Elements of Jazz
David Scoggin
The elements of jazz are based on the elements of music. They are:
• Syncopation
• Swing Rhythm
• Improvisation
• Blues
• Advanced Harmony
The first two elements, syncopation and swing, are both rhythmic elements
whose origins are largely from Africa. Improvisation was done by Bach (16851750) as well as many other times and places. The blues was created by AfricanAmericans in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The
advanced harmonic systems we use first evolved in Europe, from the Middle
Ages through the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and
Impressionistic eras.
Syncopation
In Western music, beats and other rhythmic units are traditionally designated
strong or weak. If there are four beats in a bar, beats 1 & 3 are strong (beat 1 is a
little stronger than beat 3), and beats 2 & 4 are weak. If you are considering 1/8
notes (half beats), the first 1/8 note, and all odd 1/8 notes are strong and all even
1/8 notes are weak. The same is true for all rhythmic units that are divisible by
two: the odd units are strong and the even units are weak.
Syncopation is playing or accenting notes on the weak beats or other weak
rhythmic units.
Syncopation can also be described as playing notes in unexpected places
(times). All instrumental parts in jazz contain syncopated rhythms. Syncopated
rhythms are not all on “off beats”, or “up beats” or “weak beats”. They are a
combination of notes on strong beats and weak beats. Oftentimes a note,
chord, or drum hit is anticipated, that is, played an eighth note (half a beat)
earlier than the non-syncopated, “normal”, European, square way of playing.
Syncopation makes your body feel good. It makes you want to tap your foot or
dance. When the music gets to a syncopated moment, your body is thrown off
balance for a moment by the unexpectedness of it, and when you catch your
balance a moment later, it feels good. Tension and release.
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Almost all American music, and all music that comes from the blues, is
syncopated. This includes ragtime, jazz, Rhythm & Blues, Rock, Funk, Hip-Hop,
Gospel, Latin American music, and almost all pop music.
At one time in our history, syncopation was derided as “ragged time”, thus the
term ragtime. When early jazzers would embellish written melodies with
syncopated rhythms, they would call it “ragging the melody”.
Swing
There are at least three definitions of swing that pertain to Jazz.
1) The Swing Era, or Big Band era, from the early 1930s to the end of World
War II in 1945.
2) ‘Swing’ as a verb synonym for grooving hard, or playing with good-feeling,
rhythmic intensity. People might say, “Man, they were really swinging
hard last night!”
3) The third definition is what musicians generally mean when they talk about
swing. To a musician, Swing is a way of delaying the attack time of every
other note. One must swing with respect to a particular rhythmic unit, and
that rhythmic unit in Jazz is almost always the 8th note. Jazz that swings
has uneven 8th notes. “Swing” has a kind of bouncy, loping “feel”. (In hiphop/rap, if the song is swung, it is usually the 16th note).
A series of 8th notes in a bar is counted | 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & |
It is the “ands”, or upbeats, that are delayed in order to turn straight 8th notes
into swing 8th notes.
The question then becomes, how much do we delay the upbeats? (These days,
the amount that the upbeats are delayed is sometimes called “the swing level”,
especially in computer music programs.)
This is not an easy question to answer. The nominal swing level to most people
is “a triplet feel”. That is, instead of putting the upbeat halfway between beats as
in straight 8th notes, you place the upbeat 2/3 of the way between beats.
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But in practice it is much more complex than that. For one thing, melodists
generally play straighter 8th notes than accompanists do. To swing melodies
with a triplet feel is considered corny in Jazz. We called it “the Lawrence Welk
swing level” when I worked at Coda Music Software, where we developed swing
features in the programs Finale and MusicProse.
Furthermore, swing level is actually constantly changing for a master jazz soloist.
Things that can influence and change the swing level for ay instrumental role
include: the tempo (8th notes tend to straighten out somewhat on up-tempo
tunes), the players style, the instrument, the role instrument is playing, the era of
jazz, and the musical moment. Especially for melodists, varying swing level and
time in general is a very important tool for music expression.
Latin jazz (Afro-Cuban, Afro-Caribbean) and Brazilian jazz usually do not swing,
they use straight 8th notes. But they do groove hard.
“Girl from Ipanema” – Bossa nova versus swing, piano
Clap straight 8th notes, 8th-note triplets, and triplet-feel swing 8th notes.
