Ragtime, Blues and jazz

Ragtime

style of piano playing that caught on around 1900

Ragtime was popularized by..

Scott Joplin

Ragtime is a mix of…

mixes European harmony, form, and texture with African-inspired syncopation

Blues

the Blues began as a rural-orally transmitted tradition

Blue notes

flatted or lowered thirds and sevenths in any given key

rural blues

characterized by call and response between the singer and his (acoustic) guitar

Jazz

is a rhythmically free style of music that makes liberal use of syncopation and backbeat. It always contains some element of improvisation

improvisation

spontaneous composition-another element of jazz is the use of two families of beat

Louis Armstrong

-dominant Jazz figure before WWII

-characterized New Orleans or Dixieland Jazz

- solo improvisation to collective improvisation

Scat

a style that does not use words, instead it is improvised pitches sung with improvised vocables (ohs, ahs, dos, das)

3 Early phases of blues

1) City Blues

2) Classic Blues (Bessy Smith)

3) Rhythm and blues (Robert Johnson)