicians are said to be playing inside when their melodic lines favor the principal notes of the harmonies. The more the players depart from the notes of the harmonies, the more they are said to be playing outside. (These terms are most commonly associated with modern jazz. Listen to Track 8 of the Audio Primer for an example.)

Cutting Contest

Jazz rap battles performed by pianist in a highly competitive New York Scene. Various stride players cultivated their own flashy techniques and trademarks as well. At rent parties in Harlem, at the Jungles Casino on West Sixty-second Street, in the piano competitions known as cutting contests, pianists James P. Johnson, Luckey Roberts, Willie "The Lion" Smith, and Richard "Abba Labba" McLean emerged as the best players in the highly competitive New York scene.

Buddy Bolden

Many New Orleans musicians attributed the genesis of the rougher, improvised style to a single person: black cornetist Charles "Buddy" Bolden. Bolden's style of improvisation was based on "ragging" the melodies. (1877-1931), Considered the first jazz musician ever, played cornet, never recorded however. Principal early figure in the development of the rougher, hotter New Orleans style. Celebrated for impressive power and volume, and for playing the blues.

Melody

Melodies are coherent patterns of notes; that is, they are not random notes that occur unpredictably. Melodies are made coherent by the use of patterns that combine predictability on the one hand and surprise on the other hand.

improvisation

Musicians also create spontaneous melodies, a process called improvisation. The essence of jazz, improvisation or an improvised solo refers to a performance technique in which the improviser or soloist spontaneously creates a melody that fits the form and harmony of the piece.

Articulation

Notes can be attacked, or played, in numerous ways. We refer to the ways that notes are played as articulation. For example, the articulation of notes proceeding smoothly from one to the other is legato. Short, detached notes are staccato.

syncopation

Off-beat phrasing of accents. Accents that work against steady pulse and create excitement. Very common in jazz, is the disruption of regular meter and occurs when the weaker notes of the designated meter receive unexpectedly stronger accents, as in the second and fourth beats in 4/4 meter receiving stronger accents.

Sidney Bechet

One of principal early jazz soloists. Creole of Color from New Orleans. Played both the clarinet and soprano saxophone. Spent most time in Europe due to the higher prestige towards jazz musicians. Hot head - came home after fight. Wide vibrato, helped popularize jazz in Europe

Jelly Roll Morton

One of the most influential of New Orleans musicians was a pianist and composer-arranger named Lemott Ferdinand Joseph "Jelly Roll" Morton (1890-1941). A pool hustler, braggart, and "ladies' man," he often made a living from gambling and pimping, which were far more lucrative than playing the piano. He was also a Creole of Color with an ethnic background not uncommon in New Orleans

Minstrelsy

Racists dances. Before civil war it was white troupes that wore blackface and after civil war blacks also wore black face.

Ella Jenkins - "Wade in the Water"

Spiritual: singer, guitar, piano, bass, ukulele

Spirituals, and Work Songs

Spirituals are African American songs that arose in the nineteenth century and consisted of religious lyrics with folk melodies. They were often harmonized for vocal choir. Not all African American music was associated with the church, of course. In rural areas, nonreligious music included occasional songs, field hollers, and work songs. Occasional songs accompanied various aspects of slave life, such as playing games or celebrating holidays. Work songs— nearly universal in African culture—accompanied different types of labor. Field laborers picked tobacco or cotton, threshed rice, husked corn, or harvested sugar cane to the sound of work songs.

12 bar blues

The blues form is a single, 12-bar section that repeats throughout the song and typically divides into three 4-bar phrases. The classic blues featured an aab lyric pattern that fit regular chord changes.

tonality

The character of a piece of music as determined by the key in which it is played or the relations between the notes of a scale or key. A Western musical system in which pieces are organized according to harmony within some key or with respect to some central pitch. Western tonality rests on a system of twenty-four major and minor keys.

