Playing like Louis Armstrong.

[brent.h]

..

[Christian Miller]

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When I wrote that I was influenced by Longo.

I’ve done a fair bit of putting stuff under the microscope since then - not least my own playing.

So there’s the microrhythmic aspect of jazz but the start of that struggle really is just trying to play in a precise, relaxed way. Which is a significant problem in itself.

Aside from just playing lines accurately, what I am aiming for now fwiw and what I hear from Louis, Prez, Bird, Charlie C etc etc is a relaxed precision. That’s a moving target for me. One can feel that you are playing on time, but be consistently on top. That’s not bad per se, if it’s consistent, I feel like Brecker leads the beat most of the time and I love his playing.

but when I feel a sort of laziness in the pit of my stomach and can technically execute the idea well (if) then where I end up is actually in the middle of the beat.

OTOH playing in the middle of the beat can often sound super relaxed, even behind. At a tempo like 240 the result is you sound like the tempo is kind of slower. Which is what we hear with the names above.

Fast tempos for instance are often played in an energised, pushed way by the rhythm section. The bass, piano and drums may all be leading the beat. Therefore if you are in the middle with your quarter accents, it will feel relaxed, even behind - but in a legitimate way. Which is where I’m aiming for with uptempo swing.

you have the 6/8 influence with the Afro Cuban Bembe which lines up with a lot of Billie’s phrasing. (The Bembe relates to both the quarter triplet and what Longo called ‘the Hidden Five’). I think that influence is what Louis started to lean into which separated him from the more duple straight pulse of earlier players, but I’d have to do more careful listening to be confident of that claim.

Terms like behind and ahead are used in a very subjective way by players to describe a feeling.

If you are nerdy enough to dig into the specifics of where the wave forms actually line up, it can be surprising.

we can question as to how necessary that is for developing one’s time. Longo would hate it I think. But it doesn’t seem totally unhelpful.

There’s an obviously wide gulf between me slowly trying to fix my crap time and the Mount Everest that is Louis’s sense of swing, but it’s pointed in the right direction I feel.

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[ruger9]

Does anyone ever think sometimes this stuff is thought about too much? Missing the forest for the trees?

Sometimes I think we complicate things too much. Less thinking more doing. (this is not a criticism of anyone's method, just my take on the state of the human mind sometimes.)

[Christian Miller]

Does anyone ever think sometimes this stuff is thought about too much? Missing the forest for the trees?

Sometimes I think we complicate things too much. Less thinking more doing. (this is not a criticism of anyone's method, just my take on the state of the human mind sometimes.)

Talk to drummers. They go to school on this stuff.

Nothing is intuitive at first, it all has to be drilled until we learn it.

And given the basic inability of so many would be jazz guitar students to sing and clap fairly basic rhythms against a ground beat and rhythmic independence exercises…. I think a bit more of this is much needed. Use a Bembe to phrase? People struggle to clap it.

Guitarists are bad at rhythm, by and large. Some may be able to find a great pocket through some sort of natural talent, but as a great percussion instructor put it - “there’s two kinds of musicians, those who work on their time and those who do, and I know who I’d rather play with.” Learn more, hear more.

Another option is to learn drums of course, which will teach you the same stuff.

It’s the most important area of study, really

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[ruger9]

Nothing is intuitive at first, it all has to be drilled until we learn it.

k

Completely disagree. Natural talent IS a thing that some people seem to be born with. And not just in music.

[Christian Miller]

Completely disagree. Natural talent IS a thing that some people seem to be born with. And not just in music.

Sure, people can play instruments without practicing lol.

No they can’t. Even Mozart practiced. In fact, he worked harder than any of us.

What a false dichotomy. Talented people don’t make anything of their talent without hard work and discipline.

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[joe2758]

Does anyone ever think sometimes this stuff is thought about too much?

