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etc., do you do that two-handed stuff like in that youtube you posted? That was very interesting. I've been looking for every two-handed improvisation I can find. I've been working on this and slowly making progress. Leaning towards the Brad Mehldau method at the moment which is more rhythmically varied.

Well you do come out more serious with your "the sky is falling" statements. But let's face it, there are 4 threads here talking about TOO MANY NOTES...LOL. So if you can handle the heat, stay in the kitchen

In the other forum, the "artist" comment would have started (restarted?) new arguments again

I don't want to start a can of worms here. I admire OP and agree with you about his swing and technical capability. My comments on OP are just for myself. He's not one of my influences. There are many players that are not my influences. Add Tatum to the list.

By the same token, many people hate the players I am influenced by, like Brad Mehldau.

That's cool. I'm accused of being non-swingy and classical sounding because I lean to modern style playing with straight eighths. So it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm not trying to sound like OP, Wynton, Garland, Monty, etc. Love 'em all though and I have their records. I can swing hard too but don't prefer it.

yeah, Dave Horne would be calling me on the phone LOL

Here is somebody who could technically play many notes, but mainly plays the essential. ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp2UgfaQwTc

Miles used to send his pianoplayers listening to him.

His speciality: playing rests.

and that's what I'm talking about! fun, rhythm, spirit and melody, cool tune.

Yes and no, it's something I've been working on, and I can't do it as fluently as those guys. Fred Hersch does stuff like that too, its more about 2-3 counterpoint than just playing stuff over a LH ostinato. I've came up with polyphonic exercises where I'll try to get 2-3 voices going on a Bb7sus chord or something.. You kind of start thinking like you are playing Bach's sinfonia or fugures.. althought not as thematic and deliberate.

btw I transcribed part of tony's solo, just pm me and I can give you a copy if you want.

I've been practicing this every day and my LH is becoming more fluent now. I'm really learning to build on this style. But this guy is not utilizing the rhythmic aspect as much. Also he exhibits the same difficulty I'm having: keeping good time while being distracted by 2 hands. I was hoping that this Tony guy would have at least solved that. But I guess it's not easy (trust me I know). Sometimes I play it and it sounds good time wise and I record it (with a metronome) and I can see my LH waver.

jazzwee,

I don't know what you mean by rhythmic aspect, but there are plenty of rhythmic stuff going on with triplet displacements and what not.

I didn't hear major noticable errors in his time.. Makowitz clip on the other hand, there were noticiable time problem. You can hear the LH fluctuating. I don't think its about keeping metronomic time in solo piano, Bill Evans rushes like crazy on his solo piano stuff, but the music flows

Tony Tixier is great.

etcetera, I can hear it clearly at the beginning, even just the first few bars. I know you were criticizing Bill Evan's time once and I disagree highly with that. Bill's time is one of the most precise.

This is what I mean by rhythmic variation (syncopated playing) and very precise time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4IFtgATxK0

I'm hoping that because I can now recognize time faults that someday I'll be able to fix mine Hearing a problem is the first step. Almost like Alcholics Anonymous where we acknowledge our addiction.

EDIT - I just listened to it again and I can spot it in multiple places where the LH didn't time right with the RH. This two handed improvisation stuff is VERY difficult. So what I'm talking about here is slight. He plays this thing beautifully though. I'm just recognizing that even a high level player like this guy cannot do it perfectly (although I have to yet hear an imperfection in Mehldau's).

jazzwee,

Bill Evans is actually known for his time problems in his late recordings. I read that Joe Labara actually had to confront Bill about the time issue, and Bill just asked him to follow him. I've also read that John Coltrane didn't like playing with Bill for the same reason.

Again, I guess I am more concerned about the overall flow of the music than the details.. I felt like Makowitz's playing just didn't flow that well. Also there was more Rubato in Tony Tixier's playing..I am not sure which part wasn't together, it was clear enough that I can put it down on paper... i think in the really busy LH part he is playing like triplets on RH against 16th notes on RH.. so they don't necessary line up the way you expect it.

Tony is definitely one of the best young players around now

btw Brad is doing a lot of stuff beyond just synchopation.. he does really complicated over the barline stuff, sometimes even with triplets.. It's hard to explain in words, but for me it's not something you can just get it by listening, I actually had to transcribe stuff and really figure out what he is doing. There are so many ways to play 4/4 and not make it sound like 4/4 at all.

Ben Wendell's tune "Breath" is like that too.. they are working with the same kind of rhythmic concept/vocabulary in a way. The head plays sounds like he is going through all these different meter, but it all adds up to 16 bars of 4/4


http://www.myspace.com/benwendelmusician

etcetera, I would be happy to be laden with Bill's time problems He does push the beat, but I don't classify that as a "time problem". That's more of a stylistic incompatibility maybe.

This is an interesting discussion, especially on Mehldau's. I used to look at Mehldau's stuff as being complicated. I was working with my teacher on Herbie and he was showing me this rhythmic pattern, and something just dawned on me that I could clearly see it, and that Mehldau's playing became entirely clear to me. Believe it or not, I don't think Mehldau's playing is so complex anymore (at least in 4/4). It's really a fascinating discovery. What he does is very similar to what Jazz singers do which I'll just call generally as syncopated playing. I can hear it clearly in my head and I can tap it. Boy, I wish you're still back in L.A. because I could just show it to you. Give me a few months and I think I can cop his style (simplified).

I don't know of any player who plays rhythmically as much as Mehldau almost like a person singing. Maybe Hersch and Herbie. Herbie's is different though. He'll stream eighth notes with upbeat accents and then stop and syncopate with downbeat accents. Everyone else plays in a more consistent eighth note stream and more clear time definition.

You see this is an entirely different concept. You're looking at everything as a meter. But that suggests a consistency. For example if someone is playing 12/8, it's consistent.

What I'm talking about with a Mehldau is that thinking in terms of meters is impossible as it is changing at every bar. Instead think of the repeating pattern of the overall phrasing. Listen to that ATTYA Part 1. He sets up the phrasing motif with the LH and then he uses that phrasing motif two handed for a long time. This stuff is extremely difficult to transcribe and I wouldn't even try. Instead I would just grasp it in a big picture way.

So to me, Mehldau is just doing 4/4 here. Plain and simple, with a very predictable phrasing style. I've compared many many records now and he repeats this phrasing style over and over (sometimes fast and sometimes slow). In a way, the uniqueness is gone.

hmm, as far as I know there are a lot of similarity between Bill and Brad rhythmically.. lots of rhythmic displacements, and I am pretty sure they actually have to work it out systematically. I think the album with him and Charlie Haden did is great, because Charlie haden lays down the beat most of the time so you can hear how Brad is playing against that.

If you can get the Brad Mehldau stuff right, that's great i wish you good luck

btw I am talking about Bill's very late recordings, like the ones made right before he passed away... I know Bill Evans do rush, and that's fine, his time is usually very good, but some of the rushing on the late recordings are just too frantic for me.

Etcetra, the time issue with Bill E and his last trio with Joe L and Mark Johnson is accurate. Bill kept the band on their toes. But part of this was due to his health issues and if he had a lousy piano towards his end, Sept 1980. He played gigs at times in pain and discomfort, ulcers, liver problems, abuse, you name it. I read he would rush tunes just to get the set over with because he was fighting the piano.

I remember on one tune that I have on a video about his final year touring where he was rushing "Suicide Is Painless" so much I couldn't believe it, so obvious, he was definitely having a bad night. He was also angry about the sound booming from the stage monitors. Also about the last year of Bill's life, his brother Harry committed suicide and Bill never recovered from that, they were very close. Along with the talent comes a huge sack of emotional challenges

See, Bill couldn't just relax and take an early retirement. He in fact was at the next gig when he got so sick, Joe L took him to the hospital where he finished his final bar. That was it for Bill and the trio, ultimate cancelation. Perhaps if Bill had money in the bank and taken enough time off from touring, he might have gotten his health together and made it to 70. But fate deals the cards as it plays the hand.

But there is a definite difference in Bill's playing live in his final years. Whether this was due to his health problems, lousy pianos, exhaustion, who knows. Sad anyway. Thank goodness Bill left us many records to enjoy and learn from.

katt

Bill and Mehldau are completely different. I understand rhythmic displacements, which is not what I'm talking about. But Bill doesn't do this syncopation thing. Can't you hear it in ATTYA Part 1?

Well maybe this insight is something that each person has to discover on their own. My teacher demonstrated it at the last lesson and it just blew me away. Although he was talking about Herbie. He actually did a scat on a Herbie pattern. Then we did it on the piano. And, man, that was probably the most important lesson of the year and it seemed innocuous at the time.

All I'm suggesting, etctera, is I saw another pattern here that's not meter related. It's a phrasing syncopation pattern. I think you've been slicing it horizontally and I'm now slicing it vertically (just to make some sort of analogy here).

A week ago, I couldn't hear this.

Katt, do you have a link that to that Evans' video?

jazzwee,

all i am saying is that after transcribing Brad Mehldau, Bill Evans, Ben Wendell and many others, I came to the conclusion that they are using the same kind of concept rhythmically, although it may not be apparent at first.. And I notice everybody doing it in one way or the other, so for me it sounds like a lot of these ideas are common knowledge.

I am sure people can come to different conclusion about the same thing, I guess the important thing is to know what works for you and me and sometimes what works for me might not work for you and vice versa

As you know, Mehldau doesn't feel to happy about being compared to Evans because he doesn't think they are similar. And I agree.

I don't disagree that on a micro level, they will follow the same rhythmic displacement approaches, etc. But the micro-analysis doesn't help if one is duplicating their sound, that's all.

It's like saying they all use rootless voicings. But that's just a building block. Everyone uses rootless voicings.

If you did listen to Mehldau's ATTYA Part 1, I can duplicate that phrasing pattern he's using completely, although I cannot do that cleanly on the LH. I cannot explain it as a meter thing. I'd be better off explaining it by saying listen to Bobby McFerrin.