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Spot on. Know where you are in the measure. Practice with music - jam along with records, backing tracks or other players. Get your tone right. I think of Grant Green - swung like mad, great timing and dynamics and played within his limitations. We should all work hard and aspire to this. Peace.
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04-08-2025 12:50 AM
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"The Barry Harris thing about 2 and 4 being the clap or the upper body and the 1 and 3 being the feet or the lower body makes so much sense. You have to understand rhythm to decode a written rhythm you haven't encountered before but you can't play it by understanding it."
Yes. I have been a fierce advocate of teaching Dalcroze Eurhythmics for years to High School students. It has been fantastic. Feeling and experiencing music in the body is the pillar of this educational approach that combines the body and the mind - it reveals the natural links between body movement and musical movement.
In Barry Harris I found this exact approach in jazz by the best jazz teacher I have ever listened to.
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Barry said “always pat your foot”
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
What you gonna do?
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a lil foot-tapping and the man might be able to play his sax in time... Originally Posted by Donnd
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Yes but what if he plays it really reallly fast though? Originally Posted by djg
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strong words... amateur hour! Originally Posted by Donnd
He says you shouldn't tap your foot because you should be playing with other musicians and not with your foot. I'm not sure why those are mutually exclusive.
If tapping your foot helps you play in time better, then tap your foot!
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it is such a non-issue. nobody in the world can pass a blindfold test telling tappers from non-tappers by their time feel. mainstream jazz is folk music. there are as many ways to get there as there are players. trying to codify this shit into dos and donts for clicks or tuition fees only hurts the music.
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Wait - that's not my favourite guitar playing grumpy Canadian with a bad haircut. Where is he? Who is this other bloke holding a sax? Originally Posted by Donnd
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I do remember my first jazz guitar album was Blues Dues and you can hear Joe just slamming his foot on the stage the whole time.
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Yeah I think this anti foot tapping stuff is quite recent, probably an import from the classical world where it's easy to see why you'd want to discourage it. But so many of the greats were and are inveterate foot tappers it's very hard for me to take the say so of a YouTuber seriously, even if they can play really well (I have no idea how they play)
The thing people cite videos as if they have more authority than they do. As a maker of YouTube videos myself, I try to steer away from these sorts of pronouncements the days (mostly haha).
It's a bit like saying you shouldn't play with your thumb over the top, or that you should always alternate pick everything. Maybe it's good if you are a beginner to hear this? You need to be definite with beginners.
The way I've heard it said - you can tap out of nervous energy (bad) or as a natural relaxed expression of the ground beat (good).
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Maybe, if we danced a lot, we would develop a good time. Or, at least have a goodtime.
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And now that I’m thinking about it, why isn’t foot tapping circular? Like … if you’re just lifting and smacking it on the floor fast I get it, but if the movement is rhythmic then why would it be a problem?
Like right hand strumming. Weird jerky motions make weird jerky rhythm.
whatever I hate this
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Wait wait wait … are you saying you don’t have more authority than I do? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I didn’t say that Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I got a coloured light bruv, of course I do
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It’s a bit tangential - but the anti establishment thing is a real seller on YouTube. If you tell them you can get everything you can get from attending Berklee from YouTube they’ll lap it up.
It was actually interviewing music college students that moved me away from this.
They were by and large well adjusted and enjoying their course and emphasising the importance of musical community and real world playing that made me move away from this. jazz education is much more a product of the people involved in it than any shaping syllabus.
It’s quite hard not to lean into this type of thing when you have comments saying ‘you are the only person who teaches x’ or ‘they never taught me this at college.’
If you aren’t out in the real world much it might be easy to start to believe that you have some special insight or if you are an unscrupulous person building some sort of monetised semi cult.
In classical YouTube there’s this ‘whole beat’ guy going around. Thirty minute videos just talking without any music about how people are playing Beethoven wrong and calling out excellent musicians for rejecting this theory as the establishment or whatever. It’s the tenor of our times.
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I knew a one-man band man. He banged his foot on the ground a lot... and got sciatica.
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I couldn't get far into the video*, but my first thought, based on my own experience, was, "What if foot-tapping is a response to one's sense of time?" I often find myself responding to a tune I'm playing--usually backing--with various bodily movements, not always a foot-tap. It feels like a reinforcement of the time I'm feeling rather than some kind of metronomic guiding of it. It's like dancing, even though I haven't been a regular social dancer since high school. I suspect that time-feel has its roots somewhere in the body and that tapping (or twitching or swaying or head-nodding) is just one more way it's getting out there. Kind of cheering the hands on.
