Home 
Music Jazz/Blues The standards that shaped Jazz
Music Jazz/Blues The standards that shaped Jazz
| The standards that shaped Jazz |
| Written by urbanlife.se |
|
Urbanlife.se hopes to help you find your way into Jazz and introduce it to a wider audience. One of the most common terms you’ll hear in jazz is ‘Standards’. But what is a ‘Jazz Standard?  We recommened listening to ‘Jazz standards’ on the urbanlife ipod while reading this article
Setting the StandardThere are melodies – to be precise, compositions in Jazz that still continue to hold their esteem in today’s pop-trodden world. These are the melodies that are used commonly to form the basis of every arrangement or improvisation in jazz. In one word, we call them the standards – a term often used loosely to refer any jazz composition. However, the true definition has been found to vary widely and therefore, music scholars based a final definition on certain points on which they agreed, stating a jazz standard as a composition in jazz with a continuing esteem and still used in musical repertoires. What makes a Standard?The term jazz standard is; however, used mostly to imply a composition in jazz that has been given the status of an evergreen composition that tests the musical competence of artistes through their own playing styles. That makes a particular jazz standard mostly not an original composition by the performing jazz musician; on the contrary, the standards are compositions of older musicians that were later given the status by using them as the foundations for jazz arrangements, for re-harmonization or by improvising on the musical work. Most of them have long histories with bases on old, popular tunes and sometimes, even a re-harmonized version of an original song has been found to surface as a standard. Standards from the ErasThe Dixieland era placed Basin Street Blues on the altars of immortality and standards like When the Saints Go Marching In (Louis Armstrong) and I Got Rhythm (George Gershwin) are popular even with people who are not that jazz. Blame it on the chord progressions that made the foundations for newer jazz tunes that surfaced in the subsequent decades or just on sheer madness, but the influences tapped into anything that lay between mainstream jazz and jazz sub-genres. Following is a list of the most popular standards from the different eras: • Swing band standards i. It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). ii. *Take the A Train. • Bebop standards i. Now's The Time. ii. *Well You Needn't • Bossa Nova i. *Blue Bossa ii. *Garota de Ipanema / The Girl from Ipanema iii. *One Note Samba / Samba de Uma Nota Só) • Modal and Post-bop i. Impressions ii. *So What iii. All Blues iv. Footprints • Latin/Funk i. Little Sunflower (below: Freddie Hubbard/Al Jarreau) ii. The Chicken These are all great songs that you should know, even if you never put them on your ipod. *= on the urbanlife ipod 
|