Meanwhile, learners strive to develop an unwavering sense of the beat to serve as a conceptual anchor for the flexible use of their vocabulary. Many cultivate this basic skill during years of handclapping in rhythmic accompaniment to pieces at both religious and secular music events. As suggested above, this experience also results in an aesthetic appreciation for rhythmic complexity, a sensitivity to rhythmic counterpoint, and a flexible orientation toward the interpretation and treatment of meter.
Children lacking special rhythmic gifts or comparable training sometimes find the beat to be a hazy concept initially. It belongs, after all, to that category of intangibles made comprehensible by being properly envisaged or accurately inferred from their effects upon other things. Sailors cannot see the wind, but they feel its pressure and observe whether a ship’s sails are taut or luffing. Swimmers cannot see the ocean’s current, but they feel its pull upon them and gauge its character from patterns of undulating waves. Similarly, musicians cannot see a beat, but they learn to discern it within the band’s collage of patterns when a particular musician’s part expresses it explicitly, or otherwise, to infer it as the common underlying pulse of the band’s collage. In the latter case, and when performing alone, improvisers imagine the beat as a series of evenly spaced points or regularly generated hits along a continuum of time.
Various factors can complicate the perceptions of learners, however. Even when some group members perform the beat directly, playing a regular four-beat time-keeping pattern, the actual points of the beats acquire slightly different definitions from instrument to instrument, the acoustical properties of which display differing patterns of attack and decay. Its definition also varies with individual styles of articulation, as for a horn player’s selection of tonguing syllables or for a pianist’s particular touch. Moreover, veterans can assert their interpretation of the beat with minute shifts in emphasis, creating variations in time-feeling. Pianists, for example, can widen the beat by “playing the left hand slightly ahead of the right hand in unison or chordal passages.”9
Charles Mingus once underscored the flexibility of such practices at a workshop by drawing an overlapping sequence of quarter notes at the same pitch level, indicating that, theoretically, each note’s rhythmic value could be pulled slightly forward or backward into the domain of the adjacent note (CI). In fact, most musicians “talk about playing on three different parts of the beat without making any difference in the overall tempo” (AT). Imagining the beat as an “elliptical figure,” the drummer or bass player can play either “ahead of the beat” (that is, on the front part of the elliptical figure), “behind the beat” (that is, on the very end of the elliptical figure or in varying degrees toward the center of the figure), or “on the beat” (that is, the center of the figure) (fig. 6.1).
Fred Hersch similarly maintains that in the course of a performance
there should be ten, fifteen different kinds of time. There’s a kind of time that has an edge on it for a while and then lays back for a while. Sometimes it rolls over the bar, and sometimes it sits more on the beats. That’s what makes it interesting. You can set a metronome here and, by playing with an edge or playing behind it or right in the center, you can get all kinds of different feelings. That’s what makes it come alive. People are human, and rhythmic energy has an ebb and flow.
To experiment with these subtleties and strengthen the ability to supply a steady beat in the imagination, some artists follow the advice of experts to practice faithfully with a metronome, leaving it on even when carrying out other chores to absorb its regular delineation of time (CH). Paul Wertico made his own “time much more secure” by listening to a metronome setting of 200 at the beginning and end of each day. Once having memorized its precise tempo, he acquired the ability to gauge other tempos in relation to it.
Beyond imaging the beat as a pulsating sound, performers commonly adopt physical means for its representation. The great New Orleans-style trumpeter Tommy Ladnier required Doc Cheatham to imitate him by “patting” his foot when they performed together. Ladnier insisted that it would teach Cheatham “how to play good jazz” and enable him “to really feel what he was doing.” Jelly Roll Morton gave Cheatham the same advice during their collaborative performances. In subsequent eras as jazz tempos increased, some musicians found that tired ankles caused tempos to slow down or become erratic, and they chose to omit every other beat, tapping on the music’s backbeats or, alternatively, on “one” and “three.” Others kept time with a slight nod of the head to avoid potential problems of foot tapping.10
Not only does the physical embodiment of the beat provide concrete reference points during performances, but it informs artists’ ideas by infusing them with appropriate rhythmic vitality. “In order to swing, not just to approximate swing, the rhythm has to come from your body,” Fred Hersch maintains. He knows that when his playing is “really swinging, I’m unconsciously moving from side to side or back and forth on the piano bench.” For Cheatham, as well, “it’s like dancing; it’s the movement of the body that inspires you to play. You have to pat your foot; you get a different feeling altogether than when you play not patting your foot:” In a continuing cycle, the physical representation of the beat inspires soloists’ rhythmic conceptions, which in turn provides renewed physical stimulus that finds immediate expression in improvisations. “You need rhythm for the real life of this music, for the real dance;” Hersch acknowledges.