Sometimes definitely. I think that's only the case if the player has things that should be prioritized over it; otherwise it can only help I think. I don't beleive, like some people do, that too much information can make someone worse (again, only will if their priorities are skewed).

[joe2758]

Sure, people can play instruments without practicing lol.

No they can’t. Even Mozart practiced. In fact, he worked harder than any of us.

What a false dichotomy. Talented people don’t make anything of their talent without hard work and discipline.

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Yeah, the top of the heap have the most talent AND do the most work

[ruger9]

Sure, people can play instruments without practicing lol.

No they can’t. Even Mozart practiced. In fact, he worked harder than any of us.

What a false dichotomy. Talented people don’t make anything of their talent without hard work and discipline.

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I did not say hard work and discipline were not factors in becoming a master. I said some people posses a natural talent for certain things, and they do. There's no false dichotomy here. Maybe you are taking offense because you are a teacher?

If hard work & discipline were all it took to become a master, there would be alot more masters than there are.

[Christian Miller]

I did not say hard work and discipline were not factors in becoming a master. I said some people posses a natural talent for certain things, and they do. There's no false dichotomy here. Maybe you are taking offense because you are a teacher?

And I didn’t say there aren’t talented people. But they have learn things too, and the way they do it is by practicing. No one is born being able to play the guitar or the trumpet.

I mean saying ‘some people are talented at music’ as a response to my emphasising the importance of drill and directed practice in learning new things does sound a bit like excuse to me. You hear this stuff a lot as a teacher. I’ve heard them all!

Get out of here with your lame excuses :-)!

Look, I haven’t yet taught any Mozarts or Louis’s and probably never will, but I have “taught” some players on an impressively sharp learning curves and invariably they are endlessly curious about music and spend most of their time doing it. They are in the driving seat in lessons.

Mozart himself was that way - he was learning new stuff throughout his life. Take his adult studies of Bach and Handel for example.

Otoh, I have also taught some incredibly natural musicians who made slow progress because they weren’t in the habit of practicing in a consistent focussed way. I have had students with perfect pitch who struggle to play the right strings on the guitar while everyone else has moved on. Talent is not a linear scale. Guitar has its own issues quite separate to natural musicality.

As a teacher the biggest determining factor of how well child students do is whether or not they do the practice. Some children do better than others once that basic criterion is achieved. But I do wonder if some kids have a better idea of how to practice efficiently naturally than others. Most people have no idea how to practice well. I see that as part of my gig.

But then there’d be absolutely no point in teaching anyone if i didn’t think I could teach people how to do stuff better. That’s the area of interest - and everyone has room for improvement. They’re the people that need me.

If you don’t think that applies to rhythm - go take some percussion lessons.

It’s not a point of debate.

If hard work & discipline were all it took to become a master, there would be alot more masters than there are.

You’ve pivoted to some other point I haven’t been trying to make, so I’ll take that as a tacit acknowledgement I was correct.

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[joe2758]

Look, I haven’t yet taught any Mozarts or Louis’s and probably never will

I am willing to take free lessons from you if it will help you develop as a teacher.

[Christian Miller]

I am willing to take free lessons from you if it will help you develop as a teacher.

Thanks for your kind offer, but my ego couldn’t take it


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[AllanAllen]

I like this thread, the topic and the derailment. Drumming has helped my time immensely. I just use brushes on my real book these days, but it still helps to think only about rhythm.

[ruger9]

And I didn’t say there aren’t talented people. But they have learn things too, and the way they do it is by practicing. No one is born being able to play the guitar or the trumpet.

I mean saying ‘some people are talented at music’ as a response to my emphasising the importance of drill and directed practice in learning new things does sound a bit like excuse to me. You hear this stuff a lot as a teacher. I’ve heard them all!

Get out of here with your lame excuses :-)!

Look, I haven’t yet taught any Mozarts or Louis’s and probably never will, but I have “taught” some players on an impressively sharp learning curves and invariably they are endlessly curious about music and spend most of their time doing it. They are in the driving seat in lessons.

