Thinking in Jazz

by Berliner, Paul F.

  Alternatively, artists may adopt yet another thematic approach that is distinguishable from the motivic treatment of successive patterns. Max Roach, for example, sometimes finds it useful to emphasize a discrete phrase by periodically “coming back to it or going away from it” during a solo (ex. 8.15).13 In the context of a single ongoing melodic line, a related maneuver is “double backing,” occasionally leading the evolving line “back over” an earlier phrase component at its former pitch level or in a different octave (exx. 8. 16a-b). Through diverse practices of repetition and variation of discrete elements from phrase to phrase, soloists convey a sense of both continuity and closure in their development of particular musical ideas before going on to others.

  At the same time, improvisers are concerned with striking an appropriate balance between repetition and variation, and they find a fundamental paradigm in the melodies, texts, and horn riffs of the blues. “Ideally, the phrase would go something like this,” Chuck Israels says. “ ‘Going to Chicago; can’t take you. Going to Chicago; can’t take you. Nothing in Chicago a girl like you could do.’ It’s as basic as that. The first time you make a statement, whatever it is, its importance is not known [to the audience]. The second time you make that statement, its importance is clear because you repeated it.... As soon as you start it the third time, they’re asleep if you don’t finish it differently.”

  Israels argues that, typically, repeating a figure twice is enough unless the artist changes one or more of its elements the third time. On the other hand, artists may repeat an improvised four-bar phrase three times within such structures as the blues, because “at least the changing tension of the phrase against the harmony gives it some variety.” Musicians can guide invention with comparable principles within the framework of multiple choruses and extended harmonic forms by moving through a series of different motivic sections. One phrase introduces a new idea, the next phrase imitates it, the next varies it, “then the next one is a wrap-up of that. Then there’s something else,”14

  Other designs can be equally effective. In contrast to using vocabulary patterns motivically, soloists use them as construction units of new extended ideas in which the identity of the original patterns is fleeting or obscure. The interest and logic of the constantly changing melodic-rhythmic shapes of such creations lie in their “continuity, smoothness, contours, note choices, and placement of rhythmic accents” and, generally, in their imaginative interpretations of, and complementary relationships to, the underlying chords.15 In negotiating a blues progression, for example, soloists could lead an evolving line at the end of the fourth bar from the third of the C7 chord to the flatted seventh of the F7 chord. This follows the logic of the changing chords with smooth chromatic movement, granting them “permission” to enter the second chord (HO).

  Once within the second chord’s tonality, players create different contours, drawing upon various conventions to convey an impression of their ideas’ completeness. Familiarity with the most basic techniques lends a bit of assurance to the soloist’s performance. Artists may, for example, end phrases with the pitch on which they began or on its octave equivalent. A phrase’s initial pitch provides an easily remembered goal or target for the phrase’s formulation. Similarly, an artist can establish relationships between consecutive phrases by using the preceding phrase’s closing pitch or its octave equivalent as the opening pitch of the following phrase (exx. 8.17a-b). “Working off of” a single pitch, constantly leaving it and returning to it, is another common maneuver, which one player describes as a “melodic pedal” (LG).16

  An improviser may also provide a sense of continuity and closure to sections of long twisting melodies by delineating a particular interval for exploration, creating varied kinds of melodic motion within its boundaries before proceeding to another interval and working it (exx. 8.18a-b). Different melodic concepts commonly underly an artist’s ventures. When Josh Schneider thinks “vertically,” he conceives of “each chord as a separate tonality for the duration that it’s happening in a song and play[s] different kinds of intervals within it.” Sometimes, he says, “I work on certain ways of getting through the chord changes with particular intervals I want to incorporate in my playing.” At other times, he conceives music “horizontally, [thinking of] going, say, from the third of a minor chord to the third of the dominant chord and making a line that passes through them.” In a similar vein, a satisfyingly effective procedure involves weaving in and out of the guiding model of a short step progression, so that the melodic accents of a phrase create the strong motion of an ascending or descending scale pattern (ex. 8.18b).17

  As in the case of short call and response formats described earlier, artists may create a sense of balance and continuity within the larger designs of long consecutive phrases by remembering and using phrase length itself as a model (ex. 8.19). Alternatively, players develop ideas by inventing consecutive phrases, each slightly longer than the one before, as if an outgrowth from it (ex. 8.20). Such practices also produce the effect of varying the phrasing of melodies in relation to the progression, which, as described earlier, can alter the selection of pitches from the underlying chords and suggest grouping alternative vocabulary patterns into composite phrases. In other instances, soloists convey a sense of development by gradually expanding the range of consecutive phrases (ex. 8.21).

