In this article, modern jazz guitarist Jake Hertzog (aka Guitar Player Magazine's Hey Jazz Guy), breaks down some of the different forms of jazz music.

Four Fundamental Forms of Jazz

By Jake Hertzog for ArtistWorks

Classification can be useful! Much like the biologist as a student of nature attempts to sort all living things, we students of jazz can attempt to sort the types of situations we must be able to play. Knowing full well of course that most songs are a hybrid of basic elements, one can divide the jazz "kingdom" as it were, into these four categories: The Blues, Rhythm Changes, Modal Harmony and Coltrane Changes. Regardless of ‘style’ of jazz you are studying, be it straight-ahead or bebop or modern abstract, each of these represent different ways that harmony can move, and when examining a song you might find it relies primarily on one or the other, most often with elements of all four.