Mozart himself was that way - he was learning new stuff throughout his life. Take his adult studies of Bach and Handel for example.

Otoh, I have also taught some incredibly natural musicians who made slow progress because they weren’t in the habit of practicing in a consistent focussed way. I have had students with perfect pitch who struggle to play the right strings on the guitar while everyone else has moved on. Talent is not a linear scale. Guitar has its own issues quite separate to natural musicality.

As a teacher the biggest determining factor of how well child students do is whether or not they do the practice. Some children do better than others once that basic criterion is achieved. But I do wonder if some kids have a better idea of how to practice efficiently naturally than others. Most people have no idea how to practice well. I see that as part of my gig.

But then there’d be absolutely no point in teaching anyone if i didn’t think I could teach people how to do stuff better. That’s the area of interest - and everyone has room for improvement. They’re the people that need me.

If you don’t think that applies to rhythm - go take some percussion lessons.

It’s not a point of debate.



You’ve pivoted to some other point I haven’t been trying to make, so I’ll take that as a tacit acknowledgement I was correct.

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I think we can agree it's a sliding scale, regardless of how much innate talent someone may (or may not) posses. My point was, trying to copy Louis Armstrong by attempting to turn his playing into a mathematical equation is extremely near-sighted, there's more to it than "numbers".

[ruger9]

Speaking as a former educator and current instructional designer, Christian has the correct take.

You have to use very high levels of focus, conscious thought and sometimes intellect during practice. As you do the thing, you are simultaneously listening for feedback and evaluating whether the thing you played sounded good/poor and then adjusting. This is an extremely high-level cognitive task. You continue to rehearse it again and again because your working memory is trying very hard to break it down and encode it in your long-term memory. All attempts to learn something well and deliberately require a great deal of thinking.

You only think less and do more much much later after you have encoded the knowledge/skill so indelibly in your long-term memory and have had plenty of opportunities for retrieval (multiple drills).

I guess you guys don't "feel" anything anymore? Everything is reduced to a math equation? AI should be able to play some KILLER jazz then...

[Christian Miller]

I guess you guys don't "feel" anything anymore? Everything is reduced to a math equation? AI should be able to play some KILLER jazz then...

I don’t know what to tell you. Music is complicated.

What I’ve (slowly) come to realise is that the external and internal worlds don’t always map the way you think. I want to sound objectively good, not just good in my own head. It’s my job, so that’s critical really. It’s not about me and my feely weelys. It’s about sounding good.

Which is to say feelings are at the service of sounding good. They are a tool. What am I feeling when I objectively sound good? That’s a key question for me. This is about retraining my intuition. Which is a lot.

There is an aspect of - you think you’re feeling it but actually you aren’t. I can say this has been the case for me many times.

Music is cruel like that. You think you are swinging but actually you were just rushing. You listen back to a recording and realise your internal ideas of music don’t map to the real world.

Or that night you record when you think there’s no vibe or energy and actually it’s the most grooving you’ve played. Do you reject this or do you learn from it?

Professional musicians will know what I mean. We all go through this. It’s like looking into a funhouse mirror sometimes.

Or alternatively, you could cling to subjective, fond illusions. You can do that if you are just playing for personal enjoyment I guess, in which case you think you sound better than you do.

There’s much in life like this.. romance springs to mind lol. If I knew what I know now at 21… haha. Life has a sense of humour.

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[ruger9]

I'm sure glad I don't (any more) over-analyze things like that. I spent many years doing so, until I came out the other side realizing life (and most things in it) are really alot simpler than all that. Objective truth is a rare thing, especially when it comes to esoteric subjects such as art (which is more than analyzation and formulas). But we are all on our own journeys, in our own time. All we can do is "do us" at the moment, that's the path.

