Photo: Jack Carey

What is a jazz riff?

1 : an ostinato phrase (as in jazz) typically supporting a solo improvisation also : a piece based on such a phrase. 2 : a rapid energetic often improvised verbal outpouring especially : one that is part of a comic performance. 3 : a succinct usually witty comment.

merriam-webster.com - Riff Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster

How do you improvise jazz chords?

How to Improvise Over Unrelated Chords Try to find one simple scale, chord, or set of pitches that work over all the chords. Or at least two or...

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Why use e sharp instead of F?

So if you had a C# major chord it would look like this: And the same principle applies as the one above. It's much easier to comprehend the chord...

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Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

At a recent rally for Warnock, former President Barack Obama jabbed at Walker's verbal blunders, such as an unusual riff about vampires and werewolves. — Tal Axelrod, ABC News, 6 Dec. 2022 Almost everyone has a clever pseudonym — Jonathan is trying to convince everyone to call him Jack, which will make a funny riff out of the dirty, unprintable name of their band. — Carolyn Kellogg, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Dec. 2022 One obstacle is that viewers don’t yet have a streaming habit for topical talk or comedy shows that riff on the day’s events. — Stephen Battagliostaff Writer, Los Angeles Times, 29 Nov. 2022 In other words, Violent Night becomes a riff on both Die Hard and Home Alone, but taken to their hard-R logical extremes under Wirkola’s over-the-top gory direction. — Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 29 Nov. 2022 Directors including Battles of the Sexes duo Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton riff on the bestseller’s cover, an upside-down rendering of the Manhattan skyline, in queasily tilted shots. — Time, 10 Nov. 2022 The easiest is a riff on Marian Burros’s plum torte. — Melissa Clark, New York Times, 8 Nov. 2022 Crudo offers farm-to-table Mediterranean fare for breakfast, lunch and dinner, while Parisa is a contemporary riff on Persian cuisine with rotating menus based on the local harvest. — Dana Givens, Robb Report, 28 Oct. 2022 Olivia Rodrigo held a meet and greet at Glossier’s West Hollywood outpost on Monday and the singer wore a riff on the classic school uniform for the occasion. — André-naquian Wheeler, Vogue, 25 Oct. 2022

Verb

Serendipitously, Ragazzi’s wish to riff on Tod’s was matched by Tod’s wish to invite outside collaboration, through its Tod’s-FACTORY program. — Luke Leitch, Vogue, 30 Nov. 2022 Lastly, by knowing the entire story, actors can build on and riff off each other’s performance. — Jay De La Cruz, Forbes, 10 Nov. 2022 Some poems can be storytelling poems, and other poems can riff off of a moment and open it up. — Christian Allaire, Vogue, 18 Oct. 2022 The ability to riff like that in a kitchen, to look in a fridge and come up with a dish off the cuff is a secret, genuine skill. — Wired Staff, WIRED, 29 Sep. 2022 All the while, Bobby converses with friends who riff on time or men and women or Vietnam or failure, paragraphs and pages of disquisitions that can be funny and moving and dirty and insightful. — Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2022 Byrne would riff on each topic, arriving at a distinctly Talking Heads style of lyricism — a combination of blandly objective descriptions, non-sequiturs, arresting imagery, and piercing insight. — Al Shipley, SPIN, 21 Sep. 2022 In November 2011, comic book artist Eric Colossal was one of the first Twitter users to riff off the story. — WIRED, 21 Sep. 2022 The Americana tropes of the 1950s that were so prevalent in the spring menswear collections take the form of deb dresses and khakis that riff on GI favorites. — Laird Borrelli-persson, Vogue, 13 July 2022

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Why is it called Take Five?

It's called ""Take Five"" because it was written in an unusual 5/4 meter. It was one of the first Jazz songs with a time signature other than the standard 4/4 beat or 3/4 waltz time. Brubeck explained in a 1995 interview with Paul Zollo that he asked Desmond to try writing a song in 5/4.

songfacts.com - Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Songfacts

On the album, Brubeck used a different time signature for each track, which was very unusual. In Brubeck's interview with Zollo, he said: "The album came out but the sales people, they have formulas that are unwritten laws about what's going to work, what's going to sell. And my album couldn't have worked because it's all originals. They said you should never put out all originals, you have to put in some standards and some show tunes. Well, they were wrong. It worked. And you have to be in tempos that the public can dance to. Well, they couldn't dance to most ofunless you got into some dance halls where people could dance to 5/4 and they did dance to it. So it's exposure. And also they didn't want a painting on the cover. I was breaking a whole bunch of rules." (this and above quote appear in Zollo's book Songwriters On Songwriting

How many chords are there in C major?

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How long does it take to fluently learn piano?

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