Teach Yourself Jazz - online guidebook

For the beginning player, with sheet music samples

Share page

Visit Us On FB

	16                                 JAZZ negro, in order permanently to 'keep him under'). So, as a substitute for form, the negro took a simple basic structure that was agreed on by all the singers or players taking part, and used this as a foundation on which to build up florid variations. Most blues were built up over a simple 12-bar harmonic structure of this type: Example I
	And following we see, in a very simplified diagram­matic form, the sort of tune that might be built up over this foundation (Example 2): Don't worry if at this stage you can't follow the notes or the chord symbols in these examples; for this part of it will be further explained in Chapter 9 which deals with jazz harmony. So we see the growth of jazz as a functional music —a music of living. It utters mainly the urgent call of hanging on to life. It speaks now and then in a