You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 5 Ways to Tighten Up Your Time

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

Music is like comedy - timing is everything! Today, Peter and Adam provide some tips on how to make sure you're always locked in.5 Ways to Tighten Up Your TimeMetronome practicePractice more slow temposPractice starting and ending your phrases in different placesPractice with recordingsListen and count your way through drum solosBONUSIn light of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, we understand that money is tight for a lot of people right now. That's why we've decided that for the duration of this crisis, we'll be running a Choose What You Pay campaign at Open Studio. Choose whichever course you want and then let us know how much you're willing to pay - that's it. For more info, click this link.Interested in more music advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase. And be sure to check out our All Access Pass - every course from Open Studio on every instrument.Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Peter. Hey, how's that? Not, that's not great. It needs to be tightened up. Bam. I'm Adam Mace. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear podcast.

Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Coming at you today, sponsored by Open Studio. Go to Open Studiojazz.com for all your jazz lesson needs. Hear from one of our members here. Hey, this is Rob, long-time member of Open Studio. Started out with the trumpet pack with the Sean Jones pack and then realized that I need to get my piano chops together. And I said, what the heck? So I'm just going to get the all-access pass

and now tooling around, listening to all kinds of great players and learning something from every one of them, no matter if they're on my instrument or not on my instrument. So thanks, guys, and keep up the great work. Go to you'll hear.com to leave us your speakpipe and tell us your open studio story. Thanks for that.

And what are we talking about today? We are talking about five ways to tighten up your time. And I got to tell you, that was a little bit of our dramatic usage of our advanced acting skills. I would say. That was hard for me. How many takes did that take me? It took you a while because you just can't not play to the click.

I mean, you've got to have good time. I don't like playing to the click, but yeah, it just feels weird to not be tightened up with your time. So we're hoping to give you guys some ways to do that. That's right. So we have five different ways, like really actionable suggestions you can take to work on your time, strengthen your sense of pulse, and really strengthen how you feel your way through the music. because time isn't really something that works if you're counting. Like we don't want to be robotically counting in our...

One e and a two e and a three e and a swing. Four e and a five e. No. The best way it works is to learn the language of the rhythm and be able to live in it in a way that you don't get lost, that you can feel your way out of it, even if you don't know where one is sometimes. Yeah.

Now, I got a question for you. I don't think we've ever talked about this, but are you of the mindset of once you tighten up your... time, you've got it for the rest of your life, for the rest of your career, or do you think this is like an ongoing maintenance situation? Wow, what a leading question. It is. Well, no, no, it's two choice. I'm leading you to two different choices. I think that the gains that you make can stay for a while, but that it's always a battle to work at it and to stay fresh with it. And I mean, it's really like everything else with learning music. It's like there's so many nuances to this that

we can always be working on it. I mean, you know, I'm always trying to like expand what I I can do in odd time signatures because I'm just not naturally drawn to that. Yeah. But I'm in situations all the time where I have to play in seven and nine and things like that. So I have to get better at that. And so for me, like right now, that's what I'm working on. See, I think it's kind of a combination. And I think that those areas, like what you're talking about, things that you're not familiar with are comfortable with,

you can take what you already have in terms of a solidness with time and your understanding. And so I would say, I don't know, this is a little, I guess, controversial because I've heard, People write and talk about this different ways. To me, that once you get your time together, it's sort of like riding a bicycle. You never forget. And that you take that skill with you. But yes, as you go into new areas going up a hill, going off road or whatever, you need to adapt that general skill of being able to balance on a bicycle, which you can kind of keep from muscle memory. That's the way I like to think of like, once you get good time, you can always have good time.

But you need to learn to apply it in different situations. That's exactly right. But your ears should be, like, you should be in a better position if you follow some of these things in practice. I mean, look, and all this is just practicing. These are five ways and there's probably 50 other ways. The main thing is to take some stick to a routine and then acclimate your ears so that you can hear when you're going out of time. That's right. So that as you go into new situations, like your ear becomes the barometer for whether or not your time needs to be tightened up on the spot.

