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I was just reading the reviews of that book, which is about "Deliberate Practice". Apparently this is taken from another Book on "Outliers..." and that the complete formula is:

(Spelling errors corrected)




Not too many have access to #2.

Thanks. Yeah those pesky triplets, I don't try to play them consciously, they just tend to 'come out', but I really need to work on getting some 16ths and 32'nds flowing - but it is a work in progress
Here's Footprints from the same gig. Triplets galore again, but also something - hopefully - else.
And a version of Beatrice , with me working on melody and tone colour.
Any comments and/or critiques are appreciated.

I slowed down one of the longer eighth note lines and was surprised that my teacher was swinging it ever so slightly. He always told me he plays completely straight at 180. Noticeable offbeat accents which he always tells me to do. Offbeat lands exactly on the drummer's swung eighth position. The drag is very noticeable.

http://www.box.net/shared/e9xd5amq1b

In a continuous line, I don't detect any differences in downbeat length.

The evenness is amazing. The contrast against the drummer's Ding-A-Ding is pretty clear.

Just to keep things on track here, I wanted to point out that Chris is not playing triplet sixteenths in this tune. They would be pretty fast if he did. The division is a triplet eighth. He does one or two little groups of sixteenth note runs, but they are straight sixteenths, not triplet.


Some nice playing there, Chris.

I think we're almost on the same page.



I was taught that dotted eighth-sixteenth is not the correct way to think of swing eighths. This would actually divide the beat in four parts and put the second eighth note on the fourth beat. I know that some music is notated this way, but it's not correct.

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I agree that the downbeat is a solid marker, but what I am thinking now is that the "official" downbeat (the 1st beat of a triplet) is not what's important. It's the upbeat that counts and should be the solid marker of the beat. The "official" downbeat is always implied, but if your eighths are straight, they are straight in line with the upbeat, which is your target, not the amount of drag after the "official" downbeat.



In a trio for example... the drummer and bass player are playing the "official" downbeat. The drummer's ride also provides the swung upbeat (3rd beat of a triplet). The piano player, who is in sync with the upbeat, may play straight eighths or sixteenths whose downbeat is slightly after the "official" downbeat played by the drums and bass. Or the piano may occasionally sync up with the "official" downbeat, say by comping in the left hand or starting a line. But again, the important beat is the upbeat.



Not if your reference point is the upbeat. The played downbeat can be wherever you want. Sometimes it may drag a little, sometimes it's in sync with the "official" downbeat which is always implied by the presence of the upbeat.

I saw Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra last night and I paid extra close attention to the way the band locked in. It became very apparent to me that the upbeat is the only beat that everyone always agrees on.

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http://www.smallsjazzclub.com/index.cfm?itemCategory=32338&siteid=272&priorId=0&banner=a

Scott, we are completely in sync with the offbeat. That's what has to line up regardless of anything else. The only fixed offbeat marker is the drummer's 'A' in Ding-A-Ding.

I just emailed my teacher on this question and he really doesn't think of it in a measured sense. He said that if the offbeat doesn't line up, he just feels it and then adjusts accordingly.

So I was using the downbeat as a way to line up to the offbeat. But the alternate way is to feel the offbeat at all times. Maybe I'm back to Erskine's "Uh" because that really is more of a feeling.

The answer I got was that the offbeat is a "feeling". I extract from this that he means that the subdivision is so ingrained that he knows when he's off. But the other point though is that there's trial and error going on in finding the offbeat, and the difference between him and I is that he can adjust pretty fast while I have to think about it.

He told me this before on keeping the groove. It's not that he expects me to be in the groove from moment one, he says what he's looking for is an awareness of time and the ability to correct.

So I assume from this that at a world class level, they just correct so fast that you can't notice it. When I listened to the ATTYA recordings, I don't sense fixed lengths of notes. It's more varied than that. Was he adjusting lengths of notes leading to a phrase? It sounds like it was happening based on feel.

How do we train ourselves though to have that feel at all times? What's a good practice routine?

I just came back from the jam and I again have to wonder if I was conscious of the feel. There's so much stuff going on that (everything I did tonight was sightreading leadsheets!) that I didn't even know what lines to play. Much less have time to be so exacting with the groove. Did I remember Erskine's "Uh". heck no.

I had my teacher listen to a recent recording of mine and he made a comment that was interesting and applied to most of us here. Even this version of Stella. He referred to my "Nervous energy" where a potentially good phrase is not allowed to ring because I move on and start a new phrase.

He's explaining to me that it's more than just the space. I think he's referring to phrase resolution. An exercise he did with me that really stuck was when the phrase sounded good, he yelled "STOP" so I don't play anything after and just hold the last note down.

I was beginning to get a sense of this but sometimes with too many things going on I lose awareness of this again. But I realized that we all tend to play like this. It's just series of notes to us. But more to the listener.

Even an isolated fragment can apparently have time to sink in by holding a note down and that's where the space counts.

