DECONSTRUCTING CHRIS POTTER
An study of Chris Potter’s approach to jazz standards
By Jordi Ballarín
Master of Music program. Main subject: Jazz saxophone Main subject teacher: Simon Rigter
Artistic Research Question
How can I acquire a contemporary improvisation vocabulary
and improve my jazz phrasing through studying Chris Potter’s
playing, focusing on his approach to jazz standards?
4
INTRODUCTION ... 5
WHO IS CHRIS POTTER? ... 6
BIOGRAPHY ... 6
ARTISTIC PERSONALITY AND MAIN INFLUENCES ... 7
TRANSCRIPTIONS ... 9
PHRASING ... 40
PRELIMINARY CONCEPTS ... 40
ANALYZING CHRIS POTTER PHRASING ... 40
PRACTICING THE PHRASING ... 47
RHYTHM ... 51
TIME AWARENESS ... 51
TRAINING TIME AWARENESS ... 54
THE MIXED METER ... 66
CREATING LINES ... 70
RHYTHM VARIETY ... 72
SOME TIPS FOR WORKING ON RHYTHMIC VARIETY ... 74
MELODYC DEVICES ... 75
DIVIDING THE OCTAVE ... 75
INTRODUCING VARIATIONS ... 79
HOW TO USE THIS OVER TUNES? ... 81
MORE ABOUT MOTIVIC DEVELOPMENT ... 84
CREATING LINES 2 ... 86
MORE HARMONY ... 87
TRITONE SUBSTITUTION ... 87
OTHER REHARMONIZATIONS ... 90
THE Vb9, 13 CHORD ... 92
PENTATONICS AND CONSTRUCTIONS IN PERFECT 4THS ... 92
REFLECTION IN THE PLAYING ... 96
REFLECTIONS IN COMPOSING ... 104
TUNE 1: BUT IT DID NOT HAPPEN. EXPERIMENTING WITH PHRASING. ... 104
TUNE 2: ROTTERDAM BLUES. WORKING WITH DIVIDING THE OCTAVE AND RHYTHMIC DEVICES. ... 111
COMMENTS ... 116
CONCLUSION ... 118
AUDIO AND VIDEO MATERIAL TRACK LIST. ... 120
MEDIA REVIEW ... 121 LITERATURE ... 121 CDs ... 121 INTERNET ... 122
INTRODUCTION
“There is something I found out about people I really respect how they make music and how they look at things, and it is that they are opened. They are curious and keep on checking stuff out. This how they got there in the first place, because they were curious and they wanted to learn. That is what I want to do and if I am a traditionalist in any way is that I want to try to follow the same process that seemed to get my heroes to be able to play something beautiful.”
Chris Potter.
Why to choose Chris Potter as a subject for an Artistic Research? It comes from me listening to his playing and thinking: “I want to be able to do that”. To do what? To transmit the impression of being free when improvising. Playing pretty much inside the changes when I want and being able to go somewhere else if I feel like that is what the music needs, and all that in a fluent and coherent way.
Of course, the goal of the research is not playing like Chris Potter. This is not going to happen, and that is not a bad thing. The goal is to check out his playing, try to figure out for which processes he went through to play the way he does, and see how can I apply it myself, finding my own ways through. Probably some things that worked for him will not work for me, or will work in a different way, or will bring me somewhere else, and that is fine.
What I hear when listening Chris Potter play over jazz standards is a player with a deep knowledge of bebop with a very open-‐minded attitude that makes him look for new sonorities, new rhythms, new concepts to expand his playing. In this report I will put special attention on those elements that expand his playing from bebop into somewhere else. Anyway, I will always come back to jazz tradition, there is a whole world of things to learn for me there.
6
WHO IS CHRIS POTTER?
BIOGRAPHY
Chris Potter was born on the first of January of 1971 in Chicago, and moved to Columbia, South Carolina, at a very early age. His parents were not musicians but they had a fairly good and heterogenic record collection. He remembers some Western Classical music records from Bach, Stravinsky or Bartok; some blues records, The Beatles, Bob Dylan…. And also some jazz records from Dave Brubeck, Charles Lloyd, Miles Davis or Eddie Harris.
