You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - The Secret of Syncopation - S3E45

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Peter and Adam cap off the week by answering a listener question about accenting on the offbeats. Peter also references his weekly jazz piano course Jazz Piano Method, and you can get more info on it here: https://www.openstudionetwork.com/project/pml-overview/Let us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel and leave a comment for this episode.Interested in more jazz advice? Go here to browse our catalog of jazz lessons and courses available for purchase.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram at:https://www.facebook.com/heyopenstudiohttps://twitter.com/heyopenstudiohttps://www.instagram.com/heyopenstudio See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sing. Go. Pay. Sean. I'm Adam Manis. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hearer podcast. Daily Jazz Advice coming at you.

Coming at you in the sing-song you voice here on a Friday and a snowy St. Louis. Yeah, we still have the singing from yesterday. That was fun. That was fun. And so it's still on our minds. Oh, my goodness. Okay, well, we have a question from a listener. Yeah.

And this is from Darren. This is two questions from a Darren. Not the same Darren. How do we know it's not the same one? That would be a horrible way of disguising it. Different last names that I'm not going to say on the air. No. We do not get about personal.

It's against the You'll Hear at Privacy Policy. So Darren asks, hey, I'd love to ask a question for the You'll Hear at podcast. I don't know why I had to read that sense. I had a piano teacher once who told me that to swing in your solos, apart from rhythm, you should also focus on accenting the offbeats, the end of your one and two and three counting. I try to listen for this in other piano soloing now, especially Peter's stuff, on the lessons, but I definitely hear accents on some off beats. It's more obvious when you slow it down, but there's more going on.

It's not just accenting the offbeat. More like a pattern of accents. By comparison, when I transcribe some of the licks, they tend to come off sounding robotic. Can you talk about how accents of some notes create more swinging sound and rhythmic phrasing or however you call it, we call it syncopation. We call it syncopation.

And it's an important part of swing. Yes. It's a super important part of swing. And it is not the offbeats. It's not. I mean, that's a part of the kind of describing it, but if you stop just there, you'll get, and I guess he's calling

the off-beats is what I would actually call the upbeats, right? Yeah. When I think of off-beats, I think of two and four in four-and-four, but... The upbeats are the... And two, and three, and four, and one, and two. And that doesn't sound swinging or syncopated. No, because it's not.

Yeah, not because it's you, because it's only the off-beats. So it's like, one, two, three, four. If you only play the off-beats, one, two, it starts sounding like it's the downbeats, you know, even if there's something else going on. It's corny. Yeah. It's not swinging.

Right. We just did a, we recorded a chorus called Jazz Piano Jumpstart, which is going to be available in the next few weeks. It's for very beginning jazz piano. So we talk about swing and we talk about syncopation. And one of the things we mentioned is the balance that syncopation is. It's a balance of downbeats and upbeats. Yeah.

And so the first example we use is the Charleston rhythm. Charleston, Charleston. Sorry, I'm still singing from yesterday. Right. So if we're here, one, two, three, four. So that's a very... So that's a syncopation of a phrase. Charleston 2.0.

Yeah, exactly. But that downbeat and then the upbeat on the end of two, that is syncopation. Inversely, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh. Same rhythm but flipped to where the first beat that I singe is on the upbeat and the second beat is on the downbeat. That is syncopation in a nutshell.

It is not just all up beats or all downbeats. It's mixing them up. Yeah. And I think what happens is a lot of times classical musicians look at this because of how the music is presented, like, in a jazzy way or whatever and focus in on the upbeats, like there being so many more of them and that kind of thing. But it's really, like, the way I like to think about it is as rhythmic drama and tension and release. The same way we talk about, like, what you just did with that basic,

Charleston rhythm being the most basic example of syncopation the way a five core dominant seven to a one core The five has and this is overly simplified, but it is an example of it at its basic level lowest common denominator The five chord is tense and then it resolves naturally down to the one core exactly and so with this we've got Bunt bang The actual resolution the rhythmic tension is on the next one I know we I knew where you're going on it and I so agree with you that's right because I mean it's all it's always pattern based and the fun is when the pattern gets complicated and then it gets simple or whatever. Right.

