Know your tempos: Ballads

Once every dozen years of blogging, I like to write about ballads— slow tunes you play on jazz gigs. They do exist. Possibly I don't write about them much because I learned to play them completely on the job, through playing with others; I don't have any kind of cohesive drumming theory about handling them. 

Ballads are kind of complicated with regards to tempo, time and feel. Sometimes they'll have a persistent triplet-based swing feel, or they'll pull strongly towards a double time feel, or be played semi rubato. The bassist may play whole notes, play in 2, or walk, embellishing with triplets, straight 8ths, or 16th notes, or swing 8ths in double time. Often all of the above will happen in the course of the tune, or all at once. 

Almost always someone calls the tune and counts it off and you play whatever. I've only ever had one band leader make a distinction between ballad feels when calling tunes— he would say walking ballad when he wanted the bass to play in 4 the whole time, or 12/8 ballad when he wanted a triplet-based swing feel all the way through, no double time— that didn't mean he wanted me to play triplets the whole time, like we were playing Unchained Melody. Most often in modern playing, the drummer has a lot of freedom to play texturally, and not just hold down the time. 

Getting the tempos off the records is more complicated than normal, because tempos often tend to not be 100% locked down for the whole duration of the tune. So consider these to be approximate. There are some more notes at the end. 

45 - Body And Soul - Freddie Hubbard / Here To Stay
47 - Body And Soul - Stan Getz / Billy High Street Samba
49 - Body And Soul - Sarah Vaughn / The Essential
49 - Lonely Woman - Pat Metheny / Rejoicing
49 - I Fall In Love To Easily - Miles Davis / Seven Steps To Heaven

50 - I Loves You Porgy - Bill Evans / Waltz For Debby
51 - Body And Soul - Pee Wee Russel / College Concert
52 - Infant Eyes - Wayne Shorter / Speak No Evil 
55 - Blue In Green - Miles Davis / Kind Of Blue
55 - Spring Is Here - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz

56 - Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis / Kind Of Blue
56 - Lush Life - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman
56 - Virgo - Wayne Shorter / Night Dreamer
56 - Body And Soul - Tony Williams / Young At Heart
57 - I Thought About You - Miles Davis / Someday My Prince Will Come

57 - It Never Entered My Mind - Miles Davis / Vol. 1
57 - It Never Entered My Mind - Miles Davis / Workin'
57 - The Peacocks - Stan Getz / The Peacocks
59 - Stella By Starlight - Miles Davis / My Funny Valentine
60 - Naima - John Coltrane / Giant Steps

60 - You Are Too Beautiful - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman
61 - Dedicated To You - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman
61 - I Wish I Knew - John Coltrane / Ballads
62 - Body And Soul - Don Cherry / Art Deco
62 - I Remember You - Stanley Turrentine & Milt Jackson / Cherry

62 - My Funny Valentine - Miles Davis / My Funny Valentine
62 - Old Folks - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer
63 - My One And Only Love - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman
63 - Too Young To Go Steady - John Coltrane / Ballads
64 - How Deep Is The Ocean - Miles Davis / Vol. 1

64 - When I Fall In Love - Miles Davis / Steamin'
65 - Lover Man - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters
65 - Nancy (With The Laughing Face) - Cannonball Adderley / Know What I Mean?
66 - Body And Soul - Sonny Stitt / New York Jazz
66 - It's Easy To Remember - John Coltrane / Ballads

66 - There Is No Greater Love - Miles Davis / The New Quintet
67 - Blue In Grean - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz
67 - Dancing In The Dark - Cannonball Adderly - Somethin' Else
67 - Say It (Over And Over Again) - John Coltrane / Ballads
68 - Body And Soul - Buddy Rich / Keep The Customer Satisfied

68 - Body And Soul - Frank Sinatra / Beautiful Ballads And Love Songs
68 - Nancy (With The Laughing Face) - John Coltrane / Ballads
69 - Out Of Nowhere - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters
70 - Body And Soul - Stan Getz / Body And Soul
72 - Body And Soul - John Coltrane / Coltrane's Sound

