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Rhythm is always #1. Like legend Dizzy Gillespie said he things of rhythms and then hangs pitches on the rhythm. Any note works IF you articulate it right in other words if you put it on the right beat (rhythm). Play one note with great feel and rhythm and people will be smiling. Look at the Barry Harris Half-Step concepts it is basically all about putting the strong chord tones on the strong beat/rhythm. Take your favorite lick and the shift the rhythm over by an eighth note, now does the lick still work it's all about the beat, the rhythm. One of the old classical composer (sorry I forget his name) first thing he have new composition students do is write song with one note. Student thought he was kidding, but they'd do it. The quickly discovered they could writing interesting songs by focusing on rhythm and orchestration.
It's all about rhythm that draws our attention in from the beginning. Listen to early African music it was all beats and chanting, polyrhythms between the beating to rocks and etc and the chanting. Our roots are all in rhythm.
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06-09-2023 10:13 PM
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+1
Originally Posted by docbop
And I'll add what I already stated in the country blues thread: Listening to blues taught me a lot about groove and phrasing. In the African tradition speech and rhythm are strongly connected or rather everything is rhythm.
Listen to this vocal, how the singer plays around with the rhythm.
Listen to how Junior Wells and Buddy Guy phrase the vocals and guitars lines.
Another thing I recommend and I mean this dead serious is dancing to polyrhythmic music and try to fell how your body reacts to the different interwoven rhythms.
I started going to jazz jam sessions recently and while I still suck a lot at improvising (and still know very few tunes well enough to play them good) I realize that I really have a strength in rhythm and years and years of listening to and playing strongly polyrhythmic music like blues, funk, hip-hop and reggae really pays off. On Thursday I played at a session where they had envited a salsa band as opening and closing act. The closing set was half-open so I played with them. When the Cuban congero smiles at you approvingly while you're playing rhythm and solo you know you are doing something right LOL.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Sure?Last edited by Bop Head; 06-10-2023 at 05:52 AM.
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You guys are takin it back to Africa now? Yes, rhythm is essential and the most important, but while notes are negotiable, it's essential to have the note organization with melody and harmony on point somehow as well.
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Sometimes I just put on a backing track and play one note or just a few notes over it to see what I can make happen. I have a tendency to blow too many notes so it helps me learn to relax and let the rhythm section breathe more when I'm in a live setting. Band dynamics and few notes from whatever soloist makes for a memorable spot in any evening of live music most of the time IME. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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I want sheets of sound like Jimmy Smith. :P
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The foundation of music is rhythm and it is often poorly taught (or perhaps poorly learned), maybe with the assumption that it's so basic that it comes naturally and doesn't need to be taught. Having an understanding and being able to clap and tap time signatures (2, 3, 4, 6 in particular for jazz but also 5, 7, 11 for more modern stuff) is absolutely essential and if you can't do that you're going to sound bad when you play. Being able to subdivide every one of those beats into eighth and 16th divisions is necessary, as well as being able to play them against each other. To play jazz the swing groove, 8ths groove and clave are critically important. Gotta learn syncopations. I came to this realization far too late in my musical development, so I'm behind the curve. I found rehearsing with an R&B band for about 9 months to be really helpful in developing my time feel. That was fun.
I think guitar players get dependent upon the pendulum-like motion of playing the guitar, assuming that will carry their time rather than actively counting, subdividing, syncopating, etc.
I listen to a lot of clips people post here on the forum, and I frequently notice that while soloing people's time goes out the window. Just heard one this morning: nice choice of notes, good tone, but the lack of coherent time in the line totally undercut what was being played. I often hear this in recordings of myself playing, as well. Just as we need to present a harmonic logic in our playing, there has to be a rhythmic logic too. Great rhythm and basic harmony sound better than advanced harmony and bad rhythm. As I noted up thread, to my ears guitarists and saxophone players often fall into the latter camp.
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Theres an old music teachers chestnut … Originally Posted by Cunamara
If you play the wrong note at the right time, you’re half right. If you play the right note at the wrong time, you’re all wrong.
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Rhythm? They wrote a song about it, goes something like this...
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The notes don't matter... is that some kind of joke?
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It's just garbage advice, the kind people who watch youtube for 5 hours a day but don't have time to practice eat up. If they just have the rhythm right, they won't need to learn all these arpeggios, or the notes on the fretboard, or even the major scale positions. If they just get the rhythm right, it'll sound like jazz. Originally Posted by ragman1
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ah come on... rhythm is of course important. It all is... but in general most musicians are rhythmically challenged LOL.
And playing jazz requires really technically developed skills. The skills to be able to create... live... rhythmically organized sections of space that "feel" right. Yea... as many say, most just repeat what they have played. But many jazz musicians actually develop what they pull from performing... not from practicing.
I know I posted years ago about..... long practice sessions etc... being more important than many short sessions.
(but can be difficult for many reasons... it is what it is...who cares...)
But the importance of rhythm is always obvious when you perform jazz live... even the last few decades, LOL.
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I mean … it’s hyperbole meant to make a point? Originally Posted by AllanAllen
It's just garbage advice, the kind people who watch youtube for 5 hours a day but don't have time to practice eat up. If they just have the rhythm right, they won't need to learn all these arpeggios, or the notes on the fretboard, or even the major scale positions. If they just get the rhythm right, it'll sound like jazz.
