- Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to your Masterclass, number three, Finding Your Groove with your host, Marc from .net and--
- I'm Nathan from jazzguitarlessons.net.
- Of course. And we both have white shirt. My shirt is pinging with the external natural light and Nathan was thinking to change into a blue shirt.
- Yeah, we'll switch roles for a second. I'll be the boss. You be the curriculum builder.
- No thank you.
- No .
- Pass, pass. So good timing. What's good timing, rhythmic feel? So we've taken a lot of notes. We have a lot of information to give you about this whole timing thing. The purpose of Masterclass as always is to give you stuff that is outside the curriculum. So good rhythmic feel is what makes or break a performance, I find anyways, and that's one way to see it. This timing is the glue between the musicians and it allows people to, everybody to stay on the same page. Not get lost. And so in the Masterclass we'll cover basic drills, exercises and just giving you a chance for students to get less caught up. Because when we're caught up in our fingers playing often we sort of forget about time and as Duke said, "It don't mean a thing." So that's we'll be doing. Purpose of this Masterclass.
- As Marc said, the timing and rhythmic feel of the collective of performers is probably the most important thing in music I'd say. Actually I won't just say. There are plenty of jazz musicians, professional jazz musicians and legends out there that will say the same thing. Actually I think this is a point we'll bring up later, but Marc and I, we're helping to create the jam session bonuses. And we were commenting on how the backing tracks that were created from those recording sessions, they just ride like a dream. And there's something really special about that feeling. So that's the high level concept we want everyone to aim for. There's a whole bunch of other benefits, benefits. There's a whole bunch of levels that we have to achieve before we can let it all coalesce into that almost divine feeling, that feeling of just everything's flying, you know?
- Yeah, and you know with the jam session, the bonus content of Jazz Guitar Mastery, it's really easy. You have Rich Irwin who is just banging it a quarter note in your ears with a right cymbal and I could hear this all day. Just ting, ting, ting.
- So good.
- By the way, look him up. Rich Irwin, he's the guy. He's the guy. He's a big guy in Canada and Montreal. So let's just go quickly through 30 second each, what makes us qualified to teach you that information. So I'll start. I'm Marc from jazzguitarlessons.net. Been playing forever and I have over 25 years of guitar experience. Last 11 years teaching on this website. Teaching thousands of private students on and off, different programs like the Jazz Guitar Mastery through subscriptions. And that's what I'm doing now full time. That's my full time at instructor. And we have Nathan as well.
- I've been teaching guitar for I think the past 15, almost 20 years. Almost as long, nearly as long as I've been playing. Not quite as long. But I've been playing jazz guitar for the past decade or so. Teaching it for the past four or five. I took a degree at Carlton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Bachelor of music, minor in business. And I've been working with Marc for the past three, is it really four years?
- Almost five years actually.
- Almost five years now? Almost, geez. Time flies. But as the curriculum builder at Jazzguitarlessons.net, as the community manager for the Facebook members, JGL members forum and just making sure that all of the sheet music and all of the products and curriculums, the curricula themselves are up to snuff for our students.
- Customer support as well when someone has lost their password. Everything in between. The works. Plus, yeah, you don't take enough credit. So let's just recap the two first Masterclasses. We've talked about the language, parallel. The language analogy to music. And how mindset affects our performance, that was Masterclass number two. Just a quick overview. Rhythm and the stuff we'll be talking about today is in a way part of the language. It's what helps us communicate, so we'll just spend a lot of time with metronome exercise and things like that. So let's get the boring theory stuff away with really quickly and then jump into the exercises. So let me race through the notes we've taken so we don't ramble for too long. Why good rhythms and solid timing matters, a quick overview. Music played in the pocket, it becomes larger than life. Rich Irwin, when writing cymbal jam session tracks, it's like surfing. Beyond melody and harmony and rhythms, beyond harmony and melody, the rhythms are how jazz musicians sync up. Did you add a note there, Nathan?
- Yeah, I mentioned that timing is what makes melody and harmony work. This is a thing that I've noticed with a lot of my students lately that I've had to emphasize. Is that you can play a chord, but devoid of rhythmic context, it really doesn't make sense, or it doesn't have the impact that it has. Or you can play an entirely different chord and have it imply something entirely different than just the notes that are there based on the timing.
- Awesome. Next, good timing allows musicians to keep their place within the four, meaning you're playing giant steps. You're trying not to get lost during your solo. That's good timing and time awareness that brings you that. Solid time awareness allows the freedom to play different feels. That's really important to me. As we're doing the mainstream thing, jazz, swing and bossa nova, but then there's funk, there's waltz, there's rock, there's different time signatures. And there's stuff that's required to play really modern jazz at a high level. And overall hearing good times and playing good timing and rhythm and playing good time are very much connected. It starts before the instruments. So if you can intuit that rhythm with your metronome and go ta ta ta ta ta, ta ta ta, that's where it starts. So that's why it matters so much. It's still internal work. Do you want to take it through the difficulties?
- Oh sure.
- I love that. We always do the devil's advocate. So here's what's bound to happen if you do not work on rhythms. Dangers.
- Doctors hate this. So the dangers of ignoring the rhythm part of being a musicians, and it might sound like why would anyone ignore that? And yet in jazz, pedagogue and as a focus for jazz students, we focus so hard on harmony. All the time. We have Harmony 101 and 102 coming out and 103 coming out as theory courses. But rhythm is such an important part of jazz. It's a groove music. So here's some of the dangers of ignoring--
- And in a way, sorry, in a way we sort of expect. We're like, yeah, if you play all the chords on all the scales you're gonna nail it. It's gonna, yeah. Except if you don't go to jam sessions, you don't get your butt kicked, maybe you won't get that rhythmic . Sorry, go on.
