Songs to work on for technique and rhythm?

[pamosmusic]

Has anyone check out Jazznylons playing? I did and is why I changed my suggestions as to what to work on. He's not really ready for bebop heads. Standards would be much more helpful... as I suggested.

Pamosmusic... Please post an example to show how bebop heads have helped your playing, musicianship and vocabulary. I think I saw a vid of you playing "Solar" .... is that it? Man... it's just you talk like your a bad ass jazz guitarist. Please tell me that wasn't you.

Thanks, guy.

[Jimmy Smith]

I definitely did not invent you

I can say with absolute certainty that you are indeed the human equivalent of Samuel Johnson’s rock.

thank you, that was a close call

Bahaha

[James W]

Pamosmusic... Please post an example to show how bebop heads have helped your playing, musicianship and vocabulary. I think I saw a vid of you playing "Solar" .... is that it? Man... it's just you talk like your a bad ass jazz guitarist. Please tell me that wasn't you.

Not that Amos needs someone leaping to his defence, but... are you joking? Please tell me you're joking. His version of Solar is badass...

[jazznylon]

Not to toot my own horn but I think I'm ready to play bebop heads.. I have played donna lee at tempo before (modeling matteo mancuso's playing) its just a matter of relearning it since its been a long while. At this point for me improving technique is to develop flexibility and pushing through even faster speeds than before playing through the tricky heads (with working on articulation as well)

[Christian Miller]

Has anyone check out Jazznylons playing? I did and is why I changed my suggestions as to what to work on. He's not really ready for bebop heads. Standards would be much more helpful... as I suggested.

Pamosmusic... Please post an example to show how bebop heads have helped your playing, musicianship and vocabulary. I think I saw a vid of you playing "Solar" .... is that it? Man... it's just you talk like your a bad ass jazz guitarist. Please tell me that wasn't you.

Hey reg, you see these blue u underlined thingies here, these are called hyperlinks (or at least they were in the 1990s which is when they were invented, I think the kiddie winks may simply be calling them links now)



If you click on them, you will navigate to other sites without needing to type in the web address.

I assume Peter has put these so an interested party or parties may go and listen to his playing if curious.

This should answer any of the questions posed in your post regarding the provenance of the Solar video and so on.

I hope you find this useful. I understand the internet can be a bewildering place at times.

[rpjazzguitar]

Reading through the Jimmy Raney Aebersold book today, that’s got some great rhythmic stuff in it.

I'm wondering if you have any specific strategies to recommend to actually get this sort of thing deep enough into your ears/brain for it to emerge sponteously.

I ask, because this is something I have not found to be easy. My experience is that some sounds (well, a few, anyway) are so clear that I can use them right way (eg. lydian dominant or 13b9) and others so amorphous that it takes forever (e.g., dorian, perhaps oddly).

I heard somewhere that one of the Brecker Bros would write an idea down and practice it for a year -- so that when it finally came out in his playing, it was burning.

[Peter C]

Gotta love internet forums. Go to YooToob and check out "Reg523" and just watch the hands, that's all you need to know, slow it down as necessary. I wish I had the time to spare. Nobody posting here in this thread comes even close, guitar in hand, so there's that.

[Kirk Garrett]

As someone who learned to play scales very well, I will say this is not true at all. The scales became my roadmap and they simplified A LOT of things for me. If I want a sound I know where it is. Scale practice developed my ear more than suffering through learning by ear ever did. If you can't do this basic stuff then you're just making everything else harder for no reason.

I feel like the Jimmy Bruno positions (which he insists are not scales, but which are scales) opened a huge door for me.

Plus just being able to spell the scales provides an essential roadmap, as you point out. They are the reference for kinda everything for me.

[bediles]

Hey honey, should I break out the air popper or just nuke one of those microwave jobbys?

[pamosmusic]

Hey honey, should I break out the air popper or just nuke one of those microwave jobbys?

This is fake butter and microwave drama, at best.

[AllanAllen]

I feel like the Jimmy Bruno positions (which he insists are not scales, but which are scales) opened a huge door for me.

Plus just being able to spell the scales provides an essential roadmap, as you point out. They are the reference for kinda everything for me.

He calls them pitch collections to avoid modes. He explained in an interview or DVD that this is how it was back when he came up. It was all “one a these, and one of those” “Sears roebuck bridge” or “Ellington bridge”

Everything wasn’t codified in his scene(specifically the Buddy Rich band) and it mattered More that you could play over that you knew all the names and definitions.

The forum is a strange place because we are isolated we need to know the names, It’s not like going over stuff in a room. Yet we still get people who can’t play and don’t know shit filling up the threads. (That’s a dig at myself)

[Christian Miller]

Pitch collection is a much more accurate term than mode as well. Jazz musicians do not use modes like modes.

True modal music is governed by melodic conventions as well as pitch sets - see ragas, Maqams, plainsong etc. furthermore these pitches are obviously not used to form harmonies in the way we do in jazz.

[Christian Miller]

I'm wondering if you have any specific strategies to recommend to actually get this sort of thing deep enough into your ears/brain for it to emerge sponteously.

I ask, because this is something I have not found to be easy. My experience is that some sounds (well, a few, anyway) are so clear that I can use them right way (eg. lydian dominant or 13b9) and others so amorphous that it takes forever (e.g., dorian, perhaps oddly).

I heard somewhere that one of the Brecker Bros would write an idea down and practice it for a year -- so that when it finally came out in his playing, it was burning.

Yes it takes ages for anything to come out on the stand. That’s why I don’t think it’s realistic to insist on true improvisation at all times for players at the beginner/intermediate stage. They should IMO focus on music, not process, because at the early stages nothing they play sounds like jazz. Therefore stealing other peoples stuff and regurgitating it is the best option, until they outgrow that phase. I’m very much in the licks and vocab camp, at least for learners. (Advanced players can start to transcend this.)

We all need to practice stuff A LOT for it to come out. I’m not better than Brecker, right?

For me ‘true improv’ is an ideal that requires years of learning and forgetting. That said many of my favourite players are not ‘true improvisers’ by the stringent criteria of some.. Wes is a good example.

Anyway, this is coming from someone who is far from happy with with his time and rhythm but is very interested in the subject

It’s helped me to understand time, feel and rhythmic vocabulary are all kind of separate. I’ve played with musicians with great feel who will randomly drop a beat for example. There’s many aspects to it…

One notable thing that many students (I am familiar with guitar players, but I suspect this is more general) aren’t very good at clapping or singing the basic rhythms I identified above - I expect you would have less of a problem with this with your interest in Brazilian music - this is basic stuff like clave, tresillo/Charleston, Bossa cross stick, Bembe and so on. You clap them one of these rhythms and ask them to clap it back look at you as if you’ve just asked them to factorise a partial differential equation (tbf most of my students would probably be happier doing that) so that’s an obvious starting point for most.

It was such a problem at jazz colleges in the UK they started teaching all instrumentalists percussion to address this. They generally teach Rio samba as it’s accessible and there’s a big community of samba players here. The rhythms are common throughout the African Diaspora although the lilt and feel obviously changes. In US jazz it’s the junction between the western 4/4 and the west African ‘12/8’ feels* I’m transcribing an Allan Holdsworth solo on a a ballad atm and it all lines up with the Bembe. But I rarely hear anyone talk about this stuff esp with regards to players like Alan.

Drummers understand though. They are the people to learn from, the lore keepers. We should all aim to play drums a bit. Or percussion. Brecker was a decent drummer, right?

Anyway I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here.

As for what I practice to get rhythmic ideas in my blood so to speak, one thing that I got from my Konnakol teacher (which is a whole other subject) is the value of working on rhythmic independence. So for example, singing the 2-3 clave while you play Anthropology. I also sing odd time claves (2 2 3 or 3 3 2 2 etc) when practicing in 7/4 and 5/4 etc. This can all be done Konnakol style (ta ki da etc) but other mouth sounds are equally valid.

(I do like the Karnatic way of counting on the hand. That is really useful for keeping track of the one in difficult cycles, transcribing rhythms and so on. It’s a brilliant tool box which is why everyone teaches it at music school now.)

You will also certainly be able to tell whether or not thou really know the thing you are playing as well - it all falls apart if you have to focus on your playing, so the music needs to be drilled into the unconscious.

Another thing Konnakol taught me is the difficulty of reassigning rhythms. So you might be able to clap the clave and sing the head, but singing the clave and playing the head might prove really hard.

This is obviously the kind of area where kit drummers spend many hours practicing.

Rhythmic vocab can be picked up from records. In fact when transcribing, rhythm comes first. The notes simply populate the rhythms, and once you got the rhythmic phrase the notes often fall into place. People always talk about harmonic ideas they got from solos, but actually rhythmic ideas are even more important, and actually a lot more immediate (as you aren’t puzzling out the exact pitches etc.) Heads are great for this and they will set you in good stead for gigs and jams as well.

The other thing is recording is a great way to see how well you know stuff, and how accurate it is. I do it a lot. You can hear and even see right away your inaccuracies in execution of a rhythm. (Obviously feel is a separate subject.)

*which is a very western centric and inaccurate way of describing west African rhythms, but hopefully you know what I mean

[Oscar67]

Going way back to the basics of the basics, it was entertaining to come into jazz from a musical world where I had never had any doubt whatsoever where the beat was. I took some pride in my abilities as a rhythm player… until trying to play to a guy who’s only loosely swooshing brushes across a snare. That took some adjustment, to put it mildly.

[Christian Miller]

Apparently Elvin Jones mentored a guitarist or two, and he was a stickler for players mastering a straight 4 Freddie green comp. Makes sense. If you can’t do that, what makes you think you can play swinging 8th note lines?

[pamosmusic]

As for what I practice to get rhythmic ideas in my blood so to speak, one thing that I got from my Konnakol teacher (which is a whole other subject) is the value of working on rhythmic independence. So for example, singing the 2-3 clave while you play Anthropology. I also sing odd time claves (2 2 3 or 3 3 2 2 etc) when practicing in 7/4 and 5/4 etc. This can all be done Konnakol style (ta ki da etc) but other mouth sounds are equally valid.

Oof. God bless you, Christian Miller. That’s intense stuff.

[James W]

Yes it takes ages for anything to come out on the stand. That’s why I don’t think it’s realistic to insist on true improvisation at all times for players at the beginner/intermediate stage. They should IMO focus on music, not process, because at the early stages nothing they play sounds like jazz. Therefore stealing other peoples stuff and regurgitating it is the best option, until they outgrow that phase. I’m very much in the licks and vocab camp, at least for learners. (Advanced players can start to transcend this.)

We all need to practice stuff A LOT for it to come out. I’m not better than Brecker, right?

For me ‘true improv’ is an ideal that requires years of learning and forgetting. That said many of my favourite players are not ‘true improvisers’ by the stringent criteria of some.. Wes is a good example.

Anyway, this is coming from someone who is far from happy with with his time and rhythm but is very interested in the subject

It’s helped me to understand time, feel and rhythmic vocabulary are all kind of separate. I’ve played with musicians with great feel who will randomly drop a beat for example. There’s many aspects to it…

One notable thing that many students (I am familiar with guitar players, but I suspect this is more general) aren’t very good at clapping or singing the basic rhythms I identified above - I expect you would have less of a problem with this with your interest in Brazilian music - this is basic stuff like clave, tresillo/Charleston, Bossa cross stick, Bembe and so on. You clap them one of these rhythms and ask them to clap it back look at you as if you’ve just asked them to factorise a partial differential equation (tbf most of my students would probably be happier doing that) so that’s an obvious starting point for most.

It was such a problem at jazz colleges in the UK they started teaching all instrumentalists percussion to address this. They generally teach Rio samba as it’s accessible and there’s a big community of samba players here. The rhythms are common throughout the African Diaspora although the lilt and feel obviously changes. In US jazz it’s the junction between the western 4/4 and the west African ‘12/8’ feels* I’m transcribing an Allan Holdsworth solo on a a ballad atm and it all lines up with the Bembe. But I rarely hear anyone talk about this stuff esp with regards to players like Alan.

Drummers understand though. They are the people to learn from, the lore keepers. We should all aim to play drums a bit. Or percussion. Brecker was a decent drummer, right?

Anyway I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here.

As for what I practice to get rhythmic ideas in my blood so to speak, one thing that I got from my Konnakol teacher (which is a whole other subject) is the value of working on rhythmic independence. So for example, singing the 2-3 clave while you play Anthropology. I also sing odd time claves (2 2 3 or 3 3 2 2 etc) when practicing in 7/4 and 5/4 etc. This can all be done Konnakol style (ta ki da etc) but other mouth sounds are equally valid.

(I do like the Karnatic way of counting on the hand. That is really useful for keeping track of the one in difficult cycles, transcribing rhythms and so on. It’s a brilliant tool box which is why everyone teaches it at music school now.)

You will also certainly be able to tell whether or not thou really know the thing you are playing as well - it all falls apart if you have to focus on your playing, so the music needs to be drilled into the unconscious.

Another thing Konnakol taught me is the difficulty of reassigning rhythms. So you might be able to clap the clave and sing the head, but singing the clave and playing the head might prove really hard.

This is obviously the kind of area where kit drummers spend many hours practicing.

Rhythmic vocab can be picked up from records. In fact when transcribing, rhythm comes first. The notes simply populate the rhythms, and once you got the rhythmic phrase the notes often fall into place. People always talk about harmonic ideas they got from solos, but actually rhythmic ideas are even more important, and actually a lot more immediate (as you aren’t puzzling out the exact pitches etc.) Heads are great for this and they will set you in good stead for gigs and jams as well.

The other thing is recording is a great way to see how well you know stuff, and how accurate it is. I do it a lot. You can hear and even see right away your inaccuracies in execution of a rhythm. (Obviously feel is a separate subject.)

*which is a very western centric and inaccurate way of describing west African rhythms, but hopefully you know what I mean

Any good books on rhythm you can recommend?

[Christian Miller]

Any good books on rhythm you can recommend?

I have a few books but I can’t say I’ve used them much. Hal Galper ‘forward motion’ made a big impact tho. But I think it’s a little simplified… good starting point tho. Peter Erskines book is more about time than groove, but is very good.

I quite liked Mike Longo’s stuff (video and booklet) but really he kind of gave it more of a ‘mystic aura’ than I think it deserved. It’s a lot of 6/8 on 4/4 and Bembe stuff (the ‘hidden five’ in vol III is actually Bembe. It’s cool though. My wife thinks it helped my time feel. Longo did teach Mark Ronson and Adam Rafferty so there is that. He maintained he was passing on what he learned from Dizzy.

But while it has a mathematical side, I think rhythm is above all physical.

Join a percussion workshop? That’s mostly what I’ve done fwiw. A fair bit of samba with people who really know their stuff (I’ve been lucky to have had some great tecahers and percussion masters like Joao Bosco Di Olivera and Adriano Adawale who are way overqualified to teach a shmo like me). Konnakol lessons with a great jazz/fusion drummer who also plays Karnatic music. (Asaf Sirkis, he also taught Ant btw.)

Playing rhythms on a hand drum. Trying to record some of the Ketu grooves Bonsritmos identifies. Anything like that. I can’t tell you how much more fun trad jazz gigs became when I started locking into Opanije instead of just feeling it as a stolid London taan 4/4.

Dance lessons?

You can put the basic jazz rhythms on a sheet of A4 (I should do that!) but internalising them takes a while.

This is all very much in ‘FWIW’ territory. But I think it’s good advice and it did help me I think. It got me to the level when I can at least perceive some details about rhythm and feel and diagnose when some things aren’t right in my and other peoples playing.

[Christian Miller]

Oh something I should do more - playing with records. This is highly recommended by a number of players I admire. It’s actually the next best thing to playing in person with a great rhythm section but it’s often overlooked.. whole generations of drummers learned this way

[Christian Miller]

Oof. God bless you, Christian Miller. That’s intense stuff.

I come off the rails with this quite a bit haha

but that’s what makes it practice of course

[pamosmusic]

Oh something I should do more - playing with records. This is highly recommended by a number of players I admire. It’s actually the next best thing to playing in person with a great rhythm section but it’s often overlooked.. whole generations of drummers learned this way

I'm pretty convinced that the only reason my time-feel isn't utter garbage is because I started learning before YouTube (YooToob, apparently?) blew up and I didn't have enough money for Aebersold books or whatever. So if I wanted to play along with Autumn Leaves, I'd play along with Cannonball Adderly or whoever. It certainly wasn't intentional, but probably was a decent way to get going.

[Christian Miller]

Actually the drum genius app has a lot of great stuff in it regarding claves for the drum patterns and so on. Worth checking out - forgot about that!

[bediles]

YooToob is the boomer name. That or, "The You Tubes"

[Bop Head]

I have a few books but I can’t say I’ve used them much. Hal Galper ‘forward motion’ made a big impact tho. But I think it’s a little simplified… good starting point tho. Peter Erskines book is more about time than groove, but is very good.

I quite liked Mike Longo’s stuff (video and booklet) but really he kind of gave it more of a ‘mystic aura’ than I think it deserved. It’s a lot of 6/8 on 4/4 and Bembe stuff (the ‘hidden five’ in vol III is actually Bembe. It’s cool though. My wife thinks it helped my time feel. Longo did teach Mark Ronson and Adam Rafferty so there is that. He maintained he was passing on what he learned from Dizzy.

But while it has a mathematical side, I think rhythm is above all physical.

Join a percussion workshop? That’s mostly what I’ve done fwiw. A fair bit of samba with people who really know their stuff (I’ve been lucky to have had some great teachers like Joao Bosco D’Oliveras and Adriano Adawale who are way overqualified to teach a shmo like me). Konnakol lessons with a great jazz/fusion drummer who also plays Karnatic music. (Asaf Sirkis, he also taught Ant btw.)

Playing rhythms on a hand drum. Trying to record some of the Ketu grooves Bonsritmos identifies. Anything like that. I can’t tell you how much more fun trad jazz gigs became when I started locking into Opanije instead of just feeling it as 4/4.

Dance lessons?

You can put the basic jazz rhythms on a sheet of A4 (I should do that!) but internalising them takes a while.

This is all very much in ‘FWIW’ territory. But I think it’s good advice and it did help me I think. It got me to the level when I can at least perceive some details about rhythm and feel and diagnose when some things aren’t right in my and other peoples playing.

It might now be more than 30 years ago that I read an interview with drummer Omar Hakim but something stuck in my mind: He said every time he learned to play a new style (in that interview he was relating to something like new jack swing or new styles of hip-hop IIRC) he went to a club to learn to dance to that music.

I have mentioned several times before that I played 10 years in a band that played a lot of reggae. Having the chance to watch Lucky Dube, The Wailers, Burning Spear etc. from backstage and trying to copy the way they moved to the groove has helped my reggae feel a ton.

The basic salsa steps are simple but the Cubans do them somehow off-beat!!!

Was it Zappa who said: "Free your ass and your mind will follow."?

So let's all do the Lindy Hop.

[mr. beaumont]

I'm pretty convinced that the only reason my time-feel isn't utter garbage is because I started learning before YouTube.

There's really something to this. Being forced to do things "the hard way." (in quotes because it's often not really all that hard, it just doesn't have the modern convenience attached)

And of course, the other thing is playing with humans. It wasn't jazz at first, but I started playing with an actual drummer in a band at age 12. I can't over-exaggerate the importance of what that taught me.