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My experience is that odd meters get much easier after enough repetition. The definition of "enough" varies from one player to the next, but, typically, it's a lot of time playing those grooves.
Now and then, I've found analysis to be helpful. I can think of one Hermeto Pascoal tune where the "clave" of the melody is turned backwards in part of tune -- and it may be a little easier to play when you realize it.
But, for the most part, it's a question of getting a feel for it via repetition.
Some patterns are easier to feel than others. 7/4 tends to be easier than 5/4 for most players, although that can be flipped if the 5/4 is the Take Five rhythm or the Mission Impossible rhythm.
You know it's working when you can get off the clave, omit the one, cross the bar lines and so forth - without getting lost.
How do you tap your foot? In 7, you can tap 1 3 5 7 1 3 5 7. But, remember, the 7-1 interval is twice as fast as the others because there's no quarter note in between.
Or you can tap seven half notes ... with the first bar having the strong beats on the downtap and the second bar having the strong beats on the uptap.
Or don't tap at all.
Whichever way you do it, it needs to be as automatic as tapping (however you prefer to tap) in 4/4.
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12-10-2020 04:18 AM
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In Konnakol the Tala (analogous to meter) is given by the hands. You kind of count with the hands while you sing the rhythms. You don’t tap the foot.
This is how you would do 7, for example
There are some advantages to this... one is that it’s a bit easier to spot when you’ve messed up the timing. (At least that’s what I find.)
Obviously not so easy to do this when playing guitar though lol. It’s a bit more like singing while you play the guitar?
Any rhythmic independence stuff strengthens it. Konnakol is simply a well worked out system for dealing with these mathematical possibilities.
I hear you about hearing 7 as a two bar figure with an downbeat side and an upbeat side. That is one way of feeling it, but isn’t quite what my teacher was talking about. When you feel it this way I suppose you are turning two bars of 7/8 into a 7/4 phrase. I have a tune that does this in the middle 8 actually, goes into 7/4 swing from a Balkan style short short long groove.
What I find quite fun is the way bop scales work in 7/8, which relates to this amalgamation idea.Last edited by christianm77; 12-10-2020 at 05:40 AM.
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Originally Posted by pingu
(Also notice that it feels better to have that ‘2 and’ upbeat quite straight than to swing it? That’s the way Peter plays it. Interesting)
The reason is because it is going against the 3+2 grouping of course. But that accent (and the one on 5) would be an upbeat/offbeat in either grouping if that makes sense? Because the downbeats would be on the start of the 2+3 or 3+2 grouping.
On a psychological level you could say it’s simply setting up expectations and then subverting them, and if that isn’t a good description of jazz rhythm I don’t know what is really. (or any music for that matter...)
Going back to 4/4... In classical music rhythms, those expectations are basically always downbeats, and any syncopations are subversions of the norm.
In jazz and other African Diaspora musics, these expectations can include both upbeats and downbeats. Son clave is a familiar example of this.Last edited by christianm77; 12-10-2020 at 05:49 AM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
There is a drum solo in which he grunts (maybe more of a bark, but certainly a guttural sound) the downs and ups, three of each.
xoxoxo oxoxox oo
That's useful for Samba in 7. It will help with Misturada (another of his tunes) as well.
I watched the Misra Chapu video. It divides the 7 differently and I couldn't easily sing a typical 7/4 pattern over it because the accenting is so different. I understand that it's a time honored, effective and deep subject. Whether it is a more efficient way of building the skills you need to play odd meter jazz than simply jumping into the pool (by playing it for hours) is a question I'll leave alone.
Here's my tip for getting started playing odd meter without getting lost.
Make sure the drummer makes the straight groove audible at all times. If he goes careening off into outer space, so will you, at least until you've grown the brain tissue that allows you to hear the original pulse in a sea of conflicting noise.
Here's a story.
The first time I ever had to solo during a performance in 7/4, Edu Ribeiro (whose name you might know from his Grammy with Paquito D'Rivera as part of Trio Corrente) was the drummer. (I was a student). Edu was extremely kind and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I think he understood I was struggling with the 7. I said, initially thinking I was joking, that I would appreciate a loud cymbal hit on the one in every bar.
There were two guitar players. The other player soloed right before me. He was a young guy named Scooter (hello, if you're reading this), who tore it up. He played a brilliant solo which I later transcribed because I liked it so much. He was playing electric.
I was playing nylon and I knew there was absolutely no way that I could follow him playing my slowhand single note style.
