Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Jazz Study Group 2: Advanced Players

That's great Scep. Have you tried just playing quarters and eighths only? It's like when I'm in a ballad and play triplet 16ths, the melodies change. The rhythm influences a lot. It's what we practice I guess.

One thing you don't do much of is syncopate. Herbie plays fast most of the time but it is highly syncopated. Same with Chick.

My playing has changed dramatically too since this thread started. That's why I want to keep doing this. We'll be listening to different sounding players in a little while if we comment on each others's stuff. It's great. I think the more honestly critical we are, the better. Feeding the ego doesn't make us better.

I don't syncopate? Hmm, I'll have to listen to those recordings again. Usually I'm syncopating all the time. Unless we have a different understanding of the word. I'll get back to you on that one.

Yes the 4th is definitely on top. That's what gives it its distinctive sound and yes it only really works on minor 7th chords. I think lots of voicings are usually derived from the 2+3 voicing. The idea usually being to build upon the basics. For me anyway this voicing has a very distinctive sound. I remember watching one of jazz2511 videos, he used that voicing and he specifically annotated it as the 'Kenny Barron' voicing.

Since both hands are essentially playing intervals of 9th's, it makes it a bit of a distinctive voicing with a larger sound. Its in the levine jazz piano book on page 141 (in the voicings chapter.)

Thanks for those kind words Scep!

Yeah the mike placement . . . well it was on a table right in front of us, which was fine until some folks decided to sit there.
I use an H2 for documenting and it does tend to pick up everything but actual stuff in front of it.
So, by request; a sort of up tempo: "There Will Never Be Another You."

And as a bonus, an original: WJR. Recorded at a later date, same place, different placement of the band and recorder.

Scep I listened again just to make sure I heard right.

I have a teacher that drills this to my head constantly and took a while for it to sink in. To me syncopation is a more frequent break up the lines so the endings and starts are frequent and indistinct as far as beat.

Like the way Hal Galper sings his lines here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2XnB5G6oSc

Now there are truly many people who play which continuous streams of 16ths or 8ths but to my ears, Herbie and Charlie Parker would be breaking it up into smaller chunks.

Here's a Herbie example of what I'm saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU6swznIDoo

He also doesn't stick to one note length. And lots of notes cut short.

This was very illuminating for me.

More bu-ba-di-bap-di-doo-doodle-dee-ba-beebop.

Rather then ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga-ga

Anyway, it's just something that might be helpful since I tended to similarly play very long lines as my jam examples show.

Fantastic! Very nice. I liked how it built up from what seemed like a ballad. I've got to learn from your comping as well. My comping is so rudimentary. That was so soothing the way you guys play I noticed. It seems consistent with your general style.

One great thing about what we are doing in this thread is that when we all play some of the same tunes, I think we really get a chance to exchange ideas. I'm really excited about you and Scep bringing back some life here. This is great!

Now I didn't hear any different voicings or reharms here (tell me if I'm mistaken).



Notation software wise -- Noteflight is really easy to use. That could be really useful from here on when we discuss voicings and such. I will use it.

Scep, I just wanted to let you know that you're willingness to be criticized and be a critic was what caused this thread to explode at the beginning. So if we just continue this, we can really learn from the exchange of ideas. As always, I'm consistently been willing to be criticized as hard as needed and debates on approaches are a good thing.

I've never thought of this thread as one intended for finished products. That's not as interesting.

So I hope you keep doing it. Since Chris has been willing to participate here too, we can move forward here.

Lovely, Chris, but not uptempo to me This is medium swing to medium up swing But faster than the other tunes.

Consistently, you don't overplay and that has a really good effect. The overall sound is always good and yet accomplished with the absence of pyrotechnics. I think this gives a consistency to your playing.

I was at a concert of pretty hot player here in town and chatting with a friend, we were saying that this player (grammy winner) is a monster player. But that's because we only remember the 16th notes. That's what intimidates. When you actually listen to the concert, we both realized that 80% of the time, he played just 8ths or longer and he reserved the pyrotechnics for brief moments.

I honestly didn't notice that before. So it looks like a lot can be achieved with putting the fancy stuff in reserve for occasional use.

This means that even when I play at the jams, I've started thinking about simplifying. To mostly play under my peak level. And to only occasionally foray into something more showy during brief moments and only if I felt confident.

JW,

I'm still not sure I agree with you about the syncopation, or lack thereof in my playing. Granted, I prefer longer lines of about 2 or 2 1/2 bars in length of running notes, but if you listen again you also find these interspersed with many, many syncopations. The Beautiful Love version I posted is played very fast, and maybe that just doesn't appeal to you because of the streams of notes? In any case, I'd rather not dwell on this aspect of my playing, because I know I syncopate. This is actually a big part of my problem with rushing my lines. For whatever reason when I'm playing syncopations I tend to almost consistently play them slightly before the beat. The trouble is, I don't know that I'm doing this until I hear myself recorded.
This is exacerbated by playing with others that may not be laying down a solid groove too. But even if everything is played well by the others, I tend to mostly be on top of the beat (as in before rather than exactly with it).

