The Book Of Jazz - online reference book

Its Nature, Instruments, Sources, Sounds, Development & Performers

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	212	ITS NATURE
	always in root position. Ex. 3a is a sample of the manner in which the plain B Flat chord can be enriched by the addition of the sixth (G), major seventh (A) and ninth (C); Ex. 3b shows how
	EXAMPLE 3A & 3B
	the B Flat 7th chord can be made fuller and more interesting by the use of the flatted fifth (E Natural), ninth (C) and thirteenth (G). All the other chords are subject to similar mutations. Jazz improvisation is based on notes that sound appropriate to the background of chords such as those in Ex. 3. Extensions and inversions of these chords do not basically affect the nature of the improvised solo, since their addition is voluntary and does not change the fundamental quality of the chord. The soloist, in addition to playing notes that fit into these chords and their ex­tensions, plays passing notes that link the solo line together to give the performance horizontal continuity. (The adjective "hori­zontal" or "linear" is applied to the flow of single notes in the solos, which if documented would be read horizontally across the manuscript; 'Vertical/* the term used in discussing written music as it is examined in an analysis of all the notes played by the instruments at a given point, is so employed because they may be read from top to bottom at a certain place on the score sheet of the orchestration.) For many years it was tacitly assumed that a binary time (any pulse in two beats or multiples of two) signature was indigenous and essential to all improvised jazz. Virtually all the music was in common (4/4) time; the only variations were in the multiples and divisions of four (Dixieland often had two main accents to the bar, boogie-woogie generally had eight). Only very recently have jazz musicians begun to accept the theory that jazz can be