- We've learned by trial by fire how to coalesce with the group. How to sync up as Marc said with the group. But it's definitely something you can work on at home instead of just at a jam. So let's talk about some of the dangers. Barry Harris was talking about the right notes in the wrong place. We're focusing on all the notes, we're just thinking about notes, but putting them in the wrong place makes the music sound bad. Do you have anything to add to that, Marc?
- Yeah, so the quote is something like, it was in the DVD with Barry and he says, "If you play good notes and bad rhythms "you're gonna wind up playing the good notes "in the wrong places anyways." So there's no way around it. You have to play good rhythms. So you'd rather play bad notes than good rhythms.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Than bad rhythms with good notes.
- I feel like Thelonious Monk did a lot of that . Played some really funky notes. But he was always on everywhere, so very, very intentional when he wanted to play things. For all intermediate jazz musicians or musicians just starting to go to jams, this is a danger that you're probably familiar with and Marc and I are familiar with in the beginnings of our jazz career, but getting lost in the form is a huge danger for ignoring rhythm. Eating a beat, right, and suddenly you're out of sync with the rest of the band. Or you're not even sure what bar you're in. You have to think of it and if you start thinking about it than you're gone.
- Yeah, and you're playing catch up. Most like, yeah. Snakes and Ladders, did I hear a D minor? And then you're trying to re-sync and when you're doing that, you're not even connected.
- You're in a different place altogether. And it's like, oh, you're lost. You really have to work hard to get back on or have someone tell you. That's happened to me before.
- They're like, "One."
- Ah crap, there we are . Oh yeah, I'd be lying if I said that didn't happen to me at least once.
- Oh, that happened to me a lot, yeah.
- Another danger is pissing off the drummer. Drummers love to rag on guitarists for having terrible rhythm. My best friend is a drummer. I'll say no more . Rushing and dragging with the collective feel of the music, which is the only feel that matters, right? Doesn't matter how you feel it or how that person feels it. It's how all of it comes together. And if you're rushing or dragging on it, rushing on that collective feel, the audience is gonna feel that. They're gonna feel rushed and anxious, and if that's what you want to give them then be intentional about that. But you have to actually be able to do that. You have to actually have the intentionality in order to give the audience a rushing feel. Likewise conversely, dragging on the beat. If you're not intentionally dragging on the beat, the whole song slows down. The musicians feel sluggish. They're like, "What's going on dude?" And I'd be lying if I said that didn't happen to me before.
- I know, same, wow.
- Just overall I think we want to cap this with saying that not focusing on the rhythms and usually this comes along with focusing too hard on melody, improv and harmony, the chords and how to improvise over the chords and stuff like that. Giving too much time to that and not enough time to rhythm gives an overall bland feeling to the way that you play. So yeah, you can play those licks. Yeah, you can play an altered scale line or diving into a half diminished line or something like that over a bunch of arpeggios. And it's like that's cool, but did it feel good?
- And you're riding a bicycle. Like we were referring to Rich Irwin where you hear that riding, you're in a Cadillac. As a soloist, you take a solo on anything and you're just like, "Yeah man." And then if you're a soloist and you have all your altered scales and beautiful stuff and your drummer's a so-so drummer, you're riding a tricycle or bicycle going, "Ah." So that's a bland portion we're talking about.
- Yeah, that feels, I felt that when you said it.
- Yeah? You know. So those are the dangers. So to recap, we just want to avoid to sound bland, and we want to be very intentional with our rhythms and our feel. Some of the solutions we'll talk about today. Learn to use a metronome as a tool. I wrote it in capital letters. People were like, "Metronome, yay or nay?" I'm like, "It's not even a debate." Do use a metronome. I do not attempt to mow my lawn with scissors, but it's a tool. You could use it to improve your tool. So as a tool, not a crutch. Not if I don't have my metronome, I don't gonna know where timing is. Second solution, solution quote unquote, this is a Brad Meldow story actually. Whatever you play, play it in good time. So when Pat met with Brad for the first time in the '90s probably, Pat says, "Oh, we have different language, "but we aspire to play in the same way, "which is always being spot on with the time." There's never a cack note or whatever. It's like whatever you play is gonna be in intentionally really, really good time and well placed. So that's why they recorded together these two because they see alike, but they have very different styles that are like.
- Oh yeah, they're playing the notes and the way they approach harmony and stuff like that. The notes that they play are very, very different in terms of the actual melodic language that they use. And harmonic language that they each use. But wow, are they ever just, they're just nailing that groove all the time. You're never unsure of where they're playing. Yeah, they can play some pretty wildly out there stuff, but you're pretty sure of where beat one is at all times .
- Exactly. So learning to use a metronome as a tool, not as a crutch. Whatever you play, play in good time. Just a solution. And drill some time awareness on a regular basis, because this just won't happen by accident. Well, that's pretty much the end of our you could say our introduction. Now we have, sorry, almost dropped my coffee. White shirt, oh no! We will take the next probably half hour to go through exercises that we came up with. Mostly I came up with, but Nathan, if you have anything to add, be my guest. And all of these things, as all the other Masterclasses, the practical stuff, you could take one or two and just implement it slowly. Or you could take them all and see. The important thing is maybe to use that stuff consciously and know to what effect.
- Another thing to note, Marc, if you don't mind me jumping in--
- Please.
- Is that all of these are scalable for any difficulty, because they all basically involve the metronome. Or even a backing track in some points. I'll have a point to add about that later. But metronomes are scalable in terms of how fast and how slow you're going. And in general if you're attempting something for the first time, start on the slow end. So that's the only note I want to give on that before we dive into the exercises. Go slow, scale your way up. We'll talk about notching throughout this as well. It's a special term for how to increase tempo in the metronome, or even decrease, you can use it for decreasing tempo too if you're trying to get slower. Anyway, usually faster is the way people end up going.