“The first music that grabbed me was the blues. My parents had some blues compilations from musicians from Chicago. Then went deep into The Beatles and was some years later that I discovered the jazz records and decided that I wanted to play the saxophone and I just kind of bugged my parents until they bought me a horn. So it was the saxophone that drove me deeper and deeper into this particular style of music but I think I always carried with me that idea that I just liked music. But of course was trying to learn to play the saxophone that I went deep into all the greats”.1
He started playing piano by him own at the age of 7 and saxophone at 10, first inspired by saxophone players like Johnny Hodges, Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins. It took a while, he says, until he understood Charlie Parker. But when he got it he went deep into figuring out how to play like him for some years.
At the age of 15 he was playing regularly in his hometown. He remembers having two weekly gigs in the same place. One with a very traditional jazz band with which he remembers as a very good opportunity of learning how to play jazz in a traditional way; and other with a more experimental people with whom he played a more eclectic repertoire: maybe a standard and then playing free for a while and after that a Rollin’ Stone song. A prologue of the musician to come: a very opened minded player with a very deep knowledge of bebop.
In 1989, at the age of 18 years old, he moved to New York and spent one year studying in the New School and two years in The Manhattan School of Music, graduating in 1993. During these years he joined the band of Red Rodney, the trumpet player that played in Charlie Parker’s band. He spent four years playing and learning at the side of the “the guy on the Charlie Parker record”.
After graduation from Manhattan School of Music, Potter started a long series of sideman activities with many artists such as Ray Brown, Jim Hall, Dave Douglas, Mike Manieri, Dave Holland, Steely Dan or Paul Motian. Although he recognizes the influence of all the good musicians he worked with, through different interviews he emphasizes his admiration for Paul Motian, especially
Chris Potter released his firs record as a leader in 1994: Presenting Chris Potter (Criss Cross). And there had been 14 in total including his last release on 2009: Ultrahang (Artistshare), recorded with his band called Underground, with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taiborn on Rhodes and Nate Smith on drums. Through all this records we can recognize a very unquiet and curios musician in a constant search of new ways of self expression and enjoying challenging himself one way or another.
ARTISTIC PERSONALITY AND MAIN INFLUENCES
It is maybe a bit dangerous to describe somebody’s personality without knowing him, so maybe is smarter to write down what Chris Potters says about his musical identity:
“My aesthetic is based in Bird and Lester Young and Sonny [Rollins]. I want my music to have that emotional impact. What I learned from them in terms of phrasing, sound, approach to rhythm will never be outdated. I would like to basically use the same aesthetic sensibility with more contemporary harmonic and rhythmic concepts, being influenced by classical, world music, funk, rock, rap, country, whatever...digesting new ideas, new influences to keep the freshness alive.”1
I think this defines quite well what I hear when listening Chris Potter (CP) play. Is quite obvious that his main musical background is traditional jazz, especially bebop, and at the same time is a person that likes music, no matter what style. If there is something that grabs his attention he wants to check it out.
“Style is important, but it is more important to see things in common, things that speak to people in different styles.”2
In this sense, CP is a musician that wants to be influenced by a lot of different musical expressions. But the things that grabbed him at an early age seem to be the thread that connects all this influences.
Charlie Parker is probably his biggest influence as a saxophone player, his main source of bebop vocabulary:
“I always try to find a feeling of forward motion. Obviously bird found a tremendous way (…) it feels like it just has to keep going. Learning how
1 http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/musician.php?id=10384
8
With Sonny Rollins I really hear a connection in terms of phrasing, especially in the strong articulation that they both use quite often. Also some harmonic solutions make me hear a thread in between CP and Rollins or Steve Grossman type of playing.
