Hey Man, am I swinging yet?

Willie Thomas | February 17, 2011

As you might guess, this piece is about the illusive ingredient that makes fingers pop, heads bob and weave, feet tap, bodies gyrate and puts jazz players in the Pantheon of legends like Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Kenny Dohram, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie and the big bands of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson along with scores of others that personify music in motion.

Today, when someone starts swinging, you might hear, "Hey Dude, that’s a righteous groove you're bustin!” The result is the same, an affinity to accurately measure that interval of time between two beats and energetically produce music with the beat, makes everyone feel good. Bill Haley proved that swinging on a trapeze over a bar playing one note on his tenor. I was a witness in Vegas!

My first two paragraphs attempt to convince those thinking that it's the notes played in a solo and not the time that takes the prize are misguided. Notes count, but, time rules and wins the day. Unfortunately, people of that mind, are usually the poorly endowed recipients of a natural sense of timing and rhythm in music. They may never have felt a beat and if one wandered into their playing, it was too weak or meek to ever establish a groove. So, these folks have led a beat-barren existence and have no doubt been the bane of any jazz group they ever played with and are yet to set the first toe tapping when they thought they were killin' it on the bandstand!

Is there a cure for "no-beat syndrome", probably not, it may be terminal, and for sure, it kills all grooves in its presence. A possibility for the beat-afflicted is moving with the beat while they play. Joining a marching band could help, playing with groove records and improvising licks and taking the time to listen and evaluate is always good. Making a video of you in action could no doubt put some truth in view. Practicing with the metronome on 2 and 4 is helpful, but it doesn't create a real feeling of playing with a rhythm section and swinging. Jamey Aebersold’s Play Along recordings supply a perfect resource base.

Without getting into the weeds, here's a little info about how the swing feeling is created in 4/4 time when beats 2 and 4 are accented in each measure. This sets up the natural flow and feeling of syncopation. When you feel the up beats on 4 and 2 moving to the down beats on 1 and 3, you divide the measure into two parts, a statement on beats 4 and 1, with an answer on beats 2 and 3. When kids are old enough to count, I have them silently count 1, 2, 3, 4 with a nice jazz rock beat and eventually, I have them start shouting the 4 and 1 with real energy. When this is going well, I have them bob their heads on beats 2 and 3 in response to the 4 and 1. Then we get up and march while counting and clapping. This helps the kids start feeling that space, distance and time between the beats. For most kids this becomes a “bingo” moment and controlling their body movements to match the beat is a natural result. Voila, the kids have found the beat and their groove. Unfortunately, a few beat-challenged little ones are still blinking their eyes and may be headed for a band stand near you! That's life.

The 12 jazz lessons in the Beginner's Corner on the Jazz Everyone site provides listen and play exercises that take students through basic blues patterns, starting with simple on the beat rhythms that are graduated in difficulty to eventually include syncopated triplet patterns. Hearing, imitating and memorizing these patterns is another way to break through the no-beat barrier. Work with the chromatic drills and applying them to the changes of Cherokee and other tunes is a more advanced remedy that can be helpful in developing late beat tendencies for players of all stripes at all ages, including a large number of those earning jazz degrees still adrift in a timeless sea.

The unfortunate truth about most of these beat deprived players is that no one has sufficiently informed them about their deficiency. They are allowed and even encouraged to keep transcribing solos, playing them with bad time and doing the same whenever they perform. And even more frustrating, is the large number of these timeless wonders that don't even want to hear about their problem and will argue until blue in the face that Bird plays all over the beat and Lee Morgan really lays back when he plays. What they fail to realize is that these time nuances are used by every good player because they always know exactly where the beat is. So, when all is said and done, God bless the child that's got his own ..BEAT! And in the prophetic words of one dear Brother in Jazz, "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!" Amen to that Mr. Ellington!