“Easy Street” – changing swing level, piano.
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Improvisation
Everyone in a jazz band, playing a jazz tune, is improvising to some extent; they
have some freedom to play what they choose. Everyone also has certain
responsibilities; instrumental roles that must be fulfilled.
The “featured” improvisations in jazz tunes are the solos, or improvised melodies,
played by soloists one at a time, in succession, backed up by the rhythm section.
In a typical jazz tune by a typical jazz quintet (sax, trumpet, piano, bass, drums),
the “form” would go as follows:
• Trumpet and sax play the original written melody (the Head) of the song
while the rhythm section accompanies them.
• After once through the song, the saxophone solos, improvising over the
same chord progression used under the Head, backed up by the rhythm
section. After as many times through the chord progression as the
saxophonist wants, he passes the solo on to the trumpet.
• Trumpet solos, improvising over the same chord progression used under
the Head, backed up by the rhythm section. After as many times through
the chord progression as the saxophonist wants, he passes the solo on to
the pianist.
• The pianist solos, backed up by his left hand and bass and drums.
• The bass might solo, backed up by piano and drums.
• The drums might solo.
• Trumpet and sax play the Head (written melody) again while the rhythm
section accompanies them.
There are two things that everyone is following at all times.
1) The Chord Progression (of the song being played)
2) The Groove (or beat)
As each player gets his turn to solo, everyone follows the same chord
progression. When they get to the end, they start over at the top of the chord
progression, but keep improvising new melodies.
The bass player is following the chord progression and is responsible for playing
the root (bottom note) of each chord on the beat when the chord changes. The
rest of his notes are improvised.
The chord player, or comper, (usually piano or guitar) is following the chord
progression, but is improvising extensions to the chords (9, 11, 13), and
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alterations to the chords (b9, #11, +5, …) and making chord substitutions, as
well as improvising rhythms to play the chords with (comping).
The soloist is following the chord progression, which is dictating to her possible
scale choices with which to use as her current set of available notes to create
melodies. As she goes through the chord progression of the current song, some
chords will imply key changes and require her to make new scale choices.
The drummer is not necessarily following the chord progression. He is following
the beat, as is everyone else. For this reason drummers are sometimes said to
be ”People who like to hang around with musicians”. ☺
Two of the drummer’s limbs, an arm and a foot, are dedicated to keeping the
groove, on the high hat and ride cymbal. On the ride cymbal there is plenty of
room to improvise even while keeping the groove. In modern jazz, the
drummer’s other two limbs are free to improvise embellishments, fills, drop
bombs, play polyrhythms, respond to the soloist’s ideas, and feed the soloist
fuel for new melodic ideas.
Blues Roots
There is a song by Muddy Waters called “The Blues had a Baby and They
Named it Rock ’n’ Roll”. That is very true! But the blues had other babies as
well, and they named them jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, hip-hop, and
more.
Blues was one of the original prime ingredients in jazz; perhaps the prime
ingredient (blues, ragtime, brass bands, afro-Cuban…folk, vaudeville,
minstrels…)
Like the word “swing”, the word blues has a number of valid definitions:
1) A family of styles of music – Chicago blues, Rural blues, Jump Blues,
Texas blues, Boogie Woogie, Classic blues, Hokem blues, Blues-Rock…
2) A sad feeling conveyed through music.
3) An AAB lyric form.
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4) A 12-bar chord progression, the “12-bar blues”, with many variations,
that has been the number one vehicle for jazz improvisation for over 100
years, from the very beginning until the present. Many well-known classic
rock ’n’ roll tunes are 12 bar blues, including: “Kansas City”, “Jail House
Rock”, “Lucille”, “Hound Dog”, “Route 66”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, as are
many songs by 1960s rock bands such as Cream, The Rolling Stones,
The Yardbirds, as well as 1980s pop tunes “Kiss” by Prince and “Gimme
One Reason” by Tracy Chapman.
5) A system of harmony (blues-based) that breaks the rules of diatonic
harmony, in that all the chords are most typically dominant sevenths,
and major and minor thirds are allowed at the same time. In diatonic
harmony, only the V chord has a flat 7 (dominant 7th).
6) A scale called the ”Blues scale”. It could now just as easily be called
“the rock scale”. The intervals are 1 – b3 – 4 – b5 – 5 – b7 – 1. Leaving
out the b5 gives you the minor pentatonic scale. Pentatonics scales are
the oldest scales in the world (how do we know this?).