Back to Louis Armstrong, if someone wants to sound like him, then listen to him profusely, until his music is embedded in your soul, and try to figure out his phrasing and note choice. The latter will give you the data, the former will give you the magic... to a point, because every human is different. In the end, you can't help but be yourself, with some Louis influence thrown in. That's how it works.

I learned to "swing" from listening to big bands of the 30s and 40s thanks to my dad. Before I ever thought about playing music. Swinging comes natural to me, due to that music being embedded in my soul from birth. I never had to transcribe it, or figure out the rhythm notations, to be able to swing. I had to learn the notes they use, but the swinging part came naturally.

[pamosmusic]

Practicing and playing are different and involve different processes.

Not sure why that needs to be controversial but alright.

[pamosmusic]

I like this thread, the topic and the derailment. Drumming has helped my time immensely. I just use brushes on my real book these days, but it still helps to think only about rhythm.

Me too man.

I’ve been into this lately. You can just do it with your hands and a table, so that’s a plus.

4-Way Coordination: Drumset Book | Sheet Music

[dasein]

Frankly, I'm just glad that posts I made 10+ years ago aren't embarrassing to look back at.

Yeah, I took a couple lessons with Mike Longo when I first moved to NYC. Had to stop because... well, I just moved to NYC, and money was tight. He died during the first wave of COVID, a great loss. But I'm glad he got his "Rhythmic Nature of Jazz" series out, because there is some serious wisdom in there, and it could have been lost.

But I did know about the ridiculous time of Louis Armstrong before then. I've been lucky to have good teachers, and one of them pointed it out to me. The guitar player he said that had a similarly unbelievable rhythmic precision? Grant Green.

If you wanted to learn how to swing just from records, you could do a lot worse than getting the Hot Fives and Sevens, plus the Basie Decca recordings (with Lester Young), and the Dizzy Gillespie big band recordings. Throw in some Charlie Christian and those Billie Holiday/Pres collaborations, and yeah, you're set.

Completely disagree. Natural talent IS a thing that some people seem to be born with. And not just in music.

I've thought a lot about this, and spent a lot of time around outstanding musicians, and here's what I've decided: there's no such thing as talent, but there is a thing as "Getting It." Very official terminology.

Everyone's brains work differently. But this isn't static, either. What you learn, practice, and experience also shapes how your mind works. When you work on playing chess and go from a beginner to an expert player, the entire way you see the board and the game completely transforms. When you start learning higher level mathematics ("real" math, the stuff you start with in analysis class, what mathematicians call gainin "mathematical maturity") your mind is not the same as when you started. And the same is true with music. Infants cannot perceive that an octave is the "same" note. When you're a rank beginner, bebop sounds like chaos. You just learn to hear it better. The stimulus is exactly the same, you're the one that's changed.

"Getting It" is when your brain gets to the point where it stops struggling with a domain. You are no longer paddling against the current; you and the knowledge are all flowing in the same direction. It is similar to what's usually called a "flow state," except it's not a momentary thing. For outside observers and people struggling with the same material, it looks like it just comes easy to you.

There are certain people who, for whatever reason, seem to already "Get It." Sometimes it's because they started very young. Some people, it's like they come out of the womb with their brain already wired that way. Those are the ones with "talent." Sometimes it's a mysterious thing, sometime's it's not. Mozart got thousands of hours of private instruction before he hit puberty from a demanding, professional musician father who forced him to practice and perform. Beethoven's father and teacher used to wake him up in the middle of the night to force him to practice. In those sorts of stressful, sink or swim situations, kids can be really good at figuring out what works.

Other times, they just happen to figure it out, through sheer luck or again, just how their brain works. When I see that video of Art Tatum play, his technique looks flawless. When you study his right hand runs, you see how logical the fingerings are. Is that talent? Luck? Did he stumble upon that technique, and just recognized it was working? Did he have an innate kinesthetic genius? Maybe all of the above.

There are people in all kinds of field who just seem to immediately "Get It." In math, there's Gauss and Ramanujan. In chess, there's Morphy, Capablanca, Fischer, Carlsen, etc. And there's countless music prodigies.

