Want to improve my Swing Phrasing

[ginod]

Hi guys,

Today i would like to discuss this mystery topic of the right swing phrasierung or swing feel.
I had some lesson by a great local jazz player and he told me, that he don't like my swing phrasing. My notes would be to staccato and my accents are not hip.

So he gives me the task to transcribe a Solo of a jazz player with nice phrasing and swing feel and look what he is doing.

So i transcribed stuff before and looked at the lines of a joe pass solo.

And i took some stuff together, which i want discuss with you.


On the base of eight notes, i recognized nothing which was really new for me. Joe Pass give accents on every Offbeat. He does this really constant.

A Long time ago i decided personal for me, that this sounds a little bit old fashioned.
Do you accent every offbeat in an eight note phrasing, or only some of them ?


The second topic for me is the phrasing of triplet notes.
How do you phrase them. Do you accent the first one, the second one or the third of them. When do you use Slurs. I know that many player Slur from the off to the down beat. But how do you use slurs in triplets.

I have make a PDF File for this topic, with some Practice Ideas.

My main question is. Should i accent really ever offbeat ? or only some of them. The second question is. How sounds a good triplet phrasing

[christianm77]

Maybe your being too analytical. Listen, sing then play

[christianm77]

Slurs in triplets can go a number of ways. Some play the not on the beat and slur the other two. I quite like the mike Moreno thing where you pock the first two notes and slur the rhird

[39cord]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, given the few posts I make, you will get more mileage from recording yourself against a backing track of bass and drums playing a swing rhythm. You can think all you like and transcribe till you are as good as Steve Vai and still you may not 'get it'. All the analytical work is stuck in you frontal cortex and that part of your brain is very far removed from what operates your fingers. Work on doing mostly bench presses all the time like your instructor recommended then try to run a marathon. Tell me how useful your work has been.

Playing every day is needed to accomplish part of what you are looking for. Playing with a rhythm section will accomplish another part. You can kill 2 birds with 1 stone if you play in time with a swinging rhythm section every day. It will be slow unless you are naturally gifted but you will steadily make progress.

Slurs are a personal thing. They are your personality or soul as some like to refer to it. They will come as a by-product of the recording work and need absolutely no attention as a targeted activity.

p.s., just looked at your pdf. What the devil are you practicing 4 note chromatic phrases for. That is like shooting foul shots and trying to clank them off the rim every shot. The triplets are my warm up exercise accenting the 1st, 2nd or 3rd note but do something musical with them to build useful muscle memory not make noise. For me I pick the hardest CAGED form and run the triplets. Being aware of the note to be accented is necessary and is good for both concentration and control.

[ginod]

Thank you. Don't get me wrong, this pdf is only a example to show some possibilities to make accents. This is not what i am practicing. At the moment i pay attention on how i play my jazzlines. I want that they sound more legato, with long notes and not staccato.

I already have played in jazz bands and have a degree in music college in jazz guitar. But nonetheless i want to improve my feeling to sound better.

Thank you for your tipps. I found a great Video on mymusicmasterclass by Bruce Foremen. He gave some amazing tips to improve the attention on your own swing feel. I think its Video 3 by him.

At the moment i am very interested in phrasing triplets. There are so many possibilities. Thank you christian for your tip to accent the second triplet. I also like to make polyrhythmical stuff with them. 4 against 3 is really nice. I think Jonathan Kreisberg does this a lot
Its great because you land on the one of the next bar everytime.

[Cunamara]

Can you dance and feel the swing groove? That's the first thing. The feet are on the beat, the swing is in the hips.

[39cord]

OK, with that background you are armed to the teeth with weapons and tools. Maybe do the Bruce Lee thing and pick just one device about swing rhythm and practice that kick a 1,000 times rather than the approach of practice 1,000 kicks once. If the concentration happens to be on triplets that's a good device. Christian was a big help for me on an earlier post talking about time signatures but you are kilometers ahead of me in that area. Playing alot of 12/8 should integrate what you want and allow you to come to your own decisions on what notes you care to skip in the triplet flow. That will build your phrasing and a musical vocabulary you like. Shut down the frontal cortex and just play until the notes coming tumbling out with good articulation.

[Tomcat]

good discussion, I can say that triplets I tend to downstrike 1st note, slur the 2nd and play upstroke on 3rd so I am ready to downstroke on next beat note.