In addition to metaphorizing swing in terms of dance, many performers also emphasize the importance in their upbringing of black social dance, which sensitized them to the subtleties of rhythmic expression, training them to interpret time and to absorb varied rhythms through corresponding dance steps and other patterns of physical motion. Practices mentioned earlier in which drummers actually reproduce and playoff of patterns emanating from the intricate footwork of tap dancers, and vice versa, epitomize the influence of body movement upon rhythmic conception in jazz.11
Once performers can envisage the regular passage of time at different tempos, they acquire in effect an internalized “metronome sense.”12 The beat takes
on a tangible quality and serves as a referent for understanding the mathematical relationships among the elemental components of jazz phrases. Typically, artists interpret the components as subdivisions and multiples of the beat, an interpretation that aids artists in creating and applying their patterns whether envisioned in sound alone or in the diagrammatic representations of rhythmic values familiar to them from theory manuals. Lennie Tristano directed students to formulate new phrases by dividing the beat symmetrically into patterns of eighth notes, sixteenth notes and thirty-second notes, and asymmetrically in any number of ways (LK). These were common practices for John Coltrane, who at times favored “uneven groups like fives and sevens.”13 Louis Armstrong’s foot-tapping practice provided reference for the beat’s subdivision and for the intricate off-beat phrasing that became one of his trademarks.14 Within the realm of beat subdivision, myriad nuances of phrasing in between an even eighth-note subdivision feel, a dotted-eighth and sixteenth-note feel, and a triplet eighth-note feel are associated with the dynamism of swing.
Triplet subdivisions have special significance. Carmen Lundy finds that triplets are “unlike straight eighth notes or any other kind of rhythms,” possessing something that’s “hypnotic;” especially once the patterns begin “piling up on one another. Those interrhythmic things really create a special feeling,” she remarks. “They joggle one another, and that’s what makes a person want to dance. When you hear that, it moves the body. It’s a natural thing to want to do that. Oh, it can really take you!” The feeling triplets create in both gospel and jazz served as an initial bridge between the two musical fields for Lundy, enabling her “to identify with jazz rhythmically.”
Students also learn “polymetric or polyrhythmic” invention, such as “playing five notes in the space normally left for four” (CI). Emily Remler finds that she has “gotten much
stronger rhythmically just from doing little tapping exercises that drummers have shown me, playing polyrhythms like two against three or three against four.” Lester Young was especially “fond of three-against-four cross-rhythms, which he would repeat two to four times consecutively.”15 Instrumentalists restricted to single-part performance can mentally superimpose a second meter upon that of the piece maintained by other band members, but performers of instruments with multipart capabilities can perform patterns derived from different meters simultaneously. “See, the triplet feeling in rhythm, ‘dab-dab-dab, dab-dab-dab,’ makes you relax;” Charli Per-sip points out. “It makes you hold back; you can’t rush triplets. But the duple part of the rhythm is like marches, ‘one and two and’ or ‘one and two and three and four and.’ That kind of division of time makes you move ahead, forge ahead, march—‘boom, boom, boom, boom.’ That’s the push of the rhythm. And that’s why it is so nice when you combine those two feelings. Then you get a complete rhythm that marches and still relaxes.”
For Persip, performances by “Brother Elvin Jones;” an artist who “has dug very deeply into his roots from the Motherland, Africa, for his message for the drum;” epitomize these practices. “Elvin gets into all kinds of triplet feelings against the rhythms that he plays that may be in four. Amazing, man! And that’s what makes his music sound so complex. At the same time, it’s like a whole mass of rhythm coming at you, but because it’s so triplety, it is always relaxing. The first time I heard Elvin play was one of the most unique thrills that I have had in my life:”
In its most basic form, polymetric invention creates a recurring cycle of rhythmic counterpoint. Within the same time span, the basic beats of different meters cross over one another, creating syncopation and temporarily increasing the music’s rhythmic instability and tension. They then coincide with one another, resolving the tension. This relationship is simply a springboard to further exploration on the part of improvisers who grasp its implications. “Just learning rhythmic figures like two against three can lead you to do hundreds of other things” (ER). By adopting the conceptual framework of a superimposed meter, musicians gain a set of theoretical reference points, which they can continue to subdivide in different ways, then subdivide again, creating an ever-expanding “rhythm tree.” Pitches added to alternative sets of points derived from the tree produce new and complex patterns in relation to the underlying meter.
While applying these and other fundamental principles to compose varied rhythmic components, improvisers also join the components together to create phrases of different lengths.16 As a young player, one trumpeter initially practiced “making up two-bar phrases in all kinds of different ways,” an exercise he “had to work at methodically” because he neither “came from a music background” nor had “an intuitive feeling for phrasing like some players do.”17 Similarly, students in Barry Harris’s classes practice singing short rhythmic patterns (fig. 6.2) and combining them in varied arrangements to create phrases of roughly two, four, and eight measures that correspond to the common harmonic segments of jazz pieces. Arthur Rhames explains the value of such training in his own development. “I understood that there was a legacy and a tradition in the phrasing, in the bringing together of the ideas, that the great jazz musicians were playing. I knew I needed this too, in order to be able to speak the language of jazz:” He gives credit to his study of John Coltrane’s phrasing because, he says, it “allowed me to develop an order—a way—to sequence my own thoughts.” Learners eventually absorb the features of particular models for phrasing by fashioning innumerable patterns after them, developing the ability to feel and think in terms of the time spans and rhythmic configurations of the models.
