Want to understand jazz music and improvisation better? Check out this jazz primer online text by Marc Sabatella:

http://www.outsideshore.com/primer/primer/index.html

You can purchase the paperback version, but the entire text is generously available online. I’m no musician and I’ve just started learning , so I’m wading through it now, and it’s really interesting – whether you’re a student of jazz, or just a jazz dancer interested in better understanding the music we dance to.

There’s a brief section on the history of jazz, followed by the fundamentals of jazz musical structures and processes, on to chord/scale relationships, the theory of jazz improvisation, and some notes on accompanying and jamming with others.

Thanks to Todd Yannacone for forwarding this on.