a huge mistake that many jazz players are making is not utilizing rhythm so today i'm
going to show you three common jazz rhythms and how you can use them in your jazz solos coming up
What's up brent here from learn jazz standards we help musicians just like you learn how to play
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button so that you never miss out on anything going on here as guitar piano sax trumpet bass
players we like to really focus on the melodic aspect of playing jazz the cool licks the cool
lines but oftentimes we're forgetting about the most important component that makes those lines
actually musical and that's rhythm so i'm gonna be showing you three common rhythms and a special
little trick that you can do to actually use that as the center point to start creating your own
jazz lines but make sure you do stick around to the very end of the video i'm going to show you
a really cool exercise as well that you can start utilizing today so the idea of this exercise is
we're going to start with just a rhythm and then we're going to add notes to it later so let's take
a look at rhythm number one rhythm number one sounds like this one two a one two three four
and the important aspect of this particular rhythm for me is this anticipation on the end of four
going into the next bar now this happens all the time in jazz these anticipations on the
end of four so getting used to these kinds of rhythms is really important so now that
we've figured out what this rhythm is let's go ahead and add some notes to it this one
will sound familiar to you this is over a c major seventh chord and it sounds like this
right aka we call this the lick but the idea is we're starting first with the rhythm and then
adding notes to it later you can compose your own or you could even take a common lick such as the
lick and apply it there now let's take a look at rhythm number two one a two a one two three four
okay very classic rhythm and the rhythm that i'm really paying attention to
here is this triplet eighth notes right here started with this pick up eighth note like
this is very common in jazz and you're gonna hear when i add notes to this how common this actually
is so again this is over a c major seventh chord and it sounds like this
right this is like a classic charlie parker bebop line that you'll hear all the time
with that triplet rhythm in there and again you can take that lick that i just showed
you or you can take that rhythm and then add your own lick that you can pose on top of it
now let's take a look at rhythm number three a one a two a one two three four
okay now the part of this rhythm that i'm really paying attention to is this right here that's
the end of two so again these syncopations come up quite a bit in jazz so we wanna get used to
playing different kinds of syncopations the and of two just being one of them so now of course
let's go ahead and add some actual tones some notes on top of it and hear what it sounds like
right even just a simple little lick line like that has a lot of interest in it when we really
start focusing on the rhythm first now a really cool exercise i want you to check out is this
exercise where we do what we call rhythmic motifs now what is a motif a motif is a simple idea
that you repeat over and over again and in the context of a solo you would generally develop that
motif so that it becomes even more interesting as it goes along tells a story but a motif is just a
simple idea and oftentimes when we talk about motifs we talk about melodic ideas but what i
want to focus on is rhythmic ideas so take a look at this someday my prince will come rhythmic motif
exercise so if we take a good look at it we start with this one rhythmic idea which is
right that's the first rhythm now later on you'll see i switch to another rhythm so i go
and then later on you'll hear me go
right and then the last rhythm that i do the last rhythmic motif is one two three four one
right so i'm doing this exercise so i'm taking these rhythmic motifs
i'm planning them out over top of the form of this jazz standard someday my prince will come
with my intention being that i'm going to go ahead later and add actual notes to them but the
great beauty of this is that because i'm forcing myself to be constrained to these rhythmic motifs
i'm going to be making very deliberate choices for how to actually spell out the
chords and create actual melodic interests so by starting with these rhythms we can
actually create really interesting solos so i'll show you just the very first eight bars
of this rhythmic motif adding notes on top of it and this is what it sounds like
so by being constrained to these rhythms this was really helpful for me to really think
through my solo think about my note choices from a rhythmic perspective and not a melodic perspective
first and therefore actually this is quite an interesting solo even just these eight bars and if
we continue down through the rest of it you'll see that as the motifs get more interesting and even
more rhythmic then there's a lot more interesting ideas that start coming out as a result of it
so my challenge for you today is to find a jazz standard that you know really well create rhythmic
motifs over top of it starting with the rhythms first and then compose your own solo and see what
you come up with and hey by the way if you want a little more help with rhythm and adding rhythm
into your jazz playing we have an awesome course called feeling and using rhythm 101 within our
inner circle membership as well as this someday my prince will come motific idea comes from our jazz
standards playbook volume 2. so go check us out at ljs innercircle.com i think you'll really enjoy
being a member over there with us and by the way some of the techniques i employ in that someday
my prince will come etude actually use some bebop language and ideas with enclosures and
approach tones so if you're interested in learning more about that do check out this video on the
screen right now it's about how to play instant bebop i'm sure you'll also enjoy that as well
make sure you like this video if you got value subscribe and we'll see you in the next video