Front Line

The front line described the lead (melody) instruments in early jazz bands and usually included trumpet (or cornet), trombone, and clarinet. The saxophone, while occurring in early jazz, became more popular in later jazz styles.

Syncopation

The opening lines of the spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Had" are built entirely on the B pentatonic scale (see Music Examples 1-1 and 1-2). Notice that this spiritual features syncopation: the pattern eighth note-quarter note-eighth note (eqe) occurs at the beginning of the third measure. Moreover, in practice the first, second, and fifth measures may also be performed with the same syncopated rhythm. In effect, this pattern enables the performer to avoid emphasizing the second beat. A faster version of syncopation was also common, featuring a sixteenth-eighth-sixteenth note rhythm

Piano

The piano, developed in the early 1700s, soon became the most common of all Western instruments.

New Orleans

The place where jazz is argued to originate from. (circa 1900-20) . Theories of how jazz originated in New Orleans(two theories) the "Uptown/Downtown theory" - As a result of segregation after 1894, the combination of European elements from Creoles of Color(lived downtown) with the African-based style of blacks(who lived uptown) created a unique mix that contributed to jazz. -Second theory "Generational Theory" suggests that the newer "rougher" improvised style replace the older "sweet" style. High demand for newer style. • Called New Orleans Jazz, Dixieland or Traditional Jazz • Typical Instrumentation: cornet (trumpet like), clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, tuba, drums (string bass eventually replaces tuba) • Front line: cornet, clarinet, trombone • Improvised ensemble sections with cornet on lead (melody) with improvised support by the clarinet and trombone • Collective improvisation: simultaneous improvisation by the front line • Driving rhythmic feel • "Hot" style with exuberant performances

Pitch

The property of notes being higher or lower is referred to by the word pitch as in "a low pitch" or "a high pitch." For example, women's voices typically have a higher pitch than men's. Musical notes are sometimes called pitches.

rhythm section

The rhythm section is a part of a jazz band that provides the rhythmic pulse, harmonies, and bass line. It may include any of the following: piano, guitar, bass, or drums. Early jazz bands sometimes included banjo and tuba in place of the guitar and bass. call and response: In classic call-and-response, a single voice or instrument states a melodic phrase—the call—while a group of voices or instruments follows with a responding or completing phrase—the response.

Ring Shout

The ring shout, originally derived from African religious practice, was a rhythmic dance performed in a circle. Worshipers moved counterclockwise while singing spirituals and accompanying themselves by clapping and stamping. The worshipers ingeniously circumvented the prohibition against dancing—strictly speaking, to lift and cross the feet—by shuffling. Some historians describe the ring shout as contributing the essence of African song, dance, and spirit to African American music.

chord progression

The succession of chords in music is usually not random but is often based on standard conventions. The chordal sequence is then called a chord progression or progression

texture

The texture of music is what you are hearing at a given moment: the combination of instruments playing and the manner in which they are being played. Textures are often described in dualities, such as thick or thin, high or low, or fast or slow.

Louis Armstrong - "West End Blues"

Traditional, Trumpet, Clarinet, Trombone, Piano, Percussion (skulls), banjo, trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - "Dipper Mouth Blues"

Urban Blues, early jazz, Armstrong plays second cornet, on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lil Hardin on piano, Baby Dodds on drums and Bill Johnson on banjo and vocal, cornet player and bandleader

rhythm

When notes follow one another in time, they are necessarily in some kind of rhythm, so we can think of rhythm as the experience of music through time. Beat is a steady pulse, such as a heartbeat, and an instance of rhythm, the experience of music through time.

The Ring Shout

an ecstatic, transcendent religious ritual, first practiced by African slaves in the West Indies and the United States, in which worshipers move in a circle while shuffling and stomping their feet and clapping their hands

1917 - ODJB

in early 1917 Victor Records released what is sometimes considered the first jazz record with Nick LaRocca, white cornetist and bandleader of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band (ODJB). The ODJB recorded two pieces, "Livery Stable Blues" and "Dixie(land) Jass Band One Step." These included humorous barnyard effects, with clarinetist Larry Shields crowing and cornetist Nick LaRocca imitating a horse's whinny. A white band from New Orleans, the ODJB achieved popularity performing at Schiller's Cafe in Chicago and Reisenweber's Restaurant in New York.

