You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - 7 Ways to Swing - #8

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

It's another solo Peter episode (and the first "list of 7" episode of 2019), where Peter shows off some easy ways to help you swing on any tune. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hey, Adam, are you back yet? Hey, Adam, you still gone? Where you had, little buddy? Where you had a little buddy? Where you had a little buddy? Where that big guy? I'm Peter Martin, and I am not Adam Bannis. This is the you'll hear it podcast, Daily Jazz Advice, coming at you. Coming at you strong and solo in 2019.

Adam is still gone this week. We are going to be making fun of him, mocking him as much as possible, but still giving you that daily jazz advice that you've come to love and expect. My name is Peter Martin. I am here at the piano, not in the pod cave, but adjacent to the pod cave. I have my mid-morning snacks here,

so I'm very excited about that. Hashtag plant-based for 2019. Today we are talking about, hey, Peter, what are we talking about? I don't know, buddy. I'm going to give you seven ways to swing. And I want you, as I'm giving you these seven ways to be thinking about,

how many ways has Adam Manis given you, to swing, maybe zero. So I'm going to be seven ahead of them, just putting that out there. Okay, so swing, we talk about this all the time, you know, in jazz, and it kind of becomes this elusive thing, and it shouldn't be, because this is the foundation of what we do. This is kind of like saying, I have an American accent, I have a Canadian accent, I have an Australian accent, I have, you know, those are all for speaking English, of course. Maybe you speak French. I have a French accent. I have a southern French accent. You know, this is just sort of how we do what we do, how we talk, how we tell our story, sort of the foundation. And look, it's not the only

way, the only kind of groove or accent that we use in jazz, but it's a very fundamental one to many of the ways that we play this music. So we want to have a kind of a good handle on it, but I want to hopefully demystify it too a little bit. This is not some elusive thing that you can't learn to do. You absolutely can learn to do it. And most of you that think you're not swinging probably already are. You might need to work on it. So, I'm gonna give you seven ways to swing as sort of examples of ways to get into it. But this doesn't need to be that difficult is what I'm trying to say. Okay, number one, syncopate.

Okay, now what is syncopation? We talked about this a little bit yesterday with the comping patterns, but this is just about the juxtaposition, the rhythmic resolution of the upbeat and the downbeat. So if I'm playing over a B-flat blues, a one, two, three, four. Like just starting that phrase, One, two, three, four. I'm starting on the downbeat, but I'm accenting the upbeat.

So I'm starting on the down of one, and then the upbeat of two. So I'm just playing a simple eighth note line. And look, I played four different ones because it doesn't matter what notes I play, it's about the rhythm. So that's just all eighth notes. But when we accent, we can bring out some syncopation.

So I'm just going to accent that second note, with that second eighth note. One, two, three, four. And then I did it again. When did I do it? One, two, three, four. On the end of four, okay? One, two, three, four.

Okay? So this first way is just about accenting the upbeat on simple eighth notes, right? And you don't want to do this every time. That'll be corny. Like if you go, that's corny, right? But if you do it at selected time, and you can practice this like,

this one two a one two three four where you just play continual eighth note lines it's hard it's hard to make that sound good but it's a good exercise and eventually you know you'll have that kind of a sound and be able to incorporate that into what you're doing okay that's number one number two and our seven ways to swing is going to be listened now this is normally number number one, but I actually forgot to say it number one. So today it's number two. But that doesn't mean that it is not of number one importance, as always. And really, this kind of listening, I think, to learn how to, you know, really to be a way to swing is about listening and playing along with the recording. So so many great examples that you could listen to. Mid-morning snack,

thank you very much. You're going to want to concentrate, though, on things that you really think are super hard swinging. You know, things that come to. of mine are like Paul Gansavis solo on the Duke Arlington Live in Newport. That just popped into my head. Winton Kelly's solo on Freddie Freeloader on Miles Davis. But it could be something that's not 50 years old also. It's whatever you think is really swinging. You're going to want to listen to it a lot, really concentrating on the groove, because that's ultimately what swing is. And then playing along with the recording, just concentrating on the swing and the groove. So if you're a horn player, that's going to be like learning a solo. Maybe you just learn one chorus of a solo. But you play along with the recording and, you know, really pump up the volume or get the

headphones going or something so that you can hear yourself playing along with it, but you're mainly hearing the recording. And what you're trying to do is match from a rhythmic standpoint. You're not even, I mean, you're trying to play the right notes too, but you're mainly just kind of rhythmically and timing trying to match what's going along with the recording and then repeating that over and over again. If you're a pianist, maybe learn some comping rhythms, even if you don't know the exact chords, and play that along with, you know, a great pianist that you like and you think is really swinging. But basically, it's just listening, but concentrating on that element, because just like

learning a language, learning an accent or whatever, we want to learn to imitate and then talk along with it and compare ourselves. And doing it in real time while you listen to a great recording, there's nothing like it. Okay? So that's number two. Number three of our seven ways to swing, and this is to practice on. one note. So what do I mean by that? Let's go back to our B-flap blues, or let's go to E-flat blues, just for a little bit of variety. Okay? So you're going to take a temple, and this can be any

temple that you're going to want to swing at, and should be different temples and work this into your practice routine, and you're going to play a number of choruses where you're only playing one note. So if I do a E-flat blues about here, one, two, three, four. So if you can make one-note swing, you'll be on your way. You're going to want to take rhythms that you hear. Now, obviously, you don't have any kind of melodic situation or even harmonic tool to be able to use. You just have the rhythmic tool to be able to swing.

