Brian Blade: Some relevant thoughts

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Brian Blade is definitely one of my favorite drummers on the scene today.  If you for some reason haven't been checking him out...you are fired.  Here are some inspiring and relevant quotes from an interview the July 2008 edition of "Modern Drummer"

"I'm always trying to tune in to what the other musicians are sending out, and then reacting to that as quickly as possible.  If I'm thinking when I'm on the bandstand, I know I'm in trouble."

The Two Songs of Jazz

This post is an explanation of the general theme of this blog, the introduction to my book "Melodic Syncopation", as well as my personal philosophy about how to learn to play jazz.  If this is super boring to you, don't worry I won't be offended.  But if you think this is idea is interesting or relevant to what you are doing, please let me know! 

Butch Warren

“Jazz is playing two songs at the same time.”

-Butch Warren

   

The great drummer and educator John Riley divides the artistry of drumming into four basic elements: groove, technique, musicality, and creativity.  Groove is your individual sense of time and where you place the beat, technique is your physical facility, musicality is how you respond to your musical environment, and creativity is the spark of imagination that makes every drummer as unique and identifiable as a fingerprint.  This book is not intended to be a technique primer although it has many exercises that are technically demanding.  My main purpose is to help you put your technique into musical context, uniting it with groove, musicality, and creativity and thereby improving your overall musicianship.

The importance of this holistic approach is largely explained by the quote at the top of the page from legendary jazz bassist Butch Warren.  To successfully perform jazz music, you have to be able to juggle focusing on the foundational, pre-composed song (that is the chord changes, tempo, feeling, melody, lyrics, and form), and the spontaneously created song of your improvisation.  The skill you will be developing by splitting your focus between the two songs is to be able to imagine a musical environment for yourself, and then use that musical environment as inspiration for your playing.  Rather than thinking of your playing as something isolated or that you are creating from nothing, you will instead be responding to musical impulses from your own imagination.  In essence what you can eventually achieve is playing that feels more like listening then playing.  Playing in this fashion is the ultimate meaning of “playing two songs at the same time”.

The better you are at combining these two songs, the better the music will be.  Each of the four artistic elements plays a critical role in your ability to combine the two songs of jazz.  Groove is the underlying bedrock, and without this steady foundation, the music falters.  Technique is what removes the barrier between an idea and its execution while dealing with both songs.  Musicality allows you to respond to both songs, as well as to how other musicians are dealing with both songs, flexibly and organically. And finally, creativity is the source of your own unique treatment of the songs.  Every element of drumming artistry has to be developed and integrated with the other elements in order to successfully combine the two songs of jazz into a harmonious whole.  

To develop all these artistic elements, many jazz musicians organize their technical exercises around the melodies of jazz standards.  This melodic approach to technique goes beyond simply developing physical facility.  Putting technique into a melodic context encourages the musician to maintain a steady groove, and to respond to the tension and release of the melody with musical sensitivity.  In addition to the benefits to groove and musicality, this approach plants melodies so deeply in the creative imagination, that improvising soaked in the feeling of the jazz tradition emerges.  As a result of this melodic approach and of the holistic interrelation between the four artistic elements that it cultivates, musicians are better able to seamlessly combine the two songs of jazz.  

Unfortunately, because drummers are not required by their instrument to be intimately involved with melody, often no such connection between technique and the other artistic elements exists.  Instead of using melodies as the basis for technical exercises, many drummers use arbitrary rhythms that bear little resemblance to the elegance or sophistication of a melody.  Because of this narrow focus, drummers have become notorious for a sort of athletic approach to playing that is divorced from any musical feeling.  This book works to bridge the gap between the rhythm-centric world of drummers and the melody-centric world of other musicians by organizing its rhythmic content around the melodies of jazz standards. 

Roy Haynes: Using melody in a solo

This is one of my favorite examples of a drummer using the melody in a solo.  The song is "In Walked Bud" from the album "Misterioso" by Thelonious Monk.  Roy is a master of both expressing the melody literally on the drums, and also using the character of the melody as a starting point for improvisation.  Listen to how uses the first chorus to state the melody and the second chorus as a sort of response or continuation of the melody. 

I was first made aware of this example of melodic drumming by a great article by Drori Mondlak in the May 2002 edition of "Modern Drummer".  Sadly I know of no way of getting this article which has a great transcription, if anybody knows of a way of accessing old "Modern Drummer" articles online I would love to hear it.   

Papa Jo #2 from "Melodic Syncopation"

Here I am playing the second exercise in the Papa Jo section of my forthcoming book "Melodic Syncopation".  This is exercise is based on the song "Cubano Chant" by Ray Bryant as played on the album "The Essential Jo Jones".  The song has a call and response structure which I play note for note on the snare drum with a bossa-nova style ostinato in my feet.  I am also singing the melody while I am playing.  If you are trying this yourself, don't worry too much about how your singing sounds/if your pitch is good.  The point is not to develop your vocal performance skills, but to make your connection to the melody of the song really concrete.  

One thing that I did differently than the recording was improvise my own response to the melodies call and then play that response throughout the form of the song.  After playing through one chorus with this response I would come up with a new one and try it again. 

This exercise is a jazz coordination exercise similar to what people often do with Ted Reed's "Syncopation", but I feel that using the melodies of jazz standards has a number of distinct advantages to that approach.  I will discuss some of these advantages in another post, but for now you can give this exercise a try.  I am hoping to have a more detailed version of this exercise published in a magazine article some time in the near future, so I will let you all know when that happens so you can check it out. 

Papa Jo: Blending into melodies

Papa Jo has been mysteriously overlooked as one of the most important drum innovators in the history of jazz.  I feel that recently he has started to get more of the attention he richly deserves as musicians and scholars look back at his role in the Basie band. I want to focus particularly on his ability to blend his drum parts into the melodies of songs.

In any case, Papa Jo is an incredible inspiration for me personally.  Listen to how he blends his drums  into this classic melody ("Cubano Chant", for more on this song see my post "Papa Jo exercise #2 from Melodic Syncopation") by playing the response to the call on the snare drum with the snares turned off.  This is not a flashy melodic statement, just a smart, tasteful, and brilliantly executed one.  Rather than detract from the song by trying to play something self-absorbed and technical, he makes himself an indispensable part of the melody.  

In this example ("Old Man River"), Papa Jo takes a slightly different approach to blending into the melody, but with the same effect of being a totally indispensable part of the melody.  Rather than only playing a response to the melody, in the first A section he plays the melody literally with the brushes and hi-hat and then goes into a kind of counter melody in the second A section.  In addition his tasteful fills resolve the musical phrase at the end of each 16 bar section.  On the bridge he goes into playing time with hits with the piano on the hi-hat before returning to yet another counter melody in the final A section.  

Besides his inspiring ability to play melodies, also check out his stunning uptempo brush playing and open drum solo! Both of the songs in this post are from the album "The Essential Jo Jones" which I highly recommend.  Here is a link:

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Jo-Jones/dp/B000000ECG

Jeff Hamilton: Using melody in a solo

Here are a couple beautiful example of Jeff incorporating melodies into his soloing.  Notice how Jeff is phrasing these blues melodies like a melody instrument player, not just playing them note for note out of the real book.  There are actually two melodies tucked into this solo, can you name them?

 

One more.  Check out how his solo stays in the character of the song ("A Night In Tunisia").

Finally, "Sing, Sing, Sing" where Jeff not only plays the famous Krupa introduction but the melody as well.