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Apologies if I just missed something on how to practice these but here goes.
So, you have a given template and Ritchie’s walk through on getting notes (options etc.) into the rhythmic structure.So far so good. When you’re finished though, you have two, possibly very different sounding melodies but you’re trying to get your just entered solo working in time. What’s the best approach then – practice tapping the rhythm’s out measure by measure or just hack over the example solo with your own?
Just curious how other’s are proceeding.
BTW, this seems like a great way to learn and I really appreciate the other participants putting up there work, it’s really great listening to it.
It occurs to me that at a later stage you could really take rhythms from great solos and work them around like this….again thanks and hopefully I didn’t miss some instruction in the beginning.
Cheers!
DanHope others will join in with their comments, however just in case they get lazy, I’m going to jump in and share my personal experience working with my live students.
At the point that we begin with the 1st rhythm template, we are also working with Rhythm Lab 2 in the workbook. These two go hand in hand, so I encourage students to explore all the exercises breaking the rhythms down into the 2 beat rhythm cells taught in Rhythm Lab 2. The goal here is to learn the sound of each 2 beat cell as if they were words, and train the eye to spot them and identify them immediately in the music. This simplifies matters tremendously when attempting to sightread.
I advise that you first familiarize yourself with the flow of the rhythms in the templates, and in doing so, you focus on breaking each measure down into its 2 beat cell components. Once you are comfortable with playing the entire template with the rhythms on 1 note, go ahead and try to play it with the intervals. I recommend doing this in 4 measure segments (or 2 initially if you feel 4 is too much to retain). This same procedure should be followed when first learning the upcoming etudes.
In the beginning, for many it is a combination of getting accustomed to identifying the 2 beat cells and tapping your foot while keeping track of the 8th note downbeats and upbeats. However, if you do this on a regular basis, after several months you will begin to pre-hear the sound of each 2 beat rhythm cell and the counting will happen at a sub-conscious level, thus allowing you to focus on the actual notes!
On a final note, just wanted to say that you “hit the nail on the head” when you stated that “at at a later stage you could take rhythms from great solos and work them around like this”. I actually touch upon this concept in the last 2 modules of Vol 1 in the “Dissecting the Masters” videos. The concept of writing solos over the rhythmic structure of a solo played by a master musician, has been something that personally took my improvisational skills to a new level. Rhythm is 50% of the game and acquiring rhythmic vocabulary is just as important as spending time developing the melodic 50%. In vol 2, at a certain point I explore writing a solo using the rhythmic structure of an entire Charlie Parker improvisation.
Richie,
Thanks for your quick response. I’m going to do a minor re-set on the sections you’re talking about and come back and post on it – maybe as I go along even. I need to take some time and read your comments a few times and give it some real thought as well.
Again, thanks and I’ll be back!
Dan“Problem” solved with my template question. I had jumped around just a bit and wasn’t getting things synced, so to speak.
Hey Daniel,
Sorry for the late reply – I’m a newbie on here too – currently just at the end of Vol 1 Module 2. When working through the rhythm templates I’ve just been learning one template at a time in one area of the neck – starting with position 1, 4 and 5 over the I IV V chords. I just go bar by bar reading off the chart and trying to say the intervals out loud and read the rhythms. Once I get a bit familiar with it I can start putting 4 bar chunks together, then all 12 bars. Then I up the tempo and then try translate it to the other relative positions (eg if I then start with position 2 on the I chord it will be position 5 and 6 over the IV and V chords respectively, etc).
One thing I’d love to know is are people memorising the templates. When I play it up to tempo I can get through it grand but I’m relying on the chart to prompt me regarding rhythms/intervals. Is anyone learning them off by heart without the chart, or is that perhaps not the best use of time?
I’d be interested to hear how you’re getting on now anyway. Hope practice is going well! Cheers,
ChrisFor what it’s worth…my mentor, the late Charles Banacos, would have me write similar etudes. I wouldn’t intentionally memorize them but I was told to play them even as a warm up for a few months, even though I had them down. From playing them so much I would kind of memorize them which I was told was a good. Suddenly what happened is that later when I would improvise over the standard the etude I was written for I would naturally play ideas from the related etudes I had practiced in the past. Playing our written etudes (eg. Rhythm Templates), for a few months, even after we have them down, is a way to program our subconscious mind with new vocabulary for a source of ideas when later improvising over that given progression.
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