Cool School
1950s reaction against bebop’s often frenetic momentum, with pianist Lennie Tristano its guru. The melodies are as tricky as bop’s, but the approach is quiet and low-key.
Check out Lennie Tristano: Lennie Tristano
Dixieland/trad jazz
Traditional New Orleans and Chicago styles of the 1920s revived by enthusiasts from the 1940s on, as a rootsy reaction against the perceived cerebral style of bebop.
Check out Humphrey Lyttelton: Bad Penny Blues.
Free jazz/free-improv
An approach to improvisation begun in the 1950s in an attempt to let solos off the leash imposed by a repeated theme or chord pattern — and to let groups improvise collectively, with the players listening and reacting instantly to each other’s ideas.
Check out Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz.
Funk
Funk — which originally meant dirty, earthy and bluesy — emerged in the 1950s as a reaction against the Europeanized, chamber-music sound of cool jazz.
Harmolodics
Obscure concept coined by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, referring to a reflexive, total-improv approach in which a player can react melodically, harmonically and rhythmically at once.
Head
The original theme of a song. When bandleaders point to their heads after a succession of solos, it’s an instruction to go back to the theme.
Hot licks
Derisory term in jazz, referring to the repetition of familiar or predictable phrases in a solo, usually to elicit a predictable audience reaction.
Mainstream
Revivalist style of the 1950s onward, recovering lyrical small-group swing styles of the 1930s, with Count Basie’s music a favorite source.
Modal jazz
1950s reaction against the painting-by-numbers styles of only improvising over recycling chord-patterns. Modal jazz is based on sequences of scales more than chords, and seeks to make improvisers more melodically creative.
Check out Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Multiphonics
Playing two or three notes simultaneously on a wind or reed instrument only designed to produce one at a time — now widely used as an effect.
Post-bop
Roughly describes post-1980s instrumental jazz, phrased with busy melodies and sharp rhythmic turns like bebop, but drawing on many recent developments including fusion and free-improvisation.
Check out Michael Brecker: Time Is of the Essence.
Ragtime
African-American proto-jazz form, in which the accompaniment is syncopated or — “ragged” — so that the underlying beat falls between rather than on the accents of the tune.
Check out Joshua Rifkin: The Entertainer — the Very Best of Scott Joplin
Riff or vamp
Repeated, rhythmically punchy short phrase, sometimes played by a brass or reed section behind an improviser.
Scat
Improvisational singing style, mimicking an instrumental solo with nonsense syllables and percussive sounds.
Swing
A regular beat, but with disguised and ongoing polyrhythmic tweaks. Central to the sensuous, ambiguous feel of a typical jazz pulse.
Third Stream
Variant of 1950s Cool School music, often setting jazz improvisation within European classical frameworks.
Check out The Birth of the Third Stream
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