westarm, Good job for your first attempt. You really did sound like you were very self-conscience about playing for someone outside the house. To me, it sounds like a little more practice and your ready for the next step. Keep practicing where you are at and how about another recording in the next couple of days. I have to go sell the idea of desparately needing a Zoom H2 recorder to my better half. Wish me luck!!

Very helpful Chris! Thanks for posting this!

Nice touch Westarm! Sounds great. I would practice with a metronome to get that even time going. Very critical in playing jazz. All the mechanics sound great, LH vs. RH balance is cool. It's a bit hard to hear on the headphones.

I can't tell how accurate your Charleston is on the LH due to the varying tempo but I like the length of the LH stabs.

You're on your way here.

Enjoyed those postings of Wynton Kelly, ritincop. Thanks! He will be our Jazz Master of the Week.

I heard that Brad Mehldau spent a lot of time emulating Wynton so you can see how important he is to the new crop of jazz masters. Transcribing 'Freddie the Freeloader' on the Kind of Blue Album is like standard beginning fare for phrasing with any jazzer. That's Wynton Kelly playing it. Miles Davis switched from Bill Evans.

Anyone wanting to learn how to swing can learn a lot from Wynton as he can do hard swing or play straight. He can swing hard at very fast tempos too.

Here's Freddie the Freeloader from Miles Davis (with Wynton Kelly playing piano)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeECkXU_xEA&feature=related

Listen to the phrasing, particularly phrase endings, and repeating notes. I consider this jazz phrasing 101 right here.

Of course, not to be ignored is Miles Davis himself...but we can discuss that when he's Jazz Master of the Week.


What would we do without youtube? Great resource for this thread.

OK gang, here's a quick recording of my most recent arp practice:
http://www.box.net/shared/oakawnfgg4

There's an obvious contrast between the first half and the second half. The first part is definitely more precomposed (though not completely). While in the second half I tried to stick with the arps and truly improvise. Obviously, I can't come up with a steady stream of eighths at will.

Thanks for listening.

Westarm, nice going!!! Now that you started, you can't stop now....keep the recording coming and you will not even notice the red button there anymore.

Deeluk....very nice arps & variations & you even have some improvisation!!! You are sure leading the way. I do hear long strings of 8ths. Do you write everything out or do you do them on the spot?

Deeluk - it was fun listening to those arps. You are doing something I haven't tried yet with that exercise --- improvisation. Thank you for posting and shoving me along. I do need that occasional push every now and then.

Way to go!!! Interesting recording deeluk. Given the fact that we are both using the same chords, I would have assumed that our arp runs would be similar, They're not and I like yours better. Yours are much more melodic. Also, your left hand sounds like your on two keyboards with sustained left. I assumed you were driving a digital piano but this recording sounds more like an organ???

Thanks guys. I've been having fun with this arp exercise, believe it or not. It has certainly been very challenging. And I have a long way to go yet.

Woody, I made that recording on a synthesizer workstation. The backing track is the same one I've used throughout this thread. Well, I did modify it once somewhere back there. But, my solo and arp practice I'm doing with only the RH. Just to make it easier and focus on that. When I play both LH and RH together, my solo tends to fall apart.

The track has drums, bass and a rotary organ track. I played one of the chord exercises on that track. The 2+3 voicings.

Rosa, I don't write anything down. But I have played the precomposed parts of that pattern several times and now they're memorized. The only improv there I suppose is that I did make up the pattern. And it doesn't always stay exactly the same each time I play. But I still wouldn't call it true improvisation.

That explains a lot. I'm still doing both hands and makes it that much more of a work out espically using a swing tempo.

As far a having a long way to go... I like to think of all of us as works of art - in progress.

Deeluk, just in general, I can hear major improvement even in your phrasing and just general touch. You are growing by leaps and bounds here Pretty amazing actually for a short time.

Now that you're doing these arpeggiation exercises, how about doing more repeats on the arpeggiations? So let's say on Am7 you're doing
C E G B, learn to vary this to
C E C E G B
or change so values to quarter notes, or break up the arpeggios into two phrases.

The repeats are particularly important because that's really the major aspect of the jazz vocabulary.

Here's another example to test your brain. This is going down and the first two notes are quarter notes

B[/b] B[/b] G E C
bold are quarter notes.

I'm giving these more advanced goals here since I can see you are already learning to vary the arpeggios.