[christianm77]

I like the way accenting the 2nd triplet pushes against the time. It's kind of hip...

[rpjazzguitar]

Feel can be elusive.

I don't know if this will be helpful, but here's how I have come to think about it.

You can tell if a band has a groove right by watching the audience. They will be moving unconsciously. You'll see feet tapping, heads nodding or bodies swaying -- if the audience is seated -- and there will be people wanting to dance, if it's dance music. If you don't see feet tapping, the groove is very likely not happening.

My feeling is that every instrument needs to be capable of creating that feeling even playing by itself. That is, the Count Basie band swings like mad -- and, if you isolated Freddie Greene's part, it would make you tap your foot too.

So, the question becomes, when you play your part, solo or comp, can you feel it? Can others feel it?

When it's in the pocket you know it. Or, if you can't tell, you have to work on being able to hear and feel the pocket. Playing percussion and dancing may be helpful. Lessons with a swinging bassist maybe helpful. That's the elusive part. It doesn't really require the guitar. How hard can it be to play a swinging line, once you can hear and feel what it is supposed to sound like?

[christianm77]

Playing percussion helped me a lot I have to say. One thing that's quite fun is playing a 6/8 drum pattern while singing bop heads over the top. It's quite hard. Rhythmic independence exercises on the whole seem good for groove.

One thing I've got into a little bit recently is just transcribing pure rhythms without thinking about note choices.

But really my mindset has shifted in the past 10 years or so from being primarily interested in harmony to being primarily interested in rhythm. I think I can come up with cool bebop phrases purely rhythmically, the challenge is playing these phrases on a tune.

One aspect of this that there is a connection between rhythm and note choice. For example, some sort of arpeggio or intervallic figure can be used very freely rhythmically. These phrases are very useful for being creative with rhythm I find.

On the other Neighbour tones usually occur on the upbeat and chord tones happen on the beat, so decorations of chord tones including scales have a certain rhythmic weight, with the phrases setting up the resolutions and being phrased into them.

That said it's also important to understand the role of anticipations in lines too. It's good to experiment with resolving on the beat and anticipating the beat too.

What I want to avoid a bit in my playing (which I have settled into) is always running changes in 8th notes. I've got to the point where I am good at this I think, at most tempos, but it can be a bit boxed in. I think that thinking of the rhythmic phrase first is a really important part of this.

Lastly, I do think there is something to the idea of bop phrases having an underlying clave structure. You hear this really strongly in Bird's phrasing.

[christianm77]

Also I feel that doing the Mike Longo stuff has helped a lot too. I'm not practicing this stuff at the moment, but plan to revisit it soon.

[goldenwave77]

You can tell if a band has a groove right by watching the audience. They will be moving unconsciously. You'll see feet tapping, heads nodding or bodies swaying -- if the audience is seated -- and there will be people wanting to dance, if it's dance music. If you don't see feet tapping, the groove is very likely not happening.

(See below)


So, the question becomes, when you play your part, solo or comp, can you feel it? Can others feel it?

When it's in the pocket you know it. Or, if you can't tell, you have to work on being able to hear and feel the pocket. Playing percussion and dancing may be helpful. Lessons with a swinging bassist maybe helpful. That's the elusive part. It doesn't really require the guitar. How hard can it be to play a swinging line, once you can hear and feel what it is supposed to sound like?

Art Blakey is quoted on the liner notes to The Jazz Messengers: Live at the Café Bohemia:

"In jazz you get the message when you hear the music. And when we're on the stand and we see that there are people in the audience who aren't patting their feet and who aren't nodding their heads to our music, we know we're doing something wrong."

(RE: above 2nd and 3rd paragraph, quote above.)

Again, I think this is so true. If you can sing back bebop heads, then tap out poly-rhythms against regular song heads, or against a backing track, you've got a good start on constructing a line that works...can you take a line, in your head, scat it, and then start to play around with it...rhythmically?...if so, then you're most of the way there, IMO...and then it's a matter of getting it to come out, on your instrument

Can you tap out "Billie's Bounce" or "Confirmation" so someone else can recognize it?...if so...you have the groove.

I honestly don't know if a rule-oriented approach to bebop phrasing can really work, all the time...e.g. "if playing a phrase off of the 1, 3, 5 or 6 of the major chord, insert the half-tone between 5 and 6"... maybe some of the time it does...but what if the rhythm section changes things up?...how do we adjust on the fly, in the moment, and make it sound right?