I think that's great. Yeah. Listening is the key always. So let's start with our very first. example here of things you can do to tighten up your time. The first is metronome practice. And this is a tried and trusted and trusted and trusted and accrusted and accrued and a crusted technique. It's a crusty technique, but it's tried and true. Across all genres of music, there used to be, remember these rumors of people being like, don't practice with the metronome because

you're going to lose your feel? That's right. That's the same people like, don't use a microwave oven. You're going to get, well, maybe that was true. I don't know. Oh, boy, dark on that one. No, metronome practice, in my personal experience, has always helped my time get better, even when playing with people, and especially with things like feel, because I'm more confident in where my beat is and I can mess with the field even more. Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing that we do as jazz musicians is start practicing on two and four. I know as classical musicians, you might start out with a quarter note, the half note, or even a whole note. But as jazz musicians, when you start out, you kind of want to get used to replicating that high hat,

that swing pattern on the drums. So I'm going to set a click here at 100 beats per minute. So we would think of this as one. One, two, two, three. Oh, one, two, three, four. Shubba-de-do-bap-b-b-d-le-bop. Right. That's how we're thinking of it.

That's right. High-hat sign. So that's the first thing you can do to practice in a very basic way as a jazz musician to kind of get the feeling of a rhythm section in your playing. And I like to do, I remember doing a lot of metronome practice, even over technical exercises, scales, and would start, once I kind of learned the two and four thing,

I would put that in there as part of my practice as well. So it doesn't have to just be when you're improvising or playing a tune. Awesome. So as you get better at this, though, you can do less and less. Like, I actually love to practice with the metronome on beat four. So I'm going to go here at 50 BPMs. Ooh. One, two, one, two, three.

Take a second. One, two, three, one, one, two, three. But practicing like that is a great way to see how good your time is. You know, put it at a slow tempo, put it on beat four, put it on beat two. Yeah. I have a friend who practices on the end of two only, which is like. Ooh, that's tough. That's tough.

That's fussy. That's fussy. Yeah. Or the end of four? Man, that's when stuff gets real. And one thing that you can do, too, with that, if that's challenging for you, which it will be, to go on just the four, some of those, we used to,

you know, call it like Dr. Beat and the boss rhythm machines, remember those? Come on now. All the 80s. But, McMurray Music, Page Boulevard, hello, North County. Page Boulevard. Eight floors of Midwestern instrument sales. But you would have,

you know, you can have, well, I mean, most of the apps and stuff will do this. it would be like with the emphasis that's the way to get into doing that and then you slowly take them away or if you can adjust the volume down that's the way to get into that four

that's really cool so number two of our techniques to tighten up your time can I just add one thing I just realized this is a kind of concept I think for metronome practice in general the metronome is not teaching you to groove it's teaching you to feel the distance

between the beats and for you to self-regulate so a lot of people think as we said like oh if you practice with the metronome you're going to rely on it too much. And I don't think that's true. Because, you know, I mean, that's, yeah, if you only practice everything you ever do with just the metronome, of course,

you'll start to rely on it. But the whole thing is you're starting to learn, like it's the whole thing of like, the metronome's speeding up, the metronome's slowing down. No, the more you practice with it and learn and tighten up your time, it won't sound like it's slowing down or speeding up anymore.

Agreed. The number two thing you can do to tighten up your time is to practice more slow tempos. So a lot of us like to practice in very comfortable zone. of medium to medium up. Of course. That's the jazz musician's bread and butter.

Shut bad, do but try practicing a swing tune. Here, I got it at 50. Why don't you do a little blues here? Oh, see, no, no, no. That's not even slow. This is quarter notes, buddy. Oh. Oh.

See, oh, yeah, you were trying to cheat it up a little bit. I like this even better. This is a grown person tempo right now. So this is a case where you could. do quarter notes at first and then maybe switch it to 25 beats from a minute. You're going to try switching it? Yeah. See if I can do that here on my.

That's too easy that one. I can only go to 40 on this, unfortunately. So this can be two and four? No. Yeah, this doesn't go low enough to do two and four. How low can you go? This metronome doesn't account for Peter Martin level. Well, I came up in the Betty Carter School where it was like...

Do you want to go one? Two. Oh. Three. So let's try 40. Quarter notes. Okay. Stuff.

