hey Adam are you back yet hey Adam you you still gone
where you at little buddy where you at little buddy where you at big guy
I'm Peter Martin and I am NOT Adam Maness this is the you'll hear it podcast daily
jazz advice coming at you coming at you strong and solo in 2019 Adam is still
gone this week we are going to be making fun of him mocking him as much as
possible but still giving you that daily jazz advice that you've come to love and
expect my name is Peter Martin I'm here at the piano not in the pod cave but
adjacent to the pod cave I have my mid-morning snacks here so I'm very
excited about that #plant-based for 2019 today we
are talking about hey Peter what are we talking about I don't know buddy I'm
gonna give you seven ways to swing and I want you as I'm giving you these seven
ways to be thinking about how many how many ways has atom man has given you to
swing maybe zero so I'm gonna be seven ahead of them just putting that out
there okay so swing we talk about this all the
time you know in jazz and it kind of becomes this elusive thing and it
shouldn't be because this is the foundation of what we do this is kind of
like saying I have an American accent I have a Canadian accent I have an
Australian accent I have you know I those are all for speaking English of
course maybe you speak French I have a French accent I have a southern French
accent you know this is just sort of how we do what we do how we talk how we tell
our story sort of the foundation and look it's not the only way the only kind
of groove or or accent that we use in jazz but it's a very fundamental one to
many of the ways that we play this music so we want to have a kind of a good
handle on it but I want to hopefully demystify it to a little bit this is not
some elusive thing that you can't learn to do you absolutely can learn to do it
and most of you that think you're not swinging probably already are you might
need to work on it so I'm gonna give you seven ways to swing as sort of
examples of ways to get into it but this doesn't need to be that difficult is
what I'm trying to say okay number one
syncopate okay now what is syncopation we talked about this a little bit
yesterday with the cotton with the comping patters but this is just about
the juxtaposition the rhythmic resolution of the upbeat and the
downbeat so if I'm playing over a B flat blues a one two three four like just
starting that phrase one two three four I'm starting on the downbeat but I'm
accenting the upbeat so I'm starting on the down of one and then the upbeat of
two so I'm just playing a simple eighth note line and look I played four
different ones because it doesn't matter what notes I play it's about the rhythm
so that's just all eighth notes but when we accent we can bring out some
syncopation so I'm just gonna accent that second note was that second eighth
note one two three four and then I did it again when did I do it one two three
four on the end of four okay
one two three four okay so this first way is just about accenting the upbeat
on simple eighth notes right and you don't want to do this every time
that'll be corny you like if you go
that's corny right but if you do it it's selective time and you can practice this
like this one two a-one two three four
where you just play continual eighth note lines it's hard it's hard to make
that sound good but it's a good exercise and eventually you know you'll have that
kind of a sound and be able to incorporate that into what you're doing
okay that's number one
alright number two in our seven ways to swing is going to be listen now this is
normally number one but I actually forgot to say it number one so today
it's number two but that doesn't mean then it is not of number-one importance
as always and really this kind of listening I think to learn how to you
know really to be a way to swing is about listening and playing along with
the recordings so so many great examples that you could listen to
um mid-morning snack thank you very much you're gonna want to concentrate though
on things that you really think are super hard swinging you know things that
come to mind are like Paul Gonsalves solo on the Duke Ellington live in
Newport that just popped into my head um Wynton Kelly solo on Freddie
Freeloader on Miles Davis but it could be something it's not fifty years old
also it's whatever you think is really swinging you're gonna want to listen to
it a lot really concentrating on the groove because that's ultimately what
swing is and then playing along with the recording just concentrating on the
swing on the swing and the groove so if you're a horn player that's gonna mean
like learning a solo maybe you just learn one chorus of a solo but you play
along with the recording and you know really pump up the volume or get the
headphones going or something so that your can hear yourself playing along
with it but you're mainly hearing the recording and what you're trying to do
is match from a rhythmic standpoint you're not even I mean you're trying to
play the right notes - but you're mainly just kind of rhythmically in timing
trying to match what's going along with the recording and then repeating that
over and over again if you're a pianist maybe learn some comping rhythms even if
you don't know the exact chords and play that along with you know a great pianist
that you like and you think is really swinging but basically it's just
listening but concentrating on that element because just like learning a
language learning an accent or whatever we want to learn to imitate and then
talk along with it and compare ourselves and doing it in real time while you
listen to a great recording there's nothing like it okay so that's number two
number three of our seven ways to swing and this is to practice on one
