Quick and dirty today, I just wanted to touch on the idea of cueing the head out effectively from a solo/trading situation. A couple of quick thoughts:
1. Know and hear the song you are playing
The key to cueing the band effectively is to know where you are in the form at all times. This means you should try to always hear the melody and/or chord changes no matter what you are playing. Nothing is worse than giving a cue at the wrong spot in the form. Notice how I set up the simple vamp type sound and give the bass/pianist a clear look at the end of my last four in the video above (around 1:27), which leads me to my next point.
As promised in my last post on playing shout sections, here is one of the exercises from my forthcoming book "Melodic Syncopation" that has helped me develop my ability to set up hits. Try this out for yourself and let me know what you think!
In my previous post on this idea, I discussed two of the advantages of using the melody of a tune as the basis for improvisation. The first advantage of this approach was how it unifies the sound of the song and makes everything more cohesive, and the second advantage was how it gives you an idea to work with and respond to instead of trying to create the whole solo from nothing. In today's post I want to discuss a third potential advantage to this kind of soloing, using the example of "Chief Crazy Horse" by Wayne Shorter above.
Pepe is the man!
Inviting people into your solo
The third potential advantage of using the melody in a solo is how it can help invite other musicians to participate in your solo. In the example above you can hear how my bandmate, the fantastic Pepe Gonsalvez, comes back in with the bass line of the song at around :48. This in turn sets up a cool dialogue between the two of us which gives my solo a more varied and interesting character. Not only that, when I quote the bass line at the end of my solo, it gives the band a way to transition seamlessly back in to the head out.
Of course, you never know exactly what is going to happen when you are improvising. But if you strive to keep the character of the melody alvie in your solos, you will help to contribute to the conditions necessary for continuous interaction with your fellow musicians. In essence by playing this way, you give your bandmates something that they can recognize, which invites them to participate in your solo musically.
In today's post I wanted to talk about a part of the song that prominently features the drums, the aptly named shout section! This is generally the climax of an arrangement, and is usually the spot where a drummer is given space to cut loose. Although the conventions of the shout section were developed in big bands, the same ideas can apply to smaller ensembles. The following are some good general strategies and ideas for playing a great shout.
1. Study the greats
You may notice that I almost always bring this up whenever I am talking about learning the drums. That is because not listening to the music you want to play and then expecting it to sound great is like expecting to be able to write poetry if you were raised by a pack of wolves. How would you even know where to begin? You have to have a frame of reference, a sound in your ear, before you can really aspire to produce anything great.
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but every great drummer in the history of the instrument has spent a considerable amount of time just trying to absorb what previous drummers have done. If you still need convincing, here is how the great Tony Williams put it:
"You know the reason I play the way I do is because, when I first
started playing, all I ever wanted to do was to sound like Max Roach,
was to sound like Art Blakey, was to sound like Philly Joe Jones, was to
sound like Louis Hayes, was to sound like Jimmy Cobb, was to sound like
Roy Haynes. I really wanted to figure out why they sounded the way they
did. I wasn’t interested in my own style. So I set about playing like
these guys religiously, and playing their style because it was just such
a wonderful, magical experience."
That being said, here is a classic example of some great drummers playing great shout sections to get you started:
-Mel Lewis on "The Groove Merchant" (starts around 7:26)
1. Starting on pg. 34, play the written line with a swinging eighth note interpretation (on the beat = first note of a triplet, off the beat = third note of a triplet) and also play jazz feet throughout.
2. Play continuous triplets with the written line as accents.
3. Play continuous triplet rolls with the line as accents (each unaccented note of the triplet gets doubled).
4. Play all eighth notes from the written line as accents on the snare drum, and all quarter notes or more on either the hi-tom or floor-tom, depending on which hand is playing them.
5. Pick one rhythm that you particularly enjoy and memorize it.
6. Play four bars of time and then four bars of the rhythm you chose.
7. Sing the melody of "Blue Monk" while trading fours with yourself, try to start transitioning from the rhythm back to time with some improvisation in the fourth bar.
8. While trading fours with yourself and singing "Blue Monk", play the written rhythm for two bars and improvise a response for two bars. Here are the steps of the exercise written out: Trading 4's With Syncopation
I have had a number of conversations recently about how to practice trading 4's, so I wanted to share an exercise from my forthcoming book "Melodic Syncopation" that I give to my students who are struggling with this issue. I have found that this exercise is so effective because even though it is difficult at first, it gets as close as possible to simulating actual performance. Here it is: Philly Joe #11
I had to share today's video because you get to see one of my favorite contemporary drummers Greg Hutchinson playing some uptempo brushes with one of my all-time favorite versions of the Ray Brown trio featuring Benny Green. If you go to around 1:23 you can see his pattern really clearly, and he seems to be following the Kenny Washington/Papa Jo style described in previous posts on the topic. Greg gets a really beautiful, clean, and swinging brush sound at this tempo. Also check out the great drum breaks starting around 1:50, the slick stick-to-brush transition at 5:26, as well as the superb dynamic sensitivity throughout. Enjoy!
