Free jazz is the jazz style in which the familiar structure of a 'song', consisting of chords, melodies and fixed rhythmic patterns and tempo, is largely absent and in which energy often takes the place of beauty. Spontaneity is of paramount importance. Free jazz originated as a more or less official movement in 1960, the year in which alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman released an album entitled Free Jazz. He played chordless pieces in which melody and rhythm were in control. In the sixties the term avant-garde was a synonym for free jazz and in the decades that followed most musicians even preferred this first label because they thought the word 'free' was misleading: their music was often (yet) very organized.