Rhythm and swing
Make everything you play sound like jazz: swing eighths, comping rhythms, syncopation, a time feel that holds up without a drummer, bossa nova and jazz waltz, and the articulation of a horn player.
By the end of this module you will be able to
- Play swing eighths with a triplet subdivision and adjust the swing ratio to the tempo
- Comp with the Charleston, anticipations and six other essential patterns over a ii–V–I and a blues
- Read and write syncopated rhythms with ties, dotted quarters and triplets, and play kicks from a chart
- Keep steady time with the click on 2 and 4, through dropped bars and at slow tempos
- Comp a straight-eighth bossa nova, a basic samba and a 3/4 jazz waltz
- Articulate lines with slurs, ghost notes, slides and dynamics, and choose a picking approach for each situation
Harmony gets most of the attention in jazz education, but rhythm is what listeners and other musicians hear first. A player with ordinary chord knowledge and great time gets called for gigs; the reverse is not true. This module is about the part of your playing that happens between the notes: where they fall, how long they last, how hard they are struck and how they connect. Everything here is practised with the metronome, which has settings for the click on 2 and 4, swing subdivisions and dropped bars built for exactly these lessons.