The overwhelming majority of jazz pedagogy supplies (books, DVDs, etudes, and so on.) place nice emphasis on tonality. That is true for newbie via superior artist degree.
When you’re a critical scholar of improvisation (at any degree of proficiency) it’s, after all, vital to be constantly discovering new methods to arrange tonality: harmonic extensions/substitutions, auxiliary scales, intervallic patterns, efficient voice main, and so on. It’s by exploring these supplies that you’ll find seemingly limitless methods to create stress and determination in your improvised strains.
But, regardless of how a lot you’re including to your tonal palette, you’re improvisations are nonetheless being pushed by one fundamental pressure: rhythm.
That’s proper. So far as your mind is worried, rhythm is major.
It’s the impulse to transfer the pitches that brings your improvisations to life. This sub-verbal “motion impulse” is extra speedy out of your mind to your muscle tissue than the thought (whether or not aural or mental) of how the pitches are organized.
After all, in a superbly expressive and fluently improvised solo, there’s a seemless connection between the rhythmic impulse and word selections. It could be because of this that numerous jazz improvisers don’t dedicate a lot time particularly growing their rhythmic imaginations.
For some, this results in a somewhat hardened, predictable phrasing. As a result of so many commonplace songs and traditional jazz compositions are composed in 4/4, and are constructed largely of two-bar and four-bar cells, it may be a robust (virtually irresistible!) invitation to improvise melodic strains that emphasize the tune kind on the expense of melodic freedom.
But it’s exactly this freer phrasing that’s on the essence of contemporary jazz improvisation. When you return to the good tenor saxophonist Lester Younger, you may hear/expertise a good looking “floating” form of time really feel and rhythmic expression that appears to concurrently embrace, but transcend, the type of the composition.
Within the easiest sense, Lester Younger wasn’t “trapped” by the bar strains. Every phrase had that means, freedom, and a extremely unpredictable spontaneity.
When you take heed to a number of the earliest recordings, you’ll hear him “flip the time round” pretty frequently all through his solos. It was that rhythmic freedom that served as one of many foundations of the bebop/fashionable jazz aesthetic.
But as time glided by, and harmonic potentialities in fashionable jazz grew to become extra plentiful and sophisticated, rhythmic exploration typically took a again seat.
It is because of this that I made a decision to put in writing and compose my e book, Important Polymeter Research in 4/4 for the Improvising Musician.
Some years again, after spending large quantities of apply time rising my tonal (harmonic/melodic) vocabulary, I noticed I used to be caught in my phrasing. As I recorded myself training (and after listening to a number of of my recorded performances) I observed an undesirable predictability in my phrasing.
I quickly realized that a lot of this predictability needed to do with meter. Particularly, if I had been improvising in 4/4, all of the phrases match a lttle too neatly into that subdivision.
I started exploring with superimposing different metric subdivisions over 4/4. I began with studying to think about and really feel 3/4 over 4/4. After only a few weeks of exploration, my improvising started to actually open up.
Not solely was I enjoying freer, extra spontaneous sounding and fewer predictable phrases, but in addition, the best way I organized the pitches started to open up. I started to seek out shock and enjoyment of my improvisations.
I used to be hooked. After 3/4 over 4/4, I started to discover 5/4 over 4/4. To make a really lengthy story quick, I went on to discover different subdivisions, all with fantastic outcomes.
I’ve turned my explorations right into a methodical strategy to understanding, listening to and imagining polymeter because it applies to improvisation. As a result of the subject will be so huge, my problem was to restrict the sector of research to probably the most important subdivisions and rhythmic patterns. I feel I’ve been ready to do this.
In Important Polymeter Research in 4/4, I’ve introduced almost 160 pages of notated workouts. Many of the workouts are widespread rhythmic patterns constructed from the staples of contemporary jazz tonality (dominant seventh scales, main, melodic minor, diminished, blues, augmented scales, and so on.)
Every sample “strikes round” (displaced) the bar line to problem you to all the time know the place beat one is, and that can assist you develop an unconscious potential to sense how odd-metered patterns “return” when performed over even meter.
Of all of the jazz etude books I’ve composed to date, that is the one I’ve put probably the most time, thought and energy into. I imagine there’s nothing fairly prefer it out there for the intense scholar of jazz improvisation, and am very pleased to have made it out there.
So when you’d like to seek out new methods to develop your improvisational language, please take into account my guide. And let me know what you suppose. (On the touchdown web page you’ll discover a downloadable pattern from the guide). Thanks!