Tag Archives: Jazz Improvisation

A Simple Tip To Help You Play Better At Fast Tempos

One of the things that too often goes hand in hand with playing at fast tempos is excessive bodily tension. This is not a requirement of the music. Instead, it’s largely because of the habits, perceptions and attitudes of the performer. It doesn’t have to be like that.

One of the aims of the Alexander Technique is to learn to approach any activity with a minimal amount of misdirected effort. Ease, efficiency of movement, freedom, clarity, balance.

As an Alexander teacher and practice coach, I help my students become aware of and prevent the various movement and postural habits that interfere with this easier, more efficient way of playing music. This is mostly a matter of getting them to change how they pay attention as they are playing.

Many of the problems of excess muscular tension musicians have begin with their thinking. Playing at fast tempos is a prime example.

One of the things that invites all this unwanted tension is something I call “micro-managing” the pulse. In essence, this means that you conceive the tempo as fast beats coming one after the other.

For example, in 4/4 time, at a tempo of quarter note = 262, the quarter note pulse moves by quite rapidly. If you try to feel each beat this way, it not only invites excess bodily tension (you might try to tap your foot like mad as you tighten the rest of your body), but also, it creates a feeling of urgency that scrambles your thinking a bit. It makes you less open to the control and choices available to you.

If you watch some of the great jazz masters playing at these fast tempos, you virtually never see them moving with the quarter note pulse this way. Why? Because they conceive of the pulse in a broader sense.

This means that instead of trying to feel 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, etc. as the main pulse, they tend to feel it more as a broad 1…1…1…, etc. (each “1” being the beginning of the bar). Some feel it even more broadly than that, feeling the time as long phrases crossing bar lines.

This shift in time perception tends to do two helpful things for these masters:

It helps them to maintain a helpful level of physical and cognitive ease, flexibility, responsiveness and balance that supports a great technique (sound, too!)
It helps them imagine and create the music in an entirely different way, with many more rhythmic and phrasing possibilities as well as note choices. Instead of merely “making the tempo”, they’re actually expressing themselves with a great deal of clarity and choice.

So no matter what kind of music you play, you’ll play with less misdirected effort and more precision if you broaden your perception of the tempo. Here are some guidelines you can use to help you with this:

Stop relying so strongly upon your foot. Seriously. Learn to feel the time without doing that. If you watch great classical musicians playing at blistering tempos you don’t see that foot flapping around. Same with many of the jazz greats. It’s fine to move with the music. But think of it as a lilting dance instead of a foot-stomping-neck-tightening lurch.

Start reducing the metronome click. Once you’ve got the basic idea of the piece under your fingers (or the harmonic form, if you’re a jazz player) stop setting the metronome on the quarter note. At the very least, set it to half notes, with the aim in mind of letting it click once at the beginning of each measure. So, for example, quarter note=260 becomes half note = 130, which then becomes whole note = 65. I rarely let my metronome go faster than about 80 bpm (that would be feeling the pulse on the first beat of each measure at quarter note = 320!)

Think more broadly about rhythmic groupings. If you’re working on a fast eighth-note passage, for example, start thinking of this passage as slower sixteenth notes. Or even slower 32nd notes (yes, really!) Use your metronome.

Go from even to odd. If you’re working on a very symmetrical phrase, pattern, exercise, etc., consider modulating it metrically. This change in perception can really free you from your habitually tense anticipation of playing it. So, for example, if you’re working on a phrase that is grouped as sixteenth notes, try playing that same phrase thinking of the notes as triplets, or even quintuplets (maintaining the same velocity of each note). Again, use the metronome for this.

Practice rhythmic displacement. This is another way to help you to think outside the box about tempo and rhythm. It has a similar benefit as the “even to odd”, I’ve mentioned above. Here’s an article on how to approach this.

