Make Jazz Music

Make jazz music online with a personal producer who reads the changes. Free in your browser, Veena's CoProducer writes the ii–V–I voicings, the ride-cymbal swing and a walking bass line that follows every chord, as real tracks you can edit note by note. Jazz runs from 60 BPM ballads to bebop past 250, and it always leaves room to breathe.

Jazz is a conversation. The drummer keeps time on the ride and answers the soloist, the bass walks from chord to chord, the piano comps (short chords placed around the melody rather than on top of it), and the melody states the tune and then gets reinvented. Program that conversation well and a trio of MIDI parts swings like a band.

Jazz styles and tempos

Veena's tempo runs from 40 to 300 BPM, so the whole range fits. And jazz is one of the styles CoProducer has dedicated guidance for: in Veena's own data, 84.5% of new users whose first request asks for jazz get a first result on day one.

Harmony: the ii–V–I and what jazz does with it

Almost every standard is built from one move: the ii–V–I. In C that's Dm7–G7–Cmaj7; in Bb it's Cm7–F7–Bbmaj7. Learn it in a few forms and you can read most lead sheets:

Voicings make it sound like jazz. A shell voicing plays just the root, 3rd and 7th: Dm7 as D–F–C, G7 as G–B–F, Cmaj7 as C–E–B. The 3rds and 7ths are the guide tones, and they barely move: C (the 7th of Dm7) falls to B (the 3rd of G7) and stays as the 7th of Cmaj7, while F holds as the 7th of G7 and then falls to E. With a bassist playing the roots, pianists drop the root and add colour with rootless voicings: Dm9 as F–A–C–E, G13 as F–A–B–E, Cmaj9 as E–G–B–D. Watch the voice leading: from Dm9 to G13 only one note moves.

The chord progression generator writes any of these by name ("ii–V–I in Bb with rootless voicings"), and jazz chord progressions goes deeper into the changes.

Swing: the ride pattern

Jazz 8th notes swing: the first of each pair is long and the second short, close to a triplet at medium tempos and straighter as the tempo climbs. Here is one bar on a triplet grid (each beat split in three). X is a full hit, x a lighter one:

Beat      1 . a 2 . a 3 . a 4 . a
Ride      X . . X . x X . . X . x
Hat foot  . . . X . . . . . X . .
Kick      x . . x . . x . . x . .

The ride plays the pattern drummers sing as "ding, ding-a-ding, ding-a": quarter notes, with the skip note on the last triplet of beats 2 and 4. The hi-hat closes on 2 and 4 with the foot. The kick is feathered, played so softly on all four beats that you feel it more than hear it. The snare comps: occasional accents that answer the soloist, never a backbeat. The ride keeps time, not the hi-hat.

Veena's Jazz kit is a traditional kit with a classic swing feel; the Brush kit is soft and subtle for ballads; JCLive is a live-recorded kit with natural room for a looser combo sound. Ask CoProducer for "a swinging ride pattern with light snare comping" and it writes the feel into the part. For piano and bass, the piano roll's 1/3 Beat snap puts notes on the swung triplet grid, so the pickups you draw land where a player would put them.

Walking bass

A walking bass plays one note per beat and connects the chords. Four rules produce a convincing line:

1. The root on beat 1 of each new chord.
2. Chord tones (3rd, 5th, 7th) on the strong beats.
3. Scale steps or arpeggio notes in between.
4. A chromatic approach on beat 4: a half step above or below the next chord's root.

Over Dm7 | G7 | Cmaj7 in C: D F A Ab | G B D Db | C E G B. The Ab slides into G, the Db into C. That's the whole trick, repeated through every chorus.

Veena's Acoustic Bass is a fingered upright with a soft woody thump and a short decay, built for walking lines and two-feel roots. In the two-feel, the bass plays half notes on beats 1 and 3, which suits a tune's first statement; walking on the bridge or the solos makes the band lift without anyone playing louder. The bassline generator can have CoProducer walk a line through any set of changes.

Jazz forms, bar by bar

Most standards use one of two forms. AABA is 32 bars: an 8-bar A section, the A again, an 8-bar bridge (B) with new harmony, and a final A. The 12-bar blues repeats a 12-bar cycle, often with jazz substitutions. Every pass through the form is a chorus, and an arrangement strings choruses together:

That's 108 bars, about 3 minutes 16 seconds at 132 BPM. For a full combo arrangement, add a chorus of trading fours before the head out: the piano and the drums alternate 4-bar solos.

