Jazz

         Jazz is the most interesting and one of the most complex forms of music. There are so many different styles that only a few musicians are able to effectively sound good. Jazz takes many different forms and each kind is different from the other.  

Jazz is the persona of America. Just as America is the melting pot of different cultures, jazz brings together all different kinds of people and style and mixes them into one. Jazz wasn’t invented by one person but changed over time. In a way, jazz is alive; it grows, it dies, it changes, and it stays the same. No one person completely invented all of jazz, it had to change over time as different influential people added their ideas in the pot. Jazz was formed somewhere in the late 19th to early 20th century when African slaves, brought to America, intertwined their music with classical European music. The only aspect of slaves that their owners couldn’t stop was their music. Africans brought their style of folk song and it later evolved into what we know as jazz. In the 19th century, drumming wasn’t allowed in most slave quarters; this means that the African rhythms continued and were passed on through stomping, slapping, and other rudimentary forms of drumming. Throughout time, those rhythms were translated into instrumentation and thus jazz begun. 

New Orleans is the epicenter of an earthquake that is jazz. New Orleans was the only place that allowed drumming for all people; this allowed African beats to finally take hold of America. New Orleans was the place where the bright sounds of European instruments met the dark, soulful beats of African drums. The two mixed together is like sweet and spicy, fire and ice; two opposites that shouldn’t mix but are amazing together. New Orleans jazz brought a feeling of freedom, it made people feel alive. Every jazz musician in New Orleans put their heart and soul through their instruments. This style of jazz, this effect, could not be found anywhere else; New Orleans was at the top of a mountain and other cities were the poor villagers at the bottom trying to reach the top. Without one element or the other coming together, music today would sound differently. Rap or rock and roll may not ever have come into existence. 

The style of many different people created new forms of music; an example would be swing. Swing is thought to have originally started with Papa Jack Laine’s band in New Orleans. His band was said to have ‘ragged time.’ It might have been said that his music swung. Through this syncopation of the beats is one way that the style of music changed by the influence of a group. Through this syncopation, swing was created and changed the whole course of human history. 

Another style of jazz that was transformed in New Orleans was the Latin feel. The combination of Spanish music with jazz is what transformed the beat. People from the Caribbean and New Orleans mixed together. 

The evolution of jazz was not by one person, but by many groups that would interpret every piece differently. The reason jazz is so interesting and diverse is the fact that multiple people changed and affected the different styles. 

Interpretation: Part II

        Dynamics are usually the key to how the piece of music sounds as well as the overall effect of the piece. Dynamics are the changes in volume of each note. Without dynamics, a piece of music would sound monotonous and uninteresting. The lack of dynamics in a piece would be like listening to a teacher giving a lecture and not interacting or changing the pitch of their voice. Everyone uses dynamics in everyday life; without changing the inflection of your voice, the point of the discussion would not get across. By starting a phrase soft and building up to the peak of quality tone is more interesting than if the phrase was all soft or all loud. The inflection of every pitch grabs the attention of the listener but the musician has to know when the appropriate time to do that is. 

On some instruments, and all vocals, the next technique to add would be vibrato. Vibrato is a part of interpretation that can either sound good in a piece or it can ruin it. Vibrato is a rapid, slight variation in tone that gives the tone a fuller sound. Based on the time period in which a piece of music was written, as well as the composer it was written by, and where the composer was from, different kinds of vibrato are necessary. I play the saxophone and any piece that is French requires a constant feel of vibrato; whereas a modern piece would not necessarily require vibrato on every note. Knowing who, when, and where a piece was written changes the sound the composer intended. 

Most interpretation is solely knowing what style the piece is in, who wrote the piece, and when the piece was written. Without knowing these key facts, all music would sound the same and be ineffective to all the listeners. Interpretation separates the good musicians from the world’s finest. 

Interpretation: Part I

        There are many ways that a musician can make a masterpiece come to life. Changes in the music, such as dynamics, note and rest durations, tone, etc., take hold of the listener and can either softly caress them into deep sleep or make them notice the skill of the musician. The different styles  in which a musician attacks the piece is called interpretation. 

