JAZZ TEST STUDY GUIDE (CH. 1-4, 10, & 11)

List some ways the author suggests helping you listen and enjoy jazz - Chapter 2:

-Hearing improvised lines -imagine layers of sound, one on top of another, all moving forward in time. Each layer can represent the sound of a different instrument. -Try to imagine a graph of the solo line. The horizontal side of the graph represents time passing. The vertical dimension represents high- ness and lowness of pitch. Your graph can be embellished by colored shapes and textures representing the accompanying sounds of piano chords, drums, cymbals, bass, and so on. -hum the original tune while listening to the improvisations that are guided by its chord changes. Try to synchronize the beginning of your humming with the beginning of a solo improvisation, and then keep the same tempo as the performer. You will become aware of two compositions based on the same chord changes: the original tune and the improvised melody. -try to divide the sounds into the functions they serve. For instance, there are two kinds of roles that instruments have in a jazz combo: (1) the soloist role and (2) the accompanist role.

Key points from CH. 1

1. Defining jazz is difficult because there are so many varieties. 2. The most common elements that appear in definitions of jazz are improvisation and swing feeling. 3. Improvisation means making it up as you go along, as with impromptu speaking. 4. Jazz musicians usually begin by playing a tune they all know. After that, they make up their own music and guide their improvisations by the accompaniment chords that came with the original tune. 5. Swing feeling is the rhythmic property perceived by listeners who enjoy a particular performance. 6. Jazz swing feeling seems to be perceived in listeners when music has a certain combi- nation of: a. steady tempo b. a certain kind of off-beat accenting c. a continuous rising and falling of the melodic line 7. Listeners do not always agree that a given performance is jazz. One reason is that jazz swing feeling is an opinion about how the music feels, not a fact. 8. Jazz style designations are often more expedient than accurate. Style designations are made in this book to present a variety of musicians in the smallest number of chapters.

Jelly Roll Morton

1. He was the first important jazz composer, and several of his pieces became well known in rearranged form when played by other bands. 2. He was one of the first jazz musicians to balance composition with improvisation while retaining the excitement of collectively impro- vised jazz. 3. He recorded piano solos that were well-organized, forcefully executed musical statements with horn-like lines. 4. He bridged the gap between the piano styles of ragtime and jazz by loosening ragtime's rhythmic feeling and decreasing its embellishments.

List main summary points of Chapter 3:

1. Jazz originated in New Orleans around the beginning of the twentieth century. 2. New Orleans was the ideal site for the birth of jazz because it was an intensely musical city with a history of rich ethnic diversity, especially French and African. 3. African American forms of music such as the blues and ragtime blended with European dance music and church music. 4. Jazz emerged when brass bands were at a height of popularity. 5. Ragtime was in such high demand that brass bands and string bands were improvising rag-like syncopations into their pieces to please dancers. 6. New Orleans musicians combined diverse materials to please people who had a taste for special kinds of musical excitement. 7. Jazz came out of the combination of instruments, repertory, and musical practices used by brass bands and string bands in New Orleans before the 1920s. 8. Improvisation became common as small bands attempted to perform music originally intended for large bands. Musicians improvised parts to order.

List why early jazz differs from ragtime, blues, and brass band roots (Chapter 4):

1. Much of each performance was improvised. 2. Rhythmic feeling was looser and more relaxed, thus anticipating jazz swing feeling. 3. It generated much of its own repertory of compositions. 4. Collective improvisation created a more complex musical product than was typical in ragtime, blues, or marching band music.

