Sunday, January 30, 2022

Todd's five-note pattern

Here's a five note pattern that I play all the time, without ever knowing what I'm doing with it. I've written about a couple of these accidental items before— an 11 note pattern and my grocery store hemiola  thing.

When other people play this— a very common modern thing: 



...I do the following thing. Sort of a Tony-like lick. It's actually a Gary Chaffee pattern exactly, but I re-made it up in this voicing specifically. It's always a little bit sketchy, because not everyone is comfortable hearing that, and I don't know how to get out of it— I have to wing it, with varying degrees of grace and success. So here it is written out in a couple of repeating forms, and as a two-to-eight beat long fill, ending on 1: 

 


Practice the repeating forms, then practice the fills as part of a longer phrase in a modern jazz feel. 

I recommend practicing it this way, too, accenting on the beat every beat: 


All of the fill examples end on 1; I'll also be figuring out how to end those with an accent on the last note of beat 4. 

Get the pdf

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