Make jazz music with CoProducer

1. Open daw.veena.studio and sign in with Google, and paste the prompt below. The whole trio arrives on separate tracks: drums, bass and piano.
2. Choose the voicings first. CoProducer offers three takes of each part; keep the piano whose top note moves most smoothly, and the bass is written against the chords you kept.
3. Talk to it like a bandleader:
   • "Take the tempo down to 72 and make it a ballad on the Brush kit."
   • "Walk the bass through the whole head, not just the bridge."
   • "Add a chorus of trading fours between piano and drums."
   • "Reharmonise the last A section with tritone substitutions."
   • "Swap the piano for Electric Piano and straighten the feel for a smooth jazz version."
4. Add a horn with your voice. Hum the head into your mic and ask CoProducer to make your humming a saxophone. It pitch-corrects the take to the project key before it re-voices it, so keep hummed lines mostly inside the key and leave the chromatic runs to the piano.
5. Invite a bandmate. Real-time collaboration puts a second musician in the same session: they record a guitar solo while you rework the voicings.

Make a medium-swing jazz piano trio at 132 BPM in Bb major, a 32-bar AABA tune: the Jazz kit with the ride playing the swing pattern, hi-hat on 2 and 4, a feathered kick and light snare comping; an Acoustic Bass in two-feel for the first head's A sections, then walking quarter notes with chromatic approach notes into each chord; an Acoustic Grand Piano playing a singable head over rootless left-hand voicings, the A sections on Bbmaj7–G7–Cm7–F7 turnarounds and a bridge that starts on Ebmaj7. Form: a 4-bar intro, the head, one 32-bar piano solo chorus, the head again, and a tag that repeats the last 4 bars twice more before a final held chord.

Mixing a jazz combo

• Keep the dynamics. Jazz breathes. Shape it with velocities, and keep compression light: the Compressor's Gentle preset on the bass, if anything.
• One room for the band. A single Room or Studio reverb feel on every part makes a trio sound like it played together; a Plate on the piano suits ballads.
• Place the players. Bass in the centre, the piano a little to one side, the drums a little to the other, the ride clearly audible.
• Warm, not bright. Trim the lowest rumble on the bass with the 8-Band EQ's low shelf and keep its woody body around 100–250 Hz; tame a harsh piano with a gentle high-shelf cut.

Or ask CoProducer for "a warm, natural trio mix with the ride and bass up front", and it sets the levels, pans and effects on every part.

Jazz mistakes that stop the swing

1. Random seventh chords over rigid pop drums. Extensions don't make jazz; the swing and the voice leading do.
2. Straight 8ths in a swing tune. Swing the ride and the lines, or it sounds like a practice exercise.
3. A bass that only plays roots. Walk it, and approach each chord from a half step away.
4. Muddy low voicings. Close chords below the C an octave under middle C blur. Spread them up.
5. Everyone playing all the time. Leave space in your melodies; jazz phrasing breathes, and the notes you don't play matter as much as the ones you do.
6. Hi-hat as the timekeeper. In swing the ride keeps time and the hat closes on 2 and 4.
7. Over-compressing. A squashed trio loses the conversation.

Jazz terms

Head: the tune's written melody. Changes: the chord progression. Comping: accompanying with rhythmic chords. Chorus: one pass through the form. Turnaround: the chords that lead back to the top. Tritone substitution: replacing a dominant chord with the one a tritone away. Guide tones: the 3rd and 7th of each chord. Shell voicing: root, 3rd and 7th. Rootless voicing: 3rd, 7th and colour tones, root left to the bass. Walking bass: a line of quarter notes through the changes. Two-feel: bass on beats 1 and 3. Trading fours: soloists alternating 4-bar phrases. Tag: a repeated ending phrase.

Jazz styles to try next

• Ballad: 60–72 BPM, Brush kit, Acoustic Grand Piano with rich rootless voicings, bass in two-feel.
• Bebop: 220–280 BPM, long 8th-note lines over fast ii–Vs, the Jazz kit driving the ride.
• Modal: a Dorian vamp, 16 bars on Dm7, 8 on Ebm7 and 8 back on Dm7, with open voicings built in 4ths.
• Bossa nova: 120 BPM, straight 8ths, Acoustic Guitar (nylon) comping, soft brushes; see how to make Brazilian music.
• Smooth jazz and fusion: 100 BPM, warm Electric Piano chords, a melodic lead, a Fretless Bass and a brushed groove.
• Lofi jazz: jazz changes slowed down and dusted; see how to make lofi music.

Whatever the style, the first sentence to CoProducer names the tempo, the key, the form and the band. The rest of the genres live under make music by genre.