The tune was Buritizais. 7/4 at around 232 bpm. The solo section is an 4 bar vamp with some atypical harmony. I decided to do it by playing one chord per bar for 3 bars and a couple chords in the 4th bar -- with the most interesting voicings I could manage. I started doing it and in bar 2 I heard Edu's cymbal crash. He kept that up for the entire solo. All 20 or so notes. And it helped. It would have helped even more if I'd tried to go away from the obvious down down down up up up.
Scooter was very complimentary afterward, although I assume he was being kind.
Edu has educational videos, in English, on youtube. I recommend everything he does. Brilliant player (up for at least one more Grammy this year, with Chico Pinheiro, who is nominated for City of Dreams) great teacher, very generous and caring person.
Check this one out, for example.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I'm struggling to understand the difference. The 'misra cala' video to me sounds like sort of 'cut-time' for a complex 3/4+4/4 with strokes on uneven beats: | 1 / 3 | 1 / 3 / | -- you can play pink floyd 'money' bassline over it, for example.
I always thought that every meter having more than 4 of simple beats is a complex one - i.e. actually felt as several measures and accents define the virtual bar line placement. There is a very noticeable perceptional limit of 4 (so called 'magic number') -- brain easily grasps up to 4 objects at once, above that it has to build hierarchy by sub-grouping the objects. One can train to internalize it to a big extent - but the groupings seem to always be there, I definitely feel quintuplets as 3+2 or 2+3 playing them fast and even.
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Originally Posted by Danil
BTW while Konnakol breaks things down to groupings of 2 and 3, we do in fact have an unaccented 5 ‘ta di gi ta Tom’ as well as 2+3 and 3+2
Moving fluently between groups of 3 and 2 is an important skill to cultivate.
The 5 thing above is about what you feel as an upbeat and downbeat in groupings of 5; so in this case we sing 5/4 over 5/8 instead of thinking about the 5/8 over 5/4(which rpjazzguitar is effectively doing with the 7); so we are thinking about how 5/4 feels over 5/8. What’s an upbeat and what’s a downbeat?
This turns out to be a total headfuck. At least for me.Last edited by christianm77; 12-11-2020 at 01:56 PM.
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Here’s some fun with quintuplets
Just so you know; I really have to break this down to learn it and practice.... Quintuplets are very unfamiliar; I can just go for it much more with 16ths.
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But to get back to bebop; I was just trying to make the point that some upbeats are structural to bebop phrases and aren’t felt as syncopations in the same way as they are in the Western canon.... This is true of all modern popular music actually.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Why not just 5/4 in an actual form of 2+3 or 3+2. I sort of understand playing 8ths makes the number of strokes even which may help mechanically. Playing half notes similarly constantly shifts accents similarly to playing halves over 3/4. But you mean something else probably?
maybe to have a separate thread on the complex rhythms (although on its own it may not last)
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by christianm77
The tip is that acclimating to odd meter is much easier if the drummer is locked into the groove and stays with it.
It becomes much harder if the rest of the rhythm section is struggling with it, or elaborating on it in ways which cross the groove.
Over time, your ability to feel the odd meter independently will develop.
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Finallly watched this .. So bebop is CP, Dizzy etc ... and "Modern" is Ornette Coleman and 60s Miles according to Christians opening statement. That is like 60 years ago .. alrighty then ??
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
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Originally Posted by DutchbopperOriginally Posted by Hep To The Jive
What rubs me is just how it's worded. Bebop is modern language rubs me the wrong way
Something like:
Current day jazz performance is still heavily rooted in bebop would not bother me
It's just semantics. The thing is I guess that I'm slowly starting to view jazz as a type of classical music*. Something niche with a strong tradition that is no longer part of the current zeitgeist.
*Classical music is associated with a different orchestration and a different way to feel time, so not fitting here, but you know what I mean
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I’ve never liked Bird no matter how much I wanted to. I refer to Dizzy because he’s got such lyricism and is just as intellectual.
Brings me to second point: to me the intellectualism is what makes bebop especially and jazz in general. It is the harmonic/rhythmic ‘see how far I can go’. Not meant negatively. Bebop drives this to its ultimate.
What’s before? Coots’ “You go to my head” was written before modes in jazz, and in composition it’s just as fluid jumping from one tonality to another.
What’s after? Bitches Brew!!!! IMHO as far from bop as Kanye West is from blues, which is the ground on which it stands.
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Originally Posted by Danil
Anyway it’s all a bit extra if you just want to play bop in a nice swing 5/4....
Why not just 5/4 in an actual form of 2+3 or 3+2. I sort of understand playing 8ths makes the number of strokes even which may help mechanically. Playing half notes similarly constantly shifts accents similarly to playing halves over 3/4. But you mean something else probably?
