That Jazz - Monkey Max Music and File Download

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Part I: All That Jazz: A Tour of the Basics
Receiving a rhythmic education
When you imagine the training it takes to
become a professional musician, you may think
of hours spent learning to read music, playing
scales, and practicing with a metronome to get
the sense of time.
But in fact, depending on the area of expertise,
musicians may focus on certain sections more
heavily:
� A jazz player can spend significant chunks of
practice time just mastering rhythmic combinations.
He may play scales over and over,
each time at a different speed, with different
accents and different notes grouped together.
� Music teachers assign exercises in clapping
and counting, and students compete to
see who can clap out the most complicated
rhythms. Try it for yourself by seeing how
many different ways you can clap out a pattern
over a steady 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4 rhythm
that you tap with your foot.
� Jazz drummers travel with a bagful of
rhythms. At a moment’s notice, they can
produce slow blues patterns, fast bebop
patterns, Latin rhythms (see Chapter 9), and
waltz rhythms. Using their hands, feet,
drums, and cymbals, they overlap two or
more rhythms and become one-man
machines for polyrhythms.
� Drummers and bass players need to be in
step with each other. You often see them
make eye contact during a performance as
they anticipate what’s next. Sometimes they
practice alone together, fooling around with
rhythms, finding ways to complement or
contrast.
If you’re interested in drums and drummers,
seek one of the dozens of books devoted to
modern drumming (such as Burt Korall’s
Drummin’ Men — The Heartbeat of Jazz: The
Bebop Years) and the fine art of syncopation
that is its centerpiece. Visit an online bookstore,
and you can find many drumming instruction
books with syncopation in the titles. Also, many
books by and about drummers include Art
Blakey, Lionel Hampton, and Gene Krupa. In
these books, jazz drummers explain some of
their influences and techniques.
Give the backbeat feel to any song that counts out in fours. Put the accents
on one and three, and then try them on two and four. Notice how the placement
of the beat changes the song. Many blues and jazz singers from Jimmy
Rushing to Ella Fitzgerald often stretch words so that their endings fall on
two and four, adding to the syncopated swing.
But that’s only a part of how jazz players think about the beat and where to
place accents. While swing relies partly on the backbeat, jazz players actually
vary their accents all around the beat. Within a solo, it’s common to hear a
horn player put accents in a variety of locations just before a beat, right on
the beat, or just after. Picture each beat with an oval around it. This territory
is all “in bounds” for the beat.