1. Unwritten rules are followed that enable jazz improvisers to piece together performances without rehearsal. These include (1) tempo, (2) key, and (3) progression of accompaniment chords.
2. Musicians know many of the same tunes, and they follow common practices when performing tunes having 12-bar blues and AABA construction.
3. Jazz musicians play the melody before and after they play improvisations. Both the melody and the improvisations are guided by the same cycle of chord patterns in the accompaniment.
4. Walking bass style involves playing notes that keep time for the band as well as outlining the chord progression for the improvisers.
5. The jazz drummer uses bass drum, ride cymbal, and high-hat cymbals to keep time for the band and crash cymbal and snare durm to kick and prod soloists and dramatize their ideas.
6. Comping is the accompaniment style in which the pianist feeds chords to the improvising soloist in a flexible and syncopated way.
7. People can listen to jazz by:
a. humming the original tune to themselves
while listening to the improvisations that are guided by the same
progression of accompaniment chords
b. imagining a graph of the solo line
c. imaginaning layers of sound moving forward in timed. hearing
the improvised lines of a soloist as melodies in themselves
e. listening for variations in mood, tone qualities, and rhythms
f. dividing sounds into the functions they serve (soloist vs.
accompaniment)
8. Jazz musicians improvise by reorganizing phrases they have played before. However, some of the best manage to devise lines off the cuff that are largely free of familiar patterns: Jim Hall and Wayne Shorter, for instance