Remember that the common mistake of every improviser (me especially) is the use of two many notes. So repeating the notes is very important. Especially if the repeated notes plays a little motif, the audience tends to like to hear it repeated for emphasis.

You may want to re-listen to Bill Evans playing all his arps in AL and you'll hear all the repeats he does. The main notes are the same 1-3-5-7-9 but how he organizes these notes is important to learn. Amazing how many combinations you can come up with such a simple sequence.

Keep at it Deeluk. Each recording you post shows you've crossed another barrier.

Bump

OK, Woody & Gang, here's my All Things arp.

http://www.box.net/shared/2zvtacaccc

Rosa

Great job, Rosa. Those accents are sounding very nice!

Hi Everyone,

Yesterday I was having a time of it trying to understand the concept of "swinging" at different tempos. For some unknown reason, I have been trying to keep the eighths "even", at all speeds, while accenting the upbeats. Jazzwee helped me to understand that at slower tempos, the "hard" swing is more of a triplet type feel. I have been suffering a great misunderstanding for the term "hard" swing. I thought that just meant that the upbeat accent is greater - while still keeping the eighths "even".

Jazzwee suggested that I do the same exercise at different speeds. Here is a portion of Donna Lee, played at 3 different tempos - 100, 120, 140.

Hopefully, I am starting to "GET IT". Jazzwee, what do you think?

http://www.box.net/shared/dmxg7unswo

.

.

.

Rintincop - Thank you so much for your detailed feedback. You described me perfectly here - bumpy, mechanical and stiff. I do wish I can relax old Donna. My brain seems to be working too hard on those accents.

I'll try some deep breathing before playing this one again. That has a way of relaxing me.

Hi guys, changing computers here so, I'll catch up to you shortly. I can't listen to anything right now...

But in general, Ritincop makes the point I was trying to make to Barb. "Triplet Feel" or an exact 2:1 is not the authentic jazz feel. It is usually some number in between that and 1:1. It will tend to vary but generally more swing at slower tempos and less swing at higher tempos.

Since we were doing AL at a fixed tempo it is easier to describe but as we play tunes at a wide range of tempos, it will be important to now emphasize this difference in swing feel.

This discussion (via PM) came about with Barb because I thought that a tune she was playing at a slower tempo (around 100bpm) didn't swing hard enough. As you slow it down it will need to swing harder and straigthen out as you go fast until you get to speeds emulating sixteenth notes (like 200bpm) where there is no swing at all.

Hopefully, I'll be able to listen later as I get my computer running.

Barb, My tastes aren't the same as ritincop (which ritincop and I have discussed to no end) so understand that this is a personal decision. I did not find the last recording to be too straight.

In general, at a faster tempo, I lean along these lines...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=356pcstEpEQ

...which as you can see is pretty straight. But the difference is that as you mature with playing, you don't play them exactly on the beat and this adds to the swing feel just like Mehldau. The swing impulse can be created in different ways, I find.

Sometimes it's in the approximation of a triplet feel, sometimes it's in the positioning of the line in relation to the beat (like playing straight but landing the notes in a time span between 2:1 and 1.5:1 between two swinging eights). Hard to explain, but basically you can play straight eights but if you land the notes at points where a normal swing eight would start or end, you can suggest the swing.

There's no one answer to swing. But in general, ritincop's comment about relaxing is what comes into play since relaxing in itself causes natural actions to occur like dragging (slight rubato changes).

This will come Barb. I think you're practicing this correctly. In general, the fact that you adjust your swing to the tempo is essential. The mechanical aspects of this will disappear as your muscles do this automatically and your subsconcious takes over. You will know you are there when you stop thinking about it

Pay attention to the swing style of your favorite jazzers but this time, note the tempo at which the style applies.

So to conclude the summary point:

Different Tempo = Different Swing Style

Jazzwee - Thank you for the feedback. Bottom line, I know, is to relax .

I loved that Giant Steps youtube link. He can really swing!!!

Glad you are back into the computer world.

Rosa, sorry I missed you posted recording. It sounded great and shows a lot of hard work put in there.

Now that you've got the notes in, start thinking about the swing as at the moment it has none at all. Although you accent, at this slow tempo, there has to be some swing. This is not dissimilar to my discussion with Barb.

