Pattern
Swing time
Ding, ding-a-ding on the ride, the hi-hat closing on two and four, and a kick you feel more than hear. Turn the swing to zero to hear what it is doing.
A free pack
Jazz club
by The house band · 7 items · every one follows your project's key
Jazz rhythm is carried by a cymbal and a bass, not by a kick and a snare. The cymbal swings, the bass walks, and the chords keep leading somewhere. This pack is written in double time, so one bar here is two bars of jazz and 72 BPM feels like 144.
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What is inside
Press play on any of them. They loop until you stop them.
Pattern
Two five one
The chord move jazz is built on: the second chord leads to the fifth, and the fifth falls home to the first.
Recipe
Walking bass
One note on every beat, stepping through the chord and on to the next one. It never repeats and never stops.
Recipe
Comping
Short chords that jab between the beats and leave the root note to the bass. Pianists call this comping.
Recipe
Smoky horn
A phrase, a breath, an answer. Horn players have to breathe, and the gaps are half the music.
Ding, ding-a-ding
Swing time puts the pulse on the ride cymbal: one long note, then a long and a short, over and over. The hi-hat closes on beats two and four, and the kick is so soft you feel it more than you hear it. Drummers call that feathering.
Now find the swing control and drag it to zero. The pattern turns square and lifeless at once. Swing delays every second note so that pairs of notes become long then short, closer to a gallop than a march. It is the single biggest difference between jazz and everything else in this library.
A bass that walks
Walking bass plays one note on every beat and never repeats itself. Each bar it steps through the notes of the current chord and then leans toward the next one. It is the timekeeper and the harmony at once, which is why a jazz trio can do without a rhythm guitar.
Two, five, one
Two five one is the chord move jazz is built on. The chord on step two of the scale leads to the chord on step five, and five falls home to one. Your ear hears tension, more tension, then rest. Whole songs are made by chaining that move through different keys.
Comping is what the piano does over it: short chords jabbed between the beats, leaving the lowest note to the bass player. Vibes solo and Smoky horn sit on top, and the gaps in the horn line matter as much as the notes. Horn players have to breathe.
Questions people ask
- What is swing in music?
- A way of playing pairs of notes unevenly: the first is held longer and the second arrives late. It turns a stiff rhythm into a bouncing one.
- What is a 2 5 1 chord progression?
- Three chords built on the second, fifth and first steps of a scale, played in that order. It is the most common way jazz arrives home, and it appears in almost every standard.
- What is a walking bass line?
- A bass part with one note on every beat that moves by step through each chord and on toward the next, so it sounds like someone strolling.
Now change it.
Drop any of these into a project and every step, note and sound is yours to move. That is how you find out why it works.