Year 10 - Music
Soloing and jazz beyond the big band
Blues and jazz
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
Pupils explore blues and jazz, developing understanding of key features including melody, harmony, structure and improvisation. They analyse and perform stylistic elements such as the 12-bar blues, swing rhythm and walking bass.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to understand some typical features of small-ensemble jazz, and understand how jazz solos work.
Key Notes
- There are a wide variety of common jazz ensembles, including trios, quartets and others.
- Jazz has evolved since the 'golden age' and now is a diverse style encompassing many different influences.
- Jazz solos are virtuosic and are often technically complex.
- Soloists often build signature licks into their solos and singers sometimes take improvised scat solos.
- Solos usually take place over the chords from the head, and sometimes feature breaks.
Vocabulary To Learn
- head: a chorus that repeats, and often starts and finishes a song. Performers improvise over the accompaniment in between
- break: when the accompaniment briefly stops and the soloist plays a short phrase alone
- lick: a short melodic idea that soloists add into their solos
- scat: a style of singing that uses made up 'nonsense' words, and often imitates instruments
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Improvised solos are always made up entirely on the spot.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain the lesson in two key points.
There are a wide variety of common jazz ensembles, including trios, quartets and others. Jazz has evolved since the 'golden age' and now is a diverse style encompassing many different influences.
2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'head'
a chorus that repeats, and often starts and finishes a song. Performers improvise over the accompaniment in between.
3. Correct this common mistake.
Mistake: Improvised solos are always made up entirely on the spot. Correction: While improvised solos are mostly made up on the spot, musicians often build in their own signature licks or melodic ideas that are borrowed from other music. This means that solos are often a mix of new ideas, licks and melodies from elsewhere.
More Lessons In This Unit
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