- ballads is also a thing. If you're at 50 BPM and you want to go to 40 BPM you can notch down as well.
- Exactly.
- Okay.
- Do you want to kick off the first one?
- I'll start. Practical, use a metronome as a reference for a portion of your jam. You're on the beginner stuff. This is 96 BPM and here's a B flat. Do you want to call a tune? Put me on the spot maybe.
- Yeah, sure. "All the Things."
- Oh no, okay. One, two, three, four. I got the nod of approval from Nathan. Yes, yes, that's okay, I'm cool with that.
- D six .
- Like slight things that don't go there, but I'll allow it.
- No, I thought that was great. I love the seconds you're playing at the end there.
- So then that was 96 BPM. Beginners, put your metronome on all beats, no brainer. Click, click, click, click, click. Not too fond of this, because a metronome now is spoonfeeding you information. But it might be worthwhile to do this when you're playing slow. Play 80, play 60, play 40 BPM. Metronome on two and four, we keep referring back to this on the website. I'll put this at 66. So if 66 is beating and you think, there's no special setting, but are people, how do I set my metronome on two and four, it's just clicking, right? You perceive this to be beat two and beat four of every bar, four, four. "All the Things You Are" again, right?
- Do you wanna, just to explain that for the audience, Marc, do you want to explain vocally how you get into the mode of perceiving it?
- Absolutely. And there's an old YouTube video of mine, it's about 10 years old. And that's how to set the metronome two and four. So you say one, between two clicks, let it click. One. Right, so what did you see? You start to bounce like this. One. Then you say two, and the next space in between the two beats. One, two. Do it again. One, two. One, two. One, two. And then eventually you go and you say one, two, three, four. So one, two, ah one, two, three, four. Play. See if you can improvise. Right, so that's by far the best and easiest tool to use for metronomes. Just metronome two and four. We're gonna keep coming back to this. There's two more, sorry?
- Just as a note to clarify to everybody. Just a little bit of basic arithmetic. If you want it only clicking on two out of four beats, beats two and four ignoring beats one and three, or at least not clicking on beats one and three, if you're trying to go for a target tempo of 96 beats per minute, you gotta cut that number in half for the metronome to actually get there. So put the metronome to--
- You were with 66.
- 66? Oh, you were on 66?
- My tempo is 132 then.
- 132, yeah. Or basically set your metronome and then double it for your actual tempo. So Marc set it to 66 beats per minute on the metronome. Double it to 132. That is your actual tempo. I'm playing "All the Things You Are," or Marc just played "All the Things You Are" at 132 beats per minute. But with the metronome only clicking on beats two and four.
- Yes. The beauty of this is clicking on all beats is spoon feeding you the time. That's one, that's two, that's three. Now it's like spoon feeding you half of the time so you're responsible for the downbeat, the one and the three, the backbeat. So those are the two most important beats of the bar, the strongest beats. And two and four just happens to be what the hi hat of the drummer does. Ting, chicka ting, chick. Right, so you can always lock in with that hi hat if you're used to playing with a metronome.
- That's right, yeah. That's the question I keep getting asked. Why do we put it on two and four? Is there something about jazz that's special like that? It's just because stylistically the drummer is doing the left foot, one, two, three, four, with the hi hat. So ch, ch. And that's as simple as an answer as it gets. There's nothing beyond that honestly. We could put it on one and three. It'll sound different than the jazz that we usually play because no instruments are really doing that. So it's emulating the hi hat.
- Except the bassist maybe.
- The bassist, yeah.
- The bassist would be one and three.
- Hey, when they're not playing the full walking bass four on the floor, they're sometimes doing the one and three. Do, do, do, do, do, ba, do, do. Do, do. So there's that. I mean, hey, there's justification there too.
- Yeah, and also it's much easier to play with metronome on one and three than it is two and four, because two and four are like, they're the accent, they're the upbeats. They're the foot in the air type of things. So that's why giving this as a reference is a good challenge because you have to complete the rest of the strength of the beat yourself, right?
- Right.
- So next one. So there's two more. There is a tremendous amount of reference point we can have. Beats, all beats clicking is one. Two and four's another one. Another one we might do that's a good starter, you want it to click once per bar. Okay? So what I'll do, so once per bar, the easiest answer would be to go like this, to go, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one. So that's all the things you are, right? One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. So it's a de, de, ca, de, de de. It's a bit clumsy because it feeds you really the easy portion of the beat I find, which is beat one. So basically you can put it on beat one, you can put it on beat two, beat three, beat four. You can put it on the second triplet of the third beat if you wanted. People do that and it's actually pretty advanced. But let me just give you, there's a four. One, two, three, four. There's the two and four and then there's once per bar. That's the halftime of the two and four. So I'll give you the rundown.
- So where are you perceiving this beat to be played on?
- Three.
- Beat three, okay.
- So that's beat three now of every bar four four. One, two, one, two, one, two, three, four.
- There we go.
- So that's a really neat way to play two and four. And what I like about this guy, it's like you go one, two, one, two, ah one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one. So actually it's the two and four of the halftime. In other words it's the back beat, the three. One, two, three, four, one, two, three. If you've played any rock, you know where the backbeat is. That's the snare.
- Yeah, exactly.
