Some problems with blues

[starjasmine]

Interestingly, Neely hints at another obvious physical feedback loop without actually calling it out: physical feedback. For example, preschool kids that clap and sing along with music develop pitch perception and time sense at a visceral level, learning to recognize when they are "with the beat" or "in tune" even though they may not abstract these concepts.

This brings to mind the fact that the more ways you can learn to think about something, the better you get at it.

- At one time in my life I took ballroom dance lessons and at another time I played in an R&B show band that actually had choreographed routines (like the Temptations). Both activities helped my physical sense of time. Gravity is constant, and so is your own weight and inertia (for all practical purposes) second to second; when you are trying to do a dance step, you can literally feel the speed of the music on a subliminal level because you have physical cues about how long it takes to shift your weight from foot to foot, or how long it takes to do a turn, and so on.

- Working as a club DJ also sharpened my sense of tempo: to aid seamless transitions, we labeled all of the music in our rotation according to beats per minute. Through sheer repetition, I began to be able to replay in my head certain tunes that I knew were a certain tempo: 120 bpm is a comfortable tempo for most people to dance to, so I had a lot of examples of that tempo to be able to replay mentally.

Now for the "weird story" section of my post: these skills, and the finger exercises I did to improve dexterity of my fretting hand, once got me out of a traffic ticket. I had been pulled over on a Saturday night and the officer administered a field sobriety test. After proving that I could walk a straight line, he asked me to tell him when thirty seconds had passed. I closed my eyes, and played back a 120 BPM tune in my head, felt that tempo, and then counted 60 beats at that tempo. My measure of 30 seconds was 28 seconds on the cop's stopwatch. Not bad!

So then he said, "Now I'm going to touch my fingers to my palm in a certain order and I want you to do the same." He touched his fingers to his palm in the order 1-2-3-4 and then 4-3-2-1.

Of course, I had no problem doing that. I told him "That's easy for me because I'm a guitarist and I practice finger exercises like that all the time. Now I want you to do some for me." And I did the following at the pace of 60 bpm sixteenth notes , speaking each finger number as I touched it to my palm, like fretting without a guitar in hand: "1-2-3-4, 2-3-4-1, 3-4-1-2, 4-1-2-3. Now backwards: 4-3-2-1, 3-2-1-4, 2-1-4-3, 1-4-3-2. Now alternating: 1-3-2-4, 2-4-1-3, 3-1-4-2, 4-2-3-1. OK, now you try."

He let me go :-) We both knew that he could not have done either the time estimation or the finger dexterity nearly as well as I did.

In retrospect, I was fortunate that he did not think I was being a smartass and decide to haul me in for challenging him. Also, I probably couldn't pull that off today, as I stopped practicing those finger exercises years ago. I still have that level of dexterity or better, but I'm out of practice at reciting the finger numbers as I do the patterns.

[christianm77]

There's also this

[starjasmine]

@starjasmine I really thank you for listening, great advice. You're great !

You are too kind. Thank you. I'm glad to help when I can.

[WillMbCdn5]

My favorite blues to play/study at the moment is this one - Kreisbergs phrasing , time feel and melodic development is just delicious. Watch his face and body language - he is feeling it!! Lots to learn in what seems pretty simple at first. Toss the metronome .

[starjasmine]

My favorite blues to play/study at the moment is this one - Kreisbergs phrasing , time feel and melodic development is just delicious. Watch his face and body language - he is feeling it!! Lots to learn in what seems pretty simple at first. Toss the metronome .

I love JK's playing. But I would suggest that the OP *not* toss the metronome. There's a big difference between stretching time intentionally for purposes of phrasing and not having a strong sense of meter. This band has both rock-solid internal meter and the ability to hear and respond to each others' phrasing... which is very evident from 1:35 onward, when Dr. Lonnie starts playing time.

[starjasmine]

There's also this

Interesting. @christian have you put in any time learning this? Was it helpful to you? I was a little too lazy to try to remember all the gestures today :-) but I can see where it would be useful.


IDK whether it was on this forum or another, but there's a simplified-for-kids approach to subdividing the beat that goes like this: say each word on the beat in 4/4.

Quarter notes: plum plum plum plum
Eighth notes: cherry cherry cherry cherry
Sixteenth notes: avocado avocado avocado avocado
Eighth-note triplets: banana banana banana banana
That last one is a bit awkward; you have to say BAnana BAnana rather than the normal pronunciation of BaNAna, BaNAna, but it works.

PS - sorry to get off topic!

[KirkP]

I mentioned earlier that I thought the problem in the OP videos was losing the pulse when attempting difficult passages. When playing a difficult passage it’s easy to fall behind a bit, but sometimes we’ll rush it, perhaps to compensate. In either case it’s important to continue feeling the pulse of that bassist or drummer that should be playing in your imagination. When difficult passages throw me off, I’ll sometimes practice them as a loop. In other words, you might take a two, four or eight measures from your video where you noticed you lost time and repeat just those measures until you can navigate them without losing the pulse.