Kind of like “just learn tunes” … “just listen to the masters” … “just get out and learn on the bandstand” … or any number of other things people say alllllll the time, but which are equally one dimensional and unhelpful on their own. Either we’re okay accepting that those things aren’t meant to be taken 100% literally, or we’re taking all of it literally and doing some pretty weird stuff when we practice.
The video as a whole is pretty helpful. And the main point is a good one. People play correct notes and are bummed they don’t sound like jazz, because they haven’t paid any attention to the things that aren’t notes.
Anyway—this is all to say that I’m willing to overlook a little hyperbole in favor of a decent practice idea.
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+1 Originally Posted by Reg
So you have to sometimes use a little dramatic rhetoric to make note-obsessed guitar players go … “hmmm is rhythm really the only thing that matters? Noooooo, but I guess maybe I should practice it.”
For what it’s worth, I say this from my extensive experience as a note obsessed guitarist who doesn’t practice rhythm enough.
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The notes don't matter. Here are the notes. Bb C Db D
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I went from playing classical violin to trying to play jazz guitar. Unlike most of my friends I didn't play rock or blues guitar before I started to learn how to play Autumn Leaves. Knowing how to read and musical theory, I started out with a lot more knowledge than my friends related to 'the right notes to play', but my rhythm was often 'off' since I wasn't used to having to provide a continuous rhythm or playing the melody. I clearly didn't know how to swing, get a bossa \ Latin or triplet feel etc... Originally Posted by pamosmusic
It wasn't until I got a teacher that focused me on playing a lot less notes (e.g. playing the blues only using the minor pentatonic scale or just 1-3-5-7 as 8th notes over each chord), that I was able to improve my rhythm.
My rock\blues friends had very solid rhythm but struggled when a jazz standard called for notes beyond the minor pentatonic or blues scale. I helped them by showing them what would work over 'changes' and they helped me improve my rhythm.
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But more seriously, people can be more or less taught what are the best notes over a progression/tune but if they have little sense of rhythm or timing then they won't get far. And beyond a certain improvement it can't really be taught.
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In a certain kind of flyfishing (nymphing) you have to have the right fly, at the right time, in the right water, presented the right way. The fly has to be floating naturally. The weights have to be a certain distance from the fly. The leader has to be the right diameter and invisibility. The line has to hit the water in a way the fish can't see it. The fly has to be at the right depth.
And, if you screw a single one of those things up, you don't catch a fish.
Jazz may have more ways to suck than that.
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The most helpful comment I ever read on this forum was along the lines of "an audience will rarely notice a mistake in note choice but will almost always notice a mistake in rhythm."
That comment went off like a skyrocket in my mind and has informed my practice ever since.
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That video somebody posted with Victor Wooten demonstrating that there's no such thing as a wrong note (I exaggerate, but he made a similar point) was enlightening.
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I’m not sure I buy that. There are people with perfect pitch and people who are tone deaf, but beyond that a whole range of ability and aptitude levels and ear training can absolutely be taught. Originally Posted by ragman1
In my (maybe limited) experience rhythm is about the same.
I had a pretty good ear for pitches and picked it up quick, but rhythm was a lot harder. Still, I learn it when I try.
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Maybe so :-)
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Yes well said. It's basically click bait hyperbole. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Still, I agree here. Big educators like Open Studio shouldn't be in the business of pushing bs false statements. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Yes, rhythm is the most important. But when it comes down to it, it's ALL important. Imagine if someone neglected melody or harmony because they had really solid rhythm. That's ridiculous. Jazz is really rhythm, melody, and harmony all rolled up into a continuous stream. You need every element to be on point for it to sound like good jazz. Originally Posted by Reg
Last edited by Jimmy Smith; 06-14-2023 at 02:47 AM.
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I feel a lot of this sort of stuff is best addressed by watching fewer YouTube vids and listening to more solos tbh. People here live to make things very literal (including me) but that’s not always what good teaching is.
I’m with pamomusic - there is a value in hyperbole for educational purposes. It did me a lot of good to read John Etheridge saying ‘no jazz guitarist used scales until 1959’ over twenty years ago. It’s not actually true, but it helped me stop thinking about scales so much and focus me on practicing what was at that point the right things and made me able to play changes.
Telling a player who can already play ‘right’ notes that the notes are not important will help them focus on everything else.
if you tell a player to accent the upbeats that’s not because jazz players actually accent all their upbeats - it’s a way of getting that player to focus on that specific area. The same with telling a student to stop swinging. You actually want them to swing, but what they think is swinging is fake swing. And so on.
This isn’t so much to do with YouTube imo, it’s more to do with a specific type of communication. It’s not like anyone who watches Adam’s videos plays random notes on standards. That’s absurd. They all know their textbook note choices. They’re mostly not guitar player after all haha. But they need to be told to focus on other things. So it’s a reasonable thing to say based on the audience he’s likely to have.
Not that everyone will listen of course.
In any case it’s amazing what can be done with a simple triad. It might be more accurate to say not that notes don’t matter, but rhythm is really where the jazz comes from.
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We're not 10 years old and need to be guided what the right thing to do is without understanding. I'd rather communicate rationally with teachers and others. Also jazz doesn't mostly come from rhythm - it comes from everything. Without 1 of the characteristic aspects of rhythm, melody, or harmony, it isn't jazz.
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