Reconsider beats “2” and “4” (for jazz playing). I know it is standard for many students of jazz to set the metronome to click on beats 2 and 4 (in 4/4 time) in order to help them feel the backbeat. But once you’ve reached a place in your musical development where you’re swinging comfortably, consider setting the metronome to click only on the first beat of each measure (especially at faster tempos). Besides helping you to stay less tense, this will also significantly improve your sense of time (it can be a bit of a challenge at first).

So whether you’re playing jazz, working on an etude, or even sight reading, thinking of the beat in this broader way will help you to stay calm and free. Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Practicing Improvisation: Two Essential Components To Develop For You To Improve

Develop This Important Problem Solving Skill For Continuous Improvement

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One of the things that keeps many musicians from improving, is not being able to simplify complex (or difficult) pedagogical challenges. I’m talking specifically here about how these challenges are approached in the practice room.

As I improve as a musician, I notice that I also broaden my skills in breaking large (sometimes seemingly impossible) tasks into smaller, more doable parts. This has been fundamental in helping me to approach and manage technical (and other musical) issues with confidence and clarity.

In exercise science, the act of modifying a particular exercise (making it easier) to suit the limitations of the person performing it, is called regression. Just about any exercise can be regressed: less resistance (lighter weight), slower pace, movement modification, longer rest interval, greater mechanical advantage, etc. This principle of regression makes virtually any any physical activity or exercise approachable, no matter the person’s fitness level.

The same idea applies to practicing music.

Part of my job as a practice coach for musicians is to teach my clients how to regress (simplify) their challenges. This gives them a valuable tool to approach virtually any musical task.

For you to continually progress, you need to be able to meet ever increasing challenges in the practice room. And to do that, you absolutely must learn the art and science of regression. In essence, you must learn how to simplify a musical task to make it approachable for you at your current skill level.

To regress effectively, you need to be:

Persistent-Completely committed to the task, and willing to work until you’ve mastered it.
Patient-Putting no time constraints on yourself; allowing as many practice sessions as necessary in order to master whichever step you’re working on.
Humble-Always accepting where you are in your abilities. You must also be willing and able to stop, reassess, simplify and redirect your efforts.
Kind-To yourself. Keeping positive, constructive thoughts.
Insightful-Becoming an expert on how you learn.
Creative-Always finding new ways to break things down into smaller and simpler parts.
Organized-Aiming your regressed efforts towards natural, logical progression (and keeping track of your work).
Self-aware-Staying easy, relaxed, breathing, and in balance as you practice.

No matter how difficult a particular challenge may seem, your job is to break it down into pieces that are easy enough for you to handle immediately. Your aim is to give yourself a starting point, a way to get (and stay) engaged in the process of learning. Then you master each component one small step at a time.

There are endless ways to regress challenging musical tasks. Here are but a few things to think about to do so:

Tempo-If the exercise (etude, passage, etc.) is challenging you because of tempo, find a tempo that is manageable for you. Stay with that until you’re ready and confident to move on to the next manageable tempo. Use a metronome to stay steady and track your progress.
Rhythm-If reading a complex rhythm seems daunting, take time to do the math to figure out exactly how much value each note gets. Count it out several times. Then rewrite (or rethink) the passage in longer, but equal, rhythmic values. For example, if you’re struggling with a passage that has lots of tied sixteenth and thirty-second notes, spend some time understanding and counting (aloud) the relative value of each note, then rewrite the passage in quarter notes and eighth notes of proportionate time values. If that’s still too difficult play, write it out again in half notes and quarter notes. Once you understand the math, and feel the relative time values of each note, you’ll be surprised at how easy and simple the original rhythmic passage becomes.
Rest-If you can’t make it through an exercise or piece in its entirety (perhaps because of endurance and/or mental focus issues), consider breaking it down into very small parts with brief (but mindfully placed) rests in between. As you develop endurance and focus, you can start eliminating the rests one at a time until you can manage the whole thing.
Range-If an exercise or passage is just way out of your range (but still possible on your instrument), consider transposing it to a playable range (but at the extreme ends of your actual ability). Spend lots of time with it in this range (I’m talking days or weeks), then gradually modulate in half steps toward the target range, spending lots of time on each modulation until you’ve reached your goal. (Persistence is key here!)
Information-If you feel overwhelmed with memorizing an entire piece, or are intimidated by learning a particular pattern in all twelve keys (I’m thinking of jazz musicians here), take one small segment (or one key) and really get to know it well. Play this segment to the point where you’re almost bored and truly hungry to learn more, then take another small bite, and so on. Before you know it, you’ll have it all under your fingers.
Visualization-If an exercise, piece, task, etc., seems so intimidating that you don’t know where to start, start by thinking about it without your instrument. Learn to hear it if you can (maybe get a recording?) Vividly imagine yourself playing it as you look at the music, listen to the recording, think about the chord changes, count out the rhythms, etc. Even practice singing it. All this kind of visualization work engages you in the process of learning, and studies have shown that those who practice this way gain measurable improvements. This is often the first step in the journey that will take you to your goal.