Just like with harmony. So you did that tag on the Charleston rhythm, which is a common thing, a common rhythmic phrase, which is done, uh, three, four, dun, uh, dun, uh, don't, uh, don't, don't, don't, you know, you put this extra downbeat in there and it all of a sudden it becomes a whole different thing. It's just a little bit more complicated manifestation of the syncopation, but it still has the tension and release the, you know, and normally we're talking about the updates, unless you really get into more complicated patterns, the upbeat being the more tense part of it.

So like you're starting that Charleston rhythm on something that's like a one chord. Because if you just play the first one, it's like one, I'm going to speed it up a little bit. One, because we've got to go to luncheon minute. One, two, three, four, bunt, bump, bum. So I'm only playing the first one. So there's no tension there. That's just straight down the middle. But when you go bump, tachan.

So now it's like you're kind of boom, you're in there, but it's going to resolve it the next measure. Bump, to can. Boom. So a lot of people think, oh, the whole syncopation is just bump. bomb. No, it's got to resolve somewhere. Yeah. And actually, I shouldn't say it has to resolve because that's another technique to not have a resolve. There's different ways to do it. But you have to understand what the pattern

is. Surprise is an element in this, of course. Darren, a easy way to practice this is just practice starting and ending your phrases different ways, either on the upbeat or on the downbeat. Yep. And mix it up. If you start a phrase on the downbeat, try to end it on the upbeat. If you start a phrase on the downbeat, try to end it on the downbeat and do things in between that are surprising. Yep. And then really listening kind of as you're going and I appreciate you, you know, looking at some of the transcribe lines I'm doing. I hope, hopefully they sound good or syncopated and swinging. They are. If you find them and they are. But you can like take one example from that because the next kind of level is still relatively simple, but you're

thinking about what you're accenting. So, so here we're just playing those specific downbeats or upbe, but if you're playing a 16th note line, stupid do be do be do be dub. But it might be bubidoo bedoo. So like what note are you going to accent? So the same way, like, Like you're saying, end on a certain beat, accent a certain beat, and then start to combine them together. Yeah, like combine the upbeats and the down beats. Dub-dab-dab-up-up-up, up, up,

stuff like that. Yep. I got a little triplety coffee mouth going on. That's right. But the thing about it too is like the first thing. Josh just kept flapping. The thing that you're saying, the first part, you had dubit,

you are dub-d-d-dib-dib-dab. Yeah. So you did the opposite of, not the opposite of the Charleston rhythm, but it kind of flipped around. and that you went upbeat and then you resolved it down the line.

So a lot of times if you want to think about it, I mean as much as you can try to kind of hear it, but if you want to look at a chart or something, and I think we started playing around with this in some of the transcriptions in the jazz piano method,

but putting the accents in or at least thinking about maybe you can make a mark of where the accents are, that'll start to give you a clue two of like different ways because there's really almost an infinite, like when you combine like breaks

and different rhythms with where you're going to accent. This is rhythmic phrasing. It starts to get exponential. in your choice, which is fun. It gets fun, yeah. Thank you, Darren, for the question. If you have a question, go to you'll hear it.com. Leave your question in the YouTube comments. We've got to get back in there, man. Well, now that we've finally settled the whole Corey Henry situation this week, I think the water is safe to go back in. I'm going in. I'm going in.

And I don't even like it in the first place. And leave us a rating review. We haven't been harping on that enough, but we got, okay, you mentioned one the other day, but we have a couple other reviews. Can I say them real quick? Do we have time, Andrew? We don't have time. Okay, well, this one's short. It just says so good. Five stars. You'll hear it.