But here's the key thing: there are people who don't "Get It" at first who can learn to "Get It." This is a mysterious thing, too. These fields are complicated. I really do believe that we are in the infancy of learning how to teach most complicated things. Most students who learn to get great at something do it in spite of the instruction (even though I think most teachers are doing their best with what they have).

It's a tricky thing. Most people, if they find they're not immediately good at something, quit. You have to love something and be fine without being good at it. And then you have to find that thing that makes you "Get It." This can take a long time. Some people never get there. Some people get there through hard work and experimentation. Other times, it really is just one piece of knowledge that transforms everything. I always think of Randy Johnson, spending his entire 20's struggling to break into the big leagues, all this physical talent but could never get it together. Nolan Ryan personally sought him out. "I'm going to show you something it took me 10 years in the majors to figure out." Bam. Lightning flash. Randy Johnson was immediately one of the greatest pitchers ever.

Look at Charlie Parker. His early jam sessions, he gets laughed off the stage. He goes home to practice. He figures SOMETHING out. He claims it was about the upper partials of a chord. I'm not sure it was exactly that, but the point is he clearly thought there was some point where it all clicked. He practices like a madman for a summer. You can say that the practicing is what did it, and certainly that kind of work is necessary to get to his level. But I would say this: until he Got It, the practicing wouldn't have been as effective. And it's much, much easier to practice once you Get It, when it doesn't feel like you're running uphill anymore.

And then there is the ultimate poster child of a jazz musician who was not born Getting It: John Coltrane. I will argue this until I'm blue in the face: Coltrane was not a "talented" guy. Have you heard Coltrane's earliest recordings? He sounds... OK. Workmanlike. Nothing in there that would indicate what he would later become.

Yes, he practiced a lot. But here's the thing: he ALWAYS practiced a lot. After his military service, by all accounts, he practiced obsessively. He started studying with Dennis Sandole in 1946. He studied with him into the early 1950's. Sandole said Coltrane was his hardest working student. But was the output matching the input? I would argue no. Those early Coltrane recordings are solid. He's really good. But is he better than Sonny Rollins, who was younger than him and very much a guy who Got It from Day 1? I'd say no. I'm not sure Coltrane was better than Johnny Griffin at this point.

No, it wasn't until he joined Monk that Coltrane became the guy they built churches to honor. If you read interviews with Trane, he himself seemed to think so. I don't know what Monk taught him. And yeah, getting off heroin definitely helped. But something just clicked for him. Every single year, until his death, he just got better and better. If you listen to Charlie Parker's earliest recordings (stuff like "Billie's Bounce" and "Now's the Time"), you can hear basically the same player you do in the 1950's. If you listen to Coltrane's early solos, in Dizzy's band or Johnny Hodge's band, there is NO way anyone could predict that player was eventually going to make "A Love Supreme."

If you don't feel like you are talented, you have two options. You can accept it: be fine with where you're at, or give up if you can't. Or you start searching relentlessly until you find that moment or that piece of knowledge where you Get It. That might take a long time. It looks different for everyone. Here's what you need:

- There is a little bit of faith involved. Not the arrogant, self-assured, sneering attitude you see so often passed off as faith, especially in America. It's a kind of faith in the face of hopelessness, of impossibility. You have to keep going in spite of all evidence, of all logical arguments. You need to believe you can get there.

- You need to be relentless and eclectic in your pursuit. Seek out knowledge everywhere. Try different teachers. Study great players. Read interviews. Sometimes you need to read between the lines. Try different approaches. Try everything. If it feels like you're banging your head against a wall, move on to something else. Maybe come back to it later.

- If you keep going, you will eventually find something that works. It will just feel right. Things will start falling into place. When you find that thing: keep going. I don't care if your teacher says it's the wrong way to do it. If they are any kind of real teacher, they will recognize it's working for you and encourage it. Do not let yourself get blown off course. Do not get distracted by the way other people do it. You found what works for you. Take it as far as it lets you. Only stop when it stops working.

