Study Of Jazz Harmony Theory

Jazz Harmony theory is a theory about jazz improvasition, it make progress gradually driven by its musical practice and the needs of education, its theoretical framework and the main content are closely associated with traditional harmony theory, meanwhile shows a distinct feature. Based on the gradually evolution of jazz improvisation patterns, there are different trends of music thinking in jazz, the theoretical pursuit of jazz is embodied in two aspects: on the one hand, extend improvisation materials (scale/mode); on the other, change original chord progression; So In the teaching materials highlights the chords-scales system, chord extension, reharmonization as the main content. This article is a research about the features and trend of jazz theory. Through the genre analyses such as swing, bebop and the modal jazz and text analyses to three sets of widespread jazz theory course, try to find out the existing problems and hope to promote the future development of jazz theory.There are four chapters in this dissertation; the first chapter is an overview about the characteristic of jazz. Pay special attention to the particular practice form of jazz: improvisation is key element and play base on the chord progressions of jazz standards, analyze the influence and function of the Black American and the White music tradition. The second chapter is a study of the four important harmony languages in jazz history, including swing jazz, bebop and modal jazz, they all established the jazz tradition and rules, which constitute the main body of the jazz theory content; The change of style embodies the different thinking mode of jazz improvisation, the evolution process from vertical to horizontal to vertical and horizontal integration; From early jazz’s melodic variation to swing era and highly complex be-bop period played by chord’s vertical structure pattern, then to modal jazz chords and mode/scales unity. The third chapter is the research of the pedagogical material of jazz theory. Berkeley’s harmony, Mark Levin’s Jazz theory book and George Russell’s Lydian chromatic of concept of tonal organization, they have a significantly different theoretical structure, my purpose here is to recognize the form features of jazz theory by detailed analysis. The second and third chapter is the present the process of jazz from practice to theory. The fourth chapter is a reflection about the theoretical system of jazz harmony, it is a theoretical answer to first chapter’s "features of jazz practice". There are still some problems in Jazz theory, analyze these problems and give some suggestions and comments for the development of jazz theory in the future.