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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
At least it’s not Sax and meth.
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09-25-2019 02:42 PM
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by Gabor
I think a lot of more contemporary players see rhythm as more of a clock time thing. This is becoming more and more the case actually, not just in jazz. DAWs and so on. Most of the modern players have very accurate, but kind of cold time/feel.
Pat learned on the bandstand, schooled by older musicians. His generation had more opportunities to gig with experienced players.
It’s a mindset difference with the way I was taught rhythm which was ‘fix that shit with a metronome’. What I took from Pat’s lesson was that this was helpful but no substitute for playing regularly with world class players. Which is tbf a bit easier if you are Pat :-)
Really good time feel is not actually metronomic, even if it seems like it is. Try setting a metronome to Stevie Wonder .... or try setting a metronome and walking down the street to it. It’s an interesting experience.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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It's interesting how people can hear a musician in what seems to be completely different, even opposing, ways. That's part of what makes these conversations interesting.
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Rick Beato has a good post about how modern computing kills music via DAWs by rhythm equalization. He demonstrates it on a John Bonham track.
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What I am wondering, I think no serious musician, especially jazz or classical musician can think about time as a clock thing. The groove and the expression comes from bending the time. Both PM and the new generation are serious musicians so we got a contradiction here...
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Originally Posted by Gabor
As of the contradiction you talked about, I feel like that elusive rhythm 'thing' comes from an attitude, a bravado if you will, something you learn 'on the street', not in a classroom. Today's jazz guitar world is very self absorbed. I feel like the audience is primarily the same music school nerds as the players. That breeds a certain vibe. I don't think it was necessarily the case in the past. Like, I wouldn't take my date to Lage Lund show for instance haha, but to Sco concert, yes!
Anyway, just thoughts.
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I just thought that also in jazz area there is a tendency to overestimation artists. I think partly it comes becasue of practical jazz instrumentalism - it is part of tradition in the style.
I do not want to say names to avoid negative effect because actually I truely admire many of them.
But still when I look at the current 'heroes' I see a huge difference between them and figures like Wes or Pat or Sco or Frisell... (and I do not even mention someine like Bird or Trane).
There was some kind of personal fundamentality. Very strong 'I' with background, with his soil under his feet, with his fathers behind. Personality felt as deeply rooted, it does not mean you could easily name these roots but you felt its presence. This is where true conviction comes from.
The word individual litterally means 'inseparable', 'indivisible'... personal integrity is fundamental part of European conception of Art.
I guess it is not only about tendencies in jazz music today but also about changing of conception of personality, human indivduality in general.
Those 'old school' players seem to belong to (already probably totally exhausted) tradition of European (and thus American too) humanism... I feel that their general values are more or less similar to my values (though I am much younger - and this pushes me to certain degeree out of modern social context).
Again I do not want to say that modern players are not human but definitely fundamental priciples of human individuality like feeling of time, space, perconal position in time and space, what is expression and what is impression, and what is thought and what is sentiment and so on and so on - they changed very significantly to such an extent that often people look the same, do approximately the same, speak the same but something is so different that actually one may ask oneself what is human and what is not? (I know it is a risky question from moral point of view, but I hope I do it in the circle or reasonable people).
So in my opinion that means a change in critereria that may stay yet unnoticed. In other words people already live and make art in the world of different values but it si not realized yet in the concious cultural level and is being internalized and analyzed and discussed in terms of the culture that does nto exist any more.
The newer players I think see timing more as a science.
But today it seems we are already behind even scientific one as dominating and are at the point of some new appraoch.
But for the topic - I think their approach is not specifically scientific (acdemy, books, modes), their mindset is (objectivism, systematism, regularity, even conception of "person in a world" (as opposed to the world in a person) etc.).)
I noticed the old school players approach everything as if they know and understand it, new school - as if they do not know and do not understand but want to learn... it is also scientific conception... 'I am here (alone?) in the unknown world', curiousity to some to 'otherness' is also scientific quality as opposed to recognition and respond to 'selfness'.
Complex topic...Last edited by Jonah; 09-26-2019 at 05:14 AM.
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I wonder if it s the new work? Meetings, micromanaging, tiny tasks. As opposed to 40 years ago where there was Les reliance on computers and more on big ideas and risk?
Not at all to disparage anyone, just moving the idea beyond just guitar
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Originally Posted by Gabor
If you have any interview evidence to the contrary, would be interested to see it.
