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I got this idea from one of my college teachers but recently started doing this again when I saw it in an Aaron Parks video, and he attributes it to a piano teacher he studied with whose name escapes me (classical teacher, long time teacher of adult Barry Harris, I’m sure someone will know the name).
Anyway … keep a pulse in your feet and improvise with your hands on the table in front of you, or on your chest or whatever. Also good for phrasing a melody. So keep the melody in your head and tap out the rhythms.
I’ve been using it like I use the metronome — every beat, one and three, two and four, beat one, some other beat. I’ve just started doing the Charleston rhythm in my feet and it’s absolutely thrown me for a loop. I’m back to keeping that there and just doing C Jam blues or simple rhythms in my hands.
Anyway — Aaron Parks calls it “waking the body” and said he used it as a warmup before he sits down to play. I’ve seen Ari Hoenig talk about variations of this too, but his are much more technical.
Ive been doing it for maybe three to five minutes before I start practicing. It’s been really useful to kind of get rhythms in my ear, which is always easier when they’re in my body. I feel like just generally I’m coming into more simple polyrhythms and things like that when I improvise too — stuff I’ve been capable of for a while, but just don’t use organically all that often. It’s pretty cool.
My wife is a music teacher and did some work where she was singing and signing solfège in canon and said it really helped her be able to hear in two voices. So maybe something like that happening under the surface.
Anyway. Anyone?Last edited by pamosmusic; 03-01-2025 at 05:01 PM.
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03-01-2025 02:13 PM
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Sophia Rosoff.
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There it is
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I'm sure as hell going to try it, and I'm positive I'll be able to report that absolutely nothing bad could come from an exercise like this.
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In South Indian Classical music, that's a common tactic for learning and internalizing polyrhythms - combined with rhythmic solfege.
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Yeah that sounds right. A drummer friend teaches kids that way -- he's not getting into wild stuff, but common stuff like a simple three over two or three over four, he has them work on as a big unit.
Originally Posted by Mick-7
It makes sense that to get better at trickier stuff you'd do the same thing -- get it on your body and in your voice and abstract it later.
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I found the South Indian trick of dividing up the primary beat into microbeats to be helpful. For example, 2 over 3 beats would be counted like so:
2 over 3 (in 3/4) Formula:
2 beat rhythm = 1 dotted quarter note per beat (= 2 x 3 eighth notes)
3 beat rhythm = 1 quarter note per beat (= 3 x 2 eighth notes)
----TA-ki-Ta-KI-Ta-ki-|-TA-ki-Ta-KI-Ta-ki-|
-----o--o--o--o--o--o--|--o--o--o--o--o--o--|
Bt..1............2.............|..1............2.. .........|
----TA-ki-TA-Ki-TA-ki-|-TA-ki-TA-Ki-TA-ki-|
-----o--o--o--o--o--o--|--o--o--o--o--o--o--|
Bt--1.......2.......3........|..1.......2........3.... ..|
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Wicked. Originally Posted by Mick-7
All caps are the accent?
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Yes, you'd only vocalize the top solfege though (the 2 beats of 2 over 3). Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Same formula with any rhythm, for example, 5/3 = 5 dotted 8th notes over 3 quarter notes. With odd rhythms, the poly-rhythm equation cannot be notated precisely, you can only approximate it on paper, e.g., in the case of 5/3, a dotted 8th note equals .60 of a quarter note.
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That sounds well worth a try, often the simple practices are overlooked, but they can yield massive improvements, gonna try this daily for a while, cheers.
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I’m still doing this but this has also transformed just into some rhythm practice. My wife has some progressive rhythm books and I’ve got the Omni book and stuff and I’m working on some hands and feet coordination.
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Nice, that's a good point about getting hands and feet coordination, that's what I'd like to get in, getting out my head and into my body whilst playing so I can essentially just dance and express rhythm through the guitar and just swing like a beast and let the notes come out as they may. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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I met him at 14, when he passed me at the door of our piano teacher. He became a household name, well at least in jazz circles. Me, not so much!
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speaking of Aaron, I've posted this before in the tele jazz forum but, here it is again in case you 've missed it
the entire show is well worth a listen....
S
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Something I made recently for a student.
Playing All of Me w hands.
Right foot quarter notes, left foot two and four.
Rhythms with All of Me #jazz #jazzguitarist - YouTube
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Edit: To display YouTube shorts you need to add your unique YouTube video code (Shown in bold in the example below) to the forum video url. (I'm genuinely trying to be helpful here.
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iBNSR0yK1P0Last edited by GuyBoden; 05-10-2025 at 09:42 AM.
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I was advised years ago to practice different rhythms against each other, so that I'd have them in my toolkit when needed.
It wasn't anything too exotic. For example, in 4/4 to be able to play quarter note triplets and half note triplets. In 3/4, dotted quarters. 4-tuplets (I don't know the right name) come up occasionally, e.g. in Minuano by Metheny iirc. Eventually it gets easier as you memorize the feel of things.
Another exercise I found helpful was substituting scatted drum licks for counting.
For beginners and maybe past that, using words with the right numbers of syllables and accents can be helpful. One teacher I know uses fruit. Pear, Mango, Banana, Watermelon. Blueberry gives a different accent than Banana.
I was in a band that used fruit to create those Latin style hit-breaks (again, I don't know the term). "Let's hit Watermelon, Watermelon, Pear, Blueberry".
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Ahh..John McLaughlin tricks... Originally Posted by Mick-7
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Weirdly difficult for me haha. Then, add ride cymbal and snare comps :-) Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I’ll be practicing that on the school kit when I’m back again. Embarrassing to say I can hold down a basic swing drum pattern. Yet.
But I can practice on guitar too of course
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Just got a book of jazz ride cymbal exercises and a second drum pad to put out for my right hand so we’re getting in there. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I’ve been slacking on this practice this summer though
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