And, yeah, if you're a pianist, you can kind of cheat by playing a bass line and stuff. But look, I'll do it with just like one note. One, two, three, four. But what this will do is start to kind of force you into coming up with rhythmic phrases that are swinging, that are right in the time, that have some interesting syncopation, accents,

and all those kind of things. You can do it at a faster tempo. One, two, one, two, three. Okay? Now, of course, you can extend this on. This will be kind of bonus where you take two notes. One, two, a one, two, three. Okay, but really just one note is the place it starts.

And especially those slower temples, a one, two, three, four. That's where it's at, okay? So that is, what was that number three? One, two, three. Yeah, practice on one note. Okay. of our seven ways to swing, rhythmic precision. Okay, this is so important and no matter what you play,

no matter how many notes, no matter what tempo, no matter what style, this is where it's at. You know, for really for any groove, this is important, but for swing especially because if you think about how it feels, there's a certain tension in that precision. Dink, k, k, k, k. It's not the kind of groove where it kind of comes and goes with the volume, like if you play quality,

or you slow down a little bit or there's swells and you push forth. No, it's a, boom, it's a math, there's a mathematical element to it, a robotic element, but in a positive way, right? So whatever you play within that groove that's already there has to be rhythmically precise. You can bend it and pull it back and forth, but that underlying precision's there. So even if I go, if I go into that 60th note accent of thing, it's got to be not

you know where it's just slowing down or speeding up even the slightest bit it's got to be right in there I shouldn't have said robotic you don't want it to sound robotic but it has to be precise there has to be that underlying

okay so play with rhythmic precision of course practicing with a metronome is going to help you a lot with that number five of our seven ways to swing play with confidence okay this is so important because as you're practicing all these different

ways as you're learning solos, playing along with the recordings, playing with rhythmic precision. The swing feel is a very confident feel. So you can't go in kind of meekly peeking around the corner. You've got to just put your foot all in it. You've got to jump right in it. So even if you're playing some dipping. Play it confidently. There's a swagger with swing usually that needs to be there and you have to play confidently. And if you don't really feel confident, fake it. And because it's It's just an important part of the sound. It's not a meek kind of sound. Now I know it's kind of playing loud and ignorant there,

which is the easiest way to demonstrate it. But even if you're playing, you know, soft, there's still that confidence needs to be there. Okay, so that's a really important one. That's one, two, three, four, five in our, one, two, three, four, five, in our seven ways to swing. So we got two more.

Okay. Number six, use offsets. Now, this is something that people comping, piano, guitar, drums really think about, and especially at the kind of slower. temples can be very effective and you know a lot of times we think about them in terms of triplets so if we've got one two three four that kind of temp so I'm playing all eighth notes but then now I'm going to some triplets so if I go

to triple and do use an offset with the triplet there's a number of different ways one two three one two three two three two you could just offset you know two three or just two or just three or just one well just one would just be quarter notes, I guess. That's like playing with confidence, right? But you're offsetting, you're just like, but that gives you an opportunity then to resolve things. And you can do the offsets with the eighth notes too.

So that's using offsets. I don't know if that's an official term, but that's what I'm calling it. Okay, so that's six. Number seven, so this one is, of our seven ways to swing. This is wear a scarf. I don't know if you guys are familiar with,

hashtag jazz scarf. But that's been trending the last few weeks. And I'm not sure, but I did do some episodes wearing a scarf. I actually played a gig recently in a cold venue in Chicago. Well, it was cold one of the nights where I had to wear a scarf. And I was kind of swinging that night. I'm not going to lie. So we're going to say number seven, this is kind of not part of our satisfaction guarantee

that we usually have it to you'll hear a podcast, but wear a scarf. You can try it out and see what you think. Okay. So hope you enjoyed today's episode. You know, this is number two at the piano this week by myself, and it's a little bit dictatorial, a little bit of a lesson. So if you like this kind of thing, this is what we do here at Open Studio all the time. Feel free to come check us out at openstudio network.com.

We've got a number of lessons, piano, bass, guitar, vocal saxophone. I've got a number of different lessons, and this is kind of how we do it, you know? So we hope that you'll check us out for the new year for some reference learning materials for you. And until tomorrow, you'll hear you. Thank you.