That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

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Part I: All That Jazz: A Tour of the Basics
Defining Jazz: The Swingin’ Thing
“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” — Duke Ellington wrote
that homage to jazz. Singer and bandleader Cab Calloway popularized it.
Critics and historians expend thousands of words attempting to define jazz,
but Cab covered most of it in just 11 words. After all the searching, only a
handful of elements exist that musicians and experts commonly accept as
defining characteristics of jazz.
Although listeners may not agree on which music and musicians qualify as
jazz, at a basic level, you can identify jazz by a few distinguishing traits:
swing and syncopation, improvisation, bent notes and modes, and distinctive
voices. Chapter 3 covers these in more detail.
Swing and syncopation
Swing is the rhythmic momentum that makes you want to dance or snap
your fingers to a good jazz tune. Part of what makes jazz swing is the use of
syncopation.
Syncopation is the technique of placing accents or emphasis in surprising
places. When jazz truly swings, the beat bombards you, even if the players
emphasize the beat by playing right with it some moments or just before or
after it at other times.
To get a better understanding of what I’m talking about, think of classical
music. Classical music is primarily written music — musicians rely on sheet
music which shows them phrasing, where the beats fall, and what notes to
play. Jazz, on the other hand, is felt. Sure, a lot of jazz standards (songs known
and played by many musicians) exist as sheet music, but usually only in an
outline form showing the basic changes (chord structure) of the song and its
melody. (I cover chords and melody in the section “Hearing harmony and
melody” later in this chapter.) The swing feel and syncopation can’t be captured
in musical notation, only in live jazz, where players either have the
rhythmic stuff, or they don’t.
To hear what syncopation sounds like, take a look at a common holiday song:
“Jingle Bells.” Sing the first line the usual way, just like you learned it:
“Jin-gle bells, jin-gle bells, jin-GLE all the way.”
The “GLE” on the third “jingle” gets special emphasis (at least that’s the way I
learned it).