Harlem Stride Piano

is a school of jazz piano playing derived from ragtime. With greater speed and virtuosity than ragtime. Stride accompaniment of alternating bass notes and chords with a tugging right hand that seems to pull at the left-hand rhythm to impart swing. Left hand "Boom, Chunk" Right Hand "Melody".

Tin Pan Alley

is the collective name applied to the major New York City sheet music publishers. Tin Pan Alley flourished from the late 1800s until the mid twentieth century.

Collective Improvisation

is the term often applied to the simultaneous improvising of the New Orleans (Dixieland) jazz ensemble.

Fats Waller

student of James P. Johnson, humorous entertainer (Video-Ain't Misbehaving)

String instruments

produce sound from a player plucking, strumming, striking, or bowing strings drawn over a voice box. The most commonly used string instruments in jazz are the guitar, electric and acoustic, and the acoustic bass.

Wind instruments

sounds are created by players' breaths, are normally divided into two families: brasses and reeds.

form

the layout of the music in time. Form describes how we organize music in time by dividing a work into individual units called sections. Each section contains a set of measures and divides further into sets of measures called phrases. We label a section with a capital letter of the alphabet (A, B, C, and so on) and label a phrase with a lowercase letter (a, b, c)—a system that allows us to describe a work's musical form in abbreviated fashion.

reed instruments

the players blow through or across a reed, which is attached to the mouthpiece, to create the sound. § Saxophone is the most important reed instrument in jazz but the clarinet was the reed instrument more common than the saxophone in early jazz.

brass instrument

the sound is created by players buzzing their lips into a cup-shaped mouthpiece. The most important brass in jazz is the trumpet. The flugelhorn and cornet are similar in look to a trumpet. The trombone is the second most important brass to jazz after the trumpet.

timbre

the specific quality of sound in a given instrument or voice.

Percussion instruments

those struck with either the hand or a stick or mallet such as the drums

Creoles

were people of mixed black and white ancestry. Until the late nineteenth century, they enjoyed more freedom and were better educated than the general black population. Musicians from this group generally had classical training and could read musical scores. Maintained standard New Orleans style. Maintained standard technique of "collective improvisation": front line instruments improvised simultaneously.

Eubie Blake

who began his career playing piano in Baltimore's bars and brothels, recorded in 1917 a version of his brilliant "Charleston Rag" on a piano roll.

Beginnings of Big Bands - Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington

• Characteristics - Dance and/or entertainment music, sections, written arrangements, head arrangements • Fletcher Henderson: Fletcher Henderson arrived in New York in 1920. The twenty-two- year-old came from Atlanta, where he had received a degree in chemistry from Atlanta University. He worked as a song plugger for the Pace-Handy Music Company, one of the first and most successful black publishing companies, and recorded, as pianist, with dozens of blues singers, including Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Ethel Waters. • Duke Ellington (East St. Louis Toodle-oo 1927): Ellington's unique combination of musicianship, compositional skill, professional savvy, and aristocratic persona eventually made him perhaps the most celebrated bandleader and composer in the history of jazz. • Paul Whiteman (play example from Spotify):

Jazz in New York

• In the 1920s, New York produced a well-educated and well-to-do class of African Americans (Harlem Renaissance) • Authors, Artists, Poets, Politicians, etc. of high stature • Names like W.E.B. Du Bois (author/political leader), James Weldon Johnson (author), James Reese Europe (composer/band leader), William Grant Still (classical composer), and many more • These high standards impacted jazz...(Irony of jazz and HR) • Harlem Stride Piano • Composers like Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington • Tin Pan Alley