Interpretation takes many different forms. One way a musician can make a piece of music sound better is by changing the endings of every phrase. For example, a quarter note followed by a rest can be played differently based on what the musician wants it to sound like. If the musician cuts off the sound quickly, the effect would be different than if they cut off right on the next beat. In some styles of music, such as jazz, it is proper to cut off the notes a little shorter than if it was a classical piece. The endings of notes depend entirely on what kind of genre of music is being played. How a note ends is a simple, yet complex, part of interpretation that changes the whole overall effect of the piece. 

Another simple factor that changes the sound of the piece is where a musician starts and ends phrases. Music is divided into sections called phrases. Phrases usually separate different ideas, and they also tell musicians where a good spot to breathe is. An absolute way to kill the affect of a piece is to breathe in the middle of a long note. By breathing in the middle of a long note, the musician is basically taking any strong phrase and making it as ineffective as congress; it makes every breath, every dynamic useless. To end a phrase properly, musicians have to go through every note and decide where a good place would be to take in a breath and not disturb the effect of the piece. 

Rest Duration

       Musicians have to learn to interpret how a piece of music will sound before they play a single note. Part of this interpretation is by identifying rests and their duration. Without rests, music would sound long and uninteresting. Rests help to identify where the first melody ends and a new strain begins. Rests can also help to keep the tempo even. Good composers realize that rests are just as important as the most complicated run. 

For every note division, there is a rest division of equal value. To match a whole note there is a whole rest that takes up the whole measure. A whole rest looks like a box and it fills up half of a space between the staff lines and it is touching the top of the line. Half rests are the equivalent of a half note; it takes half (or two beats) of every measure. The half rest looks like a whole rest but it touches the bottom of the line in the space of a staff. A quarter rest matches up with a quarter note and takes up one beat in each measure. Quarter rests look like a squiggly line that is perpendicular to the staff lines. The next smallest rest value is an eighth rest. Eighth rests are the same length as an eight note; a half of a quarter note. Eighth rests look like a 7 except the top of the 7 is more curved and ends with a circle at the end of that 7. Rests keep going down the line and match up with every kind of note division there is. Lengths of notes each have opposite rest values, just like the opposite of addition is subtraction. This is important because without equal and opposite values, songs wouldn’t sound right because every piece of music would have to be continuous and lacking variety. It would also be difficult for musicians to catch their breath or get any breaks if there were no rests.

The whole point of rests is to make a piece more interesting. It also gives the musician and listener different views as to how each note is stopped and how each new melody begins. Without rests, music would be less complex as well as more physically and mentally exhausting. 

Used: http://www.circleoffrets.com/

Time Signature and Note Division

After the time signature is figured out, different looking notes signify the division and length of each note. The longest note duration is a whole note; a whole note looks like a bold O on one of the lines. In four-four, a whole note would be held for a total of four beats. Whole notes will usually only be found in four-four as most musicians see it as four beats and not any other value. Another note duration value is a half note. A half note is half of a whole note, hence the name. A half note looks like a whole note with a stem on it. In four-four, there would be two beats to every whole note. The only time a half note is one beat is in the time signature where a two is on the bottom; that is why knowing the time signature is important. One of the most common note lengths in music is a quarter note. A quarter note is half of a half note or a quarter of a whole note; again, musical terms are pretty self-explanatory. A quarter note looks like a half note, only the circle is filled in. In four-four, a quarter note is the beat and lasts for one beat. Going further into divisions, the eighth note is the next value: it is a half of a quarter note, a fourth of a half note, and an eighth of a whole note. An eighth note looks like two quarter notes connected by one solid line. In four-four, an eighth note gets a half of a beat which means there are two in one beat. The next division of a note is a sixteenth note; in four-four, there are four sixteenths in a beat. A sixteenth note is half of a eighth, a quarter of a quarter, an eighth of a half, and a sixteenth of a whole. Sixteenth notes look like four quarter notes connected by two black lines. The division of notes continues like this up to 64th notes. 

