Rhythmic Displacement + Good Music
as you might know I haven´t been feeling exactly fantastic the last weeks and now I am happy to report that I am feeling better. and as usual the recipe is always the same. getting back to music. today I re-arranged my entire room ( again ) and I set up the record player and have been listening to some Herbie Hancock and also Freddie Hubbard, the record is too good.
I really sometimes wonder how I can sort of forget how good music can sound and feel. that being said I am writing from a small cafe that I really like but the music is really the worst here. it's possibly a random playlist from Spotify (?) with a lot endless songs with endless jamming and terrible guitar solos. and yes there are terrible guitar solos. I mean it's great that there are no more gate keepers, people who will have a process of selection and decide who gets to record an album and who gets to be published.
and yes it´s all not very divers or inclusive especially in the jazz business. but still I wonder. if nobody knows anymore what really good music is, will we forget about it ? probably not.
still with our heads constantly buried in our smartphones, and our minds being overloaded it can be hard to truly listen to something.. that's why it´s such a good thing go out an visit a jazz club. you'll have to sit through the tunes that don't speak to you immediately and you can feel real human energy coming from the stage. give it a try.
this is a short solo form that i made up for myself. i like chords that are a minor or major third apart- i have been using this progression to practice the rhythmic displacement of a 5 note group. let me explain.
so let´s say you are playing a 5 note group in a minor pentatonic, like this :
if you play it in quintuplets ( like above) the first note of five notes is always on the beat. so no displacement, the pattern stays locked in.
the moment you play the same pattern in 16th notes it gets displaced. the first note of the 5 notes is always one 16note later now .
I think we all have been practicing stuff likes this. and its fun ! but of course the best thing is to apply sequences like this in your improvisations.
BUT :
sometimes it doesn´t work so well. because we can´t just start a rhythmic displacement anywhere and hope it resolves well.
actually we can do that very well and that´s the bright future, but to get started I would say
a) check the subdivisions ( what are you playing ? eight notes ? triplets ? sixteenth notes )
b) count how long your phrase is ( how many quarter notes / eight notes/ etc..)
c) then find a form that you like ( like a blues in minor maybe)
d) and then reverse engineer it, f.ex. you want the last note of your pattern to be on the
one of the first bar - so where do you have to start ?
here´s a video where I play this pattern. have fun checking it out and don´t forget to count
all the best
Tina