Big Band - Jazz music popular in the 1930's and 1940's in which large numbers of musicians ( as many as 25) performed and in which there was much less improvisation and more reliance on written-out arrangements. Big band music tends to be smooth and highly danceable. Swinging the rhythm became a major characteristic. Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Artie Shaw are some of the better known big band musicians.

Bop, Be-bop or Re-bop - A jazz style of the late 1940's named for its use of nonsense syllables, sometimes sung by the performer. It tends to be fast, with highly intricate melodies, complex rhythms and dissonant harmonies. It generally features a soloist with accompaniment and uses smaller ensembles. This style also borrows from Latin American and Afro-Cuban styles. A well-known bop performer was Charlie Parker.

Blues - An early type of jazz that often has a repeated harmonic progression [a set order of chords] consisting of twelve bars of 4/4 in which the first four bars are in the tonic [chord based on the first note of the scale of a key signature], bars 5-8 are on the subdominant [chord based on the fourth note of the key signature's scale], bars 9-10 are on the dominant [chord based on the fifth note of the scale] and bars 11-12 in the tonic again.  The blues are in a major key with certain "blue" notes [lowered 1/2 step] occurring, usually on the third and seventh notes of the scale. Seventh chords are quite common [chords with the tonic, third, dominant and seventh notes] as is the use of pitch bending. Blues tend to be moderately slow and somewhat sad in character. Originally the blues were sung with a very small instrumental accompaniment. Nowadays, they can be strictly instrumental. The first published blues was Memphis Blues by W.C. Handy.

Boogie Woogie - Originally, a special type of blues played on piano in 1920's Chicago which was characterized by a constantly repeated bass figure (very rhythmic) against which a freely rhapsodic line runs. An example would be Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.

Corny - A section within a highly improvised, rhythmically complex "hot" jazz piece where the performer uses more elememtary (straight) rhythms and harmonies. It should not be as sophisticated as the "hot" portions.

Dixieland - Also known as New Orleans style jazz which developed around 1910 and which draws on both ragtime and blues, particulary the syncopated rhythms and two-beat meter [a duple meter such a 4/4 in which the first and third beats are emphasized] of the latter. Usually performed by a band consisting of trumpet, clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, string bass, and drums. A similar style is Chicage style jazz, which also uses a small band but was danced to.

Fox Trot - A style of dance, which originated in America around 1915, with a moving tempo in duple meter.  It became the basis for much of the dance steps common in the 1920's, 1930's, and 1940's. An example is the shimmy and the Charleston. Fox trots were often danced to jazz.

Free Jazz - Jazz in which the use of steady rhythms and fixed harmonic patterns is abandoned.

Hot Jazz -  A swinging, highly improvised type of jazz.

Jazz - A form of music distinctive to the U.S., which owes its origins to street brass and string bands, minstrel shows and Negro spirituals. It was originally intended as dance music, but today is just as often strictly for listening to. It is often characterized by syncopated and/or "swung" rhythms, unusual articulation styles such as soft or "lazy" tonguing (dah-dah), accents, and patterns such as slurring in groups of threes to accentuate off-beats. In addition, another major characteristic of jazz is the use of improvisation, where the performer makes up soloistic music to go with the harmony on the spot (sometimes called riffs or licks).

Latin-American Style - Includes dance styles such as bossa nova, calypso, rumba & tango.

Progressive Jazz - A style of jazz popular in the 1950's, which was largely an extension of be-bop jazz. It makes use of less strident instrumentations and  uses more running passages in equal note values instead of accented syncopations and dotted rhythms. This type of jazz is much too complicated to be danced to. Some examples of progressive jazz performers are Stan Getz (saxophone), Miles Davis (trumpet), and Thelonius Monk (piano).

Ragtime - One of the earliest forms of jazz, which was developed in the 1890's in Louisiana and is characterized by a highly florid, syncopated melodic line over an umpah-type bass accompaniment. The musical sections tended to be eight, sixteen, or thirty-two bars in length with repeats. It was often played on the piano with a banjo and string bass accompaniment. An example is Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. In ragtime, the rhythm is never swung. Ragtime is straight or a "sweet" type of jazz.

Sweet Jazz - Jazz in which the rhythms are not swung, but are played exactly as written. Improvisations were less complex. Examples include Dixieland, ragtime, and Latin-style. Sweet jazz was popular in the 1920's.

Swing - A style of jazz in which equal eighth notes or dotted eighth notes followed by sixteenth notes are played as quarter note plus eighth note triplets. The effect is to make the rhythm more lazy-sounding. Swing is a "hot" type of jazz.