- So that's a complex way of putting only one beat per bar on the metronome, but that's very, you feel it as a backbeat. So it's easy to come back to. It's on the third triplet of the--
- Yeah, exactly. If you've played any sort of funk, any sort of rock as Marc said, that's kind of the way you want to snap into that groove. Hearing the metronome in that particular way. So feel it as ka-do, ka-ca, ka-do. So yeah, that's a really good way to do it. I just want to make a real quick side note before we move on to the final point, which is you might see me bobbing my head to Marc's playing and the metronome, but off, and if that's happening, I'm just gonna chalk that up entirely to the lag in internet connection.
- Wrong Zoom.
- It's all about latency. I am totally on time at all times. Just want to .
- So am I, so am I. If you notice with the metronome, that's Zoom, man. It's not me.
- Wait, wait, that doesn't make any . Sh!
- Because of COVID, because of COVID.
- COVID, exactly. So .
- Yeah, so the backbeat, really good tip. And what I like about this backbeat is that's Frank Lazano was giving me that actually. He says, "Well, if you're ding, ding, ding, ding , "and then you go ting, ding, da ding." So again, bo ba do . Then you have these lines that are half time. So you're swinging quarter notes actually. Ba-dong, ding, . Like you have this ability to relax into a tempo that's fast. So any time you're above 200 BPM, now that was 50, but I was actually playing 200 BPM, because the metronome was clicking once every four beats. Speaking of the devil, I'm gonna transition to the one I'm not gonna demonstrate because of COVID.
- Sorry.
- I'll give you a tip of the iceberg of a way you might set up metronome that's more complex. You might set it up to, sorry?
- just the setting up part or?
- Oh, absolutely. Just sidebar, I wanted to say you could put it on any beat, any subdivision, any triplet, any 16th note. You can put it anywhere. You're click can be anywhere you want. It can be once every bar, it can be once every two bars. What Nathan's about to demonstrate is what if you have a click only once every five beats.
- So this is, we kinda go a couple of mental hoops to get this, but the first thing you do is you set the metronome to something very slow. Or maybe a little bit faster if you're going for it, but just for the sake of demonstration I've set it to 30 beats per minutes.
- Ouch.
- Yeah. And see here once in a while, right?
- Two seconds.
- Two seconds? Oh yeah, 30 beats per, I can do math or arithmetic. So you're hearing it click once every two seconds. The idea is that you want to count five equally spaced beats within this quintuplet if you will. So if you go one, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. I had to slow it down. Two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. This pulse is our quarter note. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So now I can just start counting in quarters, four quarter notes and a bar. So actually in four, four time. Two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. ♪ One da da da da da da da da ♪ ♪ Da da da da da ♪ ♪ Ah dooba dee da doo doo ♪ All right, so I lost it at the end. It was COVID.
- It's COVID, but being able to do that, such a great reference point. Imagine playing just a melody, playing just some copying. And then if you start to improvise, you're accountable for so much more, because the click, it keeps shifting. If you want to try this at home without the hassle of the metronome, here's one thing I did. Snap your finger on beat one, and then in the second bar snap it on beat two. And third bar, snap it on beat two. So go like, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one. So you get an idea of where the pulse is. And if you keep doing that then ask someone else to play a melody for you and you keep going.
- Oh, that's great. It's a fun game to play with other musicians actually 'cause you both hear it in different ways though.
- Well, I'll just ask my wife. She's a piano teacher. Fun game. She's like--
- Of course.
- "Get out of here."
- Ah, I'm such a teacher. Homework is great. I totally agree. To be absolutely clear, to overview this set of exercises, the whole point here is that the metronome is giving you a reminder of where the pulse is. It's a machine, it can't be wrong about regularity, right? Whereas we have to really train ourselves to get a really regular clock. So that's what the metronome is helping us with. It's giving us a pulse periodically, let's just say periodically. But what all these exercises are doing is lengthening the amount of time between reminders. So which means that you're forcing yourself trial by fire to sync up with that metronome and develop a strong internal clock. And the fewer reminders you have, the better your own clock has to be in order to sync up with that metronome.
- Absolutely. And to further this whole idea. It's, well, people go, "Ah, I don't want to work with a metronome." If you can't follow a metronome, quote, unquote, you can't follow drummer or a click track if you're in a studio, you can't. So it's just a tool. A reminder as you said, a side note once again. Had a teacher had us to in a group, like a 20 people class just go, "Let's all clap on beat one of every bar "while we listen to this track on a CD." Like whatever. Okay, then he said, "Every two bars." And the whole group, then every four bars. And now every eight bars. And then it sounded like, you know, you threw a bunch of potatoes in the air. Pa, ta, cluck, la, la, la. Pa, ta, ca, ca, la, la. And that was the ultimate test. He said, "Let's do an entire course," and I think he picked the metronome and he put it on mute. And he did the 32 or maybe it was the blues. 12 bar course. And then we did a 32 bar course of all the things . And we all came in, like there was a finish line and people came in early by five seconds. People came in late by five seconds. And says, "You know, your time's gotta be deep, deep." So even professional musicians will have trouble with this, but that's the reminder it can be just one once every course. And people have metronomic time that's strong enough to do that. Like one beat per minute, right?
- Marc, I don't think my metronome goes that slow.
- You can't, but you can do the karaoke. You put a track on, and then you . And then you just turn the volume down, but you keep it going.
- Ah yeah.
- And when you turn the volume back up, are you aware you believed you, anyways.
- That's a hard one.
- So metronome big overview reference point. We'll move to the next exercise or else we'll be here all night. Like talk about metronome. There is a meditative rhythms video and blog on the Jazz Guitar Lessons website. You take one click, you subdivide into several. It's not metronome two and four. Metronome four, four. It's just click and you subdivide it in one, and two and three and there's several things. You can take it much further with that stuff. It's as hard or as easy as you make it. I'll just point you to this reference point because I don't want to spend time on this right now. Do you have anything to add here?
- Not to the meditative rhythm as well, no.