It would be easier to see what I mean though demonstration. But there’s also a deeper side to this than the maths. There’s the way you feel it; which is what the exercise is actually about.
According to my teacher, 5/8 is the hardest time signature to be free in. 5/4 is actually pretty easy by comparison.
maybe to have a separate thread on the complex rhythms (although on its own it may not last)
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Some of this seems unnecessarily complicated, or, perhaps, I'm just struggling with new vocabulary.
In 5 or 7, you generally need to consider eighth notes. The groupings are typically combinations of downs and ups sometimes with varying accents.
The most common for American players are the A section of Take Five and Mission Impossible. Xo oX oo Xo Xo. Or maybe Xx ox Xs X X (caps are more accented, Xs is short). But, if you listen to Cinco (above) you'll hear other patterns. Note that the piano and guitar are locked tight, but not playing the same thing. For that matter, the B section of Take Five is different.
Exits and Flags is a well known Brazilian tune which feels like 5 quarter notes -- not much of a syncopated feel. Very different way of playing 5.
To hear different versions of 7, check out Tacho (Hermeto Pascoal), Misturada aka Mixing (Airto), Buritizais (Chico Pinheiro). Tombo in 7/4 (Airto).
For 5, try Estrella Do Mar (Jovino Santos Neto), Exits and Flags (Milton Nascimiento), No Balanco Do Jequibau (Mario Albanese), Tempestade (Chico Pinheiro). All different ways of playing it.
To develop freedom within the odd meter just takes a lot of time playing the grooves. And, being able to play the Take Five pattern, for example, won't automatically enable you to play a different one. But, the skill does develop.
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Originally Posted by BWV
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
But over the long term to become truly fluent in odd times you need to be able to play polyrhythms, odd rhythmic groupings and all sorts without losing one just as you try to in 4/4. That takes specific practice.
One good way to do this is to internalise a rhythmic vocabulary over any given meter.
So in general, my approach to this is - study it the way a drummer would. Which is why I am studying with a drummer.
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There’s a video of a drummer doing 5 vs 4, then 6 vs 5, then 7 vs 6, then 8 vs 7. And maybe more. The Olympics of drumming
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
was an interesting perspective but I’m not sure if anyone quite catches my drift. Probably not explaining it very well.
Anyway Konakol is a bit of a rabbit hole; it is however a very useful toolset. It has really little to do groove; it’s about mathematical grid time, over the past few millennia they’ve really taken it to the nth degree....
But what I was actually interested in talking about was not odd time per se.
In fact what I feel is that all jazz is in a sense ‘odd time’ in the sense that it’s all accents in groupings of 3 and 2. And of course Jimmy Raney and Tristano consciously practiced irregular groupings against the pulse even during the bop era.
I’d rather hear someone play 4/4 creatively than struggle in 7/8. There’s only so much time.... as it were
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Originally Posted by Eck
This is just the basic pale 3 vs 4 version .. but all I could find as a quick search on your time, back in the day it was a 15-20 minute solo where he'd started with 3 vs 4 and ended doing all sorts of versions
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I've heard one well known drummer talk in detail about the process of playing a fill and being certain that you come back exactly on the original beat. As an aside, if your drummer or bassist (or you) are inaccurate, it may not be at all clear who is the responsible party. Maybe it's everybody. But, if you play with better players the problem may disappear.
One thing that separates the able from the hopeful in odd meter is what seems to be an internal clock that ticks in the basic pulse no matter what is going on. It's analagous, in my mind at least, to recording with a click. If you want to be sure that you're on the beat, it may be helpful to make sure the click is plenty loud. When I hear a great band of players who have that kind of clock, the audience can be completely lost, but the players know exactly where the original pulse is, no matter how far into outer space they fly.
Can it be built up? Probably like ear training. For many it's laborious but for some, not such a big deal. I heard one master drummer (A Modern Drummer poll winner) refer to another famous player as "not a natural musician" because he needed a lesson on how to play an odd meter. He couldn't just hear it and feel it. With the lesson, he got it.
I don't know enough about it (and I'm not good enough at it) to offer advice on how to work on it. What I can say is that the main thing that helped me was a lot of repetition. Many hours of listening to odd meters and many more of playing odd meter tunes in groups.
Which, inevitably, brings me to juggling.
The Neuroscience of Juggling | Trading Atoms
This article reports measurable changes in the brains of people who learn to juggle. Other work has indicated that it takes about 3 days of practice for the brain to make the necessary connections. That is, it seems impossible until the third day, when suddenly people (students in the experiment) can suddenly do it.
I'd venture a guess that it's easier to juggle 3 or 4 objects than 5 or 7.
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