Rick Beato has a good post about how modern computing kills music via DAWs by rhythm equalization. He demonstrates it on a John Bonham track.
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What I am wondering, I think no serious musician, especially jazz or classical musician can think about time as a clock thing. The groove and the expression comes from bending the time. Both PM and the new generation are serious musicians so we got a contradiction here...
OTOH I do not believe (like for instance Jeff Berlin) that playing with a metronome will destroy your time feel - iff are playing with others as well. Too many players I admire have done it for me to think that.
For instance, Dave Cliff, great UK guitar player, is of the Tristano school. He pointed out to me that Wes's records actually slow down, and yet, being of the Tristano school, he would hold the metronome up as the ultimate arbiter. (So does that mean modern metronomic time > Wes? I don't think Dave would think that.) Dave is one of the most swinging players my country has produced (he's a lot better than that sounds) - but - he has been on the stand with EVERYONE.
BUT - on the other hand, the fetishisation of this type of clock time is quite a new thing. I think it comes from an educational system that understandably emphasises quantifiable outcomes and accountability on one hand and players who are a bit insecure about ever being able to groove and swing etc quantising the fuckery out of their playing in the mistaken belief that that is what Wes Montgomery or whoever was doing. (I say this from personal experience. I was that metronome at 10 bpm guy.)
This also has a bit of Video Games mentality about it. Get to level 20 time/feel.
Furthermore a lot of teachers don't have much of toolkit to work on this stuff beyond, play with great drummers, practice with a metronome. I think that toolkit exists in the practice of various educators, but it doesn't seem to be universal, or pulled together into one place in the way pitch resources are. There's also been some intriguing, but as yet fairly thin research on the empirical nature of swing feel that could inform teaching practice and theoretical backdrop to practical exercises to develop swing feel.
What constitutes a serious, inspiring musician is never about one thing for me. It never works to start from first principles when it comes to music haha, someone always comes along and makes me reject me firmly held beliefs about how music should be.
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Originally Posted by dlew919
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At the risk of being positivist ...
Metronomes have been around for the better part of 200 years and many of the old school greats grew up using them. I'm very skeptical that, say, Kenny Burrell (who has a college music degree and a lot of formal training) has a different time feel from Kurt Rosenwinkel because of use or non-use of metronomes.
The older school players have/had a more direct connection to blues, gospel, other folk music forms, and pop music derived from those roots than younger player because of broader cultural changes. I think that's the more likely explanation.
It's also to a degree a US vs European/Asia thing. I meet contemporaries of mine (mid 50s) all the time from Europe who almost never played or listened to soul, funk, blues, rock and roll, or country. But most Americans my age +/- a pretty big margin have all of this under our belts. Music with a greasier ryhthmic feel is in the water and air here. But this distinction is probably disappearing because the roots forms are now disappearing from American culture.
John
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Originally Posted by djg
I was playing on lute Zamboni's sonata and was blamed of slowing it down signidicantly at teh final cadenza and that it was not appropriate for the baroque style. I said: I did not slow down... The answer was look: he pointed at teh phone record and began to clap the beat... of course I knew that regarding the stric meter I was slowing down but I did not feel that i was slowing down the music... I think it is not quite the same thing.
Music has contents and we need time to pronounce it coherently and to percieve it.. people are different some need more time some less...
Another question was the opposite: I asked a well-known young lute player (the vid is on youtube) that I feel like everything is rushed (I did not say he plays faster, I said in rusch, in a haste - it is different I believe, rush is not about time it is about the essence of the action)... and he answered: put the metronome and you will see that I am exactly in time! --- you see this is what he thinks about...
In jazz it is a bit different as the basic pulse is more independent but still.... the greatest slowdown I heard was in Idle Moments - I think it is alsmot twice as slow at the end!
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There are many slowing down and rushing recordings among the greatest. This proves for me, that atomic internal clock nonsense is a deadend. What matter is the time "feel". It is not a coincidence we call it a feeling, which exact opposite of math. Within the rushing or slowing recording, a player with great time feel can make your leg or body move to feel the current tempo. Of course if the rushing or slowing down in the tune is above a value, that can be disappointing.
