Transitions 7: Building Momentum Throughout a Solo Section

Building Momentum Throughout a Solo Section

In one of my previous posts in the "Transitions" series I discussed some techniques for moving between soloists.  In today's post I want re-examine how to transition between soloists, this time from the larger-scale perspective of how to build momentum throughout an entire solo section.  

Chuck Redd!

If you go back and read through my earlier post, you will notice that I discuss the possibility of the "smooth transition" between soloists, carrying the energy from one solo directly into the next solo instead of trying to start building momentum afresh in each solo.  If you can do this same smooth transition through several solos, you can essentially create one large-scale climax in the entire song.  It is easy to lose sight of this bigger picture when you  are in the moment, and it takes a very sympathetic, mature, and sensitive group of musicians to really pull this off, but the results can be really thrilling. 

I had the pleasure of playing with just such a group of musicians the other night (Chuck Redd on Vibes, Chris Grasso on Piano, Nicki Parrott on Bass, and Lyle Link on Sax), and the video of the beautiful Bossa-Nova "Once I Loved" at the top is a great demonstration of how this can work. 

The Fundamentals of Jazz Drumming Part One

Here is the recording mentioned in the exercise above.  

Why Learn Jazz?

I did a guest blog about this topic, mainly targeted at younger drummers or drummers from non-jazz genres who are considering why they should spend the time and energy to learn jazz.  

Why Learn Jazz?

Most drummers do not grow up listening to jazz music.  In many cases, including my own, drummers don’t start exploring jazz until they are encouraged to do so by a teacher.  Jazz music is a big, complicated, and intimidating genre, and often times it doesn’t resonate with a new listener right away.  When you add all these factors up for many students the question is, why bother learning jazz at all? 

I am going to try to answer this question to the best of my ability based on the main benefits to my own playing from learning jazz.  Please keep in mind that I am not claiming that the following benefits are an exhaustive list, or the sole domain of jazz drummers. 

1. Historical Perspective

The drum set as an instrument was created to play the jazz music of early 20^th century New Orleans.  Drummers needed a way for one person to play both parts of a traditional New Orleans marching band, bass/hihat and snare, at the same time.  From that point on, the history of the drum set has been inextricably linked to the history of jazz.  Learning about the great jazz drum innovators of the past like Baby Dodds, Papa Jo Jones, and Max Roach can teach you a lot about why we play the way we do today.  Getting this historical perspective on the instrument through studying the great jazz drum innovators can immeasurably enrich your playing.   

2.  Rhythmic Improvisational Flexibility

In jazz, improvisation is at the heart of everything you do.  Learning jazz is largely about learning to improvise rhythmically.  There are two important parts of learning to improvise.  First, rather than thinking of what you are playing as a beat or pattern, you develop the flexibility to adapt what you are playing based on what is going on in the music, all while maintaining a strong overall groove.  Secondly, and just as important as learning to change what you are playing, you also quickly learn to focus on what is going on around you in order to respond appropriately.  No matter what kind of music you play, the ability to listen intently and improvise fluidly in response will always be useful.

3.  Expanded Range of Tempo, Dynamics, and Rhythmic Feels

Because jazz is the oldest drum set tradition, it has had the longest time to develop.  One result of this is that jazz drummers are forced by the genre to play a wide range of tempos, dynamics, and rhythmic feels.  On any given gig, jazz drummers will have to play everything from an exquisitely soft ballad with brushes, to a burning uptempo standard, and everything else in between.  This expanded range adds a lot of depth and versatility to a drummers playing.

4.  Musical Education

In order to thrive in the world of contemporary jazz, drummers have to learn a lot about music.  Some examples include being able to read and write charts, having a minimal understanding of piano, having basic theory proficiency, and most importantly an extensive vocabulary of tunes, composers, styles, and drummers at their disposal.  The broader musical perspective that you get from learning these things will give you additional insight into whatever music you play.   

Hopefully this list of benefits will encourage you to start pursuing jazz on your own.  Even though it can be hard at first, learning jazz is worth the effort!

Transitions 6: From Trading/Soloing To Head Out

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.

Why Memorize?

When I was a younger drummer, I rarely had the patience necessary to memorize anything I was working on that was longer than a couple of bars.  I was so eager to get on to the next thing, that spending painfully frustrating hours just memorizing what I was working on felt like a waste.  Furthermore, I think I carried over a very common bias from the rest of my liberal arts education into my approach to jazz; that is that it is less important to memorize particular facts than it is to understand the overall scheme of things.


As I have matured in my playing and my approach to learning music, I have come to the realization that this imported bias towards memorizing is actually fundamentally wrong.  In fact, the only way to learn jazz (and music generally) is to spend real time and energy memorizing.  There is simply no alternative, here are a couple of reasons why:


1. Jazz is an oral tradition
Unlike the western educational tradition, jazz comes from an older oral tradition.  That is to say, information is transmitted through memory, not the written word (or note).  This is not to say that reading music isn't useful, but rather that is helpful secondary skill.  Essentially, just about everything that you do in jazz needs to come from some combination of your memory and imagination. 

Shout Part 2: Setting Up the Hits

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!







Papa Jo #7

Here is a great recording of Basie playing "Splanky" for reference (shout section starts around 3:00):

I will try to get some video of me playing the exercise sometime in the near future.  