   

        

There are also more complex note divisions; notes can also be divided into thirds. These notes are called triplets. Triplets can be divided into quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes . A quarter note triplet doesn’t take three beats but two. This can be confusing as regularly three quarter notes take up three beats. Eighth note triplets take up one beat and three notes are played within that beat. A sixteenth note triplet also takes up one beat but it is usually broken into two groups in an eighth to have a better sense of time. Triplets can be more confusing to subdivide but they change the music to create a different sound of a melody. 

       

Divisions of notes are important in music because they give the listener something new and interesting to listen to. Different lengths of notes keep the audience sitting on the edge of their seats because the different divisions provide new insights into the composer's mind.

Used  http://www.musictheory.net/

Time Signature

Reading music is a skill that is more difficult than reading a book; reading music requires math. To the untrained eye, written music may look like a foreign language created by madmen, but every blotch and line signifies a different note, style, or subdivision of that song. Musicians are the best at multitasking. In one measure, a musician may be dividing a single beat into two, three, four, six…all the way up to 64 even lengths as well as playing that many separate pitches and keeping it all in time. There is a reason why there are so little successful musicians. 

Dividing a beat starts with knowing how many beats are in a measure; this is known by the time signature. The most common time signature is four-four.

        

The two numbers are written on top of each other and put on the right hand side of the key signature and clef. The number on top represents how many beats are in each measure and the number on bottom shows the note value of each beat. In four-four, there are four beats in a measure and the quarter note is one beat. Another common time signature is three-four; this means there are three beats in a measure and the quarter note is one beat. There are all different kinds of time signatures that communicate what the length of each note is. 

Major Vs. Minor

Music is a form of expression. One idea or phrase a musician creates may sound different to the creator and listener. Based on the amount of education an individual has had on a style of music may determine what kinds of music that listener likes. A person who has never played jazz, for example, would never understand fully what the difference between a bunch of notes and improvisation is. Music is never, and hopefully never will be, random notes thrown together, there is always an underlying structure. All music is based on chord changes. A chord, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is three or more musical tones sounded simultaneously. There are two different kinds of chords, major and minor chords. 

         All chords are based on a root, a major third, a perfect fifth, and sometimes a seventh. To find a major chord, first, you have to know what key to start in. The first major chord I will explain is using a C-scale (meaning no sharps or flats). The formula behind a major scale is w-w-h-w-w-w-h (w standing for whole step, h for half step). The root of a chord is always the key you are in. The root of a C-scale is C. To find the second note in the chord, starting from C, you have to move up four half steps. A half step is going from a white key to a black key or black to white key. The third in a C scale would be an E. To find the fifth, you start from the root again and go up seven half steps. The fifth in the C-scale is a G. With all these notes, a major triad is formed. This is usually the end of a C chord because the added seventh, in this case a B, will make the major chord sound incorrect which is why it is rarely used in major chords. 

           A minor chord is slightly different from a major chord. All the notes are the same except the third, it is now a minor third instead of a major third. Using the C-scale again, the minor third is found by moving up three half steps instead of four. When hearing a minor chord after a major chord, the minor third may sound strange but it always resolves itself within the chord changes. The interesting difference between a major and a minor chord is that, while there is only one type of major chord, three different variations of minor chords exist. The three different types of minor variations are, natural, harmonic, and melodic minors. The formula behind a natural minor scale is w-h-w-w-h-w-w. By using this formula, the natural minor scale is found and the chord is derived from it. The natural minor chord of C is: C-E flat-G. Once the natural minor is found, a harmonic minor is easy; you simply have to raise the seventh by a half step. Instead of a B flat in the minor scale of C, it would become a B. The last form of a minor scale is melodic minor. In a melodic minor, the sixth and seventh are raised by a half step; in the key of C minor, there would now be an A and B instead of A flat and B flat.

               All these different keys are used in music and can change the whole sound of a piece based on what the chord progression is. 

Used http://www.musictheory.net