Jazz Education Research Articles

Putting It Together: Integrating Jazz Education in the Elementary General Music Classroom

As many children as possible should be exposed to jazz. Nearly all public school students have music education in the elementary grades. Therefore, elementary general music classes would seem to be the most likely place for all students to be exposed to jazz styles and to come to understand the genre. However, as a teacher of elementary general you already face a daunting task: Music for every child, and every child for music, regardless of time, resources, ability, or training. How can you feasibly be expected to do one more thing? Anything added to the curriculum is done so at the expense of something else. What can you get rid of from the curricular shelf to make space for jazz? Can you really justify not emphasizing singing mastery, or reading skills, or playing recordings, or providing instrument experience, or listening to time-tested works? How can you give students a

Swing Ratios and Ensemble Timing in Jazz Performance: Evidence for a Common Rhythmic Pattern

The timing in jazz ensemble performances was investigated in order to approach the question of what makes the music "swing." One well-known aspect of swing is that consecutive eighth notes are performed as long-short patterns. The exact duration ratio (the swing ratio) of the long-short pattern has been largely unknown. In this study, the swing ratio produced by drummers on the ride cymbal was measured. Three well-known jazz recordings and a play-along record were used. A substantial and gradual variation of the drummers' swing ratio with respect to tempo was observed. At slow tempi, the swing ratio was as high as 3.5:1, whereas at fast tempi it reached 1:1. The often-mentioned "triple-feel," that is, a ratio of 2:1, was present only at a certain tempo. The absolute duration of the short note in the long-short pattern was constant at about 100 ms for medium to fast tempi, suggesting a practical limit on tone duration that may be due to perceptual factors. Another aspect of swing is the soloist's timing in relation to the accompaniment. For example, a soloist can be characterized as playing "behind the beat." In the second part, the swing ratio of the soloist and its relation to the cymbal accompaniment was measured from the same recordings. In slow tempi, the soloists were mostly playing their downbeats after the cymbal but were synchronized with the cymbal at the off-beats. This implied that the swing ratio of the soloist was considerably smaller than the cymbal accompaniment in slow tempi. It may give an impression of "playing behind" but at the same time keep the synchrony with the accompaniment at the off-beat positions. Finally, the possibilities of using computer tools in jazz pedagogy are discussed.

Problems in definitions of composition and improvisation in jazz and jazz education

Problems in definitions of composition and improvisation in jazz and jazz education

Sound Exposure Levels Experienced by a College Jazz Band Ensemble: Comparison with OSHA Risk Criteria

Jazz education plays a prominent role in the music education of students in secondary and postsecondary schools. Although there is some research relative to health risks posed to professional musicians, little information is available as it relates to young musicians at the collegiate and secondary levels. The primary purpose of this study was to assess the risk of music-induced hearing loss to members of a college jazz band using the currently defined damage risk criteria of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) (1983). Dosimeter measurements were made over a 3-day period for five different positions within a University of North Texas jazz ensemble. Measurements obtained from each musician and each position were then compared with current OSHA standards. Findings indicated that when equivalent measures were derived for three hours of exposure, allowable exposure limits were exceeded for ten of the 15 measures obtained. The lead musicians within the ensemble appeared to be at the highest risk for hearing loss. The findings lend further support for the inclusion of musicians in an occupational noise standard.

Jazz Analysis as Cultural lmperative (and other urban myths): a Critical Overview of Jazz Analysis and its Relationship to Pedagogy

Little critical attention has traditionally been paid to jazz analysis, a relatively recent addition to the larger discipline of jazz musicology. In a similar evolutionary development to its Western Art music counterpart, jazz analysis has so far succeeded in establishing a unique identity apart from other related musicological fields such as jazz history, criticism and, most significantly, jazz pedagogy. While many of its methodologies have greatly assisted in clarifying the fundamental and often hidden structures underpinning improvisation, they have, however, often demonstrated scant regard for the performance or perceptual experience of jazz. That these same monolithic models have provided the basis for popular jazz pedagogic methods poses a further problem for a tradition which has evolved with little recourse to such theoretical models. It is the purpose of this article to provide a critical overview of jazz analysis, its major methodologies, its often uneasy relationship with performance pedagogy and theoretical issues concerned with representing and analysing jazz.

