Jazz and Blues

Ragtime and Boogie Woogie

Two jazz styles which are most commonly heard on the piano (although you will sometimes hear them played by ensembles)

Listen for the left-hand VAMPs and SYNCOPATED melodies in the Rags, and for the left-hand RIFFs and right-hand IMPROVISATION in the Boogie Woogie tracks. 





Blues

Blues started as Black American folk music, developing from spirituals and work songs.

Blues music is often in 4/4 time and is mostly patterned on a 12-bar blues chord structure and on a blues scale, in which some notes are flattened. Some Blues music uses a Walking Bass Line.

Reflecting its origins in slavery, blues music tends to have sad lyrics.

Early Blues music features acoustic instruments, but from the 1930s onwards, Blues musicians increasingly used electric instruments.




Dixieland and Swing

You can tell a Dixieland band from a Swing band by the fact that the former is smaller: a classic Dixieland lineup would be solo clarinet, solo trumpet, solo trombone plus a rhythm section of drumkit, double bass and piano (and/or banjo.) A Swing band features groups of brass and woodwind instruments, including saxophones, as well as that distinctive Swing rhythm on the cymbal/hi-hat.

Here are five Dixieland tracks and six Swing:




Jazz Funk

Jazzy harmonies, improvisation and a combination of jazz instruments and the sort of amplified  instruments you might expect to hear in rock and pop music...