The special challenge of playing meaningful ideas on the guitar is to avoid mindless scales and patterns. Since it's easy for your fingers to run amuck, singing everything you
practice, both with and without the guitar, will help you focus directly on melodicism.
Melodic Formulas
To complete our process of thoroughly learning the basics of jazz
performance in modern jazz common practice, we shall now learn paradigm solo improvisational lines on everything covered above: guide-tone lines, root progressions, and the various cadences and blues.
We begin with the common cadences, and then cover some with colorful melodic tensions, before learning a few very hip blues lines that go with the blues styles we learned earlier. Since the final blues line is entirely based on the most common (minor) blues scale, it will work on both the major or minor blues tunes.
After learning these lines as written, improvise on them. Use them as a basis for vocabulary, while re-forming them into your own style, beginning by merely leaving certain of the notes out or by slightly altering their
rhythms. You have to invite new vocabulary into your existing story. To help in facilitating this, return to the playback and play one role against the play-back of another. Also, learn them in different rhythmic styles, and experiment with inflections.
Swing
Swing rhythm is the traditional regional rhythmic style of continental United States. Swing rhythm is written in 4/4 meter but is played using a 12/8 or triplet subdivided feel. The slower the tempo, the more marked this subdivision is felt.
A prerequisite to creating swing feel is that every attack be placed precisely within this 12/8 continuum. We can see below how a chromatic targeting group is normally notated vis-à-vis how it should be interpreted.
Written
Interpreted
To practice playing swing feel, begin by running choruses in which you improvise swing eighth-note lines with a metronome. Imagine a 12/8 continuum. Start by accenting the first eighth-note of each triplet
subdivision, and then shift your accents off of the beat to the third eighth- note in each triplet subdivision; then practice mixing accents. While this will take time and practice to perfect, it is nonetheless only a starting point
towards achieving a good sense of swing feel, since there are many variants and styles.
Each rhythmic style, moreover, has its own definitive generic rhythms, basic rhythmic patterns for each of the most common jazz rhythmic styles— what we have been learning.
Start with dead center time and go from there.
Practicing Time Placement
Time-placement is learned by listening to (and playing with) master jazz artists, and they don't always play dead-center metronomic time. Instead, they often focus on locking into the drummer's ride cymbal, for example. Individual artists’ rhythmic stylistic approaches vary greatly. Some Harlem black bands’ horn players consistently play even eighth-note feel over a swing rhythm section style. On the other hand, Joe Henderson and Kenny Durham would often use a swing feel over an even eighth-note rhythm
section feel. All other variant approaches in between are done as well—often within a given phrase by a single player. There are also a variety of styles in which you lay back a bit, or play slightly on top (ahead) of the time.
However, in your practicing, start with dead center time and go from there. If you can do this consistently, you can then more easily learn to increase your placement control by placing lines ahead or behind the time at will. Placement consistency can be improved systematically in the woodshed in a relatively short time with a little metronome treatment in swing
subdivision. Jazz rhythm shares a salient characteristic with African rhythm: duple against or within triple meters. There are always several such dualities co-existing in any master jazz performance. In improvising lines, we place notes dependent upon which of these dualities we wish to be in at a given moment, which can change on a dime.
Feel 4/4 straight-ahead swing time on beats two and four—unless it's real fast, and then think in a normal half-time (on beats one and three). Notice that the very count-off by the band-leader involves finger-snapping on beats two and four. This is because in swing feel the strong beats are reversed from the normal Western 4/4 meter in which beats one and three are the strong beats. It only takes a little getting used to once you have this
understanding. This turned-around effect is not present, however, in most other rhythmic styles, such as samba and funk, which tend to maintain the usual hierarchy of metric stress. If you must tap your foot, do it inside your shoe so it can't be seen or heard.
Articulations & Inflections
Inflections and articulations are the most overlooked aspects of jazz education.
Jazz Inflections, Articulations, Gestures, and Vibratos Jazz articulations, inflections, and vibratos are, in addition to African rhythm, the salient characteristics which distinguish it from the rest of Western art music. They are best learned through an ongoing process of transcription. They then must be internalized to the point where they are incorporated into the very fabric of your personal style. There are as many ways of using any of them as there are individuals to play them. These characteristic effects can be combined at will. Below is a short list: Bend
Scoop
Fall-Off: lip, half-valve, chromatic evaporating Rip
Portamento/Glissando Tremolo, Shake, Trill Doodle Tongue
Growl
Flutter Tongue Grace Note Vibrato(s)
The Blues Scale
The Blues Scale is based on the Pentatonic Scale, which contains five of the Blues Scale’s six notes.
The blues effect is created through the superimposition of blue notes (minor third, flatted fifth, and minor seventh) over a diatonic (containing only notes in a given key) major or minor key. There are many types of blues scale frequently in use, both major and minor. Perhaps the most
ubiquitous is the Minor Blues Scale, comprised of pitch classes 1, b3, 4, b5, 5, and b7: C, Eb, F, Gb, G, and Bb. You could think of this pitch collection as a C minor pentatonic scale with the b5 (Gb) added:
Minor Blues Scale
Blue notes can be played over virtually any harmony. Try, for example, sounding the Cm Blues Scale over every C chord (C, Cm∆, Cm, C7, C ∆#5, and so on, one at a time).
We have a 12-bar blues based on this scale for you to learn below. It will work over both the major and minor blues progressions in this book.