At slower tempos, each pair of eight notes are closer to the 2:1 ratio. As you speed up it goes closer to the 1:1 ratio. Although what you're playing doesn't sound fast, the way Chris Bell has it written is two chords to a measure. As you know the real ATTTYA is one chord per measure so these notes would be quarter notes if played like the real ATTYA. So to emulate eighths it would have to be double time.

Anyway, you have to focus on not playing this like classical music. Swing Rosa! Swing! Lengthen the first eighth note and shorten the second eighth note of each pair (at this tempo).

Right now all the notes are even (1:1 for each pair of eights).

I will not stop until I get all of you to swing (without which there will be no jazz). Keep trying on swinging this. I'll help you out.

SWING SWING SWING YES YES YES

Here it is:

http://www.box.net/shared/tfu12l0wsw

I literally recorded myself 58 times to listen to myself again to see if I was able to get the swing and accent. Sometimes I would have the 2:1 ratio but not the accent and sometimes the accent is there but not the 2:1 ratio.

I think I better hand this in for inspection before bad habits set in.

Tho' 58 times but kinda fun to mess around. Stomache feels it too. Heeee Heeee.

Good Evening Rosa! Yes, that time you've got swing. Good Job!!!

Yes Rosa, I think you got it that time. It sounded like you didn't pick up the swing until about 0:10 into the recording. But you kept it up from there to the end. Only 58 tries huh? Not so bad. Man, I'm scared to consider how many takes I use trying to get something down.

Rosa - I heard that swing. I listened to your first version, then this version. This one really sounds good. I guess 58 is the magic number.

Now were talkin' Rosa! Great job. I was amazed you did this so fast. Barb is right. 58 times is not bad at all. You have the talent for this. :thumb

Just to reiterate the refinement to the swing discussion that I was having with Barb. In the early lessons, I just said, to swing, accent the upbeats.

Now we're into advanced concepts now. The slower you go, the ratio is closer to 2:1, the faster you go the ratio is closer to 1:1. At all times the accents exist on the upbeat.

There's another layer here. As you listen to jazz masters, you will find that even the accent level is not constant. You may find accenting at a secondary layer which accentuates phrases. Someone like Tristano will accent at some geometric interval to imply different time.

For example, this same exercise you're doing here from Chris is based on 3 eighth notes and a rest per chord. If you took the rest out, you'd be playing an implied 3/4 tune (or playing a triplet) instead of 4 notes. This is something that Bill Evans also did using arpeggios. When playing triplets the accent is on the 1st note.

The other thing that we've discussed over and over is that true swing isn't a pure 2:1. This is the most exaggerated form. Rosa, you came close to 2:1 which is exactly right. I did not sound exaggerated to me. Exaggerated or an actual 2:1 ratio sounds corny. 1:1 is not good either. Even that Giant steps youtube I posted is not 1:1 although it is played fairly straight.

If you analyzed a recording of any player, the swing ratio is never constant. It shifts from hard to straight in varying degrees and part of playing a relaxed swing is varying this for effect.

Then there's the dragging that is also found in swing. Again the dragging varies. Dragging adds tension so this is also released by restoring time.

One final thing is that you must have the ability to play the lines with perfect legato while swinging. This is what differentiates the big guns of jazz. They can do it even at high speed. This is more of a technique thing. In some of your arp playing, sometimes the legato isn't perfect so keep an eye on this.

When there's a rest, and you're supposed to cut off the eighth, make sure to play the eighth short. Like the second note of a swing pair. There's a lot of eighths with rests in Chris' exercise.

Practicing swing is a technical skill like learning to play even scales. It is not easy to do but daily practice is required so it sounds relaxed and automatic.

Watch Hiromi swing hard in solo piano.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ggL_2hk9DyI

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p5heNtehwZg

This is what everyone should shoot for in solo piano. Play like this in a hotel or bar and you won't be background music...

BTW - I found this amusing.

Here's a young guy playing an exact transcription of Hiromi using Sheet music. Something that detractors from this thread will love.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eeHI-6xuei8

But this dude is like tied to looking at the music and there is no music creation. He is a mere playback machine now. This is not jazz. Hiromi would not play this the same way twice. I know, I watched Hiromi play this in person.

This is what btb over at the Teacher's Forum seeks to promote. Well at least this guy can emulate the swing and is technically very adept.

But imperfection is ok as long as it's music creation IMHO. Jazz is about the moment and instantaneous creation. There's a thrill knowing you can play anything, sometimes you do it well, sometimes you don't. But the masters who can play well practically all the time is another source of amazement.