Overview
Welcome to OnMusic Jazz!
Although this course does not expect you to learn to read or play music, or require previous music experience, basic familiarity with music fundamentals and essential jazz concepts will most likely give you a good head start and enhance your learning experience.
With that in mind, this section presents a broad overview of basic music elements such as the keyboard, scales, pitch, rhythm, meter, and form, on which to some of essential features and the sounds of jazz, including improvisation and swing feeling. We will also cover the defining characteristics of blues music, how the unique sounds of blues originated, how these sounds were absorbed into jazz, and some of the differences between blues and jazz.
These lessons will be especially beneficial if you don’t have basic musical or jazz knowledge, but they can also be valuable even if you already have both. The goal is to offer you the information and tools that will let you become familiar.
Objectives
Upon completion of this lesson, you will be able to do the following:
- Distinguish sharp notes from flat notes
- Identify keys on a keyboard that are a half-step or whole step apart
- Define an octave
- Describe some basic scales
- Recognize on the musical staff the clef, time signature, notes, and measures
- Define beat, tempo, note, rhythm, and meter
- Distinguish among simple meters such as duple, triple, and quadruple
- Define pickup
- Define syncopation
The Pickup
Not all melodies begin on the downbeat — that is, on the first beat of the first measure. Often there is a note (or group of notes) leading to the downbeat — what we refer to as the pickupA note or group of notes preceding the first beat of the first measure.. (In fact, the triple meter example on the previous page, Oh My Darlin' Clementine ♫, began with a pickup on beat 3.)
The pickupA note or group of notes preceding the first beat of the first measure. is also known as the upbeat or anacrusis. In The Entertainer ♫, the notes preceding the first measure form the pickup. (Note that when we count measures, measure 1 is the first complete measure).
Anacrusis With
Anacrusis Without
Syncopation
Ordinarily, rhythms reinforce the meter. That is, prominent notes occur on the strong beats. SyncopationAn accent on a note somewhere unexpected, off the main beats. occurs when an accent falls on a note located on a weak beat, or between beats. In such cases, the musician plays "off the beat."
Listen again to The Entertainer ♫, which features syncopation throughout.
Syncopation
The ancient Greeks, Pythagoras chief among them, recognized and wrote about the many ways to divide the octave. For them, dividing the octave into parts was a matter of calculating mathematical ratios between certain notes.