List main summary points of Chapter 4:

1. The first forms of jazz resulted from blending improvisational approaches to ragtime, blues, spirituals, marches, and popular tunes. 2. The first jazz bands used the instruments of brass bands: trumpet, clarinet, trombone, tuba, drums, and saxophone. 3. The earliest jazz was not recorded. We can only infer how it sounded on the basis of recordings made by New Orleans players after they had moved to Chicago. 4. The first jazz group to record was the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917. 5. Chicago was the jazz center of the world during the 1920s. 6. The earliest significant New Orleans pianist-composer was Jelly Roll Morton. 7. James P. Johnson was considered the "father" of stride piano. 8. Fats Waller was one of the most popular jazz musicians of the 1920s and 30s, as well as a prolific composer. 9. Waller brought a lightness and springy quality to stride style. 10. Earl Hines devised the "trumpet-style" of piano playing in which phrases are more "horn-like" than pianistic. 11. Louis Armstrong was one of the first combo players to effectively demonstrate solo improvisation instead of retaining the New Orleans tradition of collective improvisation. 12. Louis Armstrong possessed a larger tone, wider range, and better command of the trumpet than most early players. His solo improvisations were especially well constructed. 13. Bix Beiderbecke was one of the first "cool style" jazz improvisers.

Key points from CH. 2

1. Unwritten rules are followed that enable jazz improvisers to piece together perfor- mances without rehearsal. 2. Musicians know many of the same tunes, and they follow common practices when performing tunes having 12-bar blues and A-A-B-A construction. 3. Jazz musicians play the melody before and after they play improvisations. Both the melody and the improvisations are guided by the same cycle of chord patterns in the accompaniment. 4. Walking bass style involves playing notes that keep time for the band as well as out- lining the chord progression for the improvisers. Jim Hall, an improviser known for devising solos that are largely free of familiar patterns. Summary 15 5. The jazz drummer uses bass drum, ride cymbal, and high-hat cymbals to keep time for the band and crash cymbal and snare drum to kick and prod soloists and drama- tize their ideas. 6. Comping is the accompaniment style in which the pianist feeds chords to the impro- vising soloist in a flexible and syncopated way. 7. People can listen to jazz by a. humming the original tune to themselves while listening to the improvisations that are guided by the same progression of accompaniment chords b. imagining a graph of the solo line c. imagining layers of sound moving forward in time d. hearing the improvised lines of a soloist as melodies in themselves e. listening for variations in mood, tone qualities, and rhythms 8. Jazz musicians improvise by reorganizing phrases they have played before. However, some of the best manage to devise lines off the cuff that are largely free of familiar patterns: Jim Hall and Wayne Shorter, for instance.

Ride cymbal

A cymbal suspended over the right of the drum set. Its sound sustains, and the rhythms played on it provide a time keeping function

creole of color

A person who has mixed French and African ancestry and was born in the New World

ragtime

A popular turn- of-the-20th century style of written piano music involving pronounced syncopation

pitch bend

A purposeful raising or lowering of a tone's pitch; usually done for coloration or expressive purposes

Steady beat

A repeating, even pulse that can be felt in most music. Most styles of jazz keep a steady beat. That is, if you're tapping your foot along to the beat of the music, it stays constant, not slowing down or speeding up. Tempo is the speed of the beat. Jazz tunes can be played at any tempo from extremely slow (ballads) to extremely fast ("burning").

A-A-B-A

A sequence used to structure many popular songs, beginning with a firt part ("A") repeated once, followed by a new melody ("B" or bridge), and concluding with a return to the "A" part

Chorus

A single playing through of the structure being used to organize the music in an improvisation

blues

A style of African American song, originally consisting of a vocal with guitar accompaniment, that often expresses a lonesome or sad feeling

Walking bass

A style of bass line in which each beat of each measure receives a separate tone, thus creating a moving sequence of quarter notes in the bass range

Bessie Smith

Empress of the Blues

Chord progression

Harmonies in a particular order with specified durations

Buddy Bolden

He rearranged the typical New Orleans dance band of the time to better accommodate the blues: string instruments became the rhythm section, and the front-line instruments were clarinets, trombones, and Bolden's cornet. Bolden was known for his powerful, loud, "wide open" playing style.