Again, your aim should be to find a starting point, and stay engaged in the process of gaining proficiency. Ask yourself, “What would I have to do to give myself some kind of experience with this exercise (piece, etude, chord changes, pattern, etc)?” “How would I have to modify this exercise to be able to play it right now?”

No matter how small something is, it can be made smaller. Any task can be made simpler, if you use your imagination.

Anything you can do to keep yourself involved in the process (even if it’s simply visualizing or listening, or singing) is going to lead you in the right direction. Use your curiosity and passion as fuel, and you’ll improve.

Some of the most proficient musicians I know, are so (in part), because of their ability to approach challenges in this way. To them, nothing is impossible. Develop this problem solving skill, and nothing will be impossible for you, either.

A Simple Way To Open Up Your Rhythmic Imagination

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The art of musical improvisation involves imagination and ability: An unfettered muse supported by the specific skills necessary to turn creative impulses into clearly expressed ideas. It is the discipline of musical composition carried out moment to moment. In real time.

Because of the “real time” demands of improvisation, it’s natural for our brains to find patterns to rely upon to simplify the task. This is both good and bad. Good because it leads to connectivity, cogency, fluidity. Bad because it can also lead to us getting stuck playing many of the same things the same way over and over again.

As I listen to many jazz improvisation students, I’m many times struck by the lack of rhythmic imagination in their improvisation. In jazz pedagogy there is, in my opinion, too often an over emphasis on pitch studies (harmony, scales, passing tones, tensions, resolutions, etc.) at the expense of rhythmic studies.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it is absolutely essential to gain control over this vast amount of tonal material in order to improvise deeply, effectively and personally in the realm of modern jazz. (Lots to practice!)

Yet it is the energy of movement that turns pitch choices into music. That’s where time and rhythm come in. But too often I hear jazz improvisers playing the same rhythmic patterns, the same predictable accents, with far too much of an cadential emphasis on the form of the song they’re improvising over.

When I give a first lesson to a student of improvisation, I’m listening for many things, trying to get an idea of where they’re at with their skill and conception. Whenever I hear a student that can play with a considerable amount of fluency (holds the song form and makes the changes with relative ease), but a rather limited rhythmic conception, I always ask how he or she practices the materials of the music (scales, arpeggios, intervals and other patterns).

What I usually observe as the student plays through scale, arpeggio and other exercise patterns is far too much respect to a “4/4” kind of symmetry. Everything fits nicely into the bars and ends on the downbeat. For example, secondary triads in major keys (C major here as an example) might be played as follows:

As you can see, there is a metric grouping of 4 notes emphasized by virtue of the tonal pattern. (I use accent marks here to outline the rhythmic subdivisions). There’s nothing wrong with practicing this pattern in this manner, but you must realize if you (or my student) were to do so exclusively (or even primarily), you’d be seriously limiting how you might use this intervallic movement in your improvising. Lots of emphasis on the downbeats, and lots of emphasis on the “box” of the four bar pattern.