CP often expresses his admiration for Lester Young and his ability of making beautiful music with very simple ideas and little material. Connecting with that idea, he often explains how much he learned from the works of Western Classical composers as Bach, Bartok or Stravinsky, mainly in terms of what level of complexity are you able to reach working out very simple ideas. “Complex things are just a bunch of simple things putted together”, he says.
In the documentation process I did not listen or read from CP a reference to Michael Brecker as an important influence. Maybe it wasn’t for him, but I hear clear things in common in their playing. Similar ways of timing, with a big articulation variety and similar ways of dealing with material that connects them both with Coltrane and his experimentations with the harmonic and melodic possibilities of the different subdivisions of the octave.
Being aware of all this musical and personal background of CP is very important because gives a perspective and a context to his artistic expressions that we will go through in this work and also makes me see CP playing as a very interesting subject of study by itself, but at the same time as a door by which I can connect myself with other beautiful musical expressions.
CHRIS POTTER ON STANDARD JAZZ TUNES
“Playing standards is a big thing on how do I approach everything. I don’t do it so much anymore, but that is so much in my background. And it is very often the framework that I will work whatever thing I want to work on”.5
Transcribed material from:
Woody ‘n You
• Red Rodney (1992), Then and now, Chesky Records.
Airegin
• Chris Potter (1993), Sundiata, Criss Cross.
Amsterdam Blues
• Al foster (1997), Brandyn, Laika records.
Anthropology
• Tom Cohen (1999), Digging in, digging out, Double time jazz.
Stella by Starlight
• Jim Hall (1999), the jazzpar quartet, Storyville.
Star Eyes
• Chris Potter (2001), Gratitude, Verve.
Blues Nouveau
• Jim Rotondi (2003), New Vistas, Criss Cross.
All the things you are
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngoE1hreStc&feature=related
Giant Steps
• Bootleg recording in Denmark
18
20
24
30
40
PHRASING
PRELIMINARY CONCEPTS
“A lot of times I am just working on sound and articulation. I think I spent a lot on time on this, because this is the first thing people hear, and it is a life long thing. As much there is to learn about harmony and rhythm and form there is at least as much to learn in just sound and how to get from one note to the next.”6
Normally when talking about somebody’s “sound” on the horn we are not talking just about tone quality but of a whole picture: tone quality, timing, articulation… Sound and phrasing make as able to recognize Parker, Coltrane or whatever player we know after hearing a few notes coming out of their horns. It is a substantial part of “the voice” of each player. Nobody gets the same tone out of the horn, and there are not two players that phrase exactly the same way.
We are going to categorize this concept of phrasing in 3 different aspects:
• Timing: Placement of the notes in the context of a pulse. • Articulation: Attacks and releases of the notes.
• Dynamics: The use of sound volumes.
It is worth to say that all this aspects are not absolute things in any player. They might change depending on the specific situation: The mood of the player on that moment, which piece is being played, the tempo, relation and reaction to the other players, etc.
ANALYZING CHRIS POTTER PHRASING
CP phrasing is, to my ears, directly connected with Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker, who actually was Rollins’ main influence as well, and developed it further on probably as a consequence or other rhythmical devices he implemented in his playing and that we well study with more details in the next chapter.
6 Chris Potter Master Class DVD, Roberto’s Winds, New York, 2009.
by the rhythm section. As most of the great players, he is able to play on top of the beat, of push it forward, or lay it back depending on the moment, listening to what the phrase needs. And the same thing happens with his swing feel, normally played on a quite straight way, and in concrete spots with an emphasized triplet feel.
The following example shows what looks like a constant in CP playing: Playing on top of the beat and laying back the ends of the phrases.
Example 1: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Woody n’ You.
This feeling of laying back the end of the phrases is often mixed up with a more accented swinging intention:
Example 2: Fragment of Chris Potter Solo on Woody n’ You.
7 Eighth note feel: this expression makes a reference to the placement of consecutive eighth notes in the context of a pulse and groove, and in this particular case we are talking about swing grooves.
42 going with the groove.
Example 3: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Stella by Starlight
In the next example we can hear very clearly how he is playing in the backside of the beat for a whole blues chorus and immediately changing the time feel from the beginning of the next chorus.