There are some people who play Chopin and never sound quite right, and the same is true with jazz music.

PS: I hope people can tell that the parenthetical phrase "(see below)", up above, are my words, and is NOT contained in the quote from rpjazzguitar. The last time I did this WW III almost broke out.

[Mike Outram]

Hey @ginod

I think a good thing to get a handle on is a basic phrasing thing of having the upbeat note being different to the downbeat note. e.g., upbeat = louder; downbeat = quieter. Or upbeat = picked; downbeat = slurred.

Just some kind of difference in how you get that phrasing sound on the guitar.

That's because to do that on the guitar means dealing with how you play things. i.e., if you're slurring then that means the slur HAS to be on the same string. And that means that you have to think about WHERE you're going to play something on the fretboard to enable the slur. If you're picking, then you have to make sure you can dynamically control the picking.

Anyhow, I think it's good to be able to do all that. But then where you chose to accent in the actual music/improv is totally up to you.

You want the accenting/phrasing to be alive - not the same all the time, right?

Sorry for the plug, but in my site I have a course that discusses all this in detail with examples of how you might apply this to a few tunes. You can check it out for a couple of weeks to see if it might help

Best,

Mike

[rpjazzguitar]

All well said.


<But really my mindset has shifted in the past 10 years or so from being primarily interested in harmony to being primarily interested in rhythm. >

I noticed that a good player can sound great playing a single D note against a Bbmaj7. All it requires is a perfect feel to the note.

OTOH, if the rhythmic feel isn't there, all the harmonic and melodic sophistication won't help that much.

I fell in love with Brazilian music some time back and have struggled ever since to get the right feel. To the extent that I've progressed, mostly it didn't involve practicing guitar. Getting the groove to feel right is not an exercise in building chops -- rather, it's a challenge to feel the rhythm. I learned several hand percussion instruments and even took a dance class (and I'm the furthest thing from a dancer). But, I think the single thing that helped the most was noticing when I started swaying or tapping while listening -- and when I didn't. Somehow, I think that helped me get a little more attuned to the correct feel. Then, recording myself with bands and noticing, on playback, whether I felt like moving to the music.

It's subtle. I recently took a lesson from a Brazilian drummer. He could get you swaying by just playing a small shaker in samba rhythm. None of the gringos in the class could do it with the right feel.

[ginod]

Maybe the best way to get feedback about Phrasing is to post a video of my playing. I made a short video of me playing a little Solo in Medium Swing about Out of Nowhere. I concentrate to play Eightnotes with accenting the offbeat, playing laid-back and long notes. . Playing Triplets (but not really think about accenting). At the end i try to blow some 16th notes. But they are really even. Because i think its really hard to swing 16h notes at this tempo with accents.

It would be really nice, to get some feedback and Tipps for my playing.

Dropbox - outofnowhereanalyse.mp4

Thank you

[christianm77]

Maybe the best way to get feedback about Phrasing is to post a video of my playing. I made a short video of me playing a little Solo in Medium Swing about Out of Nowhere. I concentrate to play Eightnotes with accenting the offbeat, playing laid-back and long notes. . Playing Triplets (but not really think about accenting). At the end i try to blow some 16th notes. But they are really even. Because i think its really hard to swing 16h notes at this tempo with accents.

It would be really nice, to get some feedback and Tipps for my playing.

Dropbox - outofnowhereanalyse.mp4

Thank you

Nice one ginod, best way to learn. Your absence of ego, desire to improve and accept constructive feedback should be an inspiration.

So FWIW taking this from someone who is himself very much critical about his own playing in terms of time/feel...

It definitely warms up, and I think your 8th notes are getting there, to my ears. The relaxation is coming, and placing of the upbeats is coming along. Nice sound!

If I had a bit of input it would be about the shape of your lines. You sound like you are coming a bit from the CST, fusion thing yes?

For me, if you are trying to play straightahead bop influenced jazz (which it sounds like), it's digging deep about how the lines themselves create accents and interact with the rhythm. A good bebop phrase outlines harmony, yes - but it also creates interesting accents that push and pull against the beat.

One stylistic aspect is the use of eight-note lines, syncopations and triplet embellishments to keep interest going. The use of scales in bop as well is very specific - you rarely hear the type of stepwise up and down lines you are playing here. That's not to say it's 'bad' - just a stylistic observation. To my ears this type of phrase is quite neutral rhythmically.

