mojazzmo
02-15-2009, 07:00 PM
Hey, All.
I was working on a cool little jazz blues tune from Martino's "El Hombre" album called Blues for Mickey-O and discovered more proof of some wise words from of one of my favourite musicians, Scott Henderson. In my constant struggle to improve as a musician and improviser, I have made "phrasing" my number one aspect of playing to work on. About a year or so ago, I stumbled onto an excerpt from a Scott Henderson dvd where he was talking about phrasing. He listed, in his opinion, the 3 most important aspects of phrasing. 3) melodic line 2) the shape or contour of the melodic line and lastly and most important was 1) Rhythm of the line. Back to today and writing out Martino's first couple of solo choruses and he repeats this simple rhythmic phrase all over. When you just listen to it, it sounds great and you may not realize why but when you see the notes on the page the pattern jumps out at you. For this reason, I am a fan of writing out transcriptions. I have found the same thing in so many transcriptions lately of solos that I thought were great.They all had very strong rhythmic motifs. The shape of the line and melody may differ but because the rhythm is the motif, it just works and sounds brilliant. In my earlier years I was always looking for the magic, cool scale and chords etc.. and largely ignored the rhythmic aspect and now it has become the greater part of my focus. Just thought I would share. Any thoughts on this or phrasing are welcome.
I was working on a cool little jazz blues tune from Martino's "El Hombre" album called Blues for Mickey-O and discovered more proof of some wise words from of one of my favourite musicians, Scott Henderson. In my constant struggle to improve as a musician and improviser, I have made "phrasing" my number one aspect of playing to work on. About a year or so ago, I stumbled onto an excerpt from a Scott Henderson dvd where he was talking about phrasing. He listed, in his opinion, the 3 most important aspects of phrasing. 3) melodic line 2) the shape or contour of the melodic line and lastly and most important was 1) Rhythm of the line. Back to today and writing out Martino's first couple of solo choruses and he repeats this simple rhythmic phrase all over. When you just listen to it, it sounds great and you may not realize why but when you see the notes on the page the pattern jumps out at you. For this reason, I am a fan of writing out transcriptions. I have found the same thing in so many transcriptions lately of solos that I thought were great.They all had very strong rhythmic motifs. The shape of the line and melody may differ but because the rhythm is the motif, it just works and sounds brilliant. In my earlier years I was always looking for the magic, cool scale and chords etc.. and largely ignored the rhythmic aspect and now it has become the greater part of my focus. Just thought I would share. Any thoughts on this or phrasing are welcome.