Example 4: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Amsterdam Blues.
Articulation
In the context of saxophone playing, articulation has mainly to do with the decisions made on how and when to put your tongue on the reed, what is know as tonguing. Articulation is very tight up with the timing, or better to say, with the time feel. The choices the player does on how to articulate the line will influence the time feel.
Traditionally, the basic articulation when playing jazz, talking about consecutive eighth notes, would be like this:
the eighth notes goes more on the straight side.
Example 5: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Blues Nouveau
In CP playing, at least in the material analyzed in this research, that is all playing over swing grooves, this is also the main articulation technique. But we find very often eighth notes lines where all the notes are articulated, in a way that reminds me a bit to Harold Land’s phrasing.
Example 6: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Stella by Starlight
This kind of articulation emphasizes a lot the straight feel of the eighth notes. It is less common in higher tempos, where is harder to play and maybe not that nice.
Of course there are many places in the middle of these two described articulation techniques and CP came out to be a very flexible player in this issue, as we can see in the following transcription of a chorus over Star Eyes.
44
Dynamics
Dynamics related to music blocks is something normally underused in straight ahead jazz, unless we are talk of ballads. We don’t hear very often crescendos or diminuendos in this music, or a whole phrase played forte and the next one pianissimo. There are always exceptions, but this is the most common situation.
In the other hand, there is and important roll of dynamics inside the traditional bebop line: the creation of accents in certain notes. This part of
a very ruff one, or one very subtle.
If we focus again in CP playing we listen a quite aggressive way of attacking the notes and very pronounced accents, that connects him again with players such as Sonny Rollins or Steve Grossman. This connection is even more clear to my ears when listening a way of phrasing some lines that I think is like a sort of trademark of this kind of playing. Putting it in to words, I am talking about arpeggios played in eighth notes or eighth note triples were the target note has a strong accent and the eighth note just before that is played staccato, in a more or less exaggerated way depending on the particular case. Described like this sounds very confusing, maybe is better just to listen to some examples.
Example 8: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Blues Nouveau.
It is also very common to listen one staccato eighth note as a kind of pick up for the note on the beat.
Example 9: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Airegin.
46
The basic of bebop language is build up from eighth note lines, combined with eighth note triplets. To emphasize target notes of the line, normally the top notes, an accent is played.
Example 10: Fragment of Charlie Parker solo over Bloomdido
This implies a certain rhythm. These rhythms are created basically by putting an accent either on a note on the beat or on a note on the upbeat, creating combinations of groups of two, three or four eighth notes. As I already said, bebop is CP’s main musical background, and this motion implied in the phrasing is a very important characteristic of his playing. Actually he has developed this because of implementing different rhythmic devices, as groups of 5, 6 or 7 eighth notes, into his playing. These groupings also create sequences of two, three or four notes, but somehow they generate different sequences that create rhythmic progressions over the bar line.
Example 11: Fragment of Chris Potter solo on Blues Nouveau
As you can see in the examples, this rhythms are implied in the line, but actually the choices of where to put the accent and how strong would this accent be can change completely the meaning of the phrase and suggest another rhythm implied on the phrase.
One of the constants that appear when listening to CP talking about his approach to music is the will of creating contrast and a feeling of what he calls forward motion. The variety on the phrasing described on this chapter is a huge tool for generating contrast: Playing on the bit, and pushing it forward or laying it back depending on the moment, emphasizing the swing feel on a certain spot an after that playing some very straight articulated eighth note line, etc. To be able to combine all this elements in an organic way makes the musical speech way more interesting.
PRACTICING THE PHRASING
“I listen and try to copy a lot of different people. I play along with records of Bird, Lester Young, Miles, Louis Armstrong, Stan Getz, Coltrane, Sonny, Wayne… And just feel how that time feel feels like. Sometimes is surprising.”8
This is the hard part when talking about time feel. I can think to play more in front or more laid back but at the end of the day you just have to feel it; it is not something that you can grab from words. I am not discovering nothing new if I say that a great way of doing that is to play the solo transcription with the
8 Transcription from Chris Potter’s Master Class in Humber College, Toronto, Canada, 2009.
48 along with the record, and try to put the feel of the phrasing into your own playing.
