Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Jazz Study Group 2: Advanced Players

I would describe it as good!

Kidding aside, the short phrases sound to me as if he is playing the same kind of ideas as in his longer phrases, just broken up rhythmically. It's definitely syncopated and resolves melodically to varying degrees. Sometimes he has to get to the next little phrase before it sounds complete, and sometimes he plays several phrases that sound unresolved before firmly landing somewhere. I think maybe this is the aspect that I think of as wandering... whether the phrases are played together or separated. Each "little phrase" kind of has a life of it's own, only somewhat related to it's surrounding phrases (most of the time). It's very spontaneous. Not wandering would have more "little phrases" (linked or separated) that are more simililar to each other... like shifting melodic patterns, arpeggiated ideas, or scale-like runs. It would be more contrived. After listening again though, I do think that there are lots of instances of contrived ideas in his lines as well.

Sorry I'm still on the wandering bit.

By the way, speaking of "old" players... I saw Ahmad Jamal last year and he's still on fire! He's got a style all his own... another favorite of mine.

Hey guys, here is my exercise.

There's a pdf of it and an audio file linked to below. The idea is to take a 3 note phrase. I've used the b3, 4 and b7 from the A minor pentatonic and placed it over a ii V I progression over four bars. Left hand voicings courtesy of jazzwee.

They are played on the quarter note on purpose so as to really get the different feelings of each meter. Change them to rootless or whatever if you want, the key thing is to play quarters, almost like a simple stride. I wanted to keep the score as 'tabula rasa' as possible. So with the three note phrase it could be played with the first two legato and staccato on the last, or all three legato etc. The left hand could play long, short, long, short too etc..

There's a method beneath the expansion that leads into mixed meter and over the bar-line phrases, but I don't want to complicate things. For now realize that you should sing / subdivide alternately between triplets and sixteenths. The first phrase is in sixteenths (bars 1-4), the second is in triplets (bars 5 - 8). I will be uploading a pdf that reveals the actual 'deeper' pulses at work later today


Polymetric Melodic Expansion Exercise.

http://www.box.net/shared/njl523a24s

Audio of it: (exported from Sibelius, so don't be expecting a Steinway! :P )

http://www.box.net/shared/3d536bh8fg

As a teaser can you see which phrase implies 5/4(at a slightly slower pulse than the actual time)?

riverrun.

Edit: some of the notes should be tied properly, but it hopefully gets the idea across.

Here's the answer to the 5/4 teaser:

http://www.box.net/shared/l7uig6bm9f

And here is an example of implying 3/4 taken from the same exercise. I think this one is really worth listening to, as I shift the left hand to accompany the right hand melody notes, you can really feel the time go 'out' but it is actually pure 4/4 the whole time. Sounds kinda cool

http://www.box.net/shared/060f1djzsz

{EDIT: It states 'every quarter', but should read 'every fourth eighth note triplet'}

Here is the audio sample:

http://www.box.net/shared/z2l0uzg561

So on your polymetric melodic expansion exercise is this what's happening...?

You alternate dividing the quarter note in 3 parts and 4 parts.
The first line divides the quarter in 4, the second in 3.
The third line divides the quarter in 4 but only plays every other pulse.
The 4th divides the quarter in 3 but only plays every other pulse.
The 5th divides the quarter in 4 and plays after skipping every 2.
The 6th divides the quarter in 3 and plays after skipping every 2 and/or also divides the quarter in 4 and plays after skipping every 3.
The 7th line divides the quarter in 4 and plays after skipping every 4.
Etc.

I'm assuming the idea here is to feel the subdivisions changing on each line and become familiar with the feel of accenting every pulse within those subdivisions?

Thanks, riverrun. Just downloaded the 5/4 audio sample. My ears reads music better than my eyes, so that was very useful. I am just now working on transferring the cuban conga version of 5/4 (Candido with Elvin) to the piano. Tricky business, but very interesting.
Brad Mehldau has been discussed a lot here, and yesterday I went on Youtube and listened. The second track I found was My Favorite Things, and then it was straight to the piano. I dont have to tell people here what Mehldau can do for your piano playing, but for my part it was awesome.
Just ordered a trio CD together with the Charlie Parker Omnibook. And my Kawai MP6 arrives in a few days. Nice to have something to keep you occupied.
cubop

Exactly Scott. And yes, the last one and penultimate one are over two bars, rather than one. It's harmonically really simple. Honestly I was unsure about even posting it because I know the level of musicianship on this forum is high. But I'm teaching myself mainly and find this a useful exercise in phrasing.

Check the examples below the original post for an insight, I hope, into some of the possible implied times.

The 5/4 and 3/4 examples are pretty clear I think. It's the clearest way I could think of to introduce polyrhythms. I really hope it makes sense.

riverrun.

Cubop, Thanks for checking out my idea. Mehldau is a very advanced player, very inspiring to me. I am listening right now to Bud Powell's Poco Loco. What a great track. Thanks for reminding me of it.