Another big thing for me in trying to master the bop tradition is the clarity of articulation. Triplets should really be triplets, locked in even where they are legato. Eights should be totally clear and consistently placed (which you are clearly starting to get.)

TBH most of my timing problems now arise from technical execution and not knowing the changes well enough, but in your case I think digging into the bop melodic language and how it relates to rhythm would really help.

Since you introduced me to the Bruce Foreman video (great shout btw) I think you are along the right track. I can also recommend Jimmy Raney very highly, but the master is of course Bird.

I don't have a problem with the 16ths being even at this tempo. I think when playing double time it's good to think about syncopations you can create within the double time to add more interest.

Anyway, nice stuff and I reckon you kind of know what I am talking about already...

[39cord]

Playing is solid. Should not take much time to gain the control you are looking for.

What are you keying off (listening to) as the backing track rolls? What are you counting internally as your meter?

My belief is each player needs to assimilate that or describe it verbally in their own way but the fastest way to develop it is to record/listen/record/listen until the time sense becomes refined enough to the point where you are happy (or at least not critical) of where the notes are dropping.

For myself the bass guitar on 1, don't be late, it sounds lame. Hi-hat on 2 & 4, synch with it and hang on the note the same duration as the cymbal blooms, either staccato or a bit legato depending on the tempo but the drummer largely sets the feel, driving or laid back. Count 1, trip,let, 2 trip,let, pause .... The trip,let is generally much tighter than what you think until you listen back a million times. It often should blur like many played by Bird and Dizzy. Pause, a big tendency here to rush. The pause is tiny but it allows the phrases to breath and keeps the phrase from becoming a run on sentence. It also allows you to stay in synch with the bass so you can consistently drop your notes where you want them. On top or ahead of the bass like Wes Montgomery or in synch or slightly behind like Kenny Burrell.

[rpjazzguitar]

Nice job. I like the melodic and harmonic content of your phrases.

It always feels good when people have something nice to say, but, OTOH, it doesn't give you a direction.

So, in recognition of that (and with respect), I'll nit pick.

It sounds to me (and believe me, I've been wrong before) that you're playing a little too far behind the beat and it's taking something away from the groove. This is a subtle point, I think. What I'm suggesting is you play the exact same lines, but you play them more aggressively. Imagine that you're trying to drag a sleepy rhythm section with you in the direction of a harder groove.

[rpjazzguitar]

Nice job. I like the melodic and harmonic content of your phrases.

It always feels good when people have something nice to say, but, OTOH, it doesn't give you a direction.

So, in recognition of that (and with respect), I'll nit pick.

It sounds to me (and believe me, I've been wrong before) that you're playing a little too far behind the beat and it's taking something away from the groove. This is a subtle point, I think. What I'm suggesting is you play the exact same lines, but you play them more aggressively. Imagine that you're trying to drag a sleepy rhythm section with you in the direction of a harder groove.

[christianm77]

Nice job. I like the melodic and harmonic content of your phrases.

It always feels good when people have something nice to say, but, OTOH, it doesn't give you a direction.

So, in recognition of that (and with respect), I'll nit pick.

It sounds to me (and believe me, I've been wrong before) that you're playing a little too far behind the beat and it's taking something away from the groove. This is a subtle point, I think. What I'm suggesting is you play the exact same lines, but you play them more aggressively. Imagine that you're trying to drag a sleepy rhythm section with you in the direction of a harder groove.

Yes I think you are kind of right. I passed over this because I see it as over-correction for an old habit of playing on top. I went through a period of doing the same thing and it's good to explore where you can go with it. Eventually you find a sweet spot.

I'm not sure I would agree with the advice to play them 'aggressively.' I think that'll encourage rushing.

If your advice was meant as 'hear the phrase really aggressively in your head an then play it in a very relaxed way' I would agree. The difficulty with time is getting over-involved in it. But the lines do have to pop rhythmically. I see that as a product of accuracy and really hearing the rhythms and feeling them in your body before playing them.

I don't think playing behind the beat is necessarily a problem (Phillip Catherine?). I think the important thing is to consistently place the upbeat and then let the line even and clear - 'straight but relaxed' is the advice given.

This isn't universal across the board - for example if you are playing a single note on the beat, you will want that note to be 'on the beat' rather than behind, most likely, but for swung 8ths, it's the way out of the two main traps:

1) Overdotting
2) Playing straight or not catching the upbeat accents.

