Chapter: Fundamentals

This is a preview of the educational program A Jazz Improvisation Almanac which is under development for the Outside Shore Music Online School. Feel free to browse this preview and learn what you can from it. For a more completed product, though, check out the original freely browsable jazz textbook, A Jazz Improvisation Primer.

Music is traditionally described in terms of the four primary elements of melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. Melody refers to the sound of notes as they are heard one after another, or horizontally. Harmony refers to the sound of notes as they are heard simultaneously, or vertically. Rhythm refers to the timing of the notes. Timbre refers to the sounds of the instruments used to produce the notes.

All music is made of the same primary elements, but different styles of music tend to use these elements in different ways. This is what characterizes the styles as being distinct and identifiable, even though the boundaries may be fuzzy and there may considerable variation within a given style. In this chapter, I describe the style of jazz in terms of how it uses the primary elements of music.

In addition, I discuss the role of expression in jazz. This includes attributes such as dynamics, articulation, and various extended techniques and effects. These traits have to do with how an individual musician chooses to interpret a given musical phrase. Jazz - more so than almost any other style of music - encourages individual self-expression, but there are some common approaches shared by most jazz musicians, and this is part of the characterization of jazz.

Copyright 2000 Outside Shore Music
Authored by Marc Sabatella

Chapter: Fundamentals