- Do you want to take on the next one or should I?
- Sure. I have my guitar ready. So taking on extreme tempos. Playing ballads super, super slow. How slow were you thinking here? What song?
- "Infant Eyes," 42 BPM.
- I actually don't know, "Infant Eyes."
- That's a Wayne Shorter tune. That's when I heard this na. Ah, two, three, four. Da, da, da. Two, three, four. You're like, one, take a sip of coffee. Take a shower, come back. Two.
- Two! Wow, that's slow.
- So between 40 and 60 BPM, it's pretty slow, right?
- Yeah, yeah. Just for references, this is 50 beats per minute. And that's still in the mid to high range of what we're thinking about extreme slow tempos. 30 beats per minute.
- Oh, that hurts.
- Ridiculously, it's grueling, right? But nobody really plays in that range for jazz ballads. So if you're able to do that, if you're able to play with good feel at that range, then I'm bringing it down to 35 let's say. Putting it on beats one and every beat, just for the full reminders, every single pulse. So a ballad, let's just say "Stella," I guess.
- Go nuts. Oh, sorry, wait, what am I saying? This is on every beat. Oh my gosh, this is ridiculously slow. Shoulda practiced this. One, two, three, whoops, four. One, two, shoot, my gosh. Three, four. One, two, okay, here we are. Three, four. Oh geez, I'm actually trying to go double time on this again.
- Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh.
- It's very slow. There's a point where, why, so I'm talking about extreme tempos at this point. So with ballads it's an extreme tempo that's having you do things you wouldn't do otherwise. Namely if you're at 35 like this, what I was doing in my mind. It's like one, two, two, ta, ta, three. So you hear either triplets--
- Try playing triplets, it really helps, yeah.
- You subdivide. You have to subdivide, or else you're always like, you're playing darts with where the time is.
- There .
- Here.
- Exactly.
- And the polar opposite.
- If we play at very, very, very fast tempos. Actually this is something that my teacher used to do with me all the time. I'd be really trying to work on the melody for a tune. And just see if, make sure you have the fingering first. And as a side note, I'll mention the side note in a second. But he'd had me work on the fingering of the tune making sure I have the melody down. And then he'd be like, "Okay, just play it at 300." And I'd be like, "What?" And he's like, "Just play it at 300. "Put the metronome on 300 and see what you can do. "Just see what you can do." And I'd be surprised. I would initially think that, I've never played at 300 beats per minute before. "Giant Steps" is at 280. What am I doing with this tempo? It makes no sense. And then I'd play it and be like, "There are things you can do. "Just don't play a constant stream of eighth notes maybe." Or maybe do, maybe you can do that. I can't. I'm so rusty with that.
- This is exactly the same thing as the ballad tempos. It's forcing you to do things, you're not gonna subdivide the same way. Maybe if you comp at 250 or 300 you're gonna comp differently. When you improvise you're gonna play a lot of quarter notes, which is fine. It's giving you different, so extreme tempos is just to give you perspective when you get back to your 120, you're like ah, okay.
- So right here I have it set to 150 beats per minute. And I'm feeling it on two and four. So let's see if I can do, let's say, yeah, let's just do "Stella" again. "Stella" by Starlight. Obviously not as a ballad this time. One, two, one, oh sorry, my gosh. One, two, one, two, three. Right? Oh, I'm actually off the form. I spent too long on one bar, right? I spent twice the amount of time on one bar. So it's the sort of thing you really have to get into. But just making sure that you every now and then play a song at your extremes. Your way too fast and your way too slows. It'll show you the extent that music can be played at, right?
- That's a good tip as well. And advancing guitarist is that when you're tired of your own playing, you're stuck in a rut. Like, ah, I can't take it!
- Actually that.
- Yeah, double your tempo. And then half your tempo. It's like you can't play your old licks and your beef stew anymore because, because. So awesome. So extreme tempo. So point of reference extreme tempos. Remember you can use any or all of the point of reference we've talked about in the first part to do your extreme tempos. So case in point, if I had to play 300, I would put my metronome on beat three, like a pussy.
- Yeah, exactly.
- It's a backbeat, it's much easier to hear for me. Another tip, so we'll move on because we have a whole bunch and I want to make sure we have time to cover it. Playing in different feels and different time signatures. So you can play bossa nova, Latin, you can play samba, you can play funk and rocky type of jazz, that's totally fine and different time signature, because there's ways to play five, four and ways to play seven, eight that's when you get back to playing four, four you're just gonna be that much stronger. You have any comments about this? Move on?
- Start with turning four on the floor swing time into waltzes, and vice versa. Turning waltzes into three four time. Turn that into four four time. Just start with that. Then start branching out in different time signatures. There are plenty of versions of "Beatrice" in seven for example, or at least there's one in particular. There's also plenty of versions of tunes in five and whatnot. So yeah, try that out. Try starting with the basics first. Jazz waltz and four four time.
- Four four.
- Those are your basics, those are your fundamentals, right? And then build up.
- Five seven is sometimes easier to hear, and if you want to be scared there's Ari Hoenig's, Bert's Playground and they play "Moment's Notice" in seven.
- Oh geez, oh my gosh.
- It's with Gilad too.
- Oh yeah?
- Gilad Hekselman.
- He got Hekselman.