Swing feel

If music makes you want to dance, clap your hands, or tap your feet, it has the effect we call "swinging". One of the clearest causes of swing feeling is a steady beat. Constant tempo brings a certain kind of momentum that is essential to swing feeling. To call music "swinging" also means that the performance conveys a lilting feeling. This property is also sometimes referred to as a "groove". For music to swing in the way peculiar to jazz it must have an abundance of syncopated rhythms and the continuous rising and falling motion in a melody line. This pattern makes you alternately tense and relaxed, tense and relaxed, over and over again. Swinging is an opinion, not a fact about the music.

Describe the characteristics, form, and influences of the blues (Chapter 3 and notes):

In the beginning, blues was a form of unaccompanied solo singing. After blues began to develop, singers began to accompany themselves on the gui- tar or banjo. the blues tradition contributed to jazz in at least three important respects: (1) modeling novel sounds, (2) offering a standard set of accompaniment harmonies, and (3) furnishing part of the jazz repertory.

stride

Left-hand style used by early jazz pianists. It usually employs a bass note on the first and third beats of each measure and a chord on the second and fourth

Describe why New Orleans was a cosmopolitan and diverse city during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Why was New Orleans a good place for jazz to develop? (Chapter 3 and notes)

New Orleans was the ideal site for the birth of jazz because it was an intensely musical city with a history of rich ethnic diversity, especially French and African.

James P. Johnson

One of the first jazz musicians to broadcast on the radio. "the father of stride piano."

Comping

Syncopated chording accompaniment for an improvised solo

Bridge

The B part of an A-A-B- A composition

Syncopation

a deliberate upsetting of the normal pattern of accents. In music, syncopation involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur".

What is unique about the following recordings (Chapter 4) - i.e. how will you tell them apart? a) "Dixieland Jazz Band One-Step" - Original Dixieland Jazz Band b) "Alligator Hop" King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band c) "West End Blues" by Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines d) "Riverboat Shuffle" by Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer

a) "Dixieland Jazz Band One Step" has more roll off times sound. Sounds like circus music to me. 1st jazz recording. b) "Alligator Hop" has more melody, swings more, clarinet. c) "West End Blues" starts with trumpet, Louis Armstrong, slower d) "Riverboat Shuffle" has more pop noises and guitar. Sounds like you're on a riverboat.

fill

anything a drummer plays in addition to basic timekeeping patterns

List the influences that contributed to the birth of jazz -especially in New Orleans (Chapter 3 and notes)

brass/military bands, church music, ragtime piano, blues, minstrel shows, African and slave influences, classical music. New Orleans was a center for commerce because of its nearness to the mouth of the Mississippi River, a flourishing trade route for America, the Caribbean, and Europe. The reason the party atmosphere of New Orleans is important to the beginning of jazz is that it generated so much work for musicians. There was so much demand for live music that there was a constant need for fresh material. This caused musicians to stretch styles. They blended, salvaged, and continuously revised odd assortments of approaches and material. This ultimately became jazz.

Wynton Marsalis

classical trumpeter who imitated styles of Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington. Played a lot of neoclassical jazz