  Artists exploit other schemes as well, derived generally from jazz language use and embodying fundamental principles of tension and release. One involves producing such “essential” qualities of African American music as swing by manipulating a line’s rhythmic feeling, for example, playing just behind or just ahead of the beat before returning to on-beat performance and resolving the phrase’s rhythmic tension.18 Alternatively, they create interest and suspense by improvising melodic phrases that cross over barlines and assume abstract rhythmic relationships to the meter. Concerning the application of such techniques to solo development, Grachan Moncur once told Gary Bartz that “one way to improvise was to think as if your instrument was a bass. You follow chords and connect them, add a few non-chord tones, play a little more rhythmically, and then you start to solo” (exx. 8.22a-b). Performers also engage periodically in “harmonic syncopation” by subtly offsetting pitch selection from the piece’s structure, drawing on pitches that either anticipate the following chord or delay the preceding chord’s resolution.19

  Similar to the dynamism created by general movements between off-beat and on-beat figures, and outside and inside harmonies, are the general effects of movements creating other contrasts: for example, between increased and decreased rhythmic activity, inflected and uninflected pitches, and registral ascents and descents. Each produces schemes of tension and release, ultimately imbuing inventions with a sense of flow. So, too, does the progression among such different musical events as lyrical phrases; driving, finger-generated patterns; intricate chromatically embellished lines; swinging bebop gestures; and diminished chord patterns that depart from a prevailing meter (exx. 8.23a-b).

  Initially, the qualities of logic that define nonthematic formulations can be more difficult to grasp for learners than those presented by motivic treatments.20 While imitating their idols, students gradually absorb models for these elusive attributes, experiencing periodic breakthroughs of self-awareness that provide encouragement. When, as a young player, I first copied Clifford Brown solos, learning their every pitch was taxing. After many months of study, however, not only could I generally grasp new phrases more quickly, but, after hearing their opening fragments, I could envision logical—that is, effective—possibilities for their extension or amplification. Guessing where the next several pitches might go and trying them out, I listened further to the recording and found that I had anticipated Brown’s maneuver correctly in some instances. In others, I was incorrect for the passage at hand, but a phrase comprising the precise alternative occurred at another point in the solo or in another solo altogether. This newly acquired ability to predict the direction of i
mprovised melodies reflects increasing familiarity with an idol’s pattern of vocabulary usage and a more general sense of the musical logic of the jazz idiom gained through intensive studies of many artists.

  Barry Harris’s exercises also prepare students to appreciate comparable aspects of improvisation. At workshops, after teaching students several discrete patterns compatible with seventh chords and drilling them in the sequential application of each over the eight-bar “Rhythm” bridge, Harris places additional demands upon them. They must construct “new bridges” by selecting four of the phrases and performing them each time in a different order. Within the compositional bounds Harris provides, students cull the precise skill of making selections rapidly from a limited store of optional patterns and placing them appropriately within a progression, one musical statement to a chord. “That’s how the music works,” Harris advises them. Because Harris has cleverly selected patterns for the drill that work well in every combination, with each trial, students absorb their complementary qualities.

  Other aspects of the requirements of musical logic, whether created through motivic or through nonmotivic approaches, likewise harken back to the wisdom of the rigorous training of emerging artists. Disciplined practice to master the instant absorption and reproduction of phrases from recorded solos also cultivates the ability to precisely imagine ideas and immediately recreate them.21 In a sense, this call and response interaction with idols on recordings represents a general model for the very process of improvising in which soloists must constantly respond to their own phrases, whether repeating or transforming them. Additional exercises that extract elements from a mentor’s phrases for the invention of new patterns by analogy teach novices the most basic skill required for developing ideas, the ability to carry over selected material in the formulation of successive phrases.

  These procedures depend on the agile handling of multiple activities: conceiving, articulating, and remembering ideas. These are no mean feats for beginners. In one class, a teacher arbitrarily stopped the solos of students and requested that they perform their last phrase again. When they could not manage this, he chastized them for being “like people who don’t listen to themselves while they speak.” Aspiring improvisers must cultivate impressive musical recall in both aural and physical terms if they are to incorporate within their ongoing conversation new ideas conceived in performance.

  Furthermore, while they are performing their ideas, artists must learn to juggle short- and intermediate-range goals simultaneously. To lead an improvised melodic line back to its initial pitch requires the ability to hold a layered image of the pitch in mind and hand while, at the same time, selecting and performing other pitches. The requirements of this combined mental and physical feat become all the more taxing if, after improvising an extended phrase, soloists decide to manipulate more complex material, developing, perhaps, its middle segment as a theme. In all such cases, they must not only rely on their memory of its contour, but their muscular memory must be flexible enough to locate the segment’s precise finger pattern instantly within their motor model of the phrase.

