Jazz

By Lois Benson

I use supplementary reading to teach intervals, chords, hand shapes, patterns, rhythms and touches. I often assign a solo to a student to do "on his own". When the student plays it for me, I know what his weak points are. Jazz is an important and distinctive American contribution to 20th-century music. From lyrical sophisticated sounds of blues to boogie and bouncy, happy beat of rags.

I believe every student's musical education should include experiences in a variety of popular stylings, including jazz as a serious and recurring phase of his studies. The student should be encouraged, too, to deviate from the written notes with his own improvisations if he desires, for spontaneity is an essential ingredient of the jazz idiom. I encourage the student to make his own introduction and ending to the pieces and delete and change parts that he doesn't care for by adding notes, changing harmony and rhythms.

Jazz and rock music are an important part of today's musical scene, yet they play only a small part in most piano students' formal training. The variety of teaching problems that can be solved in this idiom are: improved rhythmic ability, steadier tempo, and heightened listening.

The jazz idiom, a strictly American development is one of the really significant contributions of the 20th century to music. Although authorities are not in complete agreement, many believe this spontaneous movement had its origin in New Orleans in the honky-tonk amusement section of the city, centered around Basin Street. From there, it spread northward up the Mississippi Valley to Memphis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and eastward to New York. During the past fifty years American jazz in its popular form has captured the imagination of youth throughout the world, and it has enriched much of the serious music of our time with new rhythms and harmonies.

While the development of its counterpart in New York and other more cosmopolitan centers of the nation has attained much more sophistication and refinement, New Orleans jazz has remained simple and close to the source of its origin. At the turn of the century ragtime's syncopated rhythm took the country by storm. In fact Scott Joplin's piano rags were best sellers in his day. As blues and ragtime styles influenced each other, a dynamic swing style emerged which eventually became known as jazz. Championed in New Orleans by Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong the new sound soared in popularity. By the 1920's jazz had entered the mainstream of American popular music.

During the swing era of the 1930's and 40's people were dancing to the big band sounds of Glenn Miller and other band leaders. The cool sounds of bebop followed in the 1950's, a time when solo artists such as Miles Davis and Charlie Parker infused jazz with a new seriousness; ever since jazz has continued to grow and change. Today the influence of blues and jazz can be heard in almost all popular music.

Twentieth century jazz has something in common with 17th and 18th century baroque music; what is shown in the score is not nearly all of what is meant. In both, hearing the style is the best guide to playing the style.

Rhythm

Instead of reading a grouping of a dotted eighth note plus a sixteenth note or two eighths, a triplet figure of a quarter and eighth would be used for the swing style.

Many blues tunes use variations of a common chord progression known as the 12-bar blues. Students with an elementary harmony background can be taught the chord pattern easily and should learn to recognize it. The pattern is as follows:
I, I, I, I, IV, IV, I, I, V, IV, I, I.

Technic

A semi-detached wrist staccato is the basic style of attack where articulation is not indicated. Legato and true staccato passages are used where appropriate for variety.

Pedaling

Pedal will be needed for an occasional cantabile passage or for color at cadences or to connect the wide-spaced notes of some chords, but should be strictly limited where it would spoil the articulation of the right hand.

Rubato

Rubato means a flexible rhythm in the solo line above a fixed beat in the accompaniment--a technique common in jazz and appropriate to these arrangements.

Ornaments

Most of the ornaments (cue size notes) should precede the beat, except for crushed notes (written as a single grace note) or mordents which are played on the beat.

Dynamics

Dynamics have been left largely to the taste and understanding of the performer as they are so often implied in other elements of the musical design.

Students will love the challenge of playing in the jazz style. Jazz is fun to play! Students will be inspired and motivated by the syncopated rhythms in the colorful, rich harmonics of jazz--a style which has captured the imagination of performer and listener alike!

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