"Dizzy Atmosphere": The Challenge of Bebop

The development of bebop in the 1940s is crucial to understanding jazz as we know it. A product of jam sessions, big bands, small combos, and countless hours of woodshedding, the musical language of bebop included rapid tempos, dissonant chords and melodic lines, tritone and other chordal substitutions, extensive chromaticism, offbeat piano accompaniment (comping), walking bass lines, polyrhythmic drumming, and, perhaps most important, a focus on extended, improvised soloing on the front-line instruments. Swing-era heavyweights such as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Art Tatum, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Blanton, and Walter Page had previously explored aspects of this language in the 1930s, but they came together in spectacular fashion in the work of Charlie Parker, John Birks Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk, to name a handful of bebop's best-known practitioners.' Bebop continues to be a core element of the language of jazz. It informs the work of most contemporary players, and many stylistic and technical innovations created in the 1940s remain integral parts of jazz education. Bebop marked the ascendance of the small combo as the basic performing unit of jazz (which remains the case today) and its production and reception transformed the meanings associated with jazz and its place in American culture. Coming to prominence at the end of World War II, amid rising African-American political demands and increasingly visible American youth cultures, bebop garnered new capital for jazz as a music that spoke to observers of social and

Creative Jazz Education by Richard Michael and Scott Stroman. London: Stainer and Bell, 1990. £12.55, 118 pp + cassette.

Creative Jazz Education by Richard Michael and Scott Stroman. London: Stainer and Bell, 1990. £12.55, 118 pp + cassette.

New Styles, New Technologies, New Possibilities in Jazz

Twentieth-century society and technology shape the needs of our students. How can we best meet those needs? John Kuzmich, Jr., director of bands at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, and editor of the Jazz Educators Journal, suggests that jazz education may supply the answer.

Jazz Education as Aesthetic Education

Jazz Education as Aesthetic Education

Jazz Education in Canada Origins and Development

Jazz Education in Canada Origins and Development

Jazz Education: Improvisation and Creativity

Jazz Education: Improvisation and Creativity

Part I: Jazz education's struggle for acceptance

Part I: Jazz education's struggle for acceptance

Marathon Man of Jazz Education

Marathon Man of Jazz Education

Music Education and Copyright Law

This article is the last in a series on the legal protection of music materials that cites actual court cases as examples. The author, Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, is an attorney and legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators.

Music Education and Copyright Law

Music teachers are constantly faced with the problem of interpreting the Federal copyright law, related legislation, and court decisions that protect composers, musicians, publishers, and their music. Many young people as well, who are interested in careers in music, find there is little specific information available on the legal hazards they may encounter. As an aid to understanding this complex subject, the Music Educators Journal is beginning, with this issue, a series of articles on the legal protection of music materials that will cite actual court cases as examples. The author of the series is Lee Eliot Berk, an attorney and Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. He is legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators and author of Legal Protection for the Creative Musician (Boston: Berklee Press, 1970).

Music Education and Copyright Law

This article is the fifth in a series on the legal protection of music materials that cites actual court cases as examples. The author, Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, is an attorney and Legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators.

Music Education and Copyright Law

This article is the fourth in a series on the legal protection of music materials that cites actual court cases as examples. The author, Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, is an attorney and legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators.

Music Education and Copyright Law

This article is the third in a series on the legal protection of music materials that cites actual court cases as examples. The author, Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, is an attorney and legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators.

Music Education and Copyright Law

This article is the second in a series on the legal protection of music materials that cites actual court cases as examples. The author, Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, is an attorney and legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators.

Music Education and Copyright Law

Music teachers are constantly faced with the problem of interpreting the Federal copyright law, related legislation, and court decisions that protect composers, musicians, publishers, and their music. Many young people as well, who are interested in careers in music, find there is little specific information available on the legal hazards they may encounter. As an aid to understanding this complex subject, the Music Educators Journal is beginning, with this issue, a series of articles on the legal protection of music materials that will cite actual court cases as examples. The author of the series is Lee Eliot Berk, an attorney and Vice-President of the Berklee College of Music, Boston, Massachusetts. He is legal advisor to the National Association of Jazz Educators and author of Legal Protection for the Creative Musician ( Boston: Berklee Press, 1970).