Will you get to be as great as your heroes? Maybe not. The better you get, the more you realize how great the greats truly are. But you will get good enough that your old self, the one at the start of this old journey, wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the two of you.

[Christian Miller]

Yeah, I mean being able to play a Bembe over 4/4 and paying attention to where you place your notes etc is not maths lol. It’s basics of the music.

Louis might not have known what a Bembe was, but he 100% knew that rhythm. There’s a line going back through Congo Square and the boats over from Cuba, back to West Africa. It’s a Ghanaian War Dance for example, called Adzogbo.

If you want to get into maths, there’s a little thing called Konnakol…

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[Christian Miller]

Oh Brent, here’s a video I did on the subject, not sure if you saw it. Sums up my current thoughts.

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[rpjazzguitar]

My $.02.

Yes, there is such a thing as talent and, at the extreme, genius. And, yes, even the geniuses have to work at it.

Do you need math to play like Louis Armstrong? Maybe you do, but he didn't.

How arcane must you get to reach a higher level? Depends on where you're starting from, what you can hear/feel, and how you learn.

In my experience a typical cause of poor time is trying to play something you can't quite execute. Another cause, or so I think, is believing that your time is better than it is, so that you don't focus on the problem.

The things that worked for me in improving my time (to the extent that I have been able to do) included: 1. playing with players who have good time, 2. recording and critiquing my playing in band situations (I probably have done this more than 100 times). 3. not getting rigid about trying to play an idea I can't play well enough to get in time. 4. lots of repetition, to the point where the feel gets deep enough in my brain.

Math gets into it mainly when I'm struggling to read a time-complex chart. Then, I may have to make tick marks with a pencil to represent 16th notes, or something like that. Being informed that I can relax on the downbeats as long as I maintain precision on the upbeats, or something like that, is not helpful to me. Which, of course, is not to say that it wouldn't be helpful to somebody else.

[pamosmusic]

Math gets into it mainly when I'm struggling to read a time-complex chart. Then, I may have to make tick marks with a pencil to represent 16th notes, or something like that. Being informed that I can relax on the downbeats as long as I maintain precision on the upbeats, or something like that, is not helpful to me. Which, of course, is not to say that it wouldn't be helpful to somebody else.

Yeah rhythm is math when you’re decoding. So what an elementary school teacher would call “sounding it out.” When you have something unfamiliar, the knowledge is really useful for really figuring out where things fall and what’s going on.

when you’re playing it you’re feeling rhythm in chunks. More what the teacher would think of as “sight words.” A first grader doesn’t need to (and probably can’t) sound out the word “the” to recognize it on the page, the same way we don’t need to count and process a clave when we hear it to know what it is and what it means.

So if you’re mathing when you’re playing it’s going to be rigid and awkward. The math is a tool you use to help you start the process of internalizing a rhythm.

[rpjazzguitar]

[QUOTE=pamosmusic;1432013]Yeah rhythm is math when you’re decoding. .[/QUOTE

This comes up a lot in big band. You get to a series of syncopated hits. If you're experienced, and depending on the chart, you may be able to see them as one familiar rhythmic sequence. But, the arranger, oftentimes, wants his arrangement to be novel, meaning the pattern of hits won't be familiar.

At that point the approach gets murky. Some players seem to have an internal click of some kind and they can place the hits without explicit counting. Others, may have to count, in which case they're likely to be late.

Now a digression into big band stuff.

Often enough, the pattern will be repeated, so if you can hear it played by somebody else the first time, you might get it on the next chorus. But, the endings are likely to be unique, so it's a good idea to figure out the ending before you start the tune. This advice applies in every horn band I've ever played in -- where the book is large and, much of the time, you've never seen the chart and have only seconds to look it over.