I think this is a global comment. I don't hear any of us doing this. He's clearly doing it on the ATTYA lesson. Delineate the idea by letting some notes ring.

Very cool to hear the drag.

Funny, I asked my friend the drum teacher (head teacher of jazz drums at the Royal College here in town) that same thing yesterday, he said "play a lot with really good drummers" and "don't think, listen-react-respond". When I asked him to clarify, he said "the crux is to "play-a-lot", if you can't play in bands, go to classes, take up African drumming, etc etc in other words - immerse yourself in rhythm - and the old "listen listen listen" to the masters. "Get it all integrated".
If one can't find a drummer, get some really good drum loops and play to them.


It'll come. Great that you're exposing yourself and getting out there.

Yes yes, this is all good!

You're really lucky to have access to such a performer as your teacher.

Wouldn't the feeling of the offbeat be learned the same way as the feeling of the downbeat? If we can learn to keep a steady beat on the downbeat, just do the same thing with the upbeat.




Yeah, I think this is the point of polyrhythms here. The upbeat is the point of reference and notes are adjusted by feeling other subdivisions besides the triplet, like straight eighths or sixteenths.



I'm going to try practicing with the metronome designating the upbeat. It's really tough to do! I used to practice with a triplet click track that emphasized the upbeat, but now I want to learn to do it with just the upbeat. It seems to me that this will work the same way it teaches to keep an even downbeat. I figure the worst thing it could do is give me a stronger sense of the upbeat.

I wonder what would happen if the drummer's swung eighth was louder on the ride cymbal. That's what we're really matching and in a typical rhythm section, it's not that easy to hear. I think the Erskine "Uh" is a good way to at least initially get centered on that offbeat position.

If you listened to the slowed down phrase snippet, you can hear the drum in the background and you can see that nothing really coincides with the piano except the offbeat swung eighth. So that whole environment almost sounds polyrhythmic since nothing one plays lands on any 4/4 downbeat or exact offbeat. It makes jazz pretty amazing when you think of this. Everything is off center.

I have to keep listening to that ATTYA recording though to make this clear. He's identifying another layer for me to recognize and I'm noticing now that the importance of this statement is quite profound.

So to test my skills in feeling this point, I will comment on everyone's music to see if this is communicated in a solo.

Hey all,

I haven't disappeared. I'm reading through this forum closely so I know exactly what is being discussed.

Fascinating discussions about time feel. I can say for certain that Erskine, as a former student of his, had time issues that he overcame through conscious practice. You can hear him rush the time on early Weather Report, for example. But he worked on his weakness and thoroughly overcame it.

In discussing this "uh" concept, I would add Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's approach in his book "Flow". We move from 'conscious incompetence' to 'unconscious competence'. Be it playing piano or driving.

Intending what you do for a while, as in being consciously 'intentional' about it, will inevitably lead to an activity becoming automatic.

My two cents.

Sounds good. Seems like your doing good finding space even though the drummer isn't really following as much as he could. Sometimes it seems like you are thinking about reharmonization in your lines but to me it just doesn't seem to fit. Some of it's good but there are places where the lines seem to be gravitating towards notes that aren't in context with the harmony. I wonder though if sometimes this has to do with what the bass is playing? I can definitely always hear the changes, it's just that some things sound too outside for my taste. Oh, and I like the chord stuff that you do starting at 6:30.

Great information here river, and it's comforting to know that the approach Eskine is advocating is what he may have used to overcome similar issues.

I also agree with your last sentence, which is what I was driving at from my original post about timing.

Do you guys ever work on some classical? I started working on Chopin Etudes 10/1 and it's amazing how much of this applies to jazz. First, just the effect on my fingers 4 & 5 just in a couple of days is tremenduous. It changed the tone of my lines and evenness.

Clearly my technique issues are tied to fingers 4 & 5 but there's the stretch aspect too.

The only problem with this Etude is that you've got to find some separate practice for the LH which doesn't get much of a workout.

I'm so used to doing arpeggios fast and with a stretch that this wasn't nearly as difficult as I expected (at least not for a moderate tempo). I don't have to perform this ever but as a technique builder, it's more intense than any other exercise I've done.

>> I started working on Chopin Etudes 10/1

Out of curiosity, how did you choose this piece?

I've been eyeing this for awhile and Chris Bell gave me a little encouragement.

Like I said, the arpeggio moves are so similar to what I already do a lot. You can really look at it as playing broken chords. This is apparently considered like some "impossible" piece for many but after trying it, I can see it is reachable for me. I can already play some bars at 3/4 of the required speed.

At first I only tried it for its arpeggio moves but then I realized it gets a lot of support from the weak fingers. Some stretches are hard on the hand but after playing through page 1, I think the only difficulty like anything else is playing sixteenths at the required 176bpm. That would take years.

Let me just say this. After practicing this, I did some improvisation and the whole feel changed. As a regular exercise it's fairly easy to memorize.