Module 14: Modern harmony and rhythmLesson 4advanced⏱ 90 min + 25 min daily for three weeks

Brazilian and Latin styles

Go beyond the basic bossa pattern: the anticipated João-style comping with Jobim-type voicings, the partido-alto samba figure, the son and Brazilian claves, an Afro-Cuban montuno over a minor ii-V, and the repertoire to learn.

Why the Brazilian guitar is a separate instrument

In jazz the guitar is one of several possible chordal instruments. In Brazilian music it is the rhythm section: the violão carries bass, harmony and the syncopated rhythm of the percussion in one pair of hands, and a singer with a guitarist is a complete band. That is why every jazz guitarist who works for a living ends up learning this music properly, and why the basic bossa pattern from Time feel, bossa nova and jazz waltz is only a starting point. This lesson assumes that pattern and the full anticipated bass line from that lesson are already automatic.

Here you will add the comping rhythm that João Gilberto actually used, the chord vocabulary that Jobim's harmony needs, the partido-alto figure that makes a samba sound like a samba, the clave that underlies both Brazilian and Afro-Cuban music, and a montuno figure for when the band calls a Latin tune and expects the guitar to play the piano's role.

The anticipated comping pattern

The two-bar bossa chord rhythm you learned first (bar 1: beats 1, and-of-2, 4; bar 2: beats 2 and 3) is the schoolbook version. What Gilberto plays more often is a pattern in which the chords anticipate: the chord lands on the and-of-4 and is held into the next bar, so the downbeat of bar 2 is sounded by a chord that was struck in bar 1. The thumb keeps its root-and-5th pattern exactly in time underneath, which is what makes the anticipation audible as a push rather than as a mistake.

The example uses a voice-leading chain that is pure Jobim: the top note E stays fixed through four chords while the inner voices move by half step. Each chord lasts two bars, so the anticipation in bar 1 of each pair pushes into a bar of the same chord.

\tempo 124
.
\ts 4 4
\voice 5.6.4{d ch "Am9"} 5.6.8 7.5.4{d} 7.5.8 | 5.6.4{d} 5.6.8 7.5.4{d} 7.5.8 | 5.5.4{d ch "D9"} 5.5.8 5.6.4{d} 5.6.8 | 5.5.4{d} 5.5.8 5.6.4{d} 5.6.8 | 5.5.4{d ch "Dm9"} 5.5.8 5.6.4{d} 5.6.8 | 5.5.4{d} 5.5.8 5.6.4{d} 5.6.8 | 3.6.4{d ch "G13"} 3.6.8 5.5.4{d} 5.5.8 | 3.6.4{d} 3.6.8 5.5.4{d} 5.5.8 |
\voice (5.4 4.3 5.2).4{d} (5.4 4.3 5.2).4{d} :8 r (5.4 4.3 5.2) | (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :8 r (5.4 4.3 5.2) (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :4 (5.4 4.3 5.2) | (4.4 5.3 5.2).4{d} (4.4 5.3 5.2).4{d} :8 r (4.4 5.3 5.2) | (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :8 r (4.4 5.3 5.2) (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :4 (4.4 5.3 5.2) | (3.4 5.3 5.2).4{d} (3.4 5.3 5.2).4{d} :8 r (3.4 5.3 5.2) | (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :8 r (3.4 5.3 5.2) (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :4 (3.4 5.3 5.2) | (3.4 4.3 5.2).4{d} (3.4 4.3 5.2).4{d} :8 r (3.4 4.3 5.2) | (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :8 r (3.4 4.3 5.2) (-.4 -.3 -.2).4 :4 (3.4 4.3 5.2) |

Practise the chord layer alone first, counting "1 (2) and (3) (4) and | (1) (2) and (3) 4" aloud. The hardest moment is the and-of-4: your thumb is about to play beat 1, and the fingers must strike a sixteenth of a second before it and then stay silent while the thumb lands. Record yourself; if the anticipation drifts onto the beat, slow down to 80 bpm.

