{"id":258,"date":"2005-11-21T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-21T09:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=258"},"modified":"2005-11-21T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-21T09:05:00","slug":"jazz_standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/11\/jazz_standards\/","title":{"rendered":"Jazz Standards"},"content":{"rendered":"

What constitutes a jazz standard? Purists may contend that only an original composition by a jazz musician qualifies\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confirmation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Doxy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sail Away,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Seven Come Eleven,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as examples. Working musicians and fake books say otherwise; a jazz standard is a song, adaptable to improvisation, that has worked its way into the general repertoire. An entire website is devoted to that proposition.
\nJazzStandards.com<\/a> was put together by jazz aficionados and musicians who saw the need for a centralized source of information about the tunes most often played in jazz. The site ranks jazz standards from 1 to 1000 in order of importance and frequency of performance. It has documentation and links for the first hundred songs. Number one, hardly a surprise, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Body and Soul.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The information about it and the other top 100 runs from basic\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

Because of its complex chord progressions, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Body and Soul\u00e2\u20ac\u009d remains a favorite of jazz musicians. The unusual changes in key and tempo are also highly attractive and provide a large degree of improvisational freedom. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

to technical\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p>\n

A very motivic melody, thus easily remembered. Noteworthy is the use of the penultimate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blue note\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (flatted third) at the end of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c easily missed by the untrained or novice performer. The harmonic progression seems to be controlled by the movement of the bass line, descending and ascending by step (Ebm \u00e2\u20ac\u201cBb7\/D \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Ebm7\/Db – Ab\/C \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Db \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Ab9\/Eb \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Db\/F \u00e2\u20ac\u201cE\u00cb\u01617 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Ebm \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Ebm7\/Db \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Cm7(b5)) before returning to the tonic via the circle of fifths, using parallel minor substitutions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Each song\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profile includes its history, recommended recordings, links to CD samples, links to books about the songs and their composers and, in some cases, musicians\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 comments on the pieces.<\/p>\n

In the forty years I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve played \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Round Midnight,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve done so to my satisfaction perhaps a dozen times at most. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the hardest for me in that, to play it really correctly, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use those \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fake book\u00e2\u20ac\u009d changes; you have to use the Monk changes or it sounds silly (to me). \u00e2\u20ac\u201dJessica Williams<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

JazzStandards.com<\/em> needs musicians\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 comments on more of the listed songs, and it cries for something it probably can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have\u00e2\u20ac\u201dlyrics. It would be daunting and expensive to get clearances for publication of words to the majority of songs that are in copyright. Those, however, are minor deficiencies in a website whose complex facets are wrapped into a design that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to navigate. JazzStandards.com<\/em> is a resource for musicians and researchers, and rewarding for anyone interested in song. The site was founded by Jeremy Wilson and is edited by Sandra Burlingame, who also writes much of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What constitutes a jazz standard? Purists may contend that only an original composition by a jazz musician qualifies\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confirmation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Doxy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sail Away,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Seven Come Eleven,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as examples. Working musicians and fake books say otherwise; a jazz standard is a song, adaptable to improvisation, that has worked its way into the general repertoire. An entire website is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}