- My favorite player of my generation I would say. Wow, yeah. And they play it in a tasty seven. It sounds like music, right, so it's very cool. All right, so playing in different time signatures, different feel, agreed. I love doing all the things you are in three four just because, because it's easily doable. Gonna go through the next tip, Charlestons. So Charlestons, I'm gonna do this on just because we're here. That's my 66 again. So one, two, a, one, two, k-three, four. That's a Charleston. Oh, I'm drunk. It's noon, right? So there's that but then there's a video on YouTube, I was young and foolish where I go through all the variations. You can displace the Charleston. So if you were to take it, the basic variation would be to take it just before beat one. Ah one, two, ah, one, two, k-three, four. Three, four. One, two, three, four. Ah one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Right, and the other variation would be to take it, that's early, that's anticipated. Take it late by half a beat, by an eighth note. Ah one, two, ah, one, two, k-three, four. One, two, three four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Right? And then as you start to use the different beats, it gets much more challenging, especially when beat four is involved, because of anticipation, whatever. But start with the basic variations and see once again, every tip before, see if you can do it with a different metronome click, different reference point. See if you can do it at extremes and try your Charlestons on different forms. I did B flat. Do it on whatever song you'd like. So that's one of the tips. Anything thing to add, sorry.
- If you play a Charleston on beat four, how do usually decide on, 'cause I know we're gonna get emailed about this. How do you usually decided on which chord to play? The before chord or the next one?
- It's a push. The four is a big push. It's an anticipation. So it'd be one, two, k-three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. So you have to take this way slower, so you hear four as an over the bar line thing, where you hold the chord of the next bar. It's hard. As you make this faster people pull these pranks on you at jam sessions. You will get lost. You will just miss a beat, like what? So yeah, or you start to interpret that before as your new one or beat two as your new one. That's, yeah. Good question. Move on, moving on?
- I think so.
- Okay. Do you want to take this one or should I? Basically it's like an hour of Nathan listening to me, that's what it is. Just sit there and listen and say, nod and smile.
- Quite, quite.
- Quite. Okay, different rhythmic figures. See if you can improvise using, I love using a blues or something. Using only one rhythmic figure. And when I say using only one rhythmic figure, it means you can have your silences. But see if you can just play quarter notes. I'm gonna play a medium rare blues. So it's 72. So my actual tempo is 144. I'm gonna improvise with quarter notes. Ah one, two, ah, one, two. I cheated.
- I see, yeah.
- So it's like a walking bass basically. See if you can do it on the downbeat. You can also do quarter notes on beats. One, two, k-three, four. Two, k-three, four, one, ah-two, three, four, right? Then you can do this with only half notes. You can do it with eighth notes. Eighth notes, I can do it because it's easy. One, two, k-three, four.
- Right, eighth notes are main, that's how we usually teach. That's your, what's the word? That's your standard rhythm.
- It's like the pennies, it's like the pennies in your change, right? And then what if you had lines that you could only do triplets? Three, two, two. One, two, one, two, three. Had to cheat here and there, but the point is what if that's the figure? That's the figure you have and you get to play with that. What I like about this is it gives you a pretty good idea of what is the subdivision grid. Like this is, oh, there I locked in my quarter notes. Oh, there I locked in my triplets.
- Dakka, dee, dakka, dee, dakka, dee, right yeah.
- Yeah.
- Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, dee, da, dee. You know, full swing eighth notes. Similar to the eight, to the triplet grid.
- Yes. And quarter notes also, I didn't demonstrate, but just see, it's all available when you improvise for real.
- Da, da, dee, diggity, douggity, diggity, douggity, diggity, douggity, da, da, da, da, da, da. The quarter notes, I find actually, so all of them obviously have their own rhythmic flavor. I find that with the quarter notes, if you focus on quarter notes, both with on the beat quarter and offbeat quarter notes, as Marc demonstrated both, demonstrated both in the very first segment as well as just specifically the offbeat ones in the second segment if you wanted to scroll back and look at that. If you start focusing on those, you'll find that you really understand what the rhythmic affect of offbeats versus on beats is. It's a very, very different flavor. You really feel the momentum of the song changing when you target offbeats. They often feel like anticipations. It's like I'm playing something early, which means we have to get to it in the next rhythmic division. Usually the next half beat.
- Yeah.
- A half a beat early, right?
- What I feel like is playing early, like playing on beat four or playing anticipated rhythms, it's like whipping the horse. Like go, ff, like it takes off.
- right.
- Yeah, and when you're late, when you play late, like beat end of one, it's like you're pulling the horse. Like whoa, whoa, whoa, the tempo will, so they have different feels as you said.
- This is where, I know we're supposed to be strictly talking about the rhythm side of things. This is where all, the big three elements of music. There's plenty of other elements too you have to explore, like texture and instrumentation and all this other stuff, space that you're playing in for example. But the big three things that we focus on in our pedagogue, rhythm, melody and harmony. This is where they sort of crossroads. They meet at a crossroads. And when you're anticipating chords, when you're playing the right note early in order to anticipate the next bar, it feels like you may just be playing quarter notes, and yet the music feels like it's accelerating or being rushed in whipping the horse. Quarter notes isn't a different or crazy kind of rhythm, but the timing at which you play certain notes, early or late even, gives it a very different rhythmic feel. Even though you're not necessarily playing with rhythm. try that, so.
- Yeah, it could be done with very basic rhythms and we haven't really talked, now we're talking about rhythm, rhythm, but one thing we might, I'll save it for last actually.
- Yeah, sure.
- We've covered rhythmic figures, so play strictly with triplets. And then when you get good at that, you can do the mediative exercise. Go I'm gonna strictly transition between triplets and eighth notes within a line. You know, you could do that. You could do all sorts of things. Three more, actually four more for you. One that's not rhythm. One is you can use good books to practice your subdivisions, practice your time awareness. Really entry level Peter Erskine's, "Time Awareness" book. Really amazing. Intermediate book, the Mick Goodrick, "Factorial Rhythms." That's sort of a crazy book. And the extreme one is Ari Hoenig's, it's on Mel Bay. I think it's called, "Polymaths For All Instruments." Something like that, that's totally crazy.