* A strong whiff of "everything you know is wrong" that always makes me back off.
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I agree with Barry 100 percent. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I see it as setting a timing/rhythm marker more than a response. I can use several bodily movements to mark time, an "and", or a backbeat or just a spot where everyone should be nailing hits on time. I sometimes find myself going heel to toe automatically when I'm seated. Originally Posted by RLetson
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+1 (or is that +2?) Originally Posted by DawgBone
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I don't "always" do it though. To me they are kind of like mile markers on a drive or in more redneck terms shotgun shells stuck on tree branches to mark the trail. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
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This is such an interesting discussion! I've enjoyed reading up till here. Not sure if I'm on board with all of what's been said, but I have a few random thoughts, for what it's worth.
While I fully respect the points being made about time and the references to some of the top players and teachers in jazz (past and present), it's not something that I could ever attain or even aspire to. As an amateur jazz guitarist (in the sense of Merrifield's notion of "the pleasures of doing what you love"), my main musical activity is participating in open jazz jam sessions at various local venues that hold them (for several opportunities per month). Any practice is for the most part reviewing known tunes and learning new tunes. In a sense, at least in my limited experience, everything I need to know is in the tunes. I practice tunes with iReal (bass and drums only) or sometimes Drum Genius. This, to me, although not optimal, is a much more interesting and fun way to keep time than using a metronome. At jams, while on stage, the focus is on listening and interacting with others. My time while comping is fine for the most part, but I have noticed on occasion that when soloing and slipping into a zone I might drop a beat, or lose the form somehow. However, with careful listening and cattention to others, I can usually find my way back into time.
In my albeit very localized and limited experience with jam sessions here in Japan, there are different ecologies for each of the venues. One of them is a hangout for some of the pro and semi-pro players, along with a few very accomplished amateur players, so the bar is quite high. However, there is always a welcoming attitude, especially toward new comers, regardless of the player level. Still, some shy away from sessions at this venue. On the other end of the spectrum is a venue that often attracts jazz curious rock and blues players, tourists passing through, students, etc. There is some crossover between these venues and I go to jams at both. What I found is that an accommodating attitude for the sake of learning among the advanced players is really helping to create moments of "situated learning" for those who have some initial difficulty getting into a jazz groove. Home practice, it goes without saying, is crucial, but being on stage in the unpredictable atmosphere of an open jam session is unparalleled as a practical learning experience.
At another venue, there is an expressed pedagogical intention. It's more like a workshop than an open jam session, and it's hosted by a regional pro pianist and bassist. Once, I got lost in the timing on "Sugar" and came in late and wobbly on returning to the head after trading fours. The bass and piano continued (there was no drummer that month). It was clear that I was off and I felt terrible. Once it thankfully ended, the pianist gave some polite advice, suggesting that I listen more closely to the bassist. But upon reflection afterwards I realized from that experience how really dependent I was on a drummer.
I've other thoughts, but I have a proclivity toward verbosity so I'll offer just one more.
Time is fluid, as several here have said, but it is also the cumulative result of individual experiences brought together in an unpredictable and interactive social setting, at least at jam sessions without a set list or rehearsals. In some sense and in some contexts, jazz can almost be thought of as a social music, at least from where I'm sitting, where mutual acceptance of diversity and careful listening are paramount attributes. Only time can tell.
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You rely on the drummer because you haven't done the dirty work with a metronome building an internal clock for yourself and have to rely on the cues of others who have. Now imagine doing a gig with a drummer who takes the same approach as you. Who is he going to turn to for cues when he does that gratuitous fill at the turnaround and loses time, after throwing a wrench in everyone else's clock? He makes everyone pay for his self indulgent behaviors. Originally Posted by JazzPadd
That exact situation was my experience last weekend helping out some friends and inspired the thread. If you don't really care, that's fine, it's just that at some point you'll shut yourself out of getting those chances to work with better players because you are a problem child on the bandstand. If you're all about fun and games it's fine, it's just that even at jams there will be certain guys who want to avoid sharing the stage with you if what you described is something routine.
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