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Hi, it's Geoff from DiscoverDoubleBass.com.
Welcome to another one of my video lessons.
Don't forget if you haven't been to see the website please go and have a look after this
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Now, today's lesson.
I'm going to be talking to you about a really good exercise that will help improve your
phrasing and thus improve your solos.
It's taken from playing fours with a band, trading fours, and if you don't understand
what that means don't worry I'm going to talk you through it.
I'm going to explain to you a few ways that you can do it better, and then I'm going to
show you how that relates to this exercise.
Let's get stuck into the details and look at how learning these fours, and improving
your phrasing can help you.
Let me give you a quick overview of what fours are.
When you're playing in a Jazz Band it's great that one person goes ahead and takes the lead
and improvises their solo, but towards the end of the solos, typically, we often do this
thing called taking fours, trading fours, and what that means is that the soloists start
to interact where one musician will play four bars, then another musician will play four
bars, and so on.
Quite often the band leader will hold his hand up with fours to help let you know that
that's going to happen, and a very common way that it comes about is when the drum solo
if nobody can take another full drum solo they often quite like to break it up by playing
four bars of a harmony instrument, like the bass, or the piano, whatever, saxophone, and
then four bars of the drums, but you'll alternate so it'll be maybe sax four bars, drums four
bars, sax four bars, drums four bars.
I just want to give you a couple of quick ideas, since we're touching on the subject
of fours, about ways that you can approach them when that's happening, because it's such
a common thing, and then I'm going to move on and show you this exercise, which I think
will help you with your phrasing and your solos.
Well when the drummer goes off and they're playing their fours it can be quite tricky
to keep everything together because at that point everybody tends to drop out, generally,
and you need to be landing together on beat one at the start of the next bar.
Particularly if you're not that experienced, or the band members around you aren't that
experience.
The more that you play this material the more that you can break the rules, but whatever
you do you should certainly know where beat one is.
When the drum solo is happening if they're playing a very syncopated rhythms it can be
quite off putting and you might lose your place so here's couple of tips to help you
through.
One, is that if you're coming from a walking bass line, which is very likely, you can just
continue to think of the bass line in your head without playing it.
You know you'll be playing your four in a bar and then you'll just keep going but just
kind of singing it in your mind, and that can help keep that crotchet pulse while the
drummer goes off on one.
Another way of doing it is to literally just count one, two, three, four in your mind,
and if you're playing with either a really bad drummer, who you're not quite sure where
they, are or a really good drummer who's breaking the time up in a very clever way it may be
useful to do that.
Of course if you're playing with a good drummer then hopefully they're playing really nice
melodic and rhythmic phrases that resolve and let you know where that is.
Also don't forget to look and take the visual cues from the musicians amongst you, so you've
got this four bars of drumming madness and then you're listening in so you can land on
beat one.
It's a really tricky thing to do, think about the melody, think about the walking bass line,
counts, and take your visual cues.
Okay, let's get to this exercise that I'm trying to reach today.
Now, I was talking to a friend of mine, Scott Devine, who's a fantastic bass guitar teacher
and he was telling me about a form of practicing improvising which I'm going to explain to
you now because I feel that it's really useful for us.
He was talking about mixing four bars of walking bass lines with four bars of an improvised
solo, much the same way that you would be when you are taking fours with the band, okay.
That's what I was playing at the beginning of this lesson you heard right at the start
where I was talking four bars of a walking line and four bars of an improvised solo,
and the reason why I think that this is so important is that for bass players in a jazz
context we are often the last person to play the solo before the melody starts so we have
to very clearly wrap up our solo and let the saxophonist, or pianist, whoever's playing
the melody give them a bit of room and let them know by playing really clear lines that
the tune is about to start.
If we blunder into the start of the next chorus there's a good chance that they will hesitate
and stop and you might have to go all the way around again and you'll ruin the shape
of your solo, or they'll, God forbid, they'll start soloing again and you know the song
never ends.
This is particularly important in tunes that have an anacrusis and that are where the melody
starts before the chord sequence, such as autumn leaves.
That note there is where the actual chord sequence starts.
You've got to give people room to do that and it's a lot easier for saxophone players
because they can go into the next solo and it's not such a problem because somebody else
is soloing, but when the melodies come in next you need to know how to wrap it up.
Now let's get back to this exercise of mixing the fours.
I used to practice that, getting around that problem, just playing the last eight bars
of a tune and then trying to resolve my solo very well, and I'm just always aware of it
on gigs, but this great little exercise will help you because you're playing in short bursts,
four bars, you've got to play one phrase, typically, that ends very well and goes straight
into your walking, because you're playing the walking in the next four bars.
It ties it all together in this way and it's a lot harder to do than it looks.
Let me show you what I mean.
If I was trading fours with the saxophone player I'd be walking for four bars and then
soloing four bars.
Let's have a listen to what that would sound like.
[Music]
Back into the walking.
Soloing.
Walking.
Getting ready for the soloing.
Walking.
You can see there I'm mixing between this walking four bars and soloing four bars, but
it's really tricky to resolve the solos clearly enough and keep the lines, the phrases really,
really clear and well-shaped so that you can pick up the walking bass line, and it's, yeah
it's a lot harder than it looks so take some time to work on that.
You might want to make sure that not all of your solos fill the four bars, make sure you're
trying to leave space, you know, use shape, dynamics, all of the things that we speak
about, and of course try it over different progressions.
I was just playing in F blues there because that was what came to mind, but it's certainly
worth trying this over different standards and hopefully you'll improve your fours when
you're playing but also your phrasing, which is the key thing and having this awareness
that you're moving towards the end of the form to enable the melody player to take over
in that context.
Well, I really hope that you've enjoyed today's lesson and of course if you have you can let
me know by pressing that like button, and then we can share the lessons with more people,
and I'd really appreciate it as well.
Keep practicing hard, I'll see you next time.
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