7) Blues notes: b3, b5, b7. Some of these notes may be bent on guitar or
horns, or ”crushed” on piano, so that a flat 3 might be anywhere between
an actual flat 3 and a natural (major) 3rd. The flat 3rd is used in blues in
melodies and riffs, even when there is a Major 3rd in the chord. In this
way, the blues violates the rules of diatonic harmony. It is both major and
minor at the same time.
Some people theorize that this came about because the thirds used in
pentatonic scales on African instruments were tuned somewhere between our
minor third and major third. Our tuning systems and harmonic systems are
approximately based on the physics of nature, but they have to be tweaked a
little to be self-consistent in all keys. (I love talking about this if anyone feels
like asking more).
8) Blues licks: A huge library of melodic fragments, bass lines, fills, chord
devices and more that is held in the public consciousness and used in
almost all American music: blues, rock, jazz, R&B, pop, hip-hop, soul,
funk, country… Licks are little melodic fragments that are “canned”; that is,
musicians have heard and played them before and can pull them out in
lieu of ”true improvisation”, and string them together to make a solo. Or,
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as is more fitting in jazz, musicians use licks to join together other, more
original melodic fragments.
Play “Blues Licks” on piano
Taj Mahal – “Hard Way” – blues, straight vs. swing
At this stage of jazz history we cannot say that blues is an absolute
indispensable ingredient in all jazz, because there are styles like Latin jazz that
do not come from the blues, and instances of “European sounding” jazz (such as
the ECM record label) that no longer contains elements of the blues.
Advanced harmony
The rich harmony that evolved in jazz is only equaled in sophistication and
complexity by late 19th-century and 20th century classical music. From the
1910s through the 1960s, harmonic innovations were a huge part of jazz’s
growth as a fine art. In the late ‘60s and 1970s, jazz-fusion went in another
direction, incorporating Rock and funk rhythms and electronic instruments. But
underground, and continuing to this day, harmony has continued to develop and
evolve in jazz.
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Many jazz tunes and other material used as Jazz tunes already have fairly
sophisticated harmony, compared to pop, Rock, blues, soul, etc. of today. Many
standards come with the harmony of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and the Great
American songbook. Composers like Richard Rogers, Cole Porter, and George
Gershwin used harmony that came largely from romantic European composers
such as Chopin and Beethoven. This was very similar to that of harmony used in
ragtime music, starting in the 1890s. Both Gershwin and Duke Ellington, as well
as many later jazz musicians such as Bill Evans and Herbie Hancock, got much
of their modern harmony from the European Impressionists Debussy and Ravel.
Pianists and guitarists take these already sophisticated harmonic vehicles for
jazz improvisation, and add extensions to the chords, alterations, substitutions,
and sometimes complete re-harmonizations.
Soloists who do not play chords, such as saxophones and brass, still follow the
chord progression all the time. They also use implied chord extensions,
alterations, substitutions, and re-harmonizations through their use of particular
scales, to make melodies, that go with these enhanced chords. Much of this
must be done by ear, on the fly, in collective improvisation.
Piano examples:
“Twinkle Twinkle”
“My Romance” – Bill Evans 1960s harmony, chord substitutions
“Modal Harmony – Quartal Harmony” - Dorian – McCoy Tyner –
Parallelism vs. Diatonic chords – Getting “outside” (the harmony)
Functional Harmony is a process where different kinds of chords have different
functions; namely, mystery, tension, and release. Diatonic chord
progressions go through this process, finally ending on a release. I called bluesbased harmony “quasi-functional”, but it does break the rules of diatonic
harmony. Modal jazz harmony is not functional. It does not work its way to a
tension chord (V7) and then release. Because of that, masters of modal jazz
have found other ways to create tension by playing “outside” the harmony.
In contemporary jazz, musicians may incorporate aspects of all three harmonic
systems, as well as some “free” playing, sometimes all within the same tune and
solo. Musicians like Charles Lloyd and John Zorn are incorporating scales and
harmony from Eastern Europe and the Middle East in contemporary jazz today.
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“Tales of Rumi” – Charles Lloyd – Piano and CD
“Autumn Leaves” – Keith Jarrett
Counterpoint with Advanced Jazz Harmony
Brad Mehldau – “Martha My Dear”
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