I was intrigued about the odd meters comment. For some of my students, 4/4 is an odd meter.....
I won't name who, but I heard a teacher lamenting about how his students were always "bringing in tunes in 19/8, 7/16, and what not" and so many "straight 8" tunes. (He was pretty negative about it.) "And nobody's dealing with the swing...." he pontificated further as he snapped his fingers on two and four (around quarter note= 120).
I say, why not be able to do it all? The more you can do, the more you will work. And furthermore, don't dog stuff cause YOU are unable to do it. For example, I really WISH I could play stride piano as well as Spike Wilner does;But I'm only going to admit admiration. It would be too easy to say "Aw, that's some BULLSHIT..." No. The beauty of our modern society is that we can enjoy it all.
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| Billy Hart |
But I also think we shouldn't do odd meters for their own sake. It's all rhythm. A lot of stuff that you could think of in four you could also think of in 7, and so on. I find myself writing odd meters less, only because I want to do it for the right reasons, not just to be impressive.
It's not that people are playing in 7/8, it's WHY are they playing in 7/8? What does 7/8 make them FEEL? There's so much great music in 4, or 3, or 6......some people might never NEED to get to 7!
I don't want to count when I listen to Stravinsky or Steve Coleman. I just want to DANCE! But it's the same for anything I'm listening to, so ultimately it doesn't matter.
Thanks for the post, George. The discussion you mentioned sparked some thoughts for me as well. I think it's always a good thing to improve all aspects of your musicianship; there's no reason that one key, time signature or ensemble is better or worse, or "righter" or "wronger" than another. Sometimes I get the feeling that there is a response to perceived "intellectualism" with anti-intellectualism. I'm not sure that either extreme is useful. It's always somewhere that's neither place to me...
ReplyDeleteI'm very curious: what might be some of the "right reasons" for playing in an odd meter? I agree that being able to swing hard in 4/4 is essential, and why not be able to do it all? I'd just love to know more about what you perceive as appropriate contexts for odd meter straight-eighths grooves.
ReplyDeleteThe only example that comes to my mind of something that grooves hard in odd meters and would be weird to do "straight" is the Chris Potter Underground kind of stuff ...
Well stated, George. I didn't see the Facebook discussion of this, but what comes to mind is that a lot or my contemporaries and a generation of younger musicians seem to think that anything in an odd meter has a sophistication to it that is lacking in a more common meter. These days, I'm more taken away most of the time by people who are able to create rhythmic energy and intrigue in 4/4 and 3/4. I think so many young musicians go straight to odd meters and neglect the rhythmic possibilities of more conventional meters, which is the only thing that's unfortunate in the widespread use of odd-meters today. To me, this has nothing to do with any issue of being intellectual or any progressiveness of anti-anything, it just has to do with using all the available tools to make great music.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your great blog, btw.
greetings all. a few tiny scattered points, which have probably been made elsewhere already-
ReplyDelete1) around the world and particularly outside the west, people dance to so-called "odd" rhythms. there are ancient traditions of playing in irregular/asymmetric rhythms and of rooms full of people dancing to those rhythms. it can be as deep as swing if you zero in on that vernacular/dance aspect.
2) james brown's music is asymmetric too, and so is most afro-caribbean music. asymmetric rhythmic divisions of duple cycles can offer just as much as composite meters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i09Nt7THZdg
3) meter is not the same as rhythm; meter is not even music; it is merely a blank space of a certain duration.
4) maybe because odd means both "not even" and "strange," people seem to confuse those two very different meanings. there's nothing inherently strange about any number. unfamiliar, maybe, but that's not the same.
5) i agree that one should have a good reason to do something in any particular meter, including four and three. indeed, everything is better when it's done for a good reason.
6) thanks, george, for your blog and your great self.
Many of my students and other younger musicians I've listened to recently seem to think that superimposing an odd meter (and straight 1/8 feel) on a jazz standard constitutes creativity and "modernization" in and of itself. It would be nice if that type of meter in an original or arrangement would serve the music, rather than function as a problem to be solved.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction is simply that, if you enjoy listening to music in odd meters, you will probably enjoy playing music in odd meters, and so you should. All of this talk of "ain't nobody SWANGin' anymore!" sounds to me like traditional jazz players wishing the world would operate inside their comfort zone, and everyone would place the highest value on what THEY like to play. Attitudes like this will only make the people who have them sad and frustrated; there's too much variety in the world. (But I'm glad folks are still swinging hard, and still enjoy trying to do so myself when the opportunity arises.)
ReplyDeleteThat said, if I'm going to play in nine, it's usually more interesting to play with someone who plays/listens to traditional Turkish music than it is to play someone who just listens to Blue Rondo a la Turk, and if I'm going to play in seven, I'd rather do it with someone who's familiar with Balkan music than simply someone whose coolest professor once brought in a transcription of Brad Mehldau's solo on 'All the Things You Are.' (Brilliant and wonderful though it is.) Perhaps this just speaks to my interest in musics of other cultures, but I do believe that, if you're going to get IN to something new, it helps to listen to a music where that thing is both commonplace and highly developed. I think one's musicianship is always strengthened by consuming and incorporating musics that have deep roots.
I've been less than amused by the online remarks recently by a certain pianist (a Wynton alum whose initials are ER) who is constantly talking about who's swinging and who's not. Worse, he's turned the conversation into a race thing.
ReplyDeleteMy 2 Cents worth on this, from my blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://ronanguil.blogspot.com/2009/09/talking-dog-syndrome.html
and
http://ronanguil.blogspot.com/2010/01/whatever-happened-to-odd-metre-swing.html
I had a band in the '70's called Listen and we did all originals, many based on "odd" (not peculiar) rhythms which we worked on extensively. People did dance to them and, other than tripping and falling down a lot, seemed to enjoy it. We would develop a piece to where we didn't have to think about it while playing as we would work out a kind of shorthand clave that would allow us to "hear" the rhythms. The problem became that if you needed to replace someone in the band, you had to teach them to learn all of this from scratch which was daunting at best. The benefit of playing in the common , more traditional time signatures is that players are way more inter-changeable given the general lack of rehearsal time most situations offer. My only comment to many of today's players is there seems to be a decided resistance or conscious choice not to swing. I don't quite follow why that would be. But that's just a generalization. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNLBsLbOEFc
ReplyDeleteThat said, if I'm going to play in nine, it's usually more interesting to play with someone who plays/listens to traditional Turkish music than it is to play someone who just listens to Blue Rondo a la Turk, and if I'm going to play in seven, I'd rather do it with someone who's familiar with Balkan music than simply someone whose coolest professor once brought in a transcription of Brad Mehldau's solo on 'All the Things You Are.' (Brilliant and wonderful though it is.) Perhaps this just speaks to my interest in musics of other cultures, but I do believe that, if you're going to get IN to something new, it helps to listen to a music where that thing is both commonplace and highly developed.
ReplyDeleteIt would be too easy to say "Aw, that's some BULLSHIT..." No. The beauty of our modern society is that we can enjoy it all...
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I really WISH I could play stride piano as well as Spike Wilner does;But I'm only going to admit admiration. It would be too easy to say "Aw, that's some BULLSHIT..." No. The beauty of our modern society is that we can enjoy it all.
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I really WISH I could play stride piano as well as Spike Wilner does;But I'm only going to admit admiration. It would be too easy to say "Aw, that's some BULLSHIT..." No. The beauty of our modern society is that we can enjoy it all.Sprachschule EnglischOn Hold Messages
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