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You can not have an internal atomic clock, then execute intentionally behind or above. I mean one can, but the result will not groove. The concept sounds me too scientific and in the best it produces interesting, but artificial feel. If one have a solid feel of groove (=good time feel), then he can execute according that his internal groove/swingLast edited by Gabor; 09-26-2019 at 08:57 AM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Originally Posted by christianm77
Main topics:
- PM's good drummer definition: a good drummer who did not allow any inaccuracy (a metronome, which beeps if you are out of sync?).
- PM: tempo's smallest subdivision is going in my head/stomach (triplets)
- PM: With a metronome demonstrates how to be sync, above, behind the beat.
- Then PM: demonstrates solo lines over the metronome. It is trademark PM, incredible, but he successfully demonstrates how to be PM, and how to not swing. You admire it, but your leg will not start to move for sure.
In case the video starts elsewhere, then seek to 6:37
Last edited by Gabor; 09-26-2019 at 09:26 AM.
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You know I feel like music is the best incarnation of time... we often say that we feel time in daily life but we cannot describe it... clocks are not time, it is just a convention (in that sense Peter Bernstein expressed what I feel very clearly, he said something like: 'using metronome while practicing helps me to stay sane...' It is very true becasue the tools of art are conventional and we cannot totally break this connection becasue we will lose communication which is the great feature of true art.)...
But still clock is convention and music as it is written or being played truely expresses internal time feel..
in that sense the meter or metronimic timing is just a supportive tool to arrange the conncetions between players or between a player and a piece... it is like something to get basic orientation.. like an actor in the stage: ok here is a table, here is a chair and there is a door... if he is a newbie he will probably make mistake because theatrical reality is conventional he will try to make marks (like they do in the movies so that they would not step out of the camera view)... but experienced actor will immidiately - often already instincltively - build up proper connections with enviroment so that he would not need to count steps or think where his partner and the audience are... and thanks to these connections his reactions will be natural.Last edited by Jonah; 09-26-2019 at 09:55 AM.
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Originally Posted by Gabor
- PM's good drummer definition: a good drummer who did not allow any inaccuracy (a metronome, which beeps if you are out of sync?).
Need to re-listen and don't really have time right now. I can't remember Pat's exact words, but I question the idea that accurate necessarily means metronomic (it may well do for the purposes of practice of course). I think the student in the vid is at such a low, amateur level, it possibly means playing with good pro-level drummers who don't drop beats, speed up massively and so on rather than Peter Erskine or something...
TBH IIRC this lesson could have been my lesson with a pro guitar player 15 years ago. It's the same shit.
One way of identfying timing problems in your playing for instance is recording yourself soloing or playing a melody without a click and listening back, maybe playing along. (The Chick Corea method)
- PM: tempo's smallest subdivision is going in my head/stomach (triplets)
- PM: With a metronome demonstrates how to be sync, above, behind the beat.
- Then PM: demonstrates solo lines over the metronome. It is trademark PM, incredible, but he successfully demonstrates how to be PM, and how to not swing. You admire it, but your leg will not start to move for sure.
In case the video starts elsewhere, then seek to 6:37
[/QUOTE]
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by Gabor
But the people researching this are bored particle physicists in a spare lunch hour, so evidence is quite thin ATM. It seems to be the way Freddie Hubbard phrases, at least.
About 6 months ago I was all about this theory, because, hey, it works. But now I'm listening to Trane and Wayne and so on again, it's like wha...?
Kreisberg said 'people think this music floats, but it's all locked in.' I wonder if that's true?
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I'm not in on this, can you expand?[/QUOTE]
He grooves like an MF, but technically he's really messy, drops beats sometimes in solos, and so on. Still one of my favourites. Screw the metronome!
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I'm not in on this, can you expand?[/QUOTE]
Blakey's in your face. He leads any band he was in...so non-drummers notice him.
I am a non-drummer, and I do love Art Blakey. But there's a lot to drums that's not on the surface, and might slip by non-drummers. Hell, I've had drummers explain it to me like I was a 5 year old and I still don't hear it. And they got their own names for shit, too, so half the time a non-drummer doesn't even know what they're talking about.
Who else does that?
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If you want to hear a classic jazz track that slows down, listen to the beginning and the end of this. I didn’t notice this for years!
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Originally Posted by grahambop
Now to wonder...just naturally slowed down...or is there a splice somewhere I never noticed...time to listen closer.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Think how much better that music would have been if they cut it with a click track /s/
Wynton v Herbie 1985
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