Music Today - Unit 1, part 2

Blue notes

Pitch adjustments; lowering the 3rd and 7th scale degrees.

Improvisation

spontaneous creation of a performer (made up as they go along)

Duke Ellington

Big band leader. Also considered a "serious composer."

Two pioneers of bebop

Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie

Consonance

Combining tones to create relaxation (sounds "right.")

Dave Brubeck

He led the most widely known of cool groups in the 1950s, his song "Take 5" was the best selling jazz single of all time.

Rodgers and Hammerstein

Songwriting team who wrote Oklahoma, South Pacific, and The Sound of Music.

Cool jazz

Style of jazz with warm, mellow sound. Narrower range, romantic, laid back.

Dissonance

The combination of tones that produces a quality of tension

Jazz

Unique form of African American music, a result of significant culture mix

Hot jazz

an early style of Dixieland jazz with collective improvisation, bright sound, high range, lots of rhythms (Louis Armstrong played it.)

Leonard Bernstein

composed music for West Side Story