Transitions 5: Dynamic transitions

Dynamics add tension

Today's post is going to focus on moving between dynamics to build tension.  In the video above (featuring Bill Heid on keys and Kris Funn on bass), check out how the transitions from loud to soft at 1:07 and again at 2:13 build tension by upsetting the expectation of a loud climax.  This upset expectation, and the tension that comes from it are one of the fundamental elements of almost any kind of music.  The longer you can delay resolving this tension, the more intense the emotional response from your audience will be.  In the video, the dynamic tension in the song doesn't really resolve until the very end. 

Will they get together or not?

It's just like a sitcom

Tension and release works in almost any art form.  One example of this that may help explain the importance of tension and release is the sitcom.  In order for a sitcom to work there has to be some kind of central tension that never gets fully resolved.  The reason people continue to watch and enjoy these shows is that they want to find out if and how this tension will finally be resolved.  As soon as the central tension is resolved, the story is over. In music the same principle applies, so waiting to resolve dynamic tension until the climax of a piece is crucial. 

As a drummer, your job is to set the dynamic range of the music.  If you play loud, everyone else kind of has to.  With that in mind, if you can exercise the restraint necessary to hold back the bashing impulse, you will find that when you do finally release that impulse, the effect will be dramatically heightened.  

Using Melody In A Solo Part 2

The advantages of using the melody in a solo

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.

Shout!

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)

Transitions Part 4: Switching Between Soloists

Two Main Approaches

Transitioning between soloists is one of the most important parts of keeping the momentum of a song alive.  In my first transitions post I discussed the basic choice of every transition, whether to emphasize or de-emphasize it.  This choice gives you two distinct approaches for dealing with this particular transition.  Either you can try to carry the energy and mood of one solo into the next, de-emphasizing the transition by making it smooth, or you can create  dramatic contrast between one solo and the next, thereby emphasizing the transition.  Both approaches can be effective, it is just a matter of finding the appropriate time to use them based on where you feel the music is going. 

1.  The Smooth Transition

The main danger of this kind of transition is that the music will get monotonous.  If there is not enough contrast in the music, you will lose your audience.  That being said, this type of transition can also lead to some of the most exciting and uplifting musical exchanges.  

One of my all time favorite examples of this type of smooth transition is on the album "Live At Birdland" going from McCoy Tyner's solo to John Coltrane's on the tune "Afro Blue" (around 4:50):

 

The Instrument Is An Illusion

You are the instrument!

I wanted to share this video with you guys because I feel like Mr. Galper's concept of the the musician being the actual instrument is incredibly important.  There are two extensions of this idea that I think are particularly relevant and useful for drummers.

1.  It doesn't really matter what kind of drums you are playing

You are going to sound like yourself, no matter what you are playing.  

Exhibit A: Eric Harland still sounds just like Eric Harland, even though he is playing on a pile of metal

Double Strokes Around the Drum Set

Double Strokes Around the Drum Set

The written out versions of everything in the video are below.  I just wanted to mention that I originally got this double stroke exercise from an excellent drummer I met in Japan named Junji Hirose.  Also, thanks to Todd Bishop at Cruise Ship Drummer for his recent post that got me thinking about inverted double strokes.  Hope you enjoy the video/idea, and as always, feel free to leave any questions or comments below!  Double Strokes Around the Drum Set

Listen To Eachother!

Just a quick thought today about one of my favorite Kieth Jarrett trio moments captured on film.  If you go to around :35 into this clip you can clearly see Keith reacting to Jack DeJohnette's super slick transition into the solo section.  From my perspective it looks like Keith is almost surprised by what he hears, and decides to just listen instead of play for almost a whole chorus!  Ask yourself how you would react in a situation where you hear something surprising.  Would you have even been aware enough to hear what was happening?  Would you have tried to just play through it?  For me this is a truly inspiring example of group interplay and listening, hope you enjoy it. 

Also, for more great drum/piano interplay check out the trading 8's starting around 6:45. 

Ballads: Grown Folks Music

Why don't we talk about ballad playing?

Ballad playing seems to be one of the most mysteriously under-discussed topics amongst drummers.  If you are going to be a professional musician in nearly any genre of music, you are going to have to learn how to play a ballad whether you want to or not.  So simply avoiding the topic is not an option. 

Perhaps the reason this topic is avoided is because the role of the drums in a ballad tends to be particularly understated/supportive.  You are not going to be the focus of attention when you are playing a ballad.  However, that in no way means that what you are playing (or not playing) isn't important.  On the contrary for a group to really pull off a ballad, what the drummer plays is key! 

Trading 4's Using Syncopation

Summary of the exercise

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

Papa Jo #3: Letting Your Phrases Breathe

Here is the exercise: Papa Jo #3 

Incidentally, this approach of singing your lines is an effective technique for any instrumentalist looking to get more space into their playing! 

Philly Joe #11: Trading 4's and 8's with the Melody

How to practice trading 4's

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

Uptempo Jazz 7: Fast Brushes Continued

Just a quick observation

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:

Shuffle!

The Shuffle!

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!  

Using Melody In A Solo

The melody as the basis for improvisation

In today's post I am going to use my own playing to demonstrate one of the themes of my blog, that is using the melody as the basis for improvising a drum solo.  One of my earliest inspirations for learning to solo using the melody was Roy Haynes' great solo on "In Walked Bud" (if you haven't checked it out already, I have a post about it here).  Some specific examples of how my playing in the video above is melodic are my imitation of the opening phrases of the melody, my use of repetition and space, and finally my adherence to the structure of the form.  If you want to read more about what I mean by melodic drumming, check out the post about Max Roach here.