I'm trying to skip reading everything that refers to your post riverrun so I can independently analyze.

This is rhythmic vocabulary building here. Some of it not so obvious.

Although I understood it in theory from reading the notation, there's nothing like listening to ingrain it into my head. However, for a practical use (in jazz), an offbeat start might be easier to think about when playing lines.

I'd really like to hear these on the offbeat.

I'm still continuing the reading here..

I would describe the first part as just outlining simple melodic fragments. Notice they are intervallic. Simple and starting on offbeats.

Then he builds in complexity. Longer phrases. And he starts substituting chords in there. Then he inserts the rhythmic patterns that are over the barline.

He talked about this before in a documentary. He listens for a motif (shape) in something he plays earlier and then modifies that and reuses it over different chords or inverts it. And then he takes the same and applies a rhythmic variation to it.

Later on he typically builds up to a crescendo with outside substitutions in 16th notes although he's pretty restrained here.

I can see why he doesn't get lost or run out of ideas because his buildup is consistent.

Lots to be learned in this single video.

The difficulty rhythmically is that his tunes go so fast that the subdivisions in the time are difficult to comprehend. Except for his odd meter overlays and note placement within the context of some unusual syncopation, I think he still plays in the Bebop idiom.

I've got to jump in here briefly with all of this talk about rhythm.

I think everyone must also take into consideration that rhythm by itself, while interesting is absolutely not enough to shape a decent line when playing a melodic instrument. Syncopation, polyrhythms and such need to have a musical shape that is not IMHO dictated by rhythm, but dictated by the melody that sits on that rhythm.

At least this is what I'm discovering, because when I analyze why I have problems with speeding up it's not that I don't understand what I'm doing rhythmically, but it's partly because my lines sometimes don't end on a note that melodically makes sense, at least to me. So, I've found that it's at those times that I rush into the next melodic resting point, or rush away from the last badly executed line. This is especially true when I'm doing something that is not all eighth notes or sixteenths.

So I'm happy to have made that discovery. I only hope that the realization helps me improve my lines and tempo issues now.

Exactly. I've seen that documentary. It was what inspired me to write the exercise as was this quote:



And scep, you can take heart from the fact that in part one of Mehldau's All The Things You Are, before the band comes in, the time is not consistent. He rushes quite a bit at one point. Not his phrases, but the basic tempo.

Point taken jazzwee about the offbeat. I wanted to emphasize the downbeat for the sake of the exercise. The exercise is really about feeling the basic quarter note pulse independent of the rhythmic nature of ones lines.

But the approach to this problem is simple. END THE LINE. Not every melodic fragment has to finish. This is the beauty of syncopation. A hanging concept actually leaves a lot of tension and is great for resolution.

I had a similar problem and I worked on this extensively by having a more jagged and frankly more modern structure. You think it's all fragmented phrases but if you start a new melody almost immediately, it starts to have a Herbie feel to it.

So the rhythm in this style I'm talking about has equal footing with the melody. Each one is randomly cut off (syncopated).

I was taught to do this specifically. So this is not some invented concept of mine.

In a tune like Giant Steps, it's almost necessary since there's not time to actually create a melody fully.

The exercise is great and is helpful for the purpose of subdivision. I was thinking now about vocabulary. So if you get a chance to alter it to be offbeat based, it would have a lot of vocabulary value since that is likely were we need to hear this in our heads.

I do appreciate what you've done there.

Last night, I spent some time listening to drummer instructional videos on the internet (lots of Erskine), and the ideas were just illuminating. Every pianist needs to study this (drum rhythms).

This is such a weak point for me that awareness here can only lead to improvement.

Thanks jazzwee,

Thinking about it more I shouldn't have used the word Melodic. It's about time development and developing your inner clock or pulse (the quarter note). There's been some fantastic feedback that's given me loads to think about. The exercise might have some use in general time development. For example, playing more complex heads, say Spain for example, in unison with others where there are a lot of off beats happening.

As a drummer it is my experience that we often have to re-state the time, which can limit creative interchange, due to other instrumentalists not having thought about time enough. A criticism I have of less advanced drummers in their comping style, is what some guys call 'chasing'. The drummer parrots what the soloist is doing rather than interacting (like counterpoint). Worth listening out for when you listen to live jazz.

I will create a pick-up version with an off-beat of it.

At a Jazz 'camp' I went to when I was a teenager the instructor had everyone close their eyes then counted 1 2 3 4. The idea was to count 12 bars and clap once at the end. No one clapped together. It made a good point. Also if you have software like Cubase or a programmable workstation / metronome it's useful to have a click play for 4 beats then have silence for four bars. Try to come in on one when it comes back in. The slower the BPM the harder it gets. Try 30 BPM. Not easy.

