Jazz techniques

Jazz is a popular style of music that emerged around the late 1800s in New Orleans, a city of great ethnic diversity and unique musical styles. Jazz music, throughout history, had the capability to bridge racial difference by bringing people of different backgrounds together to share in the common interests of listening to jazz. Many of the early most prominent jazz musicians, like Lester Young, were able to bring their own unique styles and improvisations to the development of jazz, to help…

events. The only way to explain these changes is to start at the beginning. These changes started as early as, or even earlier than the 1920’s. That is where we will begin all the way until today’s music. In the 1920s music was dominated by blues and jazz. The blues primarily came from African American slaves mostly in the south. A lot of the songs would portray the troubles of prejudice and racism that African Americans endured during these times. One singer from the 1920’s that explain the…

such an amazing and revolutionary impact on music history as well as American history. Over the past 200 years, the saxophone hasn’t taken on the role in the orchestra but rather found a much bigger home in marching bands as well as jazz big bands. What would jazz be if there were no saxophones? The world will never have to wonder about what might have never happened if the saxophone hadn’t been born. The development of the saxophone has had such a profound impact of music over the past 200…

“What is American Music?” some may suggest jazz, others may mention blues, and some individuals may suggest the marches of John Philip Sousa. However, one composer’s name is the true answer to such a question; through his synthesis of jazz, blues, and other musical styles of his time Aaron Copland’s compositions embody the quintessential American sound. To begin, one must consider the musical state of America during the early years of Copland’s…

the cello producing the sound. One of the most common uses for the cello is at an orchestra or quartet. The trumpet is part of the brass family and consists of valves, mouthpiece, lead pipe, tuning slide, and bell. Playing the trumpet requires a technique called “fingering”, which is a term for the fingers you need and valves to press down on, to acquire a music note. Sound is created when one perks their…

pianist/composer Angelica Sanchez brought a nonet to play at the Greenwich House in West Village, as part of their program dedicated to contemporary jazz and entitled Sound It Out. As explained to the audience, Ms. Sanchez is going to record soon with this group of relentless explorers/improvisers who are strictly connected to the modern-creative jazz scene. Its members are Chris Speed on tenor saxophone, Michael Attias on alto saxophone; Thomas Heberer on trumpet, Kirk Knuffke on cornet, Ben…

consists of drums, more specifically tama talking drums, Bougarabou drums, water drums and ngoma drums. However, it also consists of instruments like string instruments and flutes. African music has influenced American music greatly through blues and jazz music. Due to the influence of western culture, traditional African music and dance has lessened in…

The credit for this goes to George Beauchamp, a musician, and Adolph Rickenbacker, an electrical engineer, who are rightfully considered to be the people who created the first commercially viable modern amplifiable electric guitar. Others (mostly jazz musicians) had attempted this before them, such as using carbon button microphones and many other makeshift contraptions that were attached to the bridge of the guitar, but Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were the first to actually achieve the modern…

Big Band period of the 1930's, jazz, or swing, had turned out to be well known and fused the African components of syncopation and riffs. Riffs, rhythms, and syncopations are only a couple of attributes of African American impact on basically all music, and jazz music, specifically, took this impact to an alternate level. What changed was that already, in the mid-nineteenth century, jazz was basically syncopated music yet was more as per walking and piano music. Jazz is very improvisational,…

early years. Reich’s passion for music continued to grow. He eventually attended Julliard, where he began listening to one of the greatest influences on his music—John Coltrane. Although Reich soon realized that he would not become a jazz musician, he did not abandon jazz music all together; the drums used in his later works were profoundly affected by this period in his life. Reich’s career as a composer was enhanced by the fact that it took place during a time of…