Teaching jazz improvisation used to be very focused on scales and harmony. When learning a jazz standard, for example, a student might spend a good deal of the lesson analysing the functional harmony. The appropriate scales fitting the chords or key centres would be determined, and finally some improvisation might take place.
This approach may be fine for adult learners, but for younger students and teenagers in particular this can put them off jazz and improvising. While teaching jazz in several schools and institutions, as well as in private teaching, I have found a rhythmic approach better for getting stuck into soloing quickly.
Why is rhythm important?
This may seem a basic question, but a lot of music has a definite rhythm. Playing well needs good rhythm in addition to other areas, such as accuracy, feel, dynamics and so forth. When improvising jazz, the phrasing should be in time, with very little variation in terms of tempo. Learning to play music with a strong sense of pulse can be made easier when practising with tools such as a metronome, or an app with drumbeats.
Starting to improvise
Clapping is the easiest way to begin improvising. Many music teachers are fully aware of clapping games and exercises, but here are some ideas for getting more inventive. Ask students to:
- Stamp their feet on beats 2 and 4 while copying a twobar rhythm performed by the teacher.
- Develop this by inserting a two-bar improvisation between each refrain.
- Take turns in clapping a two-bar pattern, leaving a twobar space for the other students to copy this. Ideally, the student creating the pattern should clap the same rhythm four times, with the phrase copied four times. This forces the student to clap a clear and strong idea that is easily imitated.
Using words when clapping
This is another way in to improvising. When learning new material in a school jazz band, for example, the teacher can insert rhythms and ideas from a new tune. I recently taught a version of the bebop jazz tune ‘Salt Peanuts’ (by Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clark) to my junior jazz group. I had to adapt the piece as most of the band members, aged 12 and 13, could only play a limited number of pitches. Rhythmically, however, they were far more advanced, and were able to play more complex phrases if the tune was kept to a few pitches.
The original piece is a contrafact on ‘I Got Rhythm’, meaning it has the same structure and harmony as the Gershwin tune but the melody is different. (This common musical form and harmony is generally known as ‘Rhythm Changes’ in the jazz world.)
Marching in a circle, the students chanted the words below and later improvised new words to this rhythm.
The groove of ‘Salty Peanuts’ has a swing feel. I encouraged students, therefore, to make the quavers swung, with two quavers performed as if a triplet crotchet + quaver.
These kinds of games or ‘exercises’ are fun, but they are also educationally beneficial. The clapping games mentioned earlier develop body coordination as well as creativity. The inclusion of short improvised phrases, such as two bars, gives the student confidence and shows a way forward to jazz soloing.
Introducing pitch
One method I use when getting students to improvise is to allow just one note (pitch) to be used. The student is then able to focus on rhythm but also space, repetition and dynamics. I then gradually increase the number of pitches allowed, within the pentatonic scale. The children at my school seem to like this method and often ask if we can start our sessions like this. It seems that when the student feels safe to improvise – when there are parameters given – they are more confident to ‘have a go’.
Rhythmic nuances
The way a rhythm is articulated can add authenticity to jazz improvisation. To gain the necessary skills to imitate the ‘language’, it is important to listen to jazz music to absorb all the nuances and stresses. Most phrasing in jazz is legato, with accents on a variety of beats. It is not unusual to hear a beginner play mostly staccato, misinterpreting the articulation. I use the analogy of speech and language, where words are often joined together like a legato phrase, to explain why music often sounds better when played this way.
This connects to another important point – jazz comes from a great aural tradition. It was primarily learned by ear, and to some extent this tradition remains within the jazz community. With improvisation, it is important to listen and learn through copying. Again, I refer to the analogy of speech and the way children learn language. By listening and copying (or ‘transcribing’) jazz phrases, the student can pick up the rhythmic language quickly. This level of study may not be suitable for the beginner, but you can't beat listening to jazz recordings to get a feel for the music.
The terms ‘feel’ and ‘groove’ may sound like hip jazz talk, but these actually describe exactly what is important in jazz. Pitch is important, of course, but in general it is the rhythm and feel that makes the music sound good. A few stray pitches here and there are far less noticeable than poor rhythm. If we return to the language analogy, then poor rhythm is like speaking in a foreign language with no attention to the stresses and accents required in order to be understood. Jazz has a language that is largely informed by syncopated rhythm, and not just which mode you play with a specific chord.
Swing feel
Swing feel, meanwhile, is often tricky to interpret. The swung quaver in ‘Salty Peanuts’, described above as triplet crotchet + quaver, can appear in scores as two regular quavers (‘straight’ quavers), with an instruction at the start of a composition for ‘swing feel’. In other scores the dotted-quaver followed by semiquaver is used to imply swung quavers, but this is incorrect, an inaccurate representation. There are also various ways to play the swung quaver, depending on the composition and tempo. Compare the tune ‘Moanin’’, written by pianist Bobby Timmons and recorded by Art Blakey, with ‘Everything I Love’ as played by pianist Eliane Elias. The tunes and solos of both pianists are swung and yet sound very different because of the tempos. ‘Moanin’’ is a medium-slow shuffle swing tune, with a strong emphasis on beats 2 and 4, reinforced by Blakey's drumming; ‘Everything I Love’, meanwhile, is medium swing and up tempo, with the stress on beats 2 and 4 played in a more subtle way. A more noticeable change is the way the swung quaver feel, when faster, gets closer to a straight quaver feel. For a further example, listen to saxophonist and composer John Coltrane on ‘Giant Steps’ – you hear mostly straight quavers as the tempo is nearly 300 bpm.
And it's not simply a question of adopting swing or straight. Check out the solo by pianist-composer Herbie Hancock on ‘Dolphin Dance’ from the celebrated album Maiden Voyage. This is littered with a variety of both swung and straight quaver feels, and other interesting rhythmic patterns.
Time signatures
Traditionally, jazz music was in 4/4 and 3/4, but increasingly it's explored more complex time signatures. Note, for example, Dave Brubeck's ‘Take Five’ in 5/4, Brad Mehldau's version of ‘All the Things you are’ in 7/4, or Esperanza Spalding on ‘Cuerpo Y Alma/Body and Soul’. These metres have their own challenges, but if you break them down into smaller beats and add a groove in the bass, they are more manageable. For example, five in a bar could be 3+2, or seven in a bar, 4+3.
Playing jazz as a solo pianist presents more challenges than for other instruments. The coordination of both hands needed for improvisation, while being a lot of fun, needs to be worked at. Left-hand patterns such as in this one below can be played while the right hand improvises on the G blues scale.
Inventing riffs based on set rhythms can teach the hands to work together, even when combining different rhythms. Composing two-bar patterns, as the first step, is a great way to get students improvising with confidence.
Related listening and links
- ‘Salt Peanuts’ from album Groovin' High, Dizzy Gillespie.
- ‘Moanin'’ from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.
- ‘Everything I Love’ from Eliane Elias.
- ‘Cuerpo Y Alma’ from Esperanza.
- ‘Dolphin Dance’ from Maiden Voyage, Herbie Hancock.
- ‘Giant Steps’ from Giant Steps, John Coltrane.
- ‘Take Five’ from Time Out, Dave Brubeck Quartet.
- ‘All the Things you are’ from Art of the Trio, vol. 4: Back at the Vanguard, Brad Mehldau
- Andrea Vicari's online learning: jazzsnippets.com
- andreavicari.com