[grahambop]

I want to know what means too!

I've got 'A Train'

if you interpolate all the letters he is basically saying that you shouldn’t play with yourself (or rather in this case with a backing track) in case it makes you go blind.

[ragman1]

According to the dictionary, interpolate means 'insert (something of a different nature) into something else'. What with the dangers of premature - sorry, that just slipped out - um, self-induced blindness...

I've got lost.

What does m.s.u.t.b.o stand for? Or is it meant to be nonsense? And, if so, why? Does it stand for something in French?

Actually, what I really want to know is whether Lionel, bless him, is getting a bit more on the beat yet.

[ragman1]

See, I wouldn't sit in a dark room, noodling on an instrument I wasn't entirely familiar with, trying to play in precise time without a rhythmic backing of some kind, and getting hyper-critical with myself.

Doomed to failure, actually.

[grahambop]

According to the dictionary, interpolate means 'insert (something of a different nature) into something else'. What with the dangers of premature - sorry, that just slipped out - um, self-induced blindness...

I've got lost.

What does m.s.u.t.b.o stand for? Or is it meant to be nonsense? And, if so, why? Does it stand for something in French?

Actually, what I really want to know is whether Lionel, bless him, is getting a bit more on the beat yet.

no it’s a sort of code, in English:

.a.t.r.a.i.n
m.s.u.b.t.o.

by interpolate, I meant take m from the second row, a from the top row, s from the second row, t from the top row and carry on in the same way until you get a complete word and all the letters are used up.

Get the idea?

Moralising religious types used to warn that it made you go blind.

Blimey this is hard work!

[christianm77]

Interesting. @christian have you put in any time learning this? Was it helpful to you? I was a little too lazy to try to remember all the gestures today :-) but I can see where it would be useful.

I'm just about to start it. I've used the basic subdivisions a bit, they are useful even without knowing the rest of it.

It is pretty popular with the musicians in London, especially guys who have to play a lot of crazy contemporary shit. John McLaughlin was one of the first western jazz musicians to use it. You can hear some Konnakol on his album Que Allegria, with Trilok Gurtu, for instance. I think it became popular in fusion circles particularly as you can imagine.

It's a very well thought out system. For instance the syllables are designed to be easy to say at speed. And they've been teaching this down in places like Kerala and Tamil Nadu for centuries; some say millennia. Anyway it seems a good way of mastering complex polyrhythms and so on.

Notice how the sense of time is rooted through the hands, that way you can be sure you don't drop a beat.

[christianm77]

[339 in june]

no it’s a sort of code, in English:

.a.t.r.a.i.n
m.s.u.b.t.o.

….

Moralising religious types used to warn that it made you go blind.

Blimey this is hard work!

I've always been told that it makes you go deaf, which is even worse to keep a good timing ….

[ragman1]

no it’s a sort of code, in English:

.a.t.r.a.i.n
m.s.u.b.t.o.

by interpolate, I meant take m from the second row, a from the top row, s from the second row, t from the top row and carry on in the same way until you get a complete word and all the letters are used up.

Get the idea?

Moralising religious types used to warn that it made you go blind.

Blimey this is hard work!

It's okay, I've just got it, sorry

Just shows how pure I am :-)

[ragman1]

Here's something. It's not supposed to be depressing but I suppose it is :-)

[ragman1]

That's Cherokee, you can't fool me.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Notice how the sense of time is rooted through the hands, that way you can be sure you don't drop a beat.

Super important, and I don't know of an equivalent that even comes close in western music practice. My daughter and I have workshoped some of this for basic freshman college music transcription etc.

Basic hand movements work at different levels. 4/4 takadimi works for counting the meter, but can also be used to "transcribe" or deconstruct more difficult, smaller "four" rhythms as well, like syncopated 16th notes etc.

[Lionelsax]

Here's something. It's not supposed to be depressing but I suppose it is :-)

Thanks very much, my girlfriend asked me if you were in love, I said I didn't know but I understand it like if it were love so I appreciate.

[Lionelsax]

Hey, Lionel. Some great sounds. Good tone, good lines/concepts, and you have a lot of variety in your arsenal, with walking bass and good language ideas etc.

I definitely hear what you're talking about with time. To my ears, it's not a fundamental time issue as much as some basic technical issues. Sounds like you lose time slightly on triplet lines and some dotted quarter note -type accent lines etc. When things get slightly more complex, you're losing just a bit of time.

I would personally work on woodshedding triplets pretty heavily for a period of time. I spent a few months really working them a couple of years ago and it made a big difference in my ability to hear. If you're a normal musician, you probably have a hundred times more hours developing ideas over quarter, eighth and sixteenth note type lines, whether in school music as a kid or even just jazz. If you only play triplets as one-offs, they're never going to be as solid as others you play more often. Your 8th note triplet lines are much more solid than the quarter note triplets to my ears. I would spend some time woodshedding entire forms for a substantial amount of time utilizing quarter note triplets until you can hear and execute them solidly.