I'm not going to get into the whole 'where exactly are the upbeats?' thing - that's not actually that important. The important thing is to develop some consistency in their placement. That's as basic as making sure you feel them in your body at any tempo. Try singing offbeats legato at any tempo and record yourself doing it.. That'll tell you how well you are feeling it.

Personally I feel that ginod's feel is heading in this direction. The concept is there, it will take a little time to be internalised on a basic level.

In practice as a player, my best feel comes when I am focussing on the rhythmic phrases but playing very relaxed. When I do this, my lines sit in a nice place rhythmically at least to my ears.

[ginod]

Thank you all for this amazing tips and advices. Its great to get so much critics and feedback. Your answers help me a lot.

Some years ago, i had my teachers to look over my playing. Now i see that i have to analyze my own playing from time to time by my own. I think the hardest part is, that your ears learn to accustom the things you do every day.

[rpjazzguitar]

Ginod,

Here are a few things that I think are very helpful. Forgive me if this is repetitive or unnecessary.

Playing as much as you possibly can with the best players you can find is enormously helpful -- particularly if you record it all and listen back critically. In fact, if you can get this to happen, everything else is likely to fall into place.

What I was trying to get at before, and I think that Christianm77 may have said it much better, is to pay attention to making the music swing hard. As C77 pointed out, this doesn't mean playing in a tense or aggressive way, but, I think, it does mean playing with energy and paying attention to the time. I used the word "aggressive" in an attempt to explain something about feel.

Here's the test: I think that every part in a band should be able to swing on its own. So, if you play alone, you're doing it right when your audience is swaying to your time. I recently heard a dancer create a deep groove at a slow tempo with a foottap and a hip-slap per bar. Perfectly placed -- you could feel the rhythm. Your comping, your leads, the bassist's part, the drums -- everything should swing even if heard in isolation.

I'm sensitive to it, I think, because I have found it so frustrating. I think that it's a hard thing to teach with words. Also, it's possible to play without noticing what's missing. So, my advice is couched in emotional and contextual terms. Swing hard, and do it with the best musicians you can find to play with you.

I'd go so far as to say that a single session with truly great players can change your playing for the better.

One other anecdote. Some years back while exchanging solos with my teacher, he played a D note against 2 bars of Bbmaj7 -- and that single note sounded better than my whole solo. It was just perfectly placed. That's when I realized that it is possible to sound good playing incredibly simply. But you have to have great time. If your time is lacking, nothing will sound really good.

Rick

[ginod]

Thank you thats a great story.

I would take the chance to discuss a little bit accenting again.

Like i said in my first post, i am not really happy to accenting every upstroke in an eight note line.
If you watch the video of Bruce Foremen it seems that he recommend to accent every upbeat which comes. But maybe i didn't understand him in the right way.

In my video i tried to accent really every upbeat in my Eightnotes. Normally i make accents really ad lip. Mostly i like to accent the "two-and" and the "four-and".

Do you think it is really tasteful to accent every upbeat. My nature feeling says, that i should more think like a drummer. I think a drummer would sound like a tractor, if he would accent every upbeat. And thats the same feeling i got with the guitar, if i try to accent every upbeat in my eight notes lines.
Now i saw the video of Adam Rogers who was talking about Accents with compound note groupings. He starts to accent in pointed fourth, or groups in five eightnotes etc. ..

Maybe you know the feeling when you do something for a really long time and someone says he don't like it and you are really confused about how you can improve it or what this guy mean.

[christianm77]

AFAIK accenting every upbeat is a corrective piece of advice designed to counteract the fact that we tend to accent the downbeat, at least in this part of the world. Esp in Germany, UK etc haha

(If you accent the downbeat unconsciously and play unequal eighth notes, what you get is that horrible jerky fake swing. You've probably heard it.)

In fact your lines should sound even, with accents placed freely. But that's not necessarily how it will feel to you at first when playing.

Furthermore, learning to feel the space between the beats and all the different places where you can put a note is important training for any musician imo.

The upbeat into downbeat slurring is a way of executing fast lines in a way that is both legato and doesn't lose that swing. Mike Outram above is a master at this.

But it is possible to get a bit hung up on this intellectually, I think.

I think at this point I'd like to hear you play some bebop heads applying what you are learning about phrasing.