72 - Soul Eyes - John Coltrane / Coltrane
74 - Crazy He Calls Me - Ahmad Jamal / The Piano Scene
76 - Body And Soul - Stan Kenton / Artistry In Rhythm
76 - Central Park West - John Coltrane / Coltrane's Sound
77 - Body And Soul - Duke Ellington / Centennial 

78 - What's New - Ahmad Jamal / Legendary Trio
78 - Body And Soul - Sarah Vaughan / Complete Recordings With Clifford Brown
78 - Embraceable You - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters
79 - Body And Soul - Thelonious Monk / Monk's Dream
80 - Moonlight In Vermont - Ahmad Jamal / Legendary Trio

82 - Fall - Miles Davis / Nefertiti
85 - Body And Soul - Lester Young / Masters Of Jazz
89 - Come Rain Or Come Shine - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz
92 - Body And Soul - Coleman Hawkins / Jazz Masters
110 - Body And Soul - Lee Konitz / Peacemeal

I grabbed quite a few versions of Body And Soul— it's an extremely popular ballad, but it also seems to have the double time feel built into it— even when you're playing the slow tempo, you suggest the double time, that's how you play it. So I was curious if artists tended to gravitate to a certain tempo range when playing it— obviously, they don't.

The Charlie Parker recordings mostly are brighter tempos, and played in 4, with a walking bass.

Most of these are popular tunes and recordings, and this is a good listening assignment for anyone wanting get their ballad playing together. The list seems to want some further analysis, so maybe I'll post about that later. 

Tootie Heath brush lesson

True old school guys approach things a whole different way from the modern technocratic thing. Here's Tootie Heath giving a brush lesson:



h/t to Larry Appelbaum

Daily best music in the world: Peace Piece

Seems like the perfect time of year for this. I had been away from one of my favorite records in the world, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, for long enough that for a moment I forgot about this beautiful piece of work, Peace Piece:



The transcription in the video is a little goofy— the author has metered Evans's expressive phrasing. Maybe he had a good reason in his own studies for doing that.

Practice loop: Crazy He Calls Me

This is another sampled practice loop I've been using for a long time, good for your triplety jazz materials. It's four measures long, from the intro of Crazy He Calls Me, played by Ahmad Jamal, which I have on the album The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings. It's a slow tempo, and the timing is expressive— the first measure rushes slightly, and the last measure relaxes slightly— so you won't be able to play mechanically over it— you'll have to listen, put a little air in your playing, and play the phrase:





Here's the rhythm of the phrase, if you have trouble hearing it at first— the & of 1 swings, of course.

Transcription: Al Foster — Pannonica

Oh, what the hey, hot on the heels of our Frankie Dunlop transcription of Pannonica, here's Al Foster playing the same tune, the way I like to play it, in the original slow 4. It's from the McCoy Tyner album 4x4, and the transcription is from the piano solo, starting at 1:54 in the track. McCoy plays it a little slower here than Monk recorded it.

Foster is playing in a functional, modern mode here. He tends to accent the & of 2 and & of 4 pretty strongly, a la Elvin Jones, and maintains a triplet-based swing feel all the way through. McCoy and then Bobby Hutcherson do play some fast stuff over it, but almost all of it with a triplet foundation— little the soloing is actual double-time. During the more complex passages he will play straight triplets on the ride cymbal, which builds the intensity, and is a good way to keep from breaking the groove with that stuff.

Also noted that he likes to accent with the crash cymbal by itself— with no snare drum or bass drum to support it. And much of the comping— the things that are not obviously interactive, or marking a phrase— is for texture, and to keep the groove together.

Get the pdf

Doubling up a ballad feel with Syncopation

Happy new year, everybody. I'm practicing a lot of slow tempos lately, so here are some Reed interpretations that will be familiar to all jazz students, written out to suggest double time during a ballad. You'll be using sticks to play the exercises, but once you've gotten these together, you should be able to render something similar with brushes. First, without getting too much beyond the scope of a little blog post, we should clarify a few things about this feel. Give a listen to this recording of Dexter Gordon playing Body & Soul:





The tune is in 4/4, with a quarter note pulse of about 57 beats per minute, using what I call a compound subdivision of both triplets and straight 8th notes— any musician may play off of either subdivision at any time. You can also hear that at different moments, they may generate a swing feel based on the even 8ths, as if they were quarter notes at ~114 beats per minute. You can hear that most clearly during the piano solo after about 4:58.

Reading out of Syncopation, then, the slow quarter note pulse of our imaginary original ballad feel will fall on the half notes in Reed. So one measure of ballad 4/4 will equal two measures out of Reed, using this time feel:

To further muddy the waters, if we forget about the ballad thing, and just play Reed at a medium tempo (say, oh, 114 bpm), with the above time feel, we're actually making a half-time feel out of it by putting the hihat on beat 3, and playing half notes (plus the skip note) on the ride cymbal. But that's rarely done in jazz— virtually all of the time you play this feel, it will be because you are doubling up on a slow tempo. So we are learning vocabulary for an implied time feel, and you should not expect to see this exact feel, with the hihat on 3, “in nature.”

Now that we've settled that, on the examples, we'll be using the first four measures of the long exercise on p. 37, which should be very familiar to you. We'll be orchestrating the melody line— the top line— with our time feel, and ignoring the bottom line. You'll be practicing these applications while reading pages 32-44 of Reed.

See how we'll apply this to our ballad feel after the break:

How to play the brushes, part two

I had never seen this before: Steve Gadd playing on a 2" tape box. Along with Ted Warren's videos, the only instruction you need for brushes:



(h/t to Who Is Tony?)

Slow tempos: the compound pulse

Following up on the subdiving post: you may have noticed that I suggested subdividing 8th notes at slow tempos— not triplets, as you might expect with music like jazz, that is often thought to be triplet-based. When playing ballads I rarely subdivide in triplets, even if the feel is predominantly “triplety”— instead I play off of a compound pulse of triplets and straight, non-swing 8th notes, something like this:

Minus the embellishments, the composite rhythm of the time feel and felt pulse would look like this:

So I am playing off of a compound pulse like a hemiola, generally feeling the top line in my hands, and the bottom line in my left foot— either by tapping my heel, or somehow silently feeling the even 8th note rhythm in my foot motion; rarely by actually playing the 8ths with the cymbals:

Using this more complex skeletal structure on ballads helps keep the time anchored even when you and the group are outwardly playing with a loose feel; and generally, from moment to moment, I (and/or the other players) may be playing either off of the triplets or the 8th notes, and being clear on this structure will prevent the time from getting distorted. It also sets you up for going into double time, which is widely done, to varying degrees.

A little more after the break:

The slow click

There should really be no such thing as slow to the person playing the drums. Whatever tempo the listener is hearing, the player is going to multiply it as necessary to make a comfortable, easily-maintainable pulse out of it— subdividing, we call that. Making an easy tempo out of a hard tempo. So if a tune is counted off at 40 beats per minute, you would be thinking and feeling 8th notes or 16th notes (pulses at 80 or 160 bpm, respectively), while playing a feel that states that slow 40 bpm tempo. In the practice room, playing to a metronome setting of 40, you would be feeling a pulse of 80 or 160, while you could be playing an actual tempo of 40, 80, 160, or 320.

Approaching tempo in this way, just the bottom 16 increments on a conventional metronome (40, 42, 44, and so on, up to 76 ) will cover all the tempos you reasonably need in actually playing music. Using every other increment is nearly a fine enough gradation for the practice room, since:

40 = 80 = 160

44 = 88 = 176

48 = 96 = 192

52 = 104 = 208

56 = 112 = 224

60 = 120 = 240

66 = 132 = 264

72 = 144 = 288

With just those eight actual settings you are also covering: 80, 88, 96, 104, 112, 120, 132, 144, 160, 176, 192, 208, 224, and so on— above that point, I generally start counting tempos in half notes. The wider numerical gaps at the top of the scale are not important; the real, felt difference between 192 and 208 is the same as that of 96 and 104. If you ever wake up in a panic over always playing 120 and 132, but never 126, you can change things up and practice every other increment starting with 42, for awhile. See if it makes any difference. I don't believe you should be adhering systematically to one set of numbers, anyway; the point is that by subdividing, a fairly small range of tempos will cover the entire spectrum.

In my own practice, I generally try to use the slowest metronome settings possible, often below 40 bpm. This does force you to subdivide accurately, and once you can do that— it's not an advanced skill— it really isn't notably more difficult than using a faster click.