Jam Snippets (June)

Jam Session tonight -- Here's a couple of recordings

This is a jam so we have a mix here, like a newbie trumpet player who we allow to play the head so he can participate. I have played neither of these tunes in a group before so it's interesting to see the dynamics that developed. You can hear the discussions.

This is RAW STUFF. Messy but fun at the same time.

Look of Love (Burt Bacarach)
http://www.box.net/shared/kkmuuza2lr023loxj66n

Pardon the guitar player plugged into my monitor and basically confusing me. So some of those wrong notes you hear are actually the guitar. He wasn't supposed to be playing.


Mr PC (John Coltrane)
http://www.box.net/shared/musahc62usb2ytkrehnp

This made me panic a little during the solo since it's the first time I've played at 200bpm live. It made me tense up and I repeated ideas and I was off the pocket there for a bit. Will do better next time. But listen to what happens with the rhythm section as everyone just let loose. Completely unplanned. It was great!

My First Major Gig

I did a show recently, my first major gig with a jazz group and I was also the leader. There was a huge crowd and I had Vocals, Sax, Guitar, Keyboard, Bass and Drums. What an experience! Prior to this was mostly solo piano gigs and many jam sessions. We were a hit with the crowd and they asked to play on a regular basis. I played with experienced musicians here and it was a great feeling to get through a tune with very little discussion. I had never played with most of these people. I played with the bass player a couple of times at a jam but that was it. There's mistakes everywhere, but this is jazz so I thought it went well for the first try.



Summertime
http://www.box.net/shared/d4i8yyjyoy

Whisper
http://www.box.net/shared/449jaxh002

Lullaby
http://www.box.net/shared/m7bb20l46l

Softly
http://www.box.net/shared/dtey8dycgd

Route 66
http://www.box.net/shared/ugqm0ja1s2

Autumn Leaves
http://www.box.net/shared/0xdsygnree

God Bless
http://www.box.net/shared/0v9fqvza7m

Someday My Prince
http://www.box.net/shared/jqri5f6zt7

ATTYA
http://www.box.net/shared/ks8y17ft3n

Indian Summer
http://www.box.net/shared/tqlo468gtb

Letting Some Notes Ring

Just to track where I am, here are two recordings from practice today.

Giant Steps - 200bpm
http://www.box.net/shared/teezssv0bj

All the Things You Are
http://www.box.net/shared/1kzx7vqys5

My goal here was to avoid playing continuous streams of eighth notes and really think of the melody. I've been learning to be aware of this the last few weeks from my lessons. When I listen to the masters play, I only perceive the fast eighth note lines. But if I listen closer, there's more breaks in there than I thought, even at faster tempos.

So the lesson I learned was to "Let the Notes Ring". I realize now that this makes for better melodies and delineates ideas.

When I was playing, my teacher would stop me and say "HOLD THAT NOTE!". This is because I just keep streaming notes like scales and there's no time for an idea to catch up.

Hopefully a little bit of this is coming in to my playing. There's more of this to be done, but I think it's happening

Swing Thoughts Part 3

Some of this discussion on swing can get very technical. This is because I'm at a point now where I'm becoming conscious of what it takes to play jazz at a pro level.

This is a continuation of the journey to improve articulation and swing and part 3 of the thought process.

The more I think about the "swung eighth" position that I illustrated rhythmically in part 1, the more ideas are popping into my head.

How exactly do the masters line up their eighth notes so it fits that position of landing the offbeat on the 3 of the triplet (what I've been calling the sweet spot)? I discussed the Erskine vocalized "Uh" as the subdivision mechanism but's really hard to apply at a fast tempo, especially on the first note.

So on to further analysis. Here in this recording, I was playing with my teacher on two pianos. I just extracted his portion of the solo so I can analyze his groove. Very relaxed feel here. This is a very simple version of ATTYA so it's easy to understand. Rhythm section is iRealBook from an Iphone.

http://www.box.net/shared/ncz1fp5xnb

I know that I'm right that of the offbeat eighth lands on the 3 of a triplet (a triplet representing two eighths), it will swing even if the eighths are played straight. That was already proven by the sequenced recordings in part 2. But now here is a real player playing straight eighths and it swings.

I think I figured it out. He's playing the first eighth as a dotted eighth (so slightly longer) and then the rest of the eighths are played straight. That's how you make straight eighths swing. I was playing with one of the phrases over and over and I can feel the difference in each note length.

That's my theory at the moment. Listen to the recording. I sense that the first eighth, especially starting from a rest is longer. A dotted eighth would be an exact match rhythmically.

This is a mind boggling discovery if true because it give a precise way of getting a groove. So the rest is just how even you can play your eighths (like Classical).

Analyzing Swing in Modern Jazz - Part 2

This is part 2 of Swing Analysis. It's probably better to start with Part 1 if you are interested in this topic.

Scott, from our jazz threads took my concept of subdividing pairs of eighths in 6 (24 to a bar), and seeing what it sounds like when played against a rhythm section. He used a sequencer to make the minute adjustments necessary. And the results are below.

And I was shocked to discover that apparently my theory is correct. Now this is uptempo (220 bpm) so you'll have to just get the feel of it.

The theory of this is explained in Part 1. The "Triplet Feel" playing is how beginners typically perceive jazz. The typical swing explanation is called "Long-Short Long-Short ...". Or in notation it will be seen as a Dotted Eighth + Sixteenth. It is in fact true that this rhythm is very important in jazz because this is the rhythm of the drummer's Ride Cymbal.

However, it is UNTRUE that this extends to how jazz is played on the piano or any other instrument. As you will hear in the examples below, you can play Straight (even) eighth pairs and still swing, as long as the offbeat eighth lands in the sweet spot of the swing groove. In this is done by DRAGGING/DELAYING the beat.

Triplet Feel
This feel is the exaggerated Jazz rhythm that you don't actually hear anywhere other than from beginners and non-jazz players. This what my teacher discouraged me from playing as it is not authentic.
http://www.box.net/shared/l94dto5orl

Straight Eighths
This is an example of a playing style of some pianists where you play even eighths but you make it swing by dragging it a particular amount. See the Part 1 Thread for how much it is dragged in this example.
http://www.box.net/shared/5p2ph076ts

There is another range of playing which is in between the triplet feel and the straight eighth feel. My theory is that a harder swing is done by moving the downbeat closer to the top of the beat (from the straight eighth) while the offbeat always stays in place.

When we get another recording example, this point will be proven too. So the conclusion is that when playing jazz, don't think so much of Long-Short, but "lay back" and sense the groove that is the swing eighth in the offbeat. The 'A' in the Drummer's Jazz 'Ding-A-Ding rhythm', the 3 in a triplet.

This is not easy to do. Part 1 showed some examples of how to practice that using sounds to subdivide.

Now what's not discussed here is the accents. The way jazz works is that we focus on the offbeat. So in addition to landing on the sweet spot 3 in the triplet (the swing eighth), we also accent that eighth. How much you accent is an articulation choice and tends to happen more on the medium tempos.

Wynton Kelly, who I consider THE swing master, used a lot of accents. Kelly played in a harder swing closer to the triplet feel and mixed it with the straight eighths laid back and oftentimes in the same tune.

It's only now that I studied these rhythms in a finer subdivision that I understand what he's really doing now.

Analyzing Swing in Modern Jazz - Part 1

I was trying to solve a problem for myself. How do I keep a swing feel at a faster tempo when I'm playing straight eighths? This discovery is the result of that thought process. Below is an analysis of a typical jazz beat and I'm showing two bars in each example. The analysis of swing for me starts with understanding the beat subdivisions.

The result of this little process was very illuminating. I've tried to explain this in words before but it never came out clearly because I didn't really think it out. Thanks to our drummer friends on the Jazz Advanced Thread, I finally got to thinking about this like a drummer. Step 1 was to watch a lot of Peter Erskine instructional videos on Jazz drumming on Youtube. And that got me thinking.

So here's the progression of the thought process...



A. Quarter Note Pulse
|x x x x |x x x x |

B. Eighth Notes - if played Straight
|x x x x x x x   |x x x x x x x   |

C. Straight Eighths - Translated to 24/8
I'm translating this to 24/8 - so I can demonstrate a point. So shown below, the 8th notes played straight starts on 1 of each triplet

|Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx |Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx Xxx |

D. Triplet Feel - Shown in 24/8The drummer plays a ride cymbal pattern which sets the swing groove and often heard as 'Ding-a-Ding'. This is the pattern shown below. Beginning pianists make the mistake of playing this same rhythm as the drummer and the swing doesn't breath. It sounds mechanical and hokey. Many pianists will play a less extreme version of this with the offbeat 8th note being played in between the 1st and 2nd note of the triplet.

|Xxx xXx Xxx xXx Xxx xXx Xxx xXx |Xxx xXx Xxx xXx Xxx xXx Xxx xXx |

This pattern of 8th note pairs is also shown in music notation as Dotted Eighth + 16th (instead of a pair of Eighths). When jazz is notated, this swing is not notated and is instead just stated as 'Swing'.

In case you're wondering, the 24/8 may not visually make sense since swing is often thought of as 12/8 as in this format.
|Xx X Xx X Xx X Xx X |Xx X Xx X Xx X Xx X |
E. Alternate Drag the Beat Feel Playing Straight Eighths
Modern jazz pianists take more from the horn players when doing swing. I was taught this by feel but didn't know why it worked. I can hear it everywhere. This style of playing is the modern interpretation of swing. Eighths are played fairly straight (even lengths). But the beat is dragged slightly.

|xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx |xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx xXx |

Now look at section E above. Observe that the offbeat 8th matches the swing eighth of the Triplet feel swing in D. In other words, the offbeat 8th is played on the '-A-' of the Ding-A-Ding ride cymbal pattern.

Observe also that the downbeat eighths are dragged. They don't start on 1 of the triplet. You might think this is called 'swung' as well but it isn't. That's because swing occurs on the offbeat.

So the effect of dragging the beat while playing straight eighths is that you in effect cause a swing feel. I hear this playing of the drag a lot when I listen to Herbie Hancock. He's my best piano example of this since I can hear him adjust the drag so there's a little more to the placement than the exact Ding-A-Ding.

Practically every Horn Bebop player drags straight eighths like this from what my ear tells me. Dizzy, Bird, Coltrane, Rollins but it's hard to explain on the piano since we have a more percussive attack.

Now here's why this analysis come about. I was listening to my jam recordings and whenever the tune gets a little more uptempo, I start sounding more and more mechanical. Now you can't really do a shuffle beat at a fast tempo. At 200bpm for example, it's classical music evenness.

So how do I fix my swing? At a higher tempo, one has to accept that the eighths will be even as very few have the technique to maintain a hard swing and keep a groove. Besides it doesn't sound good.

I was taught swing by accenting the downbeats. But even accenting downbeats is not possible at 200bpm.

The answer apparently, is to drag the beat. As shown above, without further thought, dragging the beat will swing.

How to do this in practice, especially since I'm supposed to play a tune at 200bpm on Monday? I played a drum track on my iRealBook app at 200bpm and thought about it. It's pretty hard to synchronize to the offbeat 8th (the 'A' in Ding-A-Ding on ride cymbal). As it is it's going so fast that I can only sync to the quarter notes.

The solution: think of each note I play as Uh-Gah Uh-Gah Uh-Gah. Two sounds but very close together. I got this idea from Erskine since he made this sound as his internal subdivision guide. Then I think of the Gah as the top of the beat. But I hit the key on the Uh. This seems to give me a good practice point for maintaining a drag at a higher tempo.

Now there's a point where I can possibly hear this (250bpm and above?). But I think this is highly applicable in the 150-200bpm range where I typically play straight eighths.

BTW - typical of the straight eighth playing style is to accent the offbeats. But as you go past 170bpm, even that is pretty hard to do. Also, you can't really play straight eighths below 140bpm. You'll have to get closer to triplet feel.

But the secret to understanding this is in using a finer subdivision.

Roland FP7FSamples

Here's some improv postings I made to see if the Roland FP7F sounds good in a Trio mix

Stella by Starligh
http://www.box.net/shared/fm2s9z3luo
This one had a higher reverb and touch was set to "Light"

Blue Bossa
http://www.box.net/shared/y42kurb9h2
Touch was set to medium and reverb was very minimal. Just one value up from completely dry.

Very Early
http://www.box.net/shared/0qrrakvvrk
This was head only and solo piano. Just to compare the difference between solo piano and combo.

All the Things You Are
http://www.box.net/shared/qy1dxp5zu6