In essence, you’d be depriving yourself the opportunity to develop your rhythmic imagination and control to its fullest. No matter how much harmonic material you get under your fingers and into your ears, you’d be missing out on so many movement possibilities.

So a very simple thing you can do in your practice to open up your rhythmic imagination is to avoid putting all your scale, arpeggio and interval patterns in these neat little boxes.

Here are three techniques you could employ to make the pattern from above a bit more interesting and challenging while still maintaining the continuity of the line:

1. Rhythmic displacement-You can move the starting note of the pattern to different places in the bar. Here are two examples:

In the first example I displace the pattern by one half beat by starting on the upbeat of one. This kind of playing “turns the time around” so that the downbeat sounds like the upbeat. The second example has the pattern displaced by one full beat. You could go on and displace the pattern on each part of all four beats, learning to feel the movement of the pattern from many different angles.

2. Polymetric modulation-By slightly modifying the notes in the pattern you can imply different meters. (I’ve used accents to clarify.) Here is a 3/8 over 4/4 pattern:

I’ve modified the pattern above by simply omitting the fourth note (the repeated 3rd of the triad) of each group.

Below is a 5/8 over 4/4 pattern which I create by adding a fifth note to each previous group of four notes (the root of each triad):

And here’s a 7/8 over 4/4 pattern (accents on groups of 4 and 3). This pattern is a bit more complex, but easy to understand. I simply remove the fourth note (again, the repeated 3rd of the triad) from every other previous group of four notes.:

(If you’d like to explore polymetric modulation and rhythmic displacement in a thorough, methodical way, please consider my eBooks, Essential Polymeter Studies in 4/4 for the Improvising Musician, and Rhythmic Dissonance.)

3. Rhythmic modulation-By placing a 4-note grouping in the pulse of a triplet, you can create an interesting kind of rhythmic tension:

You could also use the same kind of metric modulation to with the other modified patterns from above. There are many, many ways to vary this simple triad pattern.

And I haven’t even touched upon the possibility of adding more variety by combining rhythms (mixing eighth notes with quarters, sixteenths, using ties, rests, etc; that’s a topic for another article). As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to show you here how to play patterns with a continuous pulse.

So try some of these technique next time you practice your scales, arpeggios and intervals. (If you like to play licks and other patterns you’ve learned from transcribing solos, you could also practice them in this more rhythmically multi-dimensional way.)

Of course, you should always use a metronome to check your accuracy and control. Practice each pattern with the metronome clicking on each beat, and with the click only on beats 2 and 4 (backbeat swing feel).

And if you’d like to approach these kinds of variations and explorations in time, rhythm and meter in a more methodical, challenging and comprehensive way, you might consider my e-book, entitled Rhythmic Dissonance.

Make it your mission to find new ways to work out your melodic material in a less predictable way as you expand your tonal language.

Having the ability to call upon these rhythmic devices and learning how to “land on your feet” (always knowing where you are in the bar) will vastly improve your spontaneity and control as you improvise. If you make this a regular part of your practice you’ll really surprise yourself with how you can think and move in new ways. Imagination supported by skill.

Here’s a video performance of the late, great, Warne Marsh playing Body and Soul. Listen to how he floats and subtly shifts the cadences of the song and beautifully creates and resolves rhythmic tension against the steady pulse provided by the rest of the band. A master at work. Enjoy:

Innovation Or Authenticity?

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There seems to be a conflicting theme these days expressed by some veteran jazz musicians (from the widely know to the more obscure) about the current culture of young, “up and coming” artists.

On the one hand, I hear many complaints about the lack of individuality in sound and approach perceived in many of these young musicians: “They sound generic. There’s nothing that identifies them immediately in what they play. When Coltrane, Miles or Monk played, you could tell it was them in one note.” (I’m paraphrasing here.)

