Jazz: basics and styles

In short: Jazz emerged in the early 20th century in African American communities in the southern United States, especially in New Orleans. Typical features are improvisation, a swinging rhythm and a free approach to melody and harmony.

In more detail: Its roots lie in the blues, ragtime, spirituals and brass band music, among others. From these beginnings many styles developed that still influence pop, rock and film music today.

In detail

• Improvisation: Musicians invent solos spontaneously over a fixed chord progression, responding to each other as they play.
• Swing: Quavers are often played unevenly, which creates a bouncy, forward-driving feel.
• Syncopation and blue notes: Accents between the beats and slightly “bent” notes shape the typical sound.
• Rhythm section: Piano or guitar, double bass and drums form the foundation over which horn players or singers take solos.
• Typical structure: Often the melody, or head, is played first, followed by solos over the same chord progression, and at the end the head returns.
• Standards: Many well-known tunes are reinterpreted again and again, often from a lead sheet with the melody and chord symbols.
• Early styles and the swing era: New Orleans jazz was followed in the 1930s by the swing of the big bands, for example around Duke Ellington; Louis Armstrong is regarded as a defining early soloist.
• Bebop and after: In the 1940s bebop brought fast tempos and complex harmonies, later followed by cool jazz, modal jazz, free jazz and fusion.
• Getting started: If you want to learn jazz, listen a lot, sing along with solos and practise scales and chords over typical progressions (musikgenres-ueberblick, akkorde-grundlagen, rhythmus-und-takt).