If you want to hear more of this amazing band check out the album "Live At Scullers". Here is one more blazing version of the tune "Tanga" from the video above, this time with Jeff Hamilton on drums:
In today's post we are going to discuss how to play one of my favorite grooves of all time, the shuffle! The best thing you can do to start learning how to shuffle is to get acquainted with it's sound. Starting a blog post about the shuffle with anything other than "Moanin'" is borderline heretical, so start listening and playing along here.
This song is basically the definitive recorded shuffle, so listening to and trying to imitate Art Blakey should be your starting point. The other person to listen to to get your bearings is Mel Lewis. Here is his famous shuffle on "The Groove Merchant":
Notice that neither one of these guys is overplaying, one of the many temptations when playing a shuffle. Even though their groove is incredibly driving and strong, they are playing to the ensemble and staying dynamically balanced at all times. Notice how much Mel drops down at :47 for example!
There is a Japanese proverb that goes something like, "The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists". In music there is a real strength that comes from adapting to what is going on around you as opposed to trying to insist on your way, regardless of whether you are right or wrong.
A big part of the joy of playing jazz is dealing with the unknown. No matter how much you practice, listen, and play with people, there will always be situations where you will be genuinely surprised. In these types of situations there are a few helpful things that you can do related to this idea of musical flexibility.
Just a quick post today to illustrate a point I was making in an excellent conversation on the AllAboutJazz forum. The conversation was focused on whether a drummer playing the melody was really musically relevant, or just a gimmick. My contention (predictably) is that there are a lot of ways in which a drummer can use the melody in a musically compelling fashion. If you go to 5:40 in the video above you can see one example of how a drummer can use the melody effectively.
In this clip Jeff Hamilton plays the melody at the end of his solo to transition seamlessly back to the head. To my ears this is not just a drumistic gimmick. Using the melody this way ties the drum solo to the rest of the song, something that an audience would really appreciate and relate to.
Continuing with my Papa Jo series (last post), in today's post we are going to talk about one of the most fundamental elements of Papa Jo's style, repetition. Repetition is such a critical part of Papa Jo's style because it gives audiences something that they can recognize and hold on to. There is a great example of this at around 1:51 in the classic solo above where you can hear Papa Jo play a two bar phrase and then repeat it almost note for note. The following exercise from my forthcoming book "Melodic Syncopation" is designed to help you develop some tasteful repetition in your soloing.
Trying to play the actual melody I mentioned yesterday that I just got a new recorder in the mail, and today's video is the first example of my new vastly improved audio capacity! In a conversation on the excellent drummerworld forum I brought up that I was trying to get a way from just thinking about the melody towards trying to simulate it's actual pitches. The video above is the first example of me trying to play an actual melody, in this case (somewhat ironically) "I've Got Rhythm".
I was able to play this simulated melody by carefully tuning my drums, playing with mallets, and applying very specific amounts of pressure to the drum heads (all inspired by the incredible Ari Hoenig). This is a real challenge for me, and it still needs a lot of work, but I think that I got the basic point across.
What is the point of this? In the aforementioned conversation, Todd Bishop from the excellent drum blog Cruiseshipdrummer brought up really good question. Essentially, why bother with trying to play the melody at all. The drums are a primarily rhythmic instrument, so why not, as he put it, "Just play your instrument?".
I am still relatively inexperienced at trying to play the melody on the drums, so I can only speak from a limited perspective, but my basic thought is this. The history of jazz is full of examples of people who took the approach they learned on one instrument and applied it to another, often with revolutionary results. Two classic examples of this are Lois Armstrong singing like a trumpet player, and Paul Chambers playing horn lines on the bass. These initially bizzare-seeming imported techniques were enormously influential, eventually becoming standard practice for those instruments.
I am not suggesting that playing the melody on the drums is going to become standard practice any time soon. Rather, I am saying that we should not limit how we play our instruments to what people assume is possible. As long as there is music, people will continue to find new ways to approach their instruments, and this pan-instrumental technique can yield incredibly fruitful results.
Musical Benefits In addition to this broader historical idea, there are also more practical musical benefits to learning to play melodies on the drums.
The first and most obvious benefit is that by forcing yourself to be accountable for the actual pitches of the melody, you will get much closer with the melody. A deeper connection with the melody will always provide better insight into the music, regardless of whether you are playing the melody, or accomanying someone else playing the melody. As Ari put it, "If you can't make music by yourself, you can't make music with other people".