Yeah, man. So the thing about this kind of practice is that not only does this make you good at playing slow tempos, it actually makes you good at everything else. Yeah. It makes that recognition of the beats when they're not this slow, even easier. You know what I mean? It's like practicing on hard mode and then going to an easier form. Absolutely. So the slower that you can practice, and I would, I would, I would.

recommend that you you mix in slow tempo practice in at least your weekly practice sessions. Yeah. This is very much like putting a lot of weight on and just doing a couple of reps really slowly where you have to control. That's right. And like you get your form together. You know, you, you, everything's going to sound whack. You're going to be off. But this will, this will start to hook. This will tighten up your time. Also, not only that, it's great for time use. And that's what we're talking about today. But it's also really good for like, if you want to get your phrasing together, you can't fake the phrasing on a tempo this low. If you try to improvise a solo at 40 beats per minute,

30 beats per minute, it has to be melodic AF, or it's going to sound terrible. Right, right, right. Good. That's it. Okay, so number three on our five ways to tighten up your time.

This is practice starting and ending your phrases in different places. Yeah, this was a game changer for me when I was a young musician of really getting it together because starting a phrase on the end of a beat feels different than starting it on the downbeat. Yep.

So one, two, one, two, three, four. Three, four, one, two, three, four, one, like those little changes that I had to make or ending your phrase. So practice starting your phrase on the beat and ending it on the beat, starting it off the beat, ending it on the beat, starting it off the beat, ending it off the beat,

and starting it on the beat, and ending it off the beat. All those combinations will get you to promise line. And that's with eighth notes. Just eighth notes. Just really starting with, like, those kind of exercises get you super comfortable with how things feel to start in it. Yeah. And then it also can kind of help you to hear specific issues you may have.

I mean, like, most people, when they're like, I need to tighten up your time. They'll say, like, I have bad time. And I don't believe anybody has bad time or at least is born with bad time. Sometimes there's certain parts of your playing that exhibit bad time. But if you can hear that you have bad time, it can be fixed. And so this will start to isolate certain times when maybe you rush or you drag or you come in later or early. And it's usually situational like this, like on the beat, on the offbeat. And so this allows you to isolate those situations and to really be able to hear them and then make the adjustment.

I think it's a super important thing to practice. Number four is to practice with recordings. Now, this is important. This could have been number one. It could have been. But we're not going in order of importance. No, this is in no order of importance. But it could have been number two next to metronome practice because a metronome is a metronome.

but a human being is not perfect usually. And so if you practice to your favorite classic recordings, you're going to notice that it's human, that it's not perfectly metronomic. And that's cool because you've got to get used to that if you want to play with other people. Plus, if you listen to great recordings, it's going to be within that pro-level range anyway.

So there's not going to be a lot of variation. And there's definitely not, there's very rarely that abrupt kind of variation of tempo that we were to associate with somebody that needs to tighten up their time. But you know what we're going to be talking about here is musical shifts in tempo. where it feels like it should be leaning forward that you hear in some bands

or maybe they just lay back a section just for a second and then go back that kind of thing is crucial to practice and really what I've checked out when you really go to analyze some of those situations because they're so musical the actual change of the tempo

like we had that the other day remember we listening to two base hit because I was like I know it speeds up it actually didn't speed up hardly at all it was like it felt like it was which is the way it should feel like the actual like the really good players, there's very little variation, you know.

That's true. And then, yeah, and then that, there's such an innate sense of sort of individual time. And then when you get a great group together, a great rhythm section. I mean, look, let's talk about the bass and the drums being the foundation for this for sure. But once they're really locked in, even if they're pulling back, that doesn't mean they're slowing down or pushing ahead. That underlying beat and groove stays the same. So true, man. Bless you.

I knew what was coming. Sorry about that. You're welcome, YouTube. So that's number four is practice with recordings. And number five, our final way to tighten up your time is to listen to and count your way

through drum solos. Now I said before, you don't want to be counting when you're playing. And sometimes to do that, you have to count as you're listening to music. Pick some, like, Philly Joe

solos, some Max Roach solos, some players who have really clear and cool phrasing. Art Blake... Some younger, some more recent stuff. Tony Williams, maybe Elvin Jones. No, but I'll, Jack Dijanette.

