English

Noun

routiner ‎(plural routiners)

1. (jazz) A jazz musician who plays by ear (i.e. not using sheet music, but rather following along with the band and memorizing music when needed).
   • 1999, Reid MITCHELL, ALL ON A MARDI GRAS DAY, Harvard University Press (ISBN 9780674016231), page 153

     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.

   • 2005, Lawrence Gushee, Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band, Oxford University Press, USA (ISBN 9780199889792)

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

   • 2006, Thomas Brothers, Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, W. W. Norton & Company (ISBN 9780393344240), page 236

     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.

   • 2014, Dennis McNally, On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, Counterpoint (ISBN 9781619024120), page 141

     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.

2. A device used to automatically activate and cycle the settings of electronic equipment for testing purposes.
   • 1955, Telephony

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

   • 1972, Computer Design: The Design and Application of Digital Circuits, Equipment & Systems

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

   • 2006, B. Jack Copeland, Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers, OUP Oxford (ISBN 9780191578212)

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