Teach Yourself Jazz - online guidebook

For the beginning player, with sheet music samples

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CHAPTER TWO
WHAT IS JAZZ?
DEFINITIONS
If we want to explore any subject, it's common practice to get ourselves straight at the start by defining our terms.
In the case of jazz, this is a good thing to do; for there are so many confusing and conflicting views as to what is or isn't actually jazz.
Definitions of Jazz
I've heard people call it "jazz" when the pianist of the Palm Court Orchestra is giving his rendering of "Marigold". Others will shout them down and say, with no disrespect to "Marigold", that the Palm Court pianist is producing a light syncopated novelty which has about as much to do with jazz as Beet­hoven's Ninth Symphony.
Again, some people who can't stand jazz will write the whole of it off as "an ear-splitting din." To which jazz enthusiasts may reply that much true jazz is quiet and even contemplative in nature, and that the noisy, screaming 'big band' is not really jazz at all —it is "commercialised swing."
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