note so what do I mean by that let's go back to our B flat
or let's go to E flat blues just for a little bit of variety okay so you're
gonna take a tempo and this can be any tempo that you're gonna want to swing
at and should be different temples and work this into your practice routine and
you're gonna play a number of choruses where you're only playing one note so if
I do a E flat blues about here one two three four
so if you can make one note
swing you'll be on your way you're gonna want to take rhythms that you hear now
obviously you don't have any kind of melodic situation or even harmonic tool
to be able to use you just have the rhythmic tools to be able to
swing okay and yeah if you're a pianist you can
kind of cheat by playing a baseline and stuff but look I'll do it with just like
one note one two three four
but what this will do is start to kind of force
you into coming up with rhythmic phrases that are swinging that are right in the
time that have them have some interesting syncopation accents and all
those kind of things you can do it at a faster tempo one two one two
okay now of course you can extend this on this will be kind of bonus where you
take two notes one two a one two three
okay but really just one note is the place that starts and especially those
slower tempos a one two three four
that's where it's at okay so that is what was that number three one two three
yeah practice on one note okay four of our seven ways to swing rhythmic
precision okay this is so important and no matter what
you play no matter how many notes no matter what tempo no matter what style
this is where it's at you know for really for any groove this is important
but for swing especially because if you think about how it feels there's a
certain tension in that precision it's not the kind of groove where it kind of
comes and goes with the volume like if you play quieter you slow down a little
bit or those swells that you push for know it's a boom
it's a mathematical element to it a robotic element but in a positive way
right so whatever you play with in that groove that's already there has to be
rhythmically precise you can bend it and pull it back and forth but that
underlying precision is there so if I go into that sixteenth note accent thing
it's got to be you know where it's just slowing down or speeding up even the
slightest bit it's got to be right in there I should have said robotic you
don't want to sound robotic but it has to be precise there has to be that
underlying okay so play with rhythmic precision of course practice with a
metronome is gonna help you a lot with that number five of our seven ways to
swing play with confidence okay this is so important because as you're
practicing all these different ways as you're learning solos playing along with
the recordings playing with rhythmic precision the swing field is a very
confident field so you can't go in kind of meekly peeking around the corner you
got to just put your foot all in it you got to jump right in it so
even if you're playing some bit play confidently
you know there's a swagger with swing usually that needs to be there and you
have to play confidently and if you don't really feel confident fake it and
because it's it's just an important part of the sound it's not a meek kind of
sound now I know it's kind of playing loud and ignorant there which is the
easiest way to demonstrate it but even if you're playing you know soft there's
still that confidence needs to be there okay so that's a really important one
that's one two three four five in our one two three four five in our seven ways to swing so we
got two more okay number six use offsets now this is something that people
comping piano guitar drums really think about and especially at the kind of
slower tempos can be very effective and you know a lot of times we think about
them in terms of triplets so if we've got one two three four
I kind of tempo so I'm playing all eighth notes but then I'm going to some
triplets
so if I go to triplets and do use the offset so instead of
and an offset with the triplet there's a number of different ways one two three one two
three one two three - you could just offset you know two three or just two or
just three or just one well just one would just be quarter notes I guess
that's like playing with confidence right but you're offsetting you just like
but that gives you an opportunity then to resolve things and you can do the
offsets with the eight notes too
okay so that's using offsets I don't know if that's an official term but
that's what I'm calling it okay so that's six number seven so this one
is of our seven ways to swing this is wear a scarf I don't know if you guys
are familiar with #jazzscarf but that's been trending the last few weeks
and I'm not sure but I did do some episodes wearing a scarf actually played
a gig recently you know cold venue in Chicago well it was cold one of the nights
where I had to wear a scarf so and I was kind of swing in that night I'm not
gonna lie so we're gonna say number seven this is kind of and not part of
our satisfaction guarantee that we usually have it You'll Hear It podcast
but wear a scarf you can try it out and see what you think okay so hope you
enjoyed today's episode you know this is number two at the piano this week by
myself and it's a little bit dictatorial a little bit of a lesson so if you like
this kind of thing this is what we do here at open studio all the time feel
free to come check us out at openstudionetwork.com we've got a number of
lessons piano bass guitar vocal saxophone i've got a number of different
lessons and this is kind of how we do it you know so we hope that you'll check us
out for the new year for some reference learning materials for you and until
tomorrow You'll Hear It