Upside-Down Thinking for the Jazz Pianist

        EXPLORING AN ADVANCED HARMONIC EXERCISE IN JAZZ-PIANO HARMONY

Legendary Freddie Hubbard

 In Jazz Improvisation, the question that is always asked is " What notes should I play with this Chord?"  A whole boat-load of Jazz Theory Books and Minus-One recordings have been marketed to answer this single question, ever since the introduction of Jerry Coker's 1964 book "Improvising Jazz" where an academic framework of modes and scales for improvising was laid out on paper.  There is of course, much much more to playing Jazz than mastering scales.  Scale study may not be necessary  and certainly is not sufficient.  Some would say that it is neccesary but not sufficient, but it is definitely not necessary and sufficient.   The arguments about teaching Jazz and how to think about it go on,  and the wise student would study from a variety of teachers to get different perspectives on how to learn improvising.  The one thing I believe is absolutely necessary is being able to play melodically and harmonically by ear in all 12 keys - the study of scales may facilitate that skill, but not necessarily.  If that skill is not in play,  all the scale study and hours of practice are just rote exercises leading nowhere.  This is why I have my students play "EAR" tunes in all keys, like Happy Birthday, Dixie and Jingle Bells.  Usually they understand the reason and it is surprisingly challenging to do.  The payoff is big, though. But if you can't hear your way through those tunes, how much sense does it make to improvise on a complex tune like Joy Spring and make musical sense of it?    But enough of that -  in this post I propose an advanced Harmonic exercise that turns the conventional method on its head and goes a long way to developing abilities to hear harmonically and to hear how notes relate to their underlying chord, which I believe is the foundation of improvising lines.
  Instead of asking....
       WHAT NOTES GO WITH THAT CHORD?
ask....
      WHAT CHORD GOES WITH THOSE NOTES?

This is a great way to develop the ear, to learn to listen carefully to voicings  and chord-quality differences, and develop  useful arranging skills. 

 Let's say we are given two notes  ( Eb and Ab  in this example. ) There is at least one good jazz voicing in every key  that will incorporate those two notes.  There are several possibilities in each key on chord type and voicing configuration.  This can be reworked with ANY two notes, or even 3 notes!  Or 1 note.  Here is a sample solution for the 2 notes Eb and Ab, highlighted in blue:

 Clearly this opens up a lifetime of exploration, given the 1, 2, and 3 note possibilities in 12 keys. For someone who is focused on harmony and voicing, I think this can be extremely helpful. 
Freddie Hubbard performs Joy Spring here --- 

 

 

A Hemiola by Any Other Name

  The term "Hemiola" has, like many things, evolved.  I myself am guilty of using it in ways that stretch the limits of it's many definitions. 

FIRST DEFINITION
    The earliest use of the word is simply to describe the conditions that create the Musical Interval of the Perfect Fifth - two notes that have a FREQUENCY ratio of 3:2 - for example:

                                             E660 : A440    a Perfect Fifth

        Simple enough.....then there's the
SECOND DEFINITION:
  The term evolved to mean a RHYTHMIC Ratio of 3:2    -- 3 Beats of Equal Value in a space normally occupied by 2.  This is the traditional dictionary defintion of the HEMIOLA. 

  This is extremely common in Afro-Cuban music and Jazz and is the essential feel of the Jazz Waltz.
It is so common to those of us that play Jazz, in fact, that it hardly seems worth naming.

                            
THIRD DEFINITION
      Here in the trenches, we use "hemiola" much more loosely, to refer pretty much to anything that has a "whacky" rhythm relative to the bar-line. 
   This is  a use of  the word "hemiola" that pushes the envelope  - the music below is better described as a "RHYTHMIC DISPLACEMENT"  or "Polyrhythm" or even "Cross-rhythm", but many people will just refer to this as a hemiola.  Probably not a great way to describe it, but that's language evolution for you.   In Zez Confrey's classic solo piano novelty, Kitten on the Keys, there is a 6/8 melodic phrase plastered onto a 4/4 harmonic accompaniment - it is the displacement or polyrhythm  that makes it sound like a cat wandering up and down the keyboard with an expected disregard for the underlying music. 

Here is Zez Confrey himself playing the tune - notice the exaggerated "swing-feel" eighth notes unlike most contemporary performances of this piece.

A FOURTH CURIOSITY
   Here's a clever "Note-Sequence Displacement" where a sequence of notes is displaced in the bar by ONE 1/8 beat and  the rhythm of those notes is modified as well - on first hearing this,  the word "hemiola" comes to mind, but it is really much more curious than just that.   Felix Arndt's ear-catching composition, NOLA.

   And just to cement that tune into your psyche, here's the unforgettable version by Liberace:

A FIFTH CURIOSITY
   THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING HEMIOLA -
      ( more correctly "rhythmic displacement" )

From the 1962 musical, The Music Man, comes this most memorable tune "Gary, Indiana"  - look at this melodic line below without the words -  it's really not an interesting melodic phrase AT ALL - in fact, it's straight out of Hanon Studies for the Piano ( the main character of the movie was a Music Teacher - nice touch!)  BUT,  add the 6 syllable Word-Phrase and all of a sudden there's a rhythmic HOOK, completely "lyric-dependent".  A 3 beat word-phrase stuck into a 2 beat musical phrase.  Take away the words and the "hook" just vanishes!   Is this a hemiola in the contemporary use of the word?
   Probably not.  But just as interesting by any other name, whatever that might be.  

        Listen.....

And just to close, while we're speaking of cats with disregard for the music, I include a special cat, Nora, performing a composition by Mindaugas Piecaitis with refreshing regard for music...in fact, she LOVES music....