Head (music)

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In jazz music, the head is the main melody or theme of a piece^[1]. It is usually played at the beginning and end of a performance before a series of improvised solos, and sometimes in-between them. The head of a piece can be any number of bars long, though the most common numbers are 12 and 16. It sets the key and chord progression of the piece. The combination of the melody, key, and chord progression then sets to stage for the improvised solos which are to follow.

[edit] Overview

The head is often referred to as the "A" section of the piece, if section lettering is used, as is common in jazz standards for relative ease of performance. In a typical 16-bar blues chart, a common ordering of sections is:

rhythm vamp (4 or 8 bars);
head (the "A" section, usually repeated once);
bridge (the "B" section);
"A" (head) for solos, repeated for each soloing musician;
sometimes, but not always, the bridge is performed after the last solo;
head (usually twice);
if the chart does not have a defined outro, the last three measures of the head are performed three or four times.

The jazz artist John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" features an easily recognized head, which can be heard in this Ogg audio file: Giant Steps.ogg.