  Taking good advantage of the latitude that the practice room affords them, performers devote much of their time there to experimenting with these options. Improvising by starts and stops, they develop the ability to formulate credible ideas in jazz and to develop them—carrying their part of the conversation forward—over increasing stretches of time. With growing skill and assurance, their goal is to control evolving lines of thought over an entire solo, minimally one chorus in length.22

  Toward such ends, students practice applying themselves to longer progressions, using the same operations Harris recommends for fashioning new “Rhythm” bridges. Lonnie Hillyer, a former protégé of Harris’s, once taught me a number of discrete phrases that fit different parts of a blues. He subsequently asked me to improvise complete solo choruses by making different selections from them. As Hillyer intended, this exercise led me to practice further options. Students soon realize that they can create comparable exercises for themselves within different structures by extracting from favorite solos different patterns that “work well together,” creating unique formulations from them (ex. 8.24). Of course, from Harris’s and Hillyer’s standpoint, these are but preliminary exercises preparing students to create viable constructions from complementary phrases of their own. Such drills enable students to absorb the larger dimensions of harmonic form at the same time as they gain experience conceptualizing and manipulating ideas in relation to them.

  Ultimately, however, youngsters must also learn various skills associated with the overriding aesthetic principles that guide the activities of advanced artists. These involve mastery over expressivity, over the shaping and pacing of ideas, and over any referential meanings that musical patterns have acquired in the jazz tradition.23 Improvisers illuminate these principles with perhaps the richest of their language metaphors, storytelling, whose multilayered meanings have been passed from generation to generation within the jazz community since its earliest days.

  Storytelling

  In part, the metaphor of storytelling suggests the dramatic molding of creations to include movement through successive events “transcending” particular repetitive, formal aspects of the composition and featuring distinct types of musical material.24 For early jazz players like Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, and for swing players like Lester Young, storytelling commonly involved such designs for multiple choruses as devoting an initial chorus to interpreting a piece’s melody, devoting the next to expressive liberties varying it, and then returning to the melody or proceeding on to other events such as single-note riffing patterns.25

  For contemporary players, who may place less emphasis on the melody, the considerations of shaping remain just as essential. Typically, when it comes time for Buster Williams to solo, he “wants to tell a story, and the best way to tell a story is to set it up.” If someone who is “very excited about something that just happened” comes running to Williams “saying, ‘Buster, blah-blah-blah-blah,’ the first thing I’m going to say is, ‘Look, wait a minute. Calm down and start from the beginning.’ ” Williams’s plan is the same for solo work. “Start from the beginning,” he advises. “It’s also like playing a game of chess. There’s the beginning game, the middle game, and then there’s the end game. Miles is a champion at doing that. So is Trane. To accomplish this, the use of space is very important—sparseness and simplicity—maybe playing just short, meaningful phrases at first and building up the solo from there.”

  Similarly, Kenny Barron tries “to start the solo in a way that’s sparse or low key” so that he has “somewhere to go, so that the solo can build.” From listening to Dizzy Gillespie when he performed in Gillespie’s band, Barron learned how to “save” himself in his playing. “You don’t have to play everything you know every minute,” Barron says.

  You can leave some spaces in the music. You’re not going to start off a solo double-timing. You start off just playing very simply and, as much as possible, with lyrical ideas. And as the intensity builds, if it does, your ideas can become a little more complicated. They can become longer. The way I look at it is that you’re going to start down so that you have somewhere to go. It can build to different points in different parts of the solo. It’s hills and valleys. That’s what it is anywhere. There are certain sections of the tune which build harmonically and suggest that the intensity should also build at that particular point. That’s a very natural thing to happen, and what you play will always build there. Other times, it’s a matter of wherever it occurs, wherever you feel it coming. It could happen in different spots within the tune at different times.

  A related feature of storytelling involves matters of continuity and cohesion. Paul Wertico advises his students that in initiating a solo they should think in terms of developing specific “characters and a plot.... You introduce these little different [musical] things that can be brought back out later on; and the way you put
them together makes a little story. That can be [on the scale of] a sentence or a paragraph.... The real great cats can write novels.” Wertico expresses admiration for the intellectual prowess of these players. Throughout a performance, they creatively juxtapose ideas that they introduced in their initial “character line,” and at just “the right time” in their story, they can “pull out” and develop ideas that they “only hinted at” earlier in the performance but have borne in mind all along. “That’s what’s really fantastic about a solo,” Wertico maintains.

  To develop the skills of expert storytellers, artists find it essential to devote some practice time to improvising under conditions that simulate formal music events, thereby imposing maximum constraints upon performances. Negotiating a composition’s structure as “one cohesive string,” with each chord leading to the next in strict rhythm, they formulate complete solos, pausing but momentarily to reflect on their inventions. “To learn to play a song better,” Art Farmer would “work on its chords, chorus after chorus, trying to play whatever came to mind. Even if it didn’t come out right, I’d keep playing,” he says. “At certain times, it’s not good to stop.”

  Musicians commit themselves to the rigors of developing the ideas that occur to them at the moment, cultivating powers of concentration upon which larger-scale invention depends. “After a lot of practice, you find that the phrases just begin to fall in the right place,” Harold Ousley recalls. “You are able to play a whole chorus of phrases together, and you are ready for the next chorus. The more you do it, the smoother and the easier it gets. When you begin to feel proficient at this, you feel a certain sense of freedom, and you get the inspiration to really get into your horn and to try out different things. There’s a great excitement about that.”