Chord vocabulary for bossa nova

Bossa harmony is bebop harmony played quietly: 9ths and 13ths everywhere, the minor iv chord and the bVII7 borrowed from the parallel minor, chromatic descents, and the maj7#11 as a tonic colour. The voicings that work are the ones in the example above: a bass note on string 6 or 5 for the thumb and three notes on strings 4-3-2 (occasionally 3-2-1) for the fingers, with the top voice moving as little as possible. The engine-checked shapes below are a working set in and around the first position; each line gives the three finger notes plus the thumb's bass note.

Use them in this order to hear a typical bossa turnaround in C: Cmaj9, Bm7b5 to E7b9 (the ii-V of the relative minor), Am9, Ab7#11 (the tritone substitute for D7), then Dm9 and G7b13 back to C6/9. Every voicing keeps the fingers on strings 4-3-2 except where a chord needs the 2nd and 1st strings.

Samba and the partido alto

Samba is felt in 2/4 with the heavy surdo on beat 2, as you learned, and the guitar plays sixteenth-note figures over it. The figure that defines the modern samba (and samba-funk, and much of Brazilian popular music since the 1970s) is the partido alto, a two-bar pattern whose accents fall almost entirely between the beats. It exists in several forms; the one below is a common guitar version. Bar 1 attacks on the "e" of 1, beat 2 and the "and" of 2; bar 2 on beat 1, the "a" of 1 and the "e" of 2. The thumb plays the root short on beat 1 and anticipates the 5th by a sixteenth, holding it through beat 2 where the surdo falls.

\tempo 100
.
\ts 2 4
\voice 5.5.8{ch "Dm9"} r.16 5.6.16 -.6.4 | 5.5.8 r.16 5.6.16 -.6.4 | 3.6.8{ch "G13"} r.16 5.5.16 -.5.4 | 3.6.8 r.16 5.5.16 -.5.4 | 3.5.8{ch "Cmaj9"} r.16 3.6.16 -.6.4 | 3.5.8 r.16 3.6.16 -.6.4 | 3.5.8{ch "C6/9"} r.16 3.6.16 -.6.4 | 3.5.8 r.16 3.6.16 -.6.4 |
\voice :16 r (3.4 5.3 5.2) r r (3.4 5.3 5.2) r (3.4 5.3 5.2) r | (3.4 5.3 5.2) r r (3.4 5.3 5.2) r (3.4 5.3 5.2) r r | r (3.4 4.3 5.2) r r (3.4 4.3 5.2) r (3.4 4.3 5.2) r | (3.4 4.3 5.2) r r (3.4 4.3 5.2) r (3.4 4.3 5.2) r r | r (2.4 4.3 3.2) r r (2.4 4.3 3.2) r (2.4 4.3 3.2) r | (2.4 4.3 3.2) r r (2.4 4.3 3.2) r (2.4 4.3 3.2) r r | r (2.4 2.3 3.2) r r (2.4 2.3 3.2) r (2.4 2.3 3.2) r | (2.4 2.3 3.2) r r (2.4 2.3 3.2) r (2.4 2.3 3.2) r r |

Two ways to practise it:

• Clap the chord rhythm against the metronome on 1 and 2, counting "1 e and a 2 e and a", until you can clap the two bars in a loop without thinking. Only then put it on the guitar.
• Play the chord layer with a dead-string "ghost" on every unaccented sixteenth (a muted strum with the fingers) so that the right hand moves continuously and the attacks fall out of the motion. Then take the ghosts away; the accents will stay in place. This is how Brazilian players keep sixteenth-note patterns steady at fast tempos.

Partido alto is also played "the other way round", starting from the second bar, and in real performance the player moves freely between the two orientations, the basic samba figure and the bossa pattern. That freedom comes after the loop is automatic, not before.

Clave

Every Latin rhythm, Cuban or Brazilian, sits on a two-bar clave, a timeline pattern that everyone in the band feels whether or not anyone plays it. Learn to hear it, because a comping figure that contradicts the clave is wrong in a way that no chord choice can fix.