- I'd say if you really want to get into one more thing if you're interested, get into some drum method books.
- Agreed, polyrhythms.
- Yeah, snare rudiments books specifically.
- Oh yeah.
- You'll get put through the ringer of different rhythmic cells divided down into 16th and then even further into 30 second notes, but in standard snare rudimentary cells. And that's really, really, really useful for organizing your perception of time.
- Mm-hm, agreed. Moving on another practical tip we've talked about earlier, the music game. Keep snapping your finger, turn off the volume, bring it back. I took my story. ♪ Do do do do ♪
- See if you can keep it. ♪ Da da da da ba da ♪ Yeah, I'm playing with myself, so obviously I know where it's supposed to be.
- You're cheating, yeah. So there's that and then another thing, there's two more. So there was one that's written and one that's a surprise that Nathan is gonna find out while it comes out of my mouth. Record yourself. Play with a metronome. Play without a metronome should I say, and then listen back. See if you can snap your fingers to the beat. See if you're in time. Paul Shroffel, the pianist on our jam sessions tracks. That guy's in Montreal. That's what he told me. We met, I was young. I'm like, "Dude, you're so awesome. "How do you do that?" He's like, "I don't know. "Gee, now put your phone and record yourself "and then see if you can snap your fingers, you know?" Like, okay, I guess I'll try that, and then do it with a metronome and see, when you record yourself, see how far your straying. When you think oh no, I'm solid, but then actually you're full of BS.
- Yeah yeah.
- Keeps you humble. The metronome and the recording, they keep you humble. And then the last one I wanted to mention is it's a thing, and with the Earth Tone guys. The Earth Tone, the organ trio, Burnstein, Peter Burnstein. So I've heard that that's what he would do all day for a while. Just put the metronome at a medium tempo and then play laid back. Laid back as in you play on your blues and you try to lay back on a beat and be laid, but not laid like . But just in feel. And that's tremendously difficult to do, so I'm not gonna demonstrate, because it's like you're on a chair. You know when you were in high school, you're on a chair and you balance on these two. And then before you fall down, that's what you're doing with the timing. It's a really good tip and my story with this is I saw Pat Metheny with Christian McBride. And it was interviews, I constantly tell this story. It was like 2016 I think. And Pat Metheny came on stage and started to play "Black Orpheus." And sort of played bits of the melody and played chords, whatever. And then he improvised. I'm like, "There's no drums, there's no bass." But we hear that he's laid back on the beat. Right?
- Right.
- So he has such a strong time. He's playing on his own, that you can hear the pulse, the implied pulse. And the fact that he's late on his own pulse. That's pretty intense control of time I find anyways.
- Yeah.
- Sorry?
- How do you get there is the question that will be asked?
- There's an old Metheny video on YouTube where he was doing a clinic at Berkeley like early '70s. And he just has a metronome on stage. He puts it right in the microphone and then he played. The metronome clicks every whatever 16 beats, I don't know. And he's playing all the things you are like crazy so that's one thing. All right, so we'll wrap it up. We've given you a lot. This is always what we say. Pick anywhere from two to five ideas and practice this. What happens in the end, you become more aware of the time that passes by, then meaning you're less likely to play too fast or two slow. Which regards to your subdivisions or rushing or dragging as we said. You avoid this as you keep working on that muscle. Driving a car at appropriate speed while having a conversation. That's the analogy I've written. And what I mean by this is eventually, you know, you're driving and you can talk to the guy and you're in a school zone. And you're going 20. You're not gonna go 120.
- Is that in miles per hour or is that kilometer per hour? No, I'm just kidding.
- Either way. No, I'm in Kelvin.
- What ?
- Kelvin per hour. But so the point is you get used to it, so eventually you'll stop thinking about your scales. Stop thinking about your arpeggio. Stop thinking about the time and really connect and have your ideas. That's where that level of expression, it's like giving a speech. Eventually you give out the speech and it becomes less about the words and the message and more your timing is what's gonna have the greatest impact. Like think American stand-up comedians, right? Anything else? Sorry. I think for that Masterclass I think I've taken way more microphone time then--
- There's a couple of, these aren't exercises necessarily, but these are things that are certain to come up in your mind as you watch this Masterclass. And as you watch our lessons throughout jazzguitarlessons.net and the Jazz Guitar Master program. But one of the questions that is bound to come up is metronome versus backing track, which one should I use? And the fact is you should use both I think. Especially if you're not getting out to jams as much or if you can't find a jam in your area. If you want to improve in jazz guitar you gotta play a lot of jazz. Which means there's two things that are happening here. I want to explain the process real quick. We've already talked at length about what the metronome does. The metronome gives you reminders about where the pulse is. It corrects you. But that's all it gives you. It doesn't give you stylistic information. It can sort of give you jazz stylistic information. We talked about putting it on two and four to emulate the left foot of the drummer, the hi-hat of the drummer. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, right? That hi-hat click. Other than that, it doesn't really give you much information. You are the one supplying all of the style, all of the musical style. Backing tracks do the opposite. They give you the pulse. But they also give you the full musical style. At least one iteration of that musical style. If you're on you can change it to Latin, you can change it to different instrumentation.
- Space funk.
- Exactly, yeah. Turn the comping instrument into electric keys instead of acoustic piano, things like that. But it gives you a sense of the style, which is something if you're lucky enough to be in a city where you can attend jams, or I guess not in COVID times. But attend jams or go play with a bunch of friends or whatever, they're supplying the jazz stylistic information to you. You're absorbing that. Backing tracks do similar things. In lieu of a band that you get to rehearse with, backing tracks do the same things. So it's important to both because you need to supply with how does this music actually feel? How does the rhythm actually sit? How does it groove? What does the groove look like or feel like rather? And then the metronome says okay, now do it yourself. So you gotta go back and forth with those two things.