In this particular case, playing through CP solo transcriptions has been a very challenging thing to do. CP is a player that really masters the instrument on a technical level and I found walls I decided not to try to climb during this one and a half year research. Playing fluently as he does in the altissimo register has been the highest wall, and I decided to not deal with that in this research.
Another thing that was quite new for me was the level of activity of the tongue. Not only in the intensity of the articulation but mainly in its flexibility. My playing was based in the standard jazz articulations and I found extremely enriching to practice CP solos for this issue.
I also wrote down some articulation sequences for consecutive eighth note lines that I incorporated in my practicing routines, that I found very useful to improve my flexibility on this subject:
This can look like a pretty basic thing for a classically trained player. They are more used to train articulation flexibility, but it is something generally left apart by jazz musicians.
I did not try to practice all the lines or all the scales with all the different articulations given. But I found it an interesting thing to experiment while practicing, to listen how they change the meaning of a specific line, or a concrete scale pattern. Sometimes some of them will work very nicely and others just wouldn’t fit the concrete line. I like to thing about this also as a way of ear training, understanding it like hearing a specific “sound”, with all the implications that word has.
Also found interesting to try out articulation sequences that imply an uneven when the line doesn’t suggest it.
50
Example 13: Same articulation in a scale
This would be a clear example of how phrasing can emphasize a certain rhythmic structure, either implied on the line or not. For seeing further experimentations with phrasing go to the chapter Reflections on composition.
Rhythm is probably the central issue in CP’s playing. He really developed a very rich and complex rhythmical concept that came out of trying to implement in his bebop playing different kind of influences from other music styles.
“First I was just thinking this down the middle bebop thing, and then gradually bringing some other things in there: how tabla players would play some groups of sevens, put the triplets in a slightly different spot in the bar, how some Cuban musicians play over the bar line (…) I started to think how can I still be playing confirmation or whatever, but start to use those things. And I think started first by singing this rhythms and trying to figure out what notes could work”.9
He also names western classical composers as Bartok or Stravinsky as very important influences to develop his rhythmic concept:
“They used this groupings of notes, maybe 7 notes over a 4/4, creating all this complicated polyrhythms. This was very new for western classical music but not in other cultures like African music. But not used in this kind of odd meter, it was usually related to some kind of 4 and 6. And as far as I know this music was an important influence for Stravinsky to write The Rite of Spring”.10
Listening to CP’s discography is quite obvious that he also developed a very fluent speech improvising in uneven measures. In this research I will not go through that, I will focus on figuring out how applies the mentioned influences in a 4/4 context. We well go through that developing two concepts: Time awareness and rhythmic variety.
TIME AWARENESS
I use this concept referring to everything that implies over imposing a certain rhythm, either melodically or harmonically, which suggests a different division of time than the one implied in the given time signature. Normally these are called cross rhythms.
In CP’s playing we can listen this happen constantly. I organized the rhythms he plays attending to the length of the whole patter, distinguishing three different categories:
• Cross rhythms with the length of 5 eighth notes. • Cross rhythms with the length of 6 eighth notes. • Cross rhythms with the length of 7 eighth notes.
9 Chris Potter Master Class DVD, Roberto’s Winds, New York, 2009. 10 Chris Potter Master Class DVD, Roberto’s Winds, New York, 2009.
52
Example 1: Chris Potter playing rhythm in 5 over the first four bars of Airegin’s B part.
Example 2: Chris Potter playing rhythm in 6 over Giant Steps
Example 3: Chris Potter playing rhythm in 6 over All the things you are.
Example 4: Chris Potter playing a rhythm in 7 over Giant Steps
This last one is just happening for two bars and actually sounds more like a variation of one idea. But I am pretty sure he started to hear this kind of things by moving a rhythm like that for longer periods over the bar line.
