🎷 Jazz for kids

Jazz is music that swings and makes things up as it goes. A jazz band plays a tune, then each player takes a turn making up new music over the same chords. Peabody's Jazz Café plays free swinging jazz for kids, and Old Hits plays real songs from the 1920s. Tap to listen.

Tap a station to play it. Tap again to stop.

Music rooms

What is swing?

Say hump-ty dump-ty out loud. Hear how it goes long-short, long-short? That is swing. In jazz, quick notes come in pairs, and the second one of each pair comes a little late. It makes the music bounce.

Peabody's band swings on Jazz Café. Listen to the cymbal: ting, ting-a ting, ting-a ting.

Who is in a jazz band?

The bass walks: one note on every beat, stepping up and down. The drums keep the swing, mostly on a big ride cymbal. The piano plays the chords in short stabs. Then the tune goes on top: a trumpet, a saxophone, a trombone or a clarinet.

Jazz Café is a little band: an upright bass that walks, an electric piano, a vibraphone for the tune (metal bars, hit with soft mallets) and a cymbal.

Making it up

Jazz players improvise: after the tune, each one makes up new music on the spot, fitting the song's chords. No two times are the same. Peabody's band does something like it: every Jazz Café tune is made up fresh.

Jazz began in the United States more than a hundred years ago. Old Hits plays songs from the 1920s that jazz bands loved, like Sweet Georgia Brown and I Got Rhythm. Jazz players still use the chords of I Got Rhythm to make up new tunes today.

For grown-ups

Jazz Café is Peabody's own band, made up on the device, not old records, and it has no words. Old Hits plays the tunes and chords of songs published in 1930 or earlier, which are public domain in the US, never anyone's recording. The Chord Finder plays seventh chords, the ones that give jazz its sound.