Glossary of Jazz Terms

Diatonic: The contrary of 'chromatic'. Said of melody or harmony using only the unaltered major (or sometimes minor) scale.

Dig: To appreciate a player's expression.

Diminished: Lowered by a half-step. See 'Alteration'.

Diminished triad: Triad composed of two stacked minor thirds, root, minor third, and diminished fifth.

Diminished seventh (º7): Chord composed of 4 notes, stacked in minor thirds. The symbol is a small raised circle. Since an additional minor third on top will be the octave of the bottom note, inversions of a º7 will have the same interval structure in other words, they will also be diminished 7th chords in their own right. The extensions of a º7 are a ninth (or whole step) above each chord tone. Effective modern voicing requires using at least one extension; plain º7 chords sound remarkably old-fashioned. If the chord tones and extensions are put together within an octave, the diminished scale results. Often called just 'diminished' with '7th' being implied.

Diminished Scale: A scale of 8 notes to the octave in alternating whole-steps and half-steps. There are just three different diminished scales. Quite a complicated system of voicings and motivic patterns for diminished has been developed by modern players.

Dot time: A cross-rhythm based on dotted quarter notes, extending through a passage.

Double time: A tempo twice as fast, with the time feel, bar lines and chords moving at twice the speed.

Double time feel: A time feel twice as fast, so that written eighth notes now sound like quarter notes, while the chords continue at the same speed as before.

Eight to the bar: Continuous eighth-note rhythm, as in boogie-woogie left hand patterns.

Extensions: The ninth, eleventh and thirteenth of a chord.

Fake Book: A collection of Jazz charts, published without paying royalties and thus illegal (not in the Public Domain.) For decades, a book called '1000 Standard Tunes' circulated; you can still see its grossly simplified charts, written three to a page. Some 25 years ago the "Real Book" appeared, out of the Berklee School of Music, with some 400 tunes in excellent calligraphy. This has become the standard and all Jazz musicians are expected to have a copy. More recently a number of legal fake books have been published. The best is The Ultimate Jazz Fakebook.

Free: Without rules. Especially, improvising without regard to the chord changes, or without any chord changes. Usually there is an implied restriction in 'free' playing preventing one from sounding as if chord changes are being used.

Free Jazz: A style of the early and middle sixties, involving 'free' playing and a vehement affect. It was originally associated with black cultural nationalism. Sometimes two drummers and/or two bass players were used. Some free Jazz was not very good, and some who played it later denounced it, but the style became an ingredient in future styles.

Fusion: A style developed in the late 60s by Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Chick Corea and others, partly as a reaction to the eclipse of Jazz on the music scene by rock. Incorporated elements of rock into Jazz and made greater use of repetition and non-improvised passages. Harmonic language was simplified; key feeling tended to be established by repetition rather than harmonic movement. Straight-8 time and a strong back-beat predominated.

Front: 'In front' means before the top, as an intro.

Front line: The horn players in a combo, those who aren't in the rhythm section.

Grand Staff: The treble and bass staves together.

Go out: Take the final chorus, end.

Groove: An infectious feeling of rightness in the rhythm, of being perfectly centered. This is a difficult term to define. A Medium Groove is a tempo of, say, 112, with a slinky or funky feeling.

Ground beat: The basic metric beat, most often in quarter-notes, whether explicitly stated or not.

Half-diminished ( ^Ø ): The chord with a minor third, a lowered (diminished) fifth, and a minor seventh. Formally called 'minor 7 flat 5'. This chord probably evolved from the IV minor 6th chord, which was common in the swing period; if its sixth is taken to be the root, a half-diminished chord results. The symbol is a small O with a diagonal slash. It is most often the harmony of the ii in a ii-V-I progression in a minor key. Two different scales have been commonly used for this chord; one with a flat 9th, the 'locrian', and one with an unflatted ninth, the latter scale being more modern.

Half time: A tempo half as fast.

Half time feel: A time feel half as fast, while the chords go by in the same amount of time. Occurs in the intro to Chick Corea's Tones for Joan's Bones.

Hard Bop: The style of the late 50s, engineered by Horace Silver, Art Blakey, etc. Still essentially Bebop, the style used hard-driving rhythmic feel and vehement, biting lines and harmony drenched with urban blues, rhythm 'n blues and gospel. Original compositions were stressed over the old standards used in Bebop, ranging from simple riff-based blues to elaborate compositions, sometimes using whole-tone scales. Hard Bop had a black, street flavor, a reaction, in part, to the intellectuality of the Cool School.

Harmonic rhythm: The structural organization of chord progressions in time; the rate at which the chords pass by. Since this may not be related to the rhythms of the actual notes, it is an abstract concept.

Head: The first (and last) chorus of a tune, in which the song or melody is stated without improvisation or with minimal improvisation.

Hip (or Hep): Keenly aware of or knowledgeable about life's developments, especially in the arts. "Hipness is what it is. But sometimes hipness is what it ain't..."

Hipster (or Hepster): One who is Hip (or Hep.)

Horn: A wind instrument; or any instrument.

Improvisation (improv): The process of spontaneously creating fresh melodies over the continuously repeating cycle of chord changes of a tune. The improviser may depend on the contours of the original tune, or solely on the possibilities of the chords' harmonies, or (like Ornette Coleman) on a basis of pure melody. The 'improv' also refers to the improvisational section of the tune, as opposed to the head.

Inner voice: A melodic line, no matter how fragmentary, lying between the bass and the melody.

Interlude: An additional section in a tune, especially one between one person's solo and another's. The Dizzy Gillespie standard A Night In Tunisia has a famous interlude.

Intro (Introduction): A composed section at the beginning of a tune, heard only once.

Inversion: (1) In traditional music theory, a chord with a note other than the root in the bass. (2) With regard to any particular voicing, especially a left-hand rootless voicing, a rearrangement of the voicing by moving the bottom note up an octave. Or, any one octavewise arrangement of a voicing.