On the other hand, there are complaints about a “culture of innovation” amongst younger artists that is sometimes perceived as being overly self-conscious: “What they’re playing sounds so forced, so unnatural. It doesn’t have a strong enough connection to the tradition. It comes across as too cerebral. It doesn’t swing.” (Again, I’m paraphrasing.)

I’m not here to agree or disagree with the sentiments expressed above. Rather, I’d like to talk about this conundrum specifically. I’ll start with this rhetorical question: As an artist, is it more important to be innovative or authentic?

Both innovation and authenticity have great value in art. In the world of jazz, some of the greatest, most influential improvisers have been stunningly innovative.

Besides the three I mention above, we have Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Ornette Coleman, and Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, to name but a few. All of these artists have radically opened up the possibilities of self-expression in jazz by expanding and redefining the role and/or capabilities of their respective instruments in the act of improvisation (or in the case of Mr. Ellington, compositional and orchestral possibilities).

But we also have a wealth of artists who are less innovative, yet highly influential and highly valuable to the jazz lexicon. For example, Cannonball Adderley, Kenny Dorham and Kenny Barron, though they didn’t “expand” the boundaries of the music to the degree some others have, are strong and vital influences to the music. (Great artists with distinctive voices on their respective instruments!)

Whether more an “innovator”, or more a “traditionalist”, or “stylist”, all great artists have one thing in common: Clear, immediate authenticity.

As Thelonious Monk said (another powerful innovator in jazz!), “A man’s a genius just for looking like himself.” I think it’s safe to say all the musicians I’ve mentioned above most certainly fall within Mr. Monk’s definition.

Which brings me to my point: Whatever you want to do as a musical artist, place authenticity first.

By allowing for authenticity (yes, allowing), you free yourself from expectations. (You have nobody to answer to but your own muse, your own impulse to make music.) You free yourself from lots of stifling judgements about your music. (It doesn’t matter how “unique” your music is, as long as it flows freely and generously from you.)

In essence, when you express yourself authentically through your music, you are in a constant state of gratitude. You accept the music that comes through you as a gift, and you share it with the world. You are open and welcoming to so much: ideas, sound, connections with other musicians, time, rhythm and more.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of innovators in the history of jazz weren’t trying to be innovators. They were just working with the materials of music as they found their way to their own need for artistic expression. They were “looking like themselves” as they followed their curiosity and passion.

It’s probably impossible to consciously try to make music that is “innovative”. For music to be deemed innovative, it must, by definition, change the course of the art form, and significantly expand the vocabulary of the expressive language. It must have a measurable, lasting influence on the artists of the present and of the future. That’s huge. You can’t force that happen out of sheer will. It either does or doesn’t.

Just like the greats, all you can do is follow your curiosity and passion. If your music is innovative, it will most likely rise from a natural and authentic curiosity. Curiosity about the materials of music, curiosity about your instrument, curiosity about yourself. And passion as the fuel for action (practice and study).

Aim for making music that is truly beautiful to you. Don’t second guess it. If it touches you, it will, without doubt, touch others. And that makes what you do so valuable. Don’t let the need for innovation steer you into making music that isn’t beautiful to you. (Likewise, don’t let the fear of unknown artistic territory keep you from surprising yourself with new musical discoveries.)

Allow the possibility that your viewpoint (tastes, ideas, values, perception, etc.) can change and grow. As I get older, my music making seems less conceptual and “cutting-edge” to me, but so much richer, more clearly conceived, more expressive and more beautiful than ever before. (It’s more me than ever before.)

Whether or not your musical expression falls well inside the mainstream, or far from it, if you hear and feel something that lights you up, go after it. As long as it’s it’s truly yours, you’ll be glad you did.

“Who are you?” is the question that can best guide you. So take plenty of time to stay on the path of self-discovery as you cultivate your curiosity and expand your possibilities. Enjoy the beauty you create along the way.