How to Write Jazz Tunes

If you're planning on writing jazz tunes, you'll have a full plate. Writing songs can be a laborious process, and as one of the more sophisticated music genres in existence, writing jazz songs is extra tough. Most jazz is not just a simple three-chord pattern set to a 4/4 rhythm; it's complex, it's experimental, and it's music that goes into the heart of music theory. Writing jazz takes time, work, and creativity.

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

1. Pick your medium. Find your own understanding of what it means to "write" a song. Decide for example, if you are going to record these songs from scratch with no written record, or whether you will use either sheet music or software to "write" out the notation of your numbers.
2. "Jam" songs into existence. One way to find general chord patterns and tempos is to practice free-form jazz with a group of session musicians, and then identify key elements that sound good. These elements will be fine-tuned to become your songs. Start out in a particular key and go from there.
3. Get group input. Your fellow musicians will help you hear what sounds good, and the song will evolve. Alternately, if you have total creative control, you can disregard the advice of your session keyboard, guitars and bass, at your own peril: usually, the session musicians provide some needed ballast for your process: going it alone can mean alienating part of a listening community.
4. Pick elements and sections of music to re-play and craft into new parts of songs. You will be "assembling" your song incrementally, adding notes, chords, tempo changes or key changes as necessary to arrive at a final composition.
5. Follow the stars. When in doubt, lend your ear to the great names of jazz, identifying elements of their music that made it great. If your songs don't sound just like theirs, that's okay, in fact, it's preferable; but if your songs sound soupy, disconnected, or otherwise sub-par, go back to the well to learn a little more, and try again, armed with the knowledge that you have taken from what you have heard.

Who Can Help: