Glossary
The words jazz people use, in plain language. No music degree required.
- ballad
- A slow, lyrical tune, usually about love.
- bebop
- A fast, harmonically complex style from the mid-1940s, built for listening rather than dancing. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie led it.
- big band
- A large jazz ensemble, usually 12 to 20 players, central to the swing era.
- bossa nova
- A gentle Brazilian style blended with jazz, popular in the early 1960s.
- chord changes
- The sequence of chords a tune moves through, which a soloist navigates.
- cool jazz
- A relaxed, lighter-toned style from around 1950, often softly arranged.
- free jazz
- A late-1950s break from fixed chords and forms toward open improvisation. Ornette Coleman led it.
- hard bop
- A bluesy, gospel-tinged extension of bebop from the mid-1950s – earthier and groovier.
- improvisation
- Making the music up in the moment – the core of jazz.
- modal
- Improvising on scales (modes) instead of fast-moving chords, which opens up room to roam. ‘Kind of Blue’ is the famous example.
- rhythm section
- The piano, bass, and drums (sometimes guitar) that lay down the beat and harmony under the soloists.
- riff
- A short, catchy musical phrase, repeated.
- scat
- Wordless, improvised singing using nonsense syllables, as if the voice were a horn.
- standard
- A widely known song that jazz musicians return to and reinterpret.
- swing
- The buoyant, danceable big-band style that ruled the 1930s; also the rhythmic feel that makes jazz propulsive.
- tone
- A player’s personal sound on the instrument.