The son clave has a "3 side" (three attacks: 1, and-of-2, 4) and a "2 side" (two attacks: 2 and 3). Which side comes first is decided by the melody of the tune: 3-2 when the melody's first bar is the busier one, 2-3 when the melody starts with the two-note side. The rumba clave shifts the last note of the 3 side to the and-of-4, which is the version you hear in most modern Afro-Cuban jazz. Brazilian music uses a near relative, often called the bossa nova clave: the 3 side is the same, the 2 side falls on 2 and the and-of-3.

\tempo 100
.
\ts 4 4
:4 5.3 :8 r 5.3 :4 r 5.3 | :4 r 5.3 5.3 r | :4 r 5.3 5.3 r | :4 5.3 :8 r 5.3 :4 r 5.3 | :4 5.3 :8 r 5.3 :4 r :8 r 5.3 | :4 r 5.3 5.3 r | :4 5.3 :8 r 5.3 :4 r 5.3 | :4 r 5.3 :8 r 5.3 :4 r |

Play the clave with your foot or on a muted string while you sing a melody you know; then play the bossa comping pattern against a recorded clave (the metronome has eighth-note subdivisions; program the accents yourself). The anticipated bossa pattern above lines up with the 3-2 bossa clave: the chord attacks fall on clave notes or lead into them.

The Afro-Cuban montuno

In a Cuban or salsa rhythm section the piano plays a montuno: a repeated, syncopated, two-bar (or four-bar) arpeggiated figure that outlines the harmony and locks with the clave. When a jazz group plays a Latin tune without a pianist, the guitar takes this part, and it is also the model for the Cuban tres. The figure is built from chord tones in broken octaves or single notes, almost always on the off-beats, and it must not vary while the band is playing time.

The montuno below sits over a minor ii-V in C (Dm7b5 to G7b9) and resolves to a Cm6/9 chord. It is written in 2-3 clave: the first bar of each pair has its attacks on the off-beats (the 2 side pushes), the second bar lands on beat 1. Play it in single notes first, then double every note at the octave (string 5 with string 3, string 4 with string 2) for the real montuno sound.

\tempo 120
.
\ts 4 4
:8 5.5{ch "Dm7b5"} 3.4 6.4 5.3 r 7.3 5.3 6.4 | 3.6{ch "G7b9"} 2.5 3.4 4.3 r 6.4 4.3 2.5 | :8 r 5.5{ch "Dm7b5"} r 3.4 6.4 r 5.3 7.3 | 3.6{ch "G7b9"} r 2.5 3.4 4.3 r (8.6 7.4 7.3 8.2).4{ch "Cm6/9"} |

Rules for inventing your own montuno:

1. Chord tones only, with the b9 of the dominant as the one colour note.
2. Keep the same rhythmic skeleton for the whole vamp; change the pitches with the chords, never the rhythm.
3. The figure should land on beat 1 in one bar of the cycle and avoid it in the other: that is what aligns it with the clave.
4. Think of it as two voices: a bass part on strings 6-5 and an answering part on strings 4-3, alternating, which is why octave doubling sounds so natural.

Exercises

1. Anticipated pattern, chord layer alone at 80 bpm with the count aloud; then with the thumb at 80, 100, 120, 130 over the vi-II7-ii-V as written; then over the eight-chord turnaround from the vocabulary section, two bars per chord.
2. Voice-leading drill. Play the turnaround chords as whole notes and listen to the top voice only; then re-voice any chord whose top note jumps more than a 3rd.
3. Partido alto, clapped, then with ghost strums, then clean, at 80, 90, 100, 110 bpm in 2/4; then starting from the second bar.
4. Clave. Each of the four claves on a muted string for one minute at 100 bpm, foot on 1 and 3; then play the clave while singing a bossa melody.
5. Montuno at 100, 140, 180 bpm, single notes; then in octaves at 100 and 140; then transposed to F minor and G minor using the progression table.

Quiz