I've put up two songs from tonights jam. Come and take a listen to the syncopation

Thanks for those kind words, appreciate you all taking time to listen to the track!

There are, at least a couple of re-harms; I go to A7(b9) instead of an F and so on . . . if any of you are interested I can post my harms and we can compare notes.
I'm not one for re-harming to much, I feel that it usually does more harm then good. I like the flow of the cycle of fifths combined with moving to the parallel. Also, I want to respect the composers intentions.

Snare vs. Ride cymbal . . . ?

Scep, it's maybe how we define syncopation. I thought Hal Galper defined it well.

You do have breaks. So you may define that as syncopation. I'm just thinking that part of the aspect of syncopation that causes a bit of tension and release is the unexpected nature of it. Granted that KJ would syncopate less so if your lines are of such a nature then I wouldn't even have anything to say.

Hal Galper made a funny statement in the video, he says "My syncopation is cooler than yours". That may be the gist of it. There's a syncopation style that is more of a vocabulary for jazz. Personally, I would find it hard to syncopate in the traditional manner with streams of 16ths. Part of syncopation is unexpected note lengths. Not just space and start/stops.

My syncopation needs to improve too so this is why i'm conscious of it.

Chris. Yes, please post any interesting voicings on Stella so we can compare notes. I think this is a good change of trend in our postings if we are able to look at something.

It may not be very visible but there are spaces between the ga-ga-ga's. But they're all the same note size (e.g. 16ths.).

Ok. Agreed, streams of 16th notes are hard to call syncopation. Agreed that what Hal is talking about is syncopation. But what is not making any sense is that you've listened to a few tunes of mine, focused on the running 8th notes and triplet eighths (I guess you thought these were 16ths) and said they don't constitute syncopation. Fair enough. So, listen to the things surrounding those streams. And focusing on Beautiful Love only narrows the field. I've posted probably over 10 tunes. Yes many will have running streams of 8th notes. But listen to the other lines, listen to the block chords, listen to the comping, then get back to me. I'm seriously not interested in talking about whether I know what syncopation is, and whether it is an aspect of my playing, because from my perspective my syncopation is not lacking, but the EXECUTION of it is what I am coming to terms with. I am more than willing to discuss timing, etc.

Also worthy of discussion is the aspect of being able to syncopate running eighth note lines with accents and ghost notes as well as how the running lines can be delineated by groups of notes (cells?) that are with the running line that syncopate the rhythm by way of outlining parts of the rhythm that don't fall on the beat. This is actually another part of my playing that I'm trying to improve on.

This (ghost notes, accents and rhythmic delineations within the running eighths) is something that Hal alludes to but doesn't address in this clip. For the record I also find his approach to his audience quite condescending in that clip. I wonder how many in attendance that day were put off by his arrogance. I'm not saying that some of the things he's saying aren't worthwhile, but I can think of some better ways to put them across.

Scep, there's no doubt I just made the comment related to Beautiful Love only.

I could make the same comment to myself BTW on several tunes, particularly in jams so we are probably both aware of it. In my case, when I get tense, I play without syncopation and it sounds robotic.

Just like you, it doesn't mean I don't know how to syncopate, but hopefully we are catching each other here so we can all find something to work on.

Now it is worthy of discussion to analyze various ways of syncopation since Herbie doesn't do it like KJ, or Chick. Although I would venture to say that what Hal Galper would refer to as a cool kind of syncopation is closer to Herbie's style.

I think Charlie Parker's syncopation was unique too since his lines are more asymmetrical than the ones that came before him.

But it sounds like we both agree that syncopation is key to the jazz idiom. Perhaps we can show examples of what we like. I think that Hal Galper is not that far in thinking that many players of recent vintage tend to syncopate less. I don't feel like he irritated the people in the audience. If you listen to some of their syncopation attempts, some were definitely machine like.



Agreed that this is part of it. I don't know how to implement it it yet though. The only analysis I've done of this is Bil Evans and Lennie Tristano accenting another rhythmic layer on top of 4/4 for example. Like when they do a repeated 3 note accented group, or I know of one tune where they do 9/8.

But I guess I don't look at this necessarily (at least in my terminology) as syncopation but as a rhythmic overlay. I suppose that's partly what syncopation does.

Chris, this is a really great tune. It's obvious you have a real grasp of melody and harmonic structures. Care to share others you've written?

For further thoughts on the matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation

Your definition there is pretty broad so let's stick with that.

I posted one example of syncopation above by Herbie and I'd like to syncopate like him. Scep, you know of someone that has a particular syncopation style you want to emulate? Anyone else?

Sometimes I try to scat Herbie's syncopation so it's in my head. It doesn't always come out but it's getting better.

I've heard others say, sing Confirmation to get the rhythm of Bird.

So much attention is spent on note choices/voicings that we hardly ever hear syncopation discussed.

BTW - scep, you popped those new tunes in your list without warning so I'm not going to know unless you say you have some new stuff. I'll check them out. You've been busy.