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the most important thing is to play IN TIME
by about a million times
what you play hardly matters at all - but if you keep falling out of tempo, that matters immensely
take c jam blues
learn how to play that so it swings
take any turnaround intro - learn how to play it so you don't start to drag (slow down) before the tune starts
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in a way nothing can prepare you for how serious the time is - the only way to learn is to play in public with people who have learned how serious the time is. as soon as you do you realize that the only thing that really matters is
staying in time
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so the general point is this: beginners always think that its what they play that matters (which notes and chords etc.)
but you could play the simplest possible voicings and the most unadventurous possible phrases as long as they are comfortably in time
if you do that you are doing a million times better than someone who plays their bill evans voicings but can't stay consistently in time
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so the biggest reason you don't like the way you sound even on your own at home is that
you are not playing in time (or anything like it)
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just thought this might help some people - hope so
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04-03-2016 10:33 AM
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There's a jam session I used to go to. There's a piano player I used to see there all the time. I got to calling him "Captain Trainwreck" because the guy - Seriously - had no time. He could usually make it through the head, but once the solos started, he'd slide into this draggy, rubato thing and usually we'd have to stop around the second chorus. But he kept coming back week after week, and never got any better.
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[QUOTE=Groyniad;636496]the most important thing is to play IN TIME
by about a million times
what you play hardly matters at all - but if you keep falling out of tempo, that matters immensely
take c jam blues
learn how to play that so it swings
take any turnaround intro - learn how to play it so you don't start to drag (slow down) before the tune starts
I have just started working with a metronome because, after recording myself, I discovered that time was my major problem. I am new to Jazz, but have been playing guitar for many decades and rarely play with other musicians. I am just a beginner here. I have been told to use a metronome by several teachers over the years, I should have listened.
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Yes yes yes yes
EDIT: but what would be your advice to the beginner to improve?
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Chick Corea told a friend of mine who played with him on an occasion or two, that guitar players just as a group don't have good time. He doesn't know why, but that he would recommend working on his time.
I thought that was very interesting. Chick's one of the few great jazz musicians who's actually played with a bunch of great guitar players. Made me wonder more about this.
My friend said it was said with much love as advice.
Maybe two hands playing one note? Bass players have that but their WHOLE THING is time. Guitar players are often into flash before they can run. They fly sometimes when they still have their training wheels on.
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In transcribing Pat Martino songs (mostly early Pat), I noticed that he played a lot of similar lines. But there were times when he would play a similar line but he would play them accenting off beats.
This really threw me off and showed that being able to accent both strong and weak beats, as well as the transition between the two devices, can be difficult (at least for me) if one does not have strong timing.
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Be aware. Metronome. Record yourself from time to time. Don't use the metronome all the time. Learn to keep the time in your chest or head or foot or where ever you have it. But the time is INTERNAL. It's not external. That's the danger in relying too much on the metronome. Corea suggest never use a metronome. Chick Corea is my guy, can you tell?
Originally Posted by christianm77
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Does he not? Interesting. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Many people suggest never using a metronome, more suggest using it. Personally I'm agnostic. I go through phases of using it and phases of not.
I'm thinking that the most important thing is understand the phrases you play from a rhythmic perspective. That's the missing link with a lot of analysis....
People often take a phrase and think about the note choice, but they often don't think about understanding the rhythm. One way to work on this is to sing the rhythm of the phrase without pitch (harder than it sounds) and try improvising other phrases with the same rhythm. It's also about listening to and vocalising swing rhythms as you hear them rather than going on the basis of what you think they are - many students over dot their swing feel....
I do record myself a lot which I find helpful for analysing specific issues... A lot of my time feel practice now is spent addressing and tidying up the execution of certain rhythms at certain tempos. That's a piece of information I think is important - time/feel is a definite thing a set of skills. It's not just one thing.Last edited by christianm77; 04-03-2016 at 03:33 PM.
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The last couple of years I've gotten perhaps too reliant on practicing with a metronome. But I have a series of tunes I practice everyday. They go up from 60 BPM to 300, a step at a time. I discovered I was kind of stuck at my favorite tempo, so this was my way of breaking out. But more and more I'm thinking of what Chick said. BUT using a metronome is very new to me. I only really started using one in ernest about 4 years ago. I used it very sparingly before that.
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I personally think guitarist's lag has to do with the lack of school training, and I mean school when you're a KID. I did several years of band in school, and you just get so many hours of having all subdivisions of the beat drummed into your head, and I mean literally beat in with a drumstick on a music stand! You don't have to be self disciplined. You don't have to figure things out. There's a guy at the front of the room literally shouting out the counts for triplets and all kind of syncopated 16th rhythms while simultaneously destroying a drumstick AND a music stand. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Guitarists who don't study another instrument, mostly don't get this training. You have to bear down and do the work yourself, you're always gonna sound subpar next other players. Most players I hear who can't play in time are not subdividing. I hear tons of guitar players who basically play better than me in every other way except for time, and all the rest of that honestly doesn't matter in my book. I have a lot of work to do in many areas, but most don't even seem to know that there IS a problem, and jazz seems to be about just about just playing "loose with the beat".