- And then--
- Another, oh sorry, go ahead.
- No metronome. It was like do it yourself yourself.
- All yourself. That's a really good thing to do. Record it as Marc said and then listen back. Can you snap your fingers on two and four to it all the time, right? A second thought on a completely different tangent, I realize we didn't actually explain notching at all.
- Oh, that's right. 'Kay, New York minute.
- New York minute.
- That's 13 seconds.
- Okay, I'll do it. Notching is move ahead by 10 beats per minute, fall behind by five beats per minute. Move ahead by 10 beats per minute, fall behind, repeat the process continuously until you surpass your target metronome marking and then fall down onto it. So if your target is 165 beats per minute do this process two steps forward, one step back. Two steps forward, one step back until you get past it to 170 beats per minute and then fall back onto 165. And then that means you can definitely play 165. You've played 170, you're fine.
- And you should as if you perform at a jam or if you perform in studio, you should be aware that you have some leg room for your tempo.
- Yeah, and not only that but realistically, if you play with other people you're bound to accelerate or decelerate. It happens.
- Energy, that's the energy.
- And sometimes it's a matter of just the energy just driving everyone forward or making everybody settle. Sometimes it's also an intentional matter of I don't like where this is sitting so I'm going to rush a little bit to drag everyone with me, drag everyone forward with me. Sometimes it's intentional, sometimes it's unintentional.
- And sometimes I've heard Joel Avanno actually rehearse with bands like, oh, we know during the trades with the drum the tempo's gonna pick up. Like it's very deliberate. And then during the head out we're going to take it down and there are slight adjustments in tempo. It's not like a machine, a metronome. It's go and we're all with the same tempos. We're human so we get excited and we get, so. All right, so let's wrap it up. You had a final note. Do you want to take it out?
- No, that's pretty much it for the other extraneous thoughts that I wanted to add to this discussion.
- And notching, okay great. Thank you. So thanks for watching, guys. As we always say with Masterclasses you should re-watch this maybe in a year or six months. See how much of this makes sense and how much of this you were able to practice. There's way, way, way more where this came from. We barely scratched the surface. So the key takeaways, be my guest.
- Time awareness is crucial in jazz. It's a groove music. You have to be aware of the pulse. The implied pulse, the collectively decided upon pulse. And then it's up to you the next level after that is up to you how to decide how to play on that and play with it. So don't let complicated scales and arpeggios get in the way of learning how to stay in the pocket.
- Yeah, so I wrote this down because earlier I said we get caught up. Oh, minor seven flat five to this. And then you go, "Ah, where are we?" That whole thing where you lost space. So don't get caught up. Gain perspective. And practically nobody teaches or practices it, so this can be your secret weapon. I studied one year my final year in the university. I studied with a drummer, I don't play drums. Chris McCann, look him up. Wow, that guy was friends with, he's still around but he was friends with Elvin Jones. You see pictures with Elvin. He would go New York and jam. oh, heavy, heavy player. So when I did that, my playing took off. And last few points, drum roll.
- Good timing is what makes music sound good. That's just how it is. Everybody feels good, the musicians feel good, the audience feels good.
- Exactly and good timing is the glue, the sync up factor that allows you to stay connected. So work on your timing, work on your metronome. Keep getting better time awareness. Record yourself. Do all of the above until you have a sense that you are basically, ultimately we wish always in the pocket, even though we don't. Like I never always 100%.
- But it's something to strive for, right?
- Something to strive for.
- One final thought, I just wanted to say on the secret weapon note, my own teacher, Tim Bednar in Ottawa, I don't think he ever said it in one quote, but I will paraphrase a bunch of lessons that I've had with him. Which came down to there are two things that you really, really want to make sure that you are as a guitarist. And number one is , manners, politeness. Make sure you are super friendly and a pleasure to work with. These are the things that will make it so that people remember you as a guitarist, as a musician. Will want to work with you again, whether it's play with you at a jam or actually record an album with you. Or any range, but courteous is one of them. Good rhythm is the other one. Those are the two most important things. Doesn't matter if you can play ridiculous Lydian flat five or Lydian sharp five. What am I talking about? Lydian augmented lines over "Autumn Leaves" or something. Doesn't matter. If you can play anything with super good time and you're a pleasure to work with, that's what'll get people grabbing you every time.
- Yeah, and Tim is courteous. Tim is good time and Tim can play these Lydian crazy things, for sure. He's got it all, right?
- Yeah, , but he doesn't have to. It's the first two that were super important.
- Honestly yeah, I think I'm missing the courteous part. The courteous part, that's the one I got to work on. Like I'm an instructor, I tend to be friendly with students and whatever, but it's when things when I rub shoulders with people, I'm like, "You don't have your stuff figured out," and I would say it and that doesn't work well for work in the future.
- I think for teachers it is important to be honest about where our students are. And for ourselves as well, where we are. But I get ya, yeah. When it comes to playing in a band, if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it at all I think is what our mothers all taught us, right?
- Mm-hm. Not my mom. Right.
- But yeah.
- So we'll let you go guys. Thanks for watching this Masterclass. Please let us know if you have any questions below this video. Meanwhile there is Masterclass number one and two you can watch and there is coming that we haven't recorded at this point yet. Part of our Jazz Guitar Mastery program, you can always reach me at M-A-R-C at .net and Nathan, you're at?
- [email protected]. That's [email protected].
- Awesome. So have a great practice session. Go work with your metronome and we'll let you go.
- Thanks Marc.
- Bye guys.
- Thanks everybody else. Take care.
- Bye.
