Tickle Toe: Comping pt. 2

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.

Sometimes being totally predictable is a good idea. Remember those chop chords? Also, this stuff about the almighty backbeat will come back around when we get  to clave and Afro-Cuban music. Seeya!

"Tickle Toe," comping pt.1, with a digression into Miles Davis' "So What."

Let’s start with the first eight bars, four bars of Bbm, and four of Ebm. Believe it or not, these kinds of passages can be harder to play over than when you have a bunch of chords. When I first started playing jazz professionally (as a bass player) having to walk over one chord for long stretches was what made me the most nervous.

Now the last thing you want to do is just play “Bbm” over Bbm. Check this out:

We’re connecting the different Bbm chords with a passing C-half-diminished. The Ebm7’s are connected by means of passing Fm7’s. And by doing this we’re creating a simple backing melody. What's in this example might be more than you actually need to be doing when you're in the trenches, I just wanted to show you the various possibilities in that position.

You’ll notice all the motives whose last notes are on the “and” of the beat. The tendency is to even those eighth notes out, which is wrong wrong wrong! A great model for doing it right is Miles Davis’ famous “So What.” 

https://youtu.be/DEC8nqT6Rrk  

Listen to the backing horns at 7:05 behind the piano solo. The riff consists of two eighth notes on beat four of every alternate measure, swung, with a little accent on the “and” note. Thus, ooo-Bop-*-2-3-4-1-2-3-ooo-Bop….  That last eighth note will be short, and the listener will perceive an accent due to its inherent syncopation .

And here’s the first 8 of the head, which you want to know anyway. COPY AND INTERNALIZE THESE RHYTHMS AND ARTICULATIONS.

Seeya

Tickle Toe (Count Basie, 1940)

Here are the head and changes to Tickle Toe, which you could think of as a very early bop tune. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooUUhsBsv

It pops along, around quarter note = 200, and at that tempo, "swing eighths" aren't really "swing eighths" in the normal sense. Find the swing in the placement of accents. Think generally of giving emphasis to the melodic peaks, such as the "and" of beat two (aka "the and of two")  in measures 1 and 2. Same with measure 5, but - what about measure 6? Downbeats of 1 and 3 there. 

This is a fun tune to play, and play over. 

Moody's Mood For Love

You’ve got to know Moody’s Mood For Love, one of the most iconic solos in all of jazz (https://youtu.be/u0KN4_99qEM). It was originally recorded in the 40’s as an alto sax solo over the changes to I’m In the Mood for Love, (https://youtu.be/yuOsB4psC9E). Eddie Jefferson set lyrics to Moody’s solo, and the new version, first recorded by King Pleasure (https://youtu.be/ICNhZMimZjk), became a hit and has been in many many jazz singers’ books ever since. Here below is a tab of the first chorus of the original solo, which is an excellent example of how to play over ballads.

Yes banjo-pickers, we CAN play over ballads! Listen to Moody’s phrasing - the musical sentences, and the moments of silence separating them - and notice the importance Moody places on how the phrases end. Frequently with the beboppers, you’ll hear the “modern” stuff happen on the last one or two notes of a phrase. Phrasing is yuuuuge! Pretend you’re a horn player or singer and give yourself places to take a breath, and don’t be afraid of a little silence. The use of silence is a great way of claiming this particular musical space as yours.

Breath-awareness is a great thing to incorporate into your improvisation practice: Try only playing on your exhales. Sometimes I need to do this on the gig if I find myself getting a little too busy, or valuing notes over music, my ego over my audience.

So some brief notes about playing ballads would include:

Play in phrases.

Breathe.

“Play” silence. 

Place the last note of a phrase with the same intent as you placed the first.

Learn the lyrics if possible, at least have some idea what the tune is about.

Use the melody. That melody is the reason you’re even bothering to try to play a solo over it.

Just Friends pt.2, getting a solo together

Just Friends is in G; clumps of its chord changes fit into various (mostly major) keys; you need to know the scales; you need to know the chords; if you had to pick one, I'd say learn the chords. The other notes will find their way in there. So let's just break the tune down to a collection of chord arpeggios as a place to start. I picked one place on the neck, 8th/9th position. Here are the arpeggios over all the changes in the tune:

One bit of "jazz folklore" has this or that musician playing some difficult tune in every key, every possible way. So a lot of us come up feeling guilty that we can't play, say, Just Friends all up and down the neck in every key. First of all, unless there's a singer involved, you will play it in this key - nobody else got around to doing it in all twelve keys either. Secondly, you can only solo over it in one place or key at a time. You play a hot solo in 8th/9th position, and nobody will know or care that you can't do it in the key of 6-sharps standing on your head.

That's a roundabout way of saying just do this. And when think you've got it pretty well in hand, try improvising over Just Friends, limiting yourself those same arpeggios. You might be surprised to discover that it doesn't sound half bad! So, something like this:

The iReal app is great for working on stuff ad infinitum; you can program the changes in and let it play as long as you want, at whatever tempo you like. Do change the tempo up from time to time, you don't want to get "tempo muscle-memory" (it does happen!) Gradually let some non-chord tones creep into your soloing, maybe a little chromaticism as well. If it's going well, you're playing chords in a scale-y way, and scales in a chord-y way, and not being quite aware of which is which. Or caring!

see ya.


 

Just Friends

Just the other night I was on a gig playing bass, "Just Friends" was called, and as my solo approached I thought OK, stand back y'all... I mean, I've been blowing over this thing for years, and it's a great tune to play over. And I STUNK UP the joint. So the next day I went back to "Just Friends" and started all over again, which is a great thing to do every so often.

It's a jazz warhorse, so you gotta know it. Here's the head, and in subsequent posts I'll go over some ways to attack your solo. Preferably not with the blunt instrument with which I attacked mine.

"Seven Steps to Heaven" - the head and Miles' first solo chorus, in G (the original is in F).