An item I was working on with a student— playing a simple pattern, and growing it by doubling some notes, or repeating two notes. We’ve seen most of the patterns before, this is just an […]
Category: ECM
Reed tweak: RH lead – Guy’s variation
One of my students, age 12, accidentally invented a really good way of handling the right hand lead Reed system. You have to watch out for things like that. Sometimes mistakes point to a better […]
Double time Reed tweak: one step beyond
Launching to the outer limits of what you can reasonably do with Syncopation, verging on losing the melody rhythm as a point of reference. Or not, see what you make of it. Using one of […]
Transcription: Jack Dejohnette – Tumbleweed – 01
Jack Dejohnette playing on Tumbleweed, from Michael Brecker’s album Pilgramage— released a few months after his death. This is the type of playing much of what we do here is in service of. For a […]
Transcription: Jack Dejohnette – Gentle Rain
This tune shows you one way of opening up a Bossa Nova groove, in a modern jazz setting. It’s Jack Dejohnette playing on Gentle Rain, from George Benson’s album Beyond The Blue Horizon. I’m listening […]
EZ ECM: entry to 7/4
Hey, a few broad, non-technical creative possibilities for playing a straight-8th, ECM-type texture in 7/4, which also apply to using Ted Reed’s Syncopation on the drum set broadly. First, we need some rhythms to work […]
Groove o’ the day: Jack Dejohnette – Polar AC
Jack Dejohnette playing a straight 8th groove on Freddie Hubbard’s Polar AC. This gets called an ECM feel today, but maybe we should start calling it a CTI feel. Change it up, direct people to […]
Dejohnette patterns
UPDATE: Oops, there’s a duplicate pattern in there— I think pattern 9 happens three times. And I got sloppy with my beaming standard. Oh well, it happens when you’re rushing to post stuff. Some […]
Transcription: Jack Dejohnette – Directions
Here’s that Jack Dejohnette transcription I mentioned yesterday— on the intro of Directions, from Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East – It’s About Time. The 8th note quintuplets I mentioned happen right up front, […]
Dejohnette-like method
The cosmos gave me a couple of instances of Jack Dejohnette yesterday— I got to work on that Jack Dejohnette transcription, and also happened to also catch him on the radio (KMHD.org, The Afternoon Bridge, […]
EZ ECM feel – 01 – unisons
This is the first part of a little method I used in a lesson recently, for introducing what has become known as an ECM-type feel— a modern, non-repetitive, quasi-linear, straight 8th jazz feel. See Jon […]
Reed tweak: filling the long gaps
Here’s a tweak to an ordinary straight 8th note Syncopation practice method: right hand plays the melody rhythm, left hand fills in the remaining 8th notes. Usually with the RH on a cymbal, with the […]