Routiner

Around the turn of the century, however, "routiner" or "head" music and "ear" musicians began to appear at parades. This was music more exclusively rooted in black traditions, played by men who often could not read music but who instead improvised.

Tom Albert, present during this interview, stated that Vincent was at first a routiner (i.e., playing by rote or ear) [...]

It seemed to the uptown routiners that aurality had its own set of advantages, and in the absence of strong evidence to the contrary it is hard to argue against them.

The rougher bands, like Kid Ory's or Frankie Dusen's Eagle Band, thrived; they were the “routiners,” the improvisers who worked from their ear rather than reading music.

In preparing for the test, it is only necessary to connect the routiner to a test distributor by operating a key.

Two interface lines are needed for the diagnostic routiner to communicate with the CU.

We usually let the routiner run overnight, when the exchange switches were lightly used, and thus mostly free for testing.