The three examples shown above demonstrate how to play this cross rhythms keeping the harmonic rhythm. I also noticed that CP is able to anticipate or delay harmonic changes without loosing track of where is the one. I do not know if he developed this ability from this approach but for me it is definitely related.
In this example we can observe how the target notes are a bit displaced from where we normally would expect them to be. The note B in the G7b9 is in the forth beat, and the resolution in the third of Cm7 (note Eb) is delayed till the third beat of the bar. And because of the context we can notice that it is not an accident. He is perfectly aware of where he is. This is even clearer in the following example.
Example 6: Fragment of Chris Potter solo over Amsterdam Blues.
Starting from the 7th bar of the form, we could say that he is playing some different changes. Instead of F7, D7b9, Gm7, C7, he is playing A major, Ab major, G major, C7. But at the same time he is outlining these alternate changes on groups of 6 consecutive eighth notes starting on the upbeat of the third beat of F7, creating a harmonic rhythm in ¾ that lands on the first beat of the C7. Of course he is not thinking all these things on that moment, but for sure he spend some time in the practice room figuring out how to do that till reaching the point of just hearing that kind of lines during the playing.
54
The first difficulty presented when dealing with cross rhythms is to be able to feel the two different layers going on at the same time. This means to be able being able to play the 5, 6 or 7 without loosing the one of the 4/4 bar.
For these I found very useful to work out some exercises without the horn:
This would be the basic schema for a 6 eighth note cross rhythm over a 4/4. The idea is to play both rhythmic layers being able to feel them independently, so we know in which beat of which bar are we in any moment. Once we are able to do it as it is written we can try to change one rhythm from one hand to another, or play the bottom line with the feet and clap the upper one, or whatever other combination that comes to our mind. And then try to switch from one set put to the other without stop. All this kind of games will keep our brain active and will help internalize the relation in between the two rhythms.
The same approach should be done with the basic outline of fives and sevens:
We got here a lot of different possibilities of outlining cross rhythms in five, six and seven. The next step would be to be able to play these patterns over a tune without loosing track of the harmonic rhythm. For that I found very useful as a first step and exercise I got from Steve Coleman. The idea is to play the same patter over the tune, and first play only the bass notes of the changes. Once you are able to do that you can start to go to different layers, outline a certain voice leading and slowly get into improvising melodies.
60
62 On the last chorus of the last demonstration I tried to outline a complete voice leading over the changes. By doing that combined with this cross rhythm concept I started to get some melodic structures that remind me somehow to CP playing. I guess when he says that some harmonic things from his playing came out of developing these rhythmic concepts one of the things he is talking about is this. In the following example we can see a line with sort of the same approach, combining a clear outline of chord changes with a cross rhythm in 6.
Example 7: Fragment of Chris Potter solo over All the things you are
Track and time
CD2/TRACK 2
64 This is a nice way of practicing for me. Putting obligations in order to force myself to do thing I cannot do. Hopefully by doing that a lot it starts to get into my playing in a natural way. I also notice that being able to play these rhythms in a fluent and organic way creates a kind of motivic type of playing, because actually is just about moving a rhythmic sequence and displace it over the bar line.
The image showed in the following page is a fragment of an exercise written by Chris Potter himself. I downloaded it from www.artistshare.com. It shows pretty clearly that he went in this direction to work on this cross rhythm thing. Again he emphasizes that the purpose of this exercises is not to play them exactly. They should be considered as a blueprint from where start building up our own solutions to find a way through the changes and the rhythmic patter at the same time.
q = 200 Coltrane/Potter
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66
Till now we just talked about playing a cross rhythm melodically, but respecting the harmonic rhythm. Another possible thing to do is to play a cross rhythm in a harmonic sense.