These are best heard and practiced as double stops on eighth note triplets. One voice or the other can be heard as the quarter note triplet. Try every 4th measure or every other measure until you can hear and execute them cleanly and insert them anywhere by ear. I think if you woodshed triplets this way you'll "get the other threes for free", like the dotted quarter note -type figure around 4:12 in the first video. Dotted quarter notes have the same relationship to eighth notes as quarter-note-triplets have to eighth-note-triplets.

I would slow the metronome way down and woodshed triplets. One aspect which is hard to grasp until you can play them well is that it's not just the attacks. It's the releases of notes which give away lack of feel and result in the most loss of time. That's why to really play quarter note triplet feels well, you have to woodshed 8th-note-triplet-based double-stop language. It's not just the attacks. It's the grace notes, slurs, slides, even the movement of your fingers between notes. Listen to the following everyday for a few months and learn to hear everything in terms of very slow 12/8 feels (that's triplets):

There's so much subdivision and so many instruments present that you can really hear how everything actually "locks" more than you usually think of with Billie and some of these really "loose", "behind" players. Spend a week listening to just the snare or ride. Do the same for all the other players. It also has the double time connection to ballad-12/8 and the trippy out-of-time, non-locked swing of Mulligan (I think). [I honestly don't know why woodshedding triplets helps so much with straighter swing feels, but it's a thing, and advocated by a lot of old pros. (I think it's learning to hear the releases).] Anyway, just listen to it. It's really a Rosetta's stone for understanding what Billie and Lester are doing on more sparse recordings with few instruments. She sounds so locked on this. Really just the context of hearing more subdivisions.

*****************************..
Last thing: integration of soloing, chords etc is really it's own skill. Sounds like you're mostly there with that aspect, but you might dedicate some time to 6 articulations when practicing lines.

For any line, be able to play it:
1. Starting on a chord from the beat.
2. Starting on a chord from the "&" before the beat.
3. Starting on a chord from the "&" after the beat.

4. Ending on a chord from the beat.
5. Ending on a chord from the "&" before the beat.
6. Ending on a chord from the "&" after the beat.

Be able to execute these on 8ths, 8th note triplets, quarter note triplets and sixteenths. Everything else is mostly a variation of these. The complexity of the lines doesn't really matter at ALL. So, play lines/voicings which are basically simple. Again, this is a separate skill from everything else. Once in place, you'll be able to do it with all of the great ideas that everyone can tell you're hearing and can already play. I discovered this by accident while woodshedding a concept and found out later that I could basically apply this integration skill to anything which I could otherwise play. I also found that I was better at the integration skill than other players who could otherwise play much better than me. (You play better than me in several aspects honestly).

But that pointed out to me that this is a big hole in a lot of players' arsenal. Anyway, I'm sure like most, I'm better at hearing things which I've had to work through myself pretty heavily. Again, I think you sound great and have a lot of good ideas and basic language under your belt.

Congrats and keep at it.

I really thank you for listening and analysing, I cannot see the video but I guess what you talking about.
Sometimes I play odd rhythms and when it happens with a great drummer, he takes the opportunity to play polyrhythmically, 4/4 becomes 3/4 or 6/8.
It happens when I play triplets of 4th or half notes, he generally plays accents in order to keep me in the beat.
They usually love it when other drummers get mad, some smile and have a good time because they communicate.
Polyrhythm is a big part of jazz, well, it's what I think not the big truth.

I repost my "box" because it makes me laugh. I tried to recreate something I made years ago, that's I call kind of polyrhythm because I try to play 16th notes in a swing feel.
Box

That's the old thing, when I was working on it.

Box

[christianm77]

Konnakol is drumming for tabla. It's Indian. But it can be adapted. Not at my level, though.

Konnakol is not for tabla.

Konnakol - Wikipedia

[ragman1]

Lionelsax -

It's okay, sweetie, you're quite safe :-)

[ragman1]

Konnakol is not for tabla.

Konnakol - Wikipedia

You're right! I misread it, it's tala, which means hand. Still irritating, though :-)

[wolflen]

human perception of our senses varies as they are in motion and not static

what we see,hear etc may be more or less compromised by what we think we see hear etc

same for our other abilities to translate incoming and outgoing information

record your self saying a simple line of text..time it

repeat it three times and see if the times are different on each round

when I was doing studio work and we had to work with a "click track" which is used to synchronize multi-tracks to the same pulse
if the music was fairly easy to read it may take a few takes to get it..if its complex ..well here is where raw talent and skill meet

if we record "happy birthday" three times...without any pulse measures..metronome etc..it is almost assured that the elapsed time of the tune will be different each time
although to the players ear and the listeners they may sound exactly the same

perfection in music (and most of life) is a journey without a destination

[ragman1]

But is there perfection?