Louis Armstrong

father of jazz. Nicknames: Pops, dipper mouth, satchmo,. 1. Armstrong showed that the New Orleans technique of collective simultaneous improvisation was not the only approach to jazz horn work. Intelligently developed solos could be effectively improvised apart from the lines of other band members. In other words, Armstrong was one of the first great soloists in jazz history. Partly because of him, post-Armstrong styles usually stressed solo improvisation instead of group improvisation. 2. Armstrong was one of the first jazz musicians to refine a rhythmic con- ception that a. abandoned the stiffness of ragtime b. employed swing eighth-note patterns c. gracefully syncopated selected rhythmic figures. Sometimes he staggered the placement of an entire phrase, as though he were playing behind the beat. This projected a more relaxed feeling than ragtime and exhibited more variety in the ways that notes seemed to tug at opposite sides of the beat. These rhythmic elements combined to produce one of the first jazz styles with what is today called "jazz swing feeling." 3. DespitetheexcellentplayerswhocameafterArmstrong,fewequal him as musical architects. Few had his degree of control over the overall form of a solo. He calmly forged sensible lines that had both the flow of spontaneity and the stamp of finality. His improvisations are well-paced, economical statements. The organization of Armstrong's phrases suggests that he was thinking ahead, yet the phrases manage to sound spontaneous, rather than calculated. 4. Hebroughtasuperbsenseofdramatojazzsoloconception.Hispacing was careful, allowing a solo to build tension. His double-time solo breaks were constructed to achieve maximum excitement. His high-note end- ings ensured a properly timed peak of intensity and resolution of tension. 5. At that time most improvisers were satisfied simply to embellish or paraphrase a tune's melody. Armstrong himself was a master at both, but he did much more. He frequently broke away from the melody, 48 Chapter 4 Early Jazz and improvised original, melody-like lines that were compatible with the tune's chord progressions. This became the main approach for improvisation in the next fifty years of jazz history. 6. Armstrong's command of the trumpet was possibly greater than that of any jazz trumpeter before him. It became a model to which others aspired. He had an enormous, brassy tone, and remarkable range. Altogether with his rhythmic and dramatic sense, he conveyed a certainty and surging power. Even during the final decades of his career, Armstrong maintained a tone quality that was unusual for its weight, breadth, and richness. 7. Armstrong popularized the musical vocabulary of New Orleans trumpet style and then extended it. 8. Armstrong's tremendously fertile melodic imagination provided jazz with a repertory of phrases and ways of going about constructing improvisa- tions. In other words, he extended the vocabulary for the jazz soloist. These next two contributions are less central to his reputation among jazz musicians, but they remain significant in the broadest sense of jazz history. 9. The Armstrong singing style influenced many popular singers, including Louis Prima, Billie Holiday, and Bing Crosby. In this way, he affected American music beyond the boundaries of jazz. Armstrong's influence was so pervasive that Leslie Gourse titled a book about American jazz singers Louis' Children. 10. Armstrong popularized scat singing, a vocal technique in which lyrics are not used (Jazz Classics CD1 for Jazz Styles, 11th Edition, Track 11; Jazz Classics CD1 for Concise Guide to Jazz, Track 3). The voice improvises in the manner of a jazz trumpeter or saxophonist. Recent examples of the technique can be found in the work of George Benson, Al Jarreau, and Bobby McFerrin.

Robert Johnson

founder of television network BET (Black Entertainment Television) and one of the greatest blues performers of all time.

Be able to label the parts of a drum set-Chapter 2: hi-hat, ride cymbal, crash cymbal, bass drum, snare, toms etc

look it up

The Original Dixieland Jazz Band

made the first recordings. This was a collection of white New Orleans musicians who organized a band in Chicago during 1916 and played in New York in 1917. They used cornet, clarinet, trombone, piano, and drums. Under the leadership of cornetist Nick LaRocca

Scott Joplin

most important ragtime composer (piano)

Describe what a drummer does - Chapter 2:

not just a timekeeper, acts as a colorist, kicks and prods the soloist, decorates group sound, underscores the style. Also keep in mind that a drummer's playing can control (1) the loudness level, (2) sound texture, and (3) mood of a combo's performance, much as a conductor does with a symphony orchestra.

spontaneous

not written down or rehearsed beforehand. leaves room for originality.

Earl Hines

one of the first modern jazz pianist. known for his "trumpet" style approach

collective improvisation

simultaneous improvisation by all members of a group together

Bill Beiderbecke

the most influential trumpeter of the 1920s, aside from Louis Armstrong. he was usually cool and played in a more subdued manner. put solos together quite intelligently. But, unlike Armstrong, he played their rhythms with considerable restraint.

Groove

the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or sense of "swing". Tp find pleasure in the music.

Improvisation

to compose and perform or deliver without previous preparation. aka "ad lib" or "jam". you can tell if something is improvised due to its organization rather than written or memorized parts.

high hat

two cymbals that strike together by means of a foot pedal

Fats Waller

well known for three different talents: song writing, piano playing, and entertaining. "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Honeysuckle Rose," and "Jitterbug Waltz" are the best known. Waller was most important to jazz as an improvising pianist