The following exercises are based on this concept that I learned from Simon Rigter. The starting idea is to impose a harmonic rhythm in ¾ over the normal 4/4 structure of a song. Is possible to keep this two layers going on for as long as you want. At the beginning I started doing it during three 4/4 bars, that is the length that this game needs in order to make the match again the first beat of the two time signatures. Like this sounds very complicated, let’s see a practical example.
This is the harmonic structure of the B part of Airegin, by Sonny Rollins:
So if we change the harmonic rhythm of the first three bars of the first and second pentagram we would get the following harmonic rhythm:
CD2/TRACK 3
Looking at it can seem to be very awkward thing to do. But it actually sounds pretty normal outlined this way. In fact the only thing that is happening is that some chords are being anticipated and some resolutions are being delayed. Charlie Parker was already doing that without maybe thinking of it.
Depending on which form we want to do this mixed meter, we will not have enough chords to fill in the ¾, so we will have to add some, like we can observe in this line Simon Rigter made up over All the things you are during a lesson I had with him:
68
For now what we this is make an alternate harmonic rhythm in 3 over the 4/4. But it has not to be necessarily like that. We can think about other harmonic rhythms, and we can make them also in a not regular way.
This is an example of that over Giant Steps:
CD2/TRACK 5
Also dealing with groupings of 5 and 7 consecutive eighth notes can be approached with a harmonic implication. Basically it works more or less the same way, creating a delay in the harmonic rhythm. But is very hard to keep it for long periods, so I just worked it out in little environments like a II V I progression.
70 Example 7: Fragment of Chris Potter solo over Anthropology.
CREATING LINES
This kind of lines I found transcribing CP made me try to figure out how can I do it myself. Normally all the shapes we practice over the scales or all the lines we try to be able in every key through the horn are based on structures in two or four, and sometimes in three. And consequently these are the things that, at least in my case, come to my ear and to my fingers while improvising. So I started to look for lines and shapes in five and seven, first just adapting material I already know.
For example, a II V I line like this one:
Can become a five-‐note groupings line just by changing all that seventh chords into ninth chords:
As I said before, lines like that imply again a delay in the harmonic rhythm. In this case the line resolves to the first degree in the third beat of the third bar.
I also found quite handy to adapt some octatonic shapes in similar ways: into:
because at the end this was the tricky part for me. In the example written above the octatonic sequence is repeated five times being the last note of the last group in the first beat of the fourth bar. Notice also that harmonically, the lines implies a dominant sound that actually doesn’t resolve to the one, goes over it till reaching the next dominant chord. Lines with this kind of approach can be founded in CP playing:
Example 8: Fragment of Chris Potter solo over Airegin
Going back to where I was, talking about creating lines in fives and sevens, I came up with some kind of “rules” to be able to make a smooth transition to the real pulse. Not in a very systematic way like trying to figure out all the possibilities, just realizing some constants that made the lines work for me.
So I know that if play five eighth notes three times I need an extra passing tone to reach the one of the third bar:
Or, like we already saw, playing five eighth notes four times we get to the third beat of the third bar, or five times and the last note of the last grouping is in the first beat of the forth bar.
Or playing two times seven eighth notes, starting in the second beat and finishing on the first beat of the third bar.
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Starting in the upbeat before the one, playing three times seven we land on the third beat of the third bar.
Through these mental games I create lines over II V I progressions or turn arounds. Lines to play through the twelve keys in order to build up a bit of vocabulary based on this concept.
I think working on all this things we talked about till now in this chapter are very helpful. First, because it causes a huge enrichment of your playing in a rhythmical sense; and second, because they contribute in training the ear in a rhythmical and time perception aspect. This helps to be aware of which moment of the bar you are in every moment without needing to rely in the rhythm section for that.
RHYTHM VARIETY
Closely related to this search we just saw in the previous section, CP has developed a very rich pallet of rhythms that he uses in a very surprising way, looking for the creation of contrast in his playing.
Example 9: Fragment of Chris Potter solo over All the things you are.
The use of quarter note triples, mixed up with eighth note triplets is a trademark of CP playing. Also the use of sixteenth notes combined with triplets is very common, giving a feeling of tension.
