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Comparison of Jazz Music
Jazz music is an American music genre that has seen various changes over the years. Jazz music existed from time immemorial, but the genre became recognized in the music industry after the production of Heebie Jeebies by Louise Armstrong. Armstrong is one of the greatest jazz musicians who ever lived. During the recording of the song, Armstrong is believed to have lost his lyric sheet thus leading him to invent new rhythms and tunes along the song to create a reasonable performance (Alexander 49). Regardless of the issues concerning the performance, people loved the arrangement and began creating a similar format of music hence the creation of a new genre. Other musician began creating similar music because it allowed them the freedom of creativity, which was not common in other music genres. Jazz did not have any specific rules, and the musicians used the surrounding environments, their feelings, and their experience to create music. It attracted a wide group of musicians from all walks of life, but African-American musicians were more attracted to the genre than their counterparts were. Jazz was referred to as the salt of the east because it began in Oreland before spreading to rest of the world (Kramer 90). Today, jazz has remained relevant and a creative way of musicians to explore their talents.
Other than Louise Armstrong, Charles parker is another person who had a considerable contribution to jazz music. He changed some of the things that were traditionally associated with jazz and created a new subgenre referred to as the bebop.

Both the traditional jazz of Armstrong and the modern jazz pioneered by parker were organized in groups where various proficient musicians came together to create music. African American rhythms were performed in a European-American way thus making the genre an all-inclusive one (Kramer 108). Both the new and old jazz produced smooth, unrestricted sounds but in an unplanned manner. For instance, stress on rhythms was placed on areas where stresses were not supposed to be included thus making the music more of a performance than a pre-recorded music. Syncopation has remained a signature of jazz music to date, but with little variation. Comparing Parker’s songs with those of Armstrong, one realizes that although syncopation is used in both songs, in Parker’s song the music element is more refined than that of Armstrong (Alexander 55). The reasons for this discrepancy are obvious because, at the time of Armstrong, most artists were trying out the new genre and the art of using complicated and varying rhythms were not perfected. Parker and another musician of the time perfected the old skill and made a better mechanism to ensure effective syncopation. For instance, in parker’s songs, syncopation has been enhanced by instrumentation which was not as refined during the times of Armstrong.
In both the old and new jazz music, swing notes were common. However, these elements are more pronounced in Armstrong’s songs than they are in the new generation songs. Traditionally, jazz was a danceable music, but during the days of parker, jazz was changed into a more complicated genre of music. From 1940, people stopped dancing to jazz and started paying attention to the creativity of musicians which allowed the artists to include some details in the genre that were not found in the old jazz (Alexander 48). Swing notes were not so pronounced during parker days because at this time people did not need to dance to jazz to enjoy the music. Additionally, the modern jazz allowed musicians to use a very fast tempo and rapid chord changes because jazz was not a music meant for dancing. In other songs such as the dead man’s blues, the use of swing notes was quite perfected to allow spontaneity and to give the artists the opportunity to make personal choices in prolonging some notes and shortening others. Parker and his other jazz musicians had more freedom to include spontaneous rhythmic momentum and change notes because at this time jazz music was more of showing the musicians’ attitude and not creating a danceable music.
Harmonization was one of the main characteristics of jazz music ever since the times of Armstrong. Traditionally, a creative group interacted and collaborated with one another to produce specific harmonies as different soloists sang similar notes in varied ways. However, this trend changed in the days of parker making the composer of the music the main soloist. In the days of parker, the other people in the group provided supportive roles to the artist who was given the soloing role of that particular song. Although harmonization is still seen in bebop combos, the focus was to allow the soloist to include other elements such as syncopation, complex chord progression, key changes, and varying tempos to the song (Kramer 142). Moreover, the people offering the supportive roles to the soloist provided a complex harmonic structure to the music making it hard to copy. For instance, the song Koko has a very complicated harmonic structure in comparison to the song dead man’s blues that is more centered on polyphonies, yet both songs are of the jazz genre.
Instrumentation is also different in modern jazz subgenres like the bebop than it is in the traditional jazz genre as coined by Armstrong. A jazz band used to have fourteen pieces of instruments but in bebop, the instruments were reduced to about seven items. In parker days, a saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums created the entire band. Moreover, these instruments were not heavily arranged because the focus was more on the creativity of the musician to play with music elements than it was in creating a particular sound. In addition, the instrument arrangement allowed the artists to play around with certain details of the music, which would not be possible with a large number of instruments. For instance, changing the tempo and chords was much easier in bebop in comparison to the traditional jazz system because of the light instrumentation (Alexander 76). These variations can be seen clearly in the songs scrapple from the apple and potato head blues. Improvisation has remained a core of jazz music, and it has been adopted by almost all the subgenres over the years.
Jazz music is one of the major genres of music that has been able to connect different groups of people from varied backgrounds. Jazz is an African-American genre that is performed in European and American systems thus embracing almost all societies of the world. Bebop combo has maintained the jazz music elements, but some aspects have been included to suit the current needs of the society. Bebop is played at a faster tempo, with instrumental virtuosity and complex chord progression among other things.

Works Cited
Alexander, Stephon. The jazz of physics: the secret link between music and the structure of the universe. New York: Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group, 2016. Print.
Kramer, Elena. The importance of jazz music in Toni Morrison’s “Jazz. München: GRIN Verlag, 2009. Print.