Now in your standard bluegrass arrangement, the mando guy will spend a lot of time hitting their chop chords on beats 2 and 4, what we call the backbeat. The backbeat is just as important in jazz, the big difference being that its execution is more subtle. So nobody will be playing it like a bluegrass mandolinist, but please God, let it be somewhere! Jazz, minus the feeling of a strong 2 and 4, sounds unmoored, disorganized. So, though you might not be playing the actual backbeat, you are respecting it by playing because of, and around it, and it is felt internally in a way that orients everything everybody does.
Want to hear it done right? Here's my old colleague and sister-from-another-mister, Twin Cities drummer Jendeen Forberg leading the Wolverines big band. https://youtu.be/0NFi-K9sD94
So keep the backbeat in mind as you work these comping patterns. And as you work out your own ideas, let it be the thing that connects one chord to another, and one rhythmic motif to another. Hearing the backbeat as your “audible life stream” (reaching back for some new-agey vocab there…) can mean the difference between random stabs of chords, and solid coherent accompaniment for your soloist.
And if you aren’t yet able to consistently pat your foot on 2 and 4, get busy on that!
And here’s the full chorus. Come up with your own ways of doing this, but remember:
- Your chords should make a SIMPLE melody.
- Everything you do is for/because of the soloist.
- The harmony is audible without you. That’s not why you’re comping.
- Texture. What happens when you use a two note chord instead of a four note one.
- Respect the backbeat.
- Love.