Erskine is a master teacher and master instructor too. His approach has an enormous influence on me, and I'm still trying to absorb his ideas. He was also the guy who 'discovered' Dave Weckl when he was playing New York in a fusion outfit called 'French Toast'. He would go on to play with Chick Corea and impacted a generation of drummers. His dedication to his craft is inspiring: At 40 he totally changed his hand technique after discovering some new ideas (that were actually older ideas developed in the early 20th century). Changing fundamentally how you hold the stick, its fulcrum and everything, after over 20 yrs of playing another, more tense way, is *not* easy. When you see him play now he is so relaxed he looks like he's falling asleep! lol

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuUkMndArXE Peter Erksine: Everything is Timekeeping. I got this years ago. It's a classic. The track that's featured at about 45 seconds in is incredible. The control of the time feel is superb, at such a slow tempo. He talks about how the subdivision changes as you play fast. And the most important lesson of all when playing fast. THINK SLOW.

Just booked my Herbie Hancock/Wayne Shorter tickets at Disney Concert Hall in March!

I decided I'm going to aggressively seek to watch the big guns.

I think what we are both saying here is the same thing, but I haven't clarified the entire thought.

The fragments have to make sense melodically. If they don't resolve within the cell or little syncopated line, they ought to make sense in the bigger line, otherwise they are nothing more than illogical, amusical blips. This is what perhaps separates students from performers. The fragment has to be within context of that which has been fragmented. Otherwise its almost like shattering a bunch of stained glass windows then picking random pieces from each one and those pieces together to make one window. It may seem pretty since its all stained glass, but it won't have the integrity as one window that has been fragmented and reassembled.

Or maybe its like Cubism. The fragments still have to refer back to the subject. You won't find the randomness of some external subject, say trees or lakes, introduced into a painting that is depicting a person unless those trees or lake were part of the original scene.

So when I hear players that have these fragments, and they don't really go anywhere in the short term (seemingly wandering, stand alone bits of notes), I try to listen for the longer line, then if they don't make any sense then I know that the melodic sense is missing, or simply dismissed from the execution.

Herbie has been working with an incredible young bass player called Tal Wilkenfeld. She is in her mid 20's and only started bass at 17! On the piano front Hiromi is someone I've been listening to recently. Two of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JfKY0K_NQk& (I've got rhythm) and an original track http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKuEJBKRW4M

I can't disagree with you here. What's missing from the discusion is how a fragment is created. If the fragment has the right chord tones in sync, it will sound good even when cut off.

If the fragment starts off with extensions (causing tension) and doesn't resolve then it could sound of context when cut off.

In modern jazz though, it's not uncommon for the structure (or bigger concept) to not appear obvious when taking a line in a shorter context.

Mehldau actually makes a note that the connecting motif in Highway Rider is a specific call and response idea and that repeats all over the album. However, the picture is so big that this appears in the beginning lines but not necessarily so often as to constitute an obvious structure.

I didn't realize how common the fragmentation concept is until my teacher specifically made me do it. As a practice exercise he has me do two things:

STYLE 1
1. Keep a long continuous line and then don't play notes at random points. However, keep the melodies going in your head.

STYLE 2
1. Create Melodic snippets but keep cutting it off and start a new snippet with a different rhythmic pattern. Sometimes it's as small as 2 eighth notes or just one long note. But the idea is vary the phrase fragments.

These are very different and he encourages me to play with both. But guiding both are always the harmonic structure. Harmony is defined in the solo at all times.

I would say that style 1 is mostly Keith Jarrett, Style 2 is mostly Herbie. Mehldau is more call/response with his fragments (which I like a lot). But not always. Everyone mixes between the above styles at various moments. Sometimes it depends on the tune.

I wish I could link to a playing of my teacher's version of All the Things You Are which is completely #2. Very #2. Very modern.

I'm not going to keep this up forever. So everyone can take a listen and then eventually I will delete it.

This is recording of 'All the Things You Are' with this very modern fragmentation concept (my terminology).

ATTYA Fragmented Concept
http://www.box.net/shared/k13ibez7c0

There's so much going on here from substitutions to rhythmic displacement (chord anticipation). And the trio manages to stay in sync. I only included a portion. It ends when the bass solo starts.

The thought process of the player here is completely bound by the rules of his predefined harmony even is fragmented it is. The rhythmic displacement is clearly defined as well. Nothing random.

I heard it was recorded in one take.

Can't the bigger line just be the underlying harmonic structure of the tune? In this way, anything that fits in with that structure is correct. The analysis then just becomes a matter of details... what note choices, patterns, rhythms, or lack thereof and how the player chooses to group those ideas. And the correctness of all this would be a matter of perception. To those who don't "get" jazz, it all sounds bad. Probably because they can't hear how whatever is happening at the moment relates to anything else. It all just seems random. So there are many levels of perception in terms of how things fit together. Even to the experienced listener or player there are different ways of hearing what's going on precisely because of the different levels of organization that are there.