But if you start at like sort of the classic language of jazz people, like Art Blakey, how he. Baby Dodds. Baby Dodds go all the way by Kenny Clark. No, but where Art Blakey would put his phrases over the bar line, that's a lesson in how to learn phrasing over the bar line. And if you can count your way through it and then feel it, you will never get lost on the drum solo again. No drummer will be able to throw you unless they're effing it up. And don't feel like it's cheating. Oh, if I listen to the same recording over and over again, I'm going to learn it.

I'm going to know what's happening. That's actually the way you tighten up your understanding of this and give you the confidence. Yeah, when you're in a real situation with a live drummer, you never know what they're going to do. But being able to navigate that through these great recordings is really the pathway to get there. And then the experience of doing it live on jam sessions.

And then when you've got to count, you count. But then at a certain point, you've got to kind of jump off the cliff and trust yourself with that. So we give you five actionable things you can do here. And we're going to list them again. And I want you to think about if you're practicing this week, and let's say you have five sessions that you can get in this week, do each one of these five things.

On day one, practice with the metronome on two and four, on something that's a little bit out of your comfort zone. On day two, practice a slow tempo. Again, that's just a hair outside of what you're comfortable doing. On day three, practice starting and ending your phrases on either the downbeat or the upbeat. On day four, practice with one of your favorite recordings,

trying to keep time, whether that's playing, walking with your bass player or playing drums or comping if you're a piano player. On day five, listen to one of your favorite drum solos and try to count your way through it. I'm getting a little background of music here. Yeah, I was just thinking of something, the idea of practice along with the recording,

because I was listening to this early. This is Chill, Joshua Redmond, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christian McBride, Brian Blade, Brad Meldow. That kind of stuff, especially if you want to learn it, because you can practice away from the recording. You can turn it on and then off and see,

and match up with it. Where you are, yeah, that'll start to get your time together. Yeah, you could have a friend, like, turn down the recording and then turn it back up after a couple of seconds. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, this is really one of those things, Once you commit to these concepts and then commit a little bit of time each day,

you can see some rapid progress. It's very true. You can see some rapid progress. If you've not worked on any of these things, you will progress. And there's good ways to test yourself with this stuff too. Obviously, the met you know. We got a bonus coming up in a minute. It might even be the most important one.

So please stick around. YouTube, podcast, all that stuff. We are having some fun on the YouTube. I mean, I don't want to say we're blowing up because, you know. Bro. But, you know what I'm saying? We want to ask you guys, please subscribe to this channel because we've got a lot more of this coming. But it takes a lot to put this together, but we're committed to doing it our week and our day.

Yeah, not our day. We got a lot of nice comments. We got a lot of nice comments on a lot of nice comments. No, not, no. We have a lot of nice comments of people saying like 30 seconds in, subscribe. Like, love that stuff. That's cool. Subscribe because we're going to be releasing stuff on the weekly basis for sure.

Because that's how we roll. That's right. And check out our sponsor, openstudiojazz.com when you get a chance. Yeah. Let's talk about our bonus. What is it? Okay, so this is one I think that you can do both at the, well, close to the instrument, but especially a way.

Learn to dance and go and dance. Like, you got to connect time and music. Dance is the, it's like the missing link, you know what I'm saying? So, like, listen. And this is not about necessarily dancing to jazz, whatever. Listen to dance music. There's plenty of different kinds out there all around the world. If you don't.

Learn to move your body. in a way that is within the time, and then you'll be able to apply that to your music, because when you're playing an instrument, you're just moving your body. You're really dancing on your instrument at the highest level. Yeah, and even if you're not comfortable dancing or you can't dance, like, go watch people dance.

That's right. Not me. I mean, I mean. No, but pros. Like, I remember, like, when I started playing tango music, I love playing tango music. It's one of my favorite kinds of music to play. And I went to my first Malanga,

and I watched the dancers dance to the music that I'd already kind of been listening to, and it Exactly It connected me to the music in a way that I hadn't realized before It was literally like the visualization of the music

It's beautiful It's beautiful Well Until tomorrow You'll hear it