What's worse is that, in jazz, the least common denominator for subdivision of the beat is triplets mostly. To untrained musicians who haven't done a lot of work with them, triplets are basically some kind of magical, fairy, unicorn which were requires some mystical understanding at the top of a mountain. Guitarists mostly don't get them unless there are three of them together, making up one beat. Once you get into the polyrhythmic stuff and syncopation.... unicorns....fairies.....
Dortmund I think is the one who said it: subdivide, subdivide, subdivide. +1
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I think you're right on the money Matt! I was lucky to have been in stage band throughout high school. But even by then it was a little late. But my very first band was a horn band with professionally looking charts written by the trumpet player. They all went to school together, though older than me by about 4-5 years, my same high school, which had a kick ass band director and award winning bands. The band was a Tower of Power band. We did so much of their music through Bump City and What Is Hip. That really taught me to sub-divide. THAT was a lesson. Funky 16ths, but mostly straight.
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I just make it a point to record myself often.
Then, if some practice with a metronome is needed, believe me, I hear it.
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I think this is true. Guitarists who can play good time have often spent some years in the trenches playing rhythm guitar for exacting band leaders. Not all of them, but many of them. Other guys play bass or drums. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
I don't know many jazz guitar players who swing that hard TBH. Those that do really stand out for me.
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I'm starting to think my uptempo jazz playing might be improved by working on refining my 16th subdivisions (ala funk - which is not something I play much of) - do you think there is affinity here? I have heard that funk traces its roots back to New Orleans which is also true of bop rhythm. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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Playing TOP in particular and trying to hit those Garabaldi/Prestia grooves got me visualizing stuccato 16th note accents. Guitar chanks in 16th stuccato mutes. Subdivision. I think it helped.
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It all traces back to NOLA.
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Parenthetical aside: Originally Posted by henryrobinett
My partner in many crimes to date, a quietly influential guitar player in Canada, teaches at a nearby University. One of his strategies is for his students to do their everyday movement-involving stuff to the rhythm of their metronome. Always easy to spot his students on campus - they're the ones walking along to the click in their pockets, feeling a groove and digging the pulse. Seems to work, too.
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One thing is a relatively recent duh realization for me that might be reflective of this problem is that my time has to be equally on for both hands. I've spent so much time in my picking hand my attention went there. I'd concentrate on striking the note in time with the pick. But my time improved when I instead put more attention on squeezing the note with my left. REALLY getting the pulse in my left hand. Just getting my right to follow. But the articulation is also in the right hand. So much goes into both. Therein lies some of the problem.
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I try to do a lot of multitrack recording, which is harder than one might think. So I tend to record usually to a metronomic click track. But that is not the same as playing to a percussionist. Still there are drawbacks to a click track just as there are drawbacks to too much rubato. Sometimes I just leave the click as a high hat rhythm just to remind me of where the beat is. Of course, you can be early or late and subdivision is a big deal.
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I've been working with Jimmy Raney's style now for several months. To be sure, his note choices, the fingerings, the speed, have all been challenging. BUT his sense of time is what is so hard to get. He has a way of teetering and staggering around the beat. He never fails, never misses, but he slips and slides all around it. His phrasing is almost "How long can I wait without missing the bus" or "How hard can I push without going off the cliff?" He never misses the bus or goes off the cliff, but in working on his stuff, I have done it many, many times. Originally Posted by christianm77
The OP is right. I played in a weekly jam session with local musicians for about 18 months several years back. I'd always had trouble playing in pick-up bands and such. But this session was anchored by a pianist, drummer and bassist who were drop-dead solid in their time. I literally felt like they were carrying me when I played, and I learned from them that the lamest lines and most prosaic voicings could work when the flow was preserved. Yes, still lame and prosaic, but not "song-ending catastrophe."
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Two hands doing something very different. This is normal for string instrument players and I thin it's part of the problem we have with time, as Henry noted in post #18. Pianists have two hands doing basically the same thing. Drummers have two hands (and two feet) doing basically the same thing. Reed players have two hands doing basically the same thing, Brass player not so much, they are coordinating lips and one hand mostly so I don't know how this applies to them.
I think it is easier to be rhythmic with your hands when they are doing something similar (listen to how many pianists play one beat with their left hand and the next beat with their right, for example. Drummers often alternate between limbs). For string players, our hands are doing very different things and *both* of those things have to be in time. When I am playing well, or at least when I feel like I am playing well, my awareness is not in either hand- it's somewhere between my hands. I suppose that really my awareness is on the music and the perception of my hands is almost incidental to that; movement is effortless and accurate. This can sometimes last for a few seconds on end. It often seems easier to achieve when I am playing fingerstyle than with a plectrum.
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Try not using the click when doing this and you'll see where your time is really at. Originally Posted by targuit
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I've found it useful when practicing with a metronome to set it half time or quarter time. Then practice with the metronome playing various beat. For example, at quarter time play a tune with the metronome clicking on beat one, then try again on beat two, and so on. I've also done this with the metronome clicking on the swing triplet anticipating beat one. It's more interesting and challenging than just having the metronome click quarter notes.
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That's way too complicated for my wee little brain.
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one thing about rhythm, jazzers aren't the only ones who have some.
Blues, rock, bluegrass, classical . . . jazz doesn't own good timing.
I think guitarists sometimes play off beat just so they can be heard over the mix.
pluck a bit before or a bit after, or toss in some really slow triplets just to catch an ear
Maybe not a good habit, but it happens
Hopefully then you can grab the groove if other players give you nasty stares
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