The second slightly less obvious benefit is that by playing the melody this way, you will get your audience to listen to you in a new way. When I played the melody of "I've Got Rhythm" for an audience last week, I got more positive feedback than I have ever got for anything I have played before. People love new sounds, and people love melodies, so playing this way can lead them to appreciate what you are doing on the drums much more than they ordinarily would.
Brian Blade and Kenny Garrett are two of the most communicative musicians in contemporary jazz, and when you put the two of them together they will burn the house down. The key to the explosive energy that these two produce is the way that they listen and respond to each other, as if they are in a dialogue. I chose the video above to illustrate the importance of this conversational back and forth because of the magical duet starting around 2:30.
Brian and Kenny's playing weaves together like two strands in a cord. For example, listen to how Kenny's repeated rhythm starting at 3:43 blends and lifts Brian's groove, and how Brian's groove accommodates and pushes Kenny's rhythm in return. Because of the way they are listening to each other, they always know when to give the other person space, and when to push them.
Miles Davis' first great band with Philly Joe on drums has become the standard for hard bop drumming. Given the central role that this band plays in the history of jazz, it is important for every drummer to spend time listening and learning from the great Philly Joe. If you haven't checked this group already, the epochal prestige recordings and the album "Milestones" are the best place to start.
The Philly Joe Beat
In today's post we are going to be exploring one particular element of Philly Joe's playing that he popularized during his tenure with Miles, the Philly Joe beat. This beat is a thick sounding cross-stick played on beat four that replaces the usual snare drum chatter, typically used during a piano solo. In the example below from "Billy Boy" on the album "Milestones", Philly Joe starts playing the beat around 2:00.
The transition we are going to focus on in today's post is moving between brushes and sticks. This transition appears to be relatively simple and unimportant, but in reality it is very difficult to do well and makes a big difference in how the music comes across to an audience. It is exactly the sort of thing that you don't notice when it is done correctly, so many drummers make the mistake of not practicing it. You can see me do a version of this transition at 1:25 in the video above. The song is another great Bobby Muncy original "Bouncin With Joe And Dana", and the soloist is the fabulous Gene D'Andrea.
The two parts of a song that are going to have the biggest impression on an audience are the beginning and the ending of a song. In today's post we are going to talk about four general strategies for playing great endings.
1. Listen
Everything you do, including playing a great ending, is predicated on your ability to listen. If you are listening intently you can have the confidence to know when to be flexible, and when to be assertive. The following clip of me playing a great Bobby Muncy original is an example of how listening can make an ending flexible:
Did you hear how the note the band held at the end started to rise and crescendo? That wasn't planned, it just happened because everyone was listening to each other.
In the last post about transitions I discussed transitions generally, and also explained some strategies for practicing them. In today's post I want to focus on one transition in particular, that is moving from a head into the solo section of a tune.
Break into 4/4 swing
The classic transition in this situation is to give the soloist a break at the end of the form, usually two to four bars long, and then go right into driving 4/4 swing. One of the greatest examples of this type of transition is Charlie Parkers terrifying break on "A Night In Tunisia" (around 1:16):
I distinctly remember the first time I heard Kenny Washington playing uptempo brushes (the video above starting around :58). His playing absolutely terrified me. It was this same version of "In the Still of the Night" from the album "Written in the Stars" by the Bill Charlp Trio, I was an undergrad at the University of Michigan, and my first thought was, "This is physically impossible". For those of you who haven't tried to play these kinds of tempos with brushes and don't see what the big deal is, I encourage you to try playing anywhere close to this tempo for yourself.
Kenny Washington's Advice
I had the good fortune to get to hear and talk to Kenny at the Detroit Jazz Festival several years ago. He was again playing with Bill Charlap, and their set included some incredible tempos which Kenny played with brushes. After the show I asked him for advice about developing uptempo brush technique. I thought I would pass three of his pieces of advice on to you because I know lots of people struggle with this issue like I do.
Continuing where I left off in the last post, here is some more advice about developing uptempo comping vocabulary based on the melody of "Anthropology". To start off, the recording at the top from "Art Pepper +11" is a great way to familiarize yourself with this melody (the great Mel Lewis is on drums).
Drumming and Dance Some of you may know that Papa Jo did some tap dancing, but finding this footage of Papa Jo playing with a tap dancer (starts at 1:48) really emphasizes how much this dance sensibility permeated everything he played. The conversation between the the dancer and Papa Jo is so seamless it as if they are playing the same instrument. This understanding of the relationship between the drums and dance in jazz has largely been lost, but it is beautiful and inspiring to see and hear in Papa Jo's playing!
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