Equally important is the ability to inset phrases based on particular models within different sections of progressions. Artists can reinforce a piece’s harmonic rhythm by improvising two- or four-measure phrases that are congruent with the underlying progression, or they can begin patterns in the middle of harmonic segments and carry them over into the next, “dovetailing the obvious lines of demarcation” and bringing the solo line into cross-rhythmic relationship with the progression’s structure (ex. 6.2).18 In this regard, selected points on an artist’s superimposed polymetric frame also provide targets for the introduction of larger chunks of formerly mastered vocabulary, allowing for their placement in abstract and varied rhythmic positions in relation to the meter. This may explain, in part, the effective character of passages of even eighth notes within many solos that initially appear to be on the beat but turn out, on close examination, to position themselves with assurance almost imperceptibly behind or ahead of the beat, thereby acquiring a subtle, floating quality.
By exploiting these practices, artists can imbue solo lines with dramatic, constantly alternating patterns of on-beat and off-beat accentuation, an essential feature of swing. The leader of Tommy Turrentine’s teenaged band once explained this general principle on the way home from a rehearsal by instructing Turrentine to walk with a steady pace and observe where the phrases he was carrying in his “head” fell in relation to his footsteps, noticing especially where they “came out on ‘one.’ ” Stepping on the horizontal lines, which divided the sidewalk into successive units, and on the invisible lines, which halved them, Turrentine interpreted each pair of units as a measure.
Subsequently, he discovered that the beginnings and endings of some phrases coincided with the sidewalk’s lines, falling on the strong beats, while others fell on the invisible lines or backbeats, and in between them on the off-beats. Along with clarifying the concept of syncopation, this graphic demonstration sensitized Turrentine to each tune’s unique rhythmic counterpoint in relation both to the meter’s regular grouping of beats and to the rocking motion of its dual accentuation scheme. Turrentine found the same principles of syncopation and off-beat phrasing embodied by the background riffs that he and his peers learned in order to accompany singers and other soloists.
As in the momentum of effective tunes and riffs, improvisers propel solos forward partly by beginning and ending phrases on different beats within measures. Moreover, they animate the internal features of phrases with comparable procedures. Over the span of a phrase, they produce subtle shifts of accentuation between backbeats two and four—temporarily challenging the metric structure and generating rhythmic tension—and beats one and three, reinforcing the metric structure and resolving rhythmic tension. The alternation between off-beat and on-beat emphasis creates similar schemes of tension and release (exx. 6.3a1-a2). Various techniques accomplish the same goals, each with distinctive qualities of expression. Artists may produce diverse accentuation schemes simply by varying the selection of beats or parts of the beat on which they change dynamic levels or melodic direction. They may throw different accents on the contour of a recurring gesture through rhythmic displacement, that is, by performing the gesture at different metric positions (ex.6.3b).
Articulation is another important device. Ghosting on-beat pitches in an eighth-note sequence creates de facto accents on every off-beat, increasing rhythmic tension. Reversing the procedure relieves rhythmic tension. Ken Mc-Intyre once suggested that I practice patterns of eighth notes by slurring and tonguing them in different groupings so that their accents fell in unpredictable sequences on and off the strong and weak portions of beats. Similarly, the varied application of hard, soft, and ghosted attacks can shift accents within a repeated eighth-note triplet, changing its perceived rhythmic configuration and its relative syncopated quality. Moreover, when articulated as alternating pairs of slurred pitches, the triplet figure assumes a polymetric relationship to the underlying meter (ex. 6.3c). Other essential devices include timbral change and pitch inflection, each contributing to the rhythmic complexion of phrases (exx. 6.3d1-d2).
For variety, musicians can also lightly segment a melodic line into different groupings by weighting selected pitches with embellishments or, in more substantial terms, altering breathing patterns in the unpredictable,
playful production of short rests (ex. 6.4). “Bebop is like the music of Mozart or Bach;” Fred Hersch says. “Bach will have these unbroken sixteenth-note phrases, but there are little things that talk in the music, and you have to bring them out in your performance. With bebop, you’ve also got to articulate the phrases and shape them, making variety and music out of the notes.” In a similar light, Miles Davis once advised Tommy Turrentine that players could “play simple and sound good;” if they understood how to “phrase.” Turrentine elaborates, explaining that improvising “linear or melodic” ideas is like “writing a sentence. The commas, the periods, and the exclamation points have to be very pronounced.”
Equally important is musical space, accomplished through the use of substantive rests, the unvoiced rhythmic trailers whose irregular time spans offset those of the phrases that precede and follow them. In effect, rests introduce soft accents into the solo line as its sound subsides and the rhythm section temporarily moves to the foreground of the music. Suspended over the passing beats, a rest also invites listeners to reflect upon the soloist’s most recent figure, challenging them to anticipate the entrances of subsequent figures. Musicians commonly cite Miles Davis as an inspired model for the effective use of space, which increases the potency of his phrases and heightens their dramatic quality.
Thinking in Jazz Page 23