Jazz Education

Jazz theory, improvisation, instruments, listening guides

These are 10 easy jazz standards for beginners, listed in the order we suggest you learn them. Two blues tunes come first, “Bags’ Groove” and “Watermelon Man,” then … Read more

What You’ll Learn in This Guide The realistic timeline to sound like a jazz guitarist, not just a rock player using 7th chords Which skills from folk, rock, … Read more

What You’ll Learn in This Guide What jazz piano actually requires, and how it differs from classical or pop technique The essential scales and modes every jazz pianist … Read more

Acid jazz is dance music built from jazz, funk, soul and hip-hop. It came out of London’s club scene in the late 1980s, when DJs who played old … Read more

Jazz piano is a style of keyboard performance rooted in African American musical tradition, emerging from the ragtime and blues idioms of the early 1900s and evolving into … Read more

Jazz fusion, also called jazz-rock or simply fusion, is jazz improvisation and harmony played with the electric instruments and rhythms of rock, funk and R&B. It took shape … Read more

Cool jazz is a style of modern jazz that took shape in the late 1940s as a calmer alternative to and flourished through the 1950s. It is marked … Read more

Hard bop is the style of jazz that grew out of bebop in the mid-1950s: it kept bebop’s fast-moving chord changes, small groups and long improvised solos, and … Read more

Jazz guitar chords are seventh chords and their extensions (9ths, 11ths and 13ths), played as moveable shapes without open strings so that one fingering works in every key. … Read more

Jazz guitar is a style of guitar playing, and a family of instruments, central to jazz music from the 1920s to the present day, encompassing everything from the … Read more

Modal jazz is jazz in which the soloists improvise on a scale, or mode, that stays in place for eight, sixteen or more bars, instead of on a … Read more

Jazz piano chords are seventh chords rather than triads: where a pop pianist plays C major as C-E-G, a jazz pianist starts from Cmaj7 (C-E-G-B) and often adds … Read more