Know your tempos: Workin' / Steamin' / Cookin' / Relaxin'

You can buy them 
all in one collection now.

Hey, we haven't done one of these in a while. All the tempos from four very famous Miles Davis records, with his very famous quintet from the 50s, with Philly Joe Jones on drums— core literature. 

Workin'
It Never Entered My Mind - 58
Four - 207
In Your Own Sweet Way - 114
The Theme (take 1) - 137
Trane's Blues - 164
Ahmad's Blues - 114
Half Nelson - 257
The Theme (take 2) - 132

Cookin' 
My Funny Valentine - 67
Blues By Five - 177
Airegin - 292
Tune Up - 315
When Lights Are Low - 123

Steamin' 
Surrey With The Fringe On Top - 128
Salt Peanuts - 350
Something I Dreamed Last Night - 56
Diane - 143
Well, You Needn't - 230
When I Fall In Love - 67

Relaxin'
If I Were A Bell - 184
You're My Everything - 57
I Could Write A Book - 227
Oleo - 258
It Could Happen To You - 188
Woody'n You - 256

All of them, again, in ascending order:
Something I Dreamed Last Night - 56
You're My Everything - 57
It Never Entered My Mind - 58
My Funny Valentine - 67
When I Fall In Love - 67
Ahmad's Blues - 114
In Your Own Sweet Way - 114
When Lights Are Low - 123
Surrey With The Fringe On Top - 128
The Theme (take 2) - 132
The Theme (take 1) - 137
Diane - 143
Trane's Blues - 164
Blues By Five - 177
If I Were A Bell - 184
It Could Happen To You - 188
Four - 207
I Could Write A Book - 227
Well, You Needn't - 230
Woody'n You - 256
Half Nelson - 257
Oleo - 258
Airegin - 292
Tune Up - 315
Salt Peanuts - 350

It's good to attach a number to these things, and know that Miles ballads, in this period at least, gravitated around 57 and 67 bpm. Those showy numbers like Half Nelson and Woody'n You are around 257. Those slow medium items @ 114, and two different types of bright swingers around ~185 and ~230. 

And here— for my own peculiar interest— are all of them doubled or halved to put them in the familiar ~100-200 range— the medium to top end of standard metronome range. Useful and helpful as a practical thing dealing with time. There's got to be some kind of useful information in Miles putting a lot of tunes in tempos that equalize to the low to mid teens, or high 120s to mid 130s.

Four - 103
Something I Dreamed Last Night - 112
You're My Everything - 114
Ahmad's Blues - 114
In Your Own Sweet Way - 114
I Could Write A Book - 114
Well, You Needn't - 115
It Never Entered My Mind - 116
When Lights Are Low - 123
Surrey With The Fringe On Top - 128
Woody'n You - 128
Half Nelson - 129
Oleo - 129
The Theme (take 2) - 132
My Funny Valentine - 134
When I Fall In Love - 134
The Theme (take 1) - 137
Diane - 143
Airegin - 146
Tune Up - 157
Trane's Blues - 164
Salt Peanuts - 175
Blues By Five - 177
If I Were A Bell - 184
It Could Happen To You - 188

Plain talk about fast tempos

“Billy, can we talk?”

Henry Fonda time. I see we need to have this talk again. Everybody wants to talk about ride cymbal technique for blazing tempos. A little perspective on the subject:  

About 15 years ago a couple of friends of mine were moving to New York, and were intimidated that they would not be good enough at playing playing really fast tempos— and a list of whatever hard tunes— so we did some regular sessions to work on that. 

We concluded, after a few months of this: half note = 150-160 was manageable and playable, 165-175 was getting frenetic, above ~ 175 was getting ridiculous and we could barely keep it together. That's the approximate range of tempos on Four & More. 

Many people never play anything faster than about the highest traditional metronome marking: quarter note = 208. They'll say “let's burn one” and then count off ~200 bpm. Most other people rarely get much above ~ Passion Dance / Chasin' The Trane tempo— let's say quarter note = 240. 

Roy Haynes's magic tempo, around half note = 143— the approximate tempo on his famous recordings of Matrix, Have You Met Miss Jones?, Reaching Fourth, All The Things You Are— is extremely fast for most people. I think it's a tempo at which every ambitious player should be able to really kill it— I'll call that normal fast.   

A little above that, we're getting into the high range where the subdivisions are playable and sound like regular notes, fast but not hyperactive. 

At the very high end, half note = 200 is a nice round number, and John Riley mentions it in his book The Art of Bop Drumming, so a lot of  us think of that as the number to strive for as our upper limit. And it's truly absurd. You'll hear things in that vicinity on records occasionally, and usually everyone sounds bad except maybe the guy who's session it is. As fast as those 60s Miles records are, they never get that fast, and they never sound bad like that. 

But I don't know, here's Woody Herman's band playing Caldonia, the tune Riley mentioned, and they keep it together at around 400 bpm. They were a touring band, so they were doing this together every night. And the rhythm section breaks it up by laying out a couple of times, and playing some half time. Bob Leonard is on drums, watch carefully what he's actually doing. Watch what everyone does at these tempos— most often they're not playing a complete, perfectly composed bebop drum part.

More often where those numbers come up in everyday life is when people get called to play with a touring performer, who calls at least one absolute barn burner. That's where normal players get burned— normal excellent players. It's an unfair situation, because they're probably just playing with the guy the one time.  

My principled objection to insane tempos is that they're BS. Speeding something up to the point that “the beat” is really a subdivision, and you're supposed to be creative in a subdivision of that— it's BS. It's not music, it's a jazz-cultural terror weapon.  

[...]

...which is totally irrelevant when you were called to play with Godzilla and he's making you do something insane, and you have to do it because you took the gig and you're on stage and this is happening. You get no opportunity to get up and debate the merits of it. There will be no opportunity to rationally present your position that your priorities were directed at more substantive musical pursuits.

So, I'm not saying don't work on this, just keep it in perspective— who are you going to be playing with, and when. If you want to do ordinary jazz gigs and jam sessions locally, just be very good within traditional metronome range, up to about 208. As a broad rule, everyone should be able to do that. And there is a lot of work to do just learning to play well in that range. That's the point of this entire conversation.

If you're a serious college level student, be pushing that up into that Passion Dance range— sounding very good at quarter note = 250+. You may be called on to hack through something faster than that. 

If you're very ambitious about your playing, and want to play with the very best players in any region of the country, you want to be able to kill it at Roy Haynes tempo. Check out the Pat Metheny record Question & Answer, which has a lot of fast tunes on it— you want to be able to hang with everything on there. When you can do that, that's when you should be thinking about how will I survive when thrust into a super-fast situation.

In fact you'll want to be able to hang and sound good in the full Four & More spectrum— say, half note = 145-175. At least be able to survive at the upper end of that. 

The absolutely absurdly fast range... if you can do these other things, you can probably survive, somehow. I don't know if anyone has that perfectly worked out in the practice room and ready to go in a fully finished state when called upon to do it. Max Roach had to learn to do it on stage, and most of us do not get the opportunity to do that any more.  

POSTSCRIPT: Oh, when my guys got to New York nobody they played with was playing fast, either, and they were all playing ordinary tunes. 

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. 

Equivalency of tempos

Object To Be Destroyed
by Man Ray

A rhythm issue I've been thinking about is the equivalence of tempos and their halves and doubles. I was wondering how small a range of tempos would cover the entire practical range of performance tempos. A mathematically minded individual could probably figure it out in a second, if he knew anything about music. I checked, and he doesn't, so I had to actually think it through myself.

The answer is 52-100, which includes sixteen standard metronome markings:

52 54 56 58 60 63 66 69 72 76 80 84 88 92 96 100


Let's walk through it:

Standard metronome tempo range: 40-208
Before digital metronomes, that's what they used to mark on all metronomes. It's a realistic practical tempo range for most music.


Tempo range in actual performance: 25-400
At least, there are examples of recorded music in approximately that range. Tempos from 200-280 are common in jazz, tempos from 280-400 are increasingly uncommon. Quarter note = 400 is an extreme tempo, and is very rare. Let's consider that the outer limit of what a very ambitious jazz drummer will ever be asked to perform. We can have a conversation another time about whether a 400 bpm pulse can even be considered a “beat” in any meaningful sense.

You can decide for yourself how to approach very slow tempos. Dig into Shirley Horn's recorded works to get an idea of the practical lower tempo limit in jazz.


Traditional standard bpm values for mechanical metronomes: 
40 42 44 46 48
50 52 54 56 58
60 63 66 69
72 76
80 84 88
92 96
100 104 108
112 116
120 126
132 138 144
152 160 168
176 184 192
200 208

A total of 39 markings. Note that if we halve the values from 40-76— 80 and above are doubles of lower values— they increase in single bpm increments from 20-30, then 1.5 beat increments from 30-36, then a two beat increment from 36-38.


That's the answer: 40-76
We can derive all of the values above by doubling the values from 40-76. I've extended that to cover our entire range up to 400 bpm, or 54 markings:

40 / 80 / 160 / 320
42 / 84 / 168 / 336
44 / 88 / 176 / 352
46 / 92 / 184 / 368
48 / 96 / 192 / 384
50 / 100 / 200 / 400
52 / 104 / 208
54 / 108 / 216
56 / 112 / 224
58 / 116 / 232
60 / 120 / 240
63 / 126 / 252
66 / 132 / 264
69 / 138 / 272
72 / 144 / 288
76 / 152 / 304


More practical answer: 52-100
Most of us don't play or listen to a lot of tunes in the 40 bpms— it's not real familiar terrain, musically. The 52-100 range is much more common in day to day usage. Double everything twice, and half-time the tempos from 80-100 to get the metronome range plus the faster jazz tempos.


For slow-click practicers
Working with a slow click, regardless of the actual tempo you are practicing, is an extremely effective way of developing your time, so here are the 40-76 tempos halved.

20-30 (1-bpm increments)
31.5 33 34.5 36 38

Most metronomes won't let you use decimal points, so you'll probably have to get these by using the 40-76 numbers, and setting the device to give you downbeats every two beats, and then silence the quarter note pulse. If you're really sick in the head, you could do the 10-19 gamut by setting it do give you downbeats every four beats, and silencing the quarter notes.


Conclusion
So, the real range of tempos is fairly small, if you think in terms of this matrix-type concept. Being aware of it may help you structure your practice, and improve your concept of time and rhythm overall.

Know your tempos: Beatles

It happens often enough: some other players are discussing a tempo for a tune, and they look at me like I can pull it out of the air just from a number. It's actually extremely simple to do that accurately, if you just memorize the BPM of some things you've heard a few thousand times in your life. You already know the tempo— you just don't know the number. Hence this Know Your Tempos series of posts, and today's list of tempos of well known Beatles songs.

What I suggest doing is getting out your metronome, and before turning it on, hear the song in your head— recall it like a mental photograph of the recording— and tap or clap the tempo. Then turn on the metronome and see how you did. Note the ones you missed— you probably won't be able to rely on your recall of them later. For the ones you nailed, memorize the BPM number, then dazzle your friends with your perfect tempo recall.

62 - You've Got To Hid Your Love Away
74 - Let It Be
84 - Come Together
86 - I Am The Walrus
92 - Strawberry Fields
92 - Octopus's Garden
95 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
95 - Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
102 - All You Need Is Love
111 - Yellow Submarine
113 - With A Little Help From My Friends
114 - Penny Lane
119 - Good Day Sunshine
122 - Nowhere Man
123 - Drive My Car
124 - Getting Better
126 - Ticket To Ride
127 - Get Back
129 - Here Comes The Sun
138 - Taxman
139 - Got To Get You Into My Life
140 - Eight Days A Week
141 - Eleanor Rigby
143 - A Hard Day's Night
165 - Rock & Roll Music
166 - Magical Mystery Tour
181 - I'm A Loser
195 - Help!

Know your tempos: what's meant by up

In case you were wondering how fast you need to be able to play, here are a bunch of your favorite tracks spanning the break between "medium up"- where it's still possible to swing- and actually fast, where the 8th notes even out. My method for arriving at these is pretty accurate- my old DB-33 doesn't have a tap function, but thanks to the analog tempo wheel I'm usually able to get it to stay in sync with the track without adjustment for 16 measures or more. I've given the tempos in quarter notes and half notes:

234/117 - Passion Dance - McCoy Tyner / The Real McCoy - Elvin Jones
240/120 - Law Years - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer - Roy Haynes
240/120 - Milestones - Miles Davis / Milestones - Philly Joe Jones
240/120 - The Windup - Keith Jarrett / Belonging - Jon Christiansen
248/124 - H & H - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer - Roy Haynes

248/124 - Music, Music, Music - Ahmad Jamal / Live at the Pershing - Vernell Fournier
248/124 - Humpty Dumpty - Chick Corea / Mad Hatter - Steve Gadd
256/128 - Oleo - Miles Davis / Cookin' - Philly Joe Jones
256/128 - Blues Connotation - Ornette Coleman / This Is Our Music - Ed Blackwell
258/129 - Solar - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer - Roy Haynes

258/129 - Agitation - Miles Davis / ESP - Tony Williams
260/130 - Madness - Miles Davis / Nefertiti - Tony Williams
260/130 - Strode Rode - Sonny Rollins / Saxophone Colossus - Max Roach
260/130 - Humph - Thelonious Monk / Genius of Modern Music, vol. 1 - Art Blakey
268/134 - Ginger Bread Boy - Miles Davis / Miles Smiles - Tony Williams

268/134 - Billy Boy (blowing) - Miles Davis / Milestones - Philly Joe Jones
280/140 - Airegin - Miles Davis / Cookin' - Philly Joe Jones
280/140 - Seven Steps to Heaven - Miles Davis / Seven Steps to Heaven - Tony Williams
282/141 - What Is This Thing Called Love?  - Clifford Brown/Max Roach / Basin Street - Max Roach
286/143 - All the Things You Are - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer - Roy Haynes
286/143 - Have You Met Miss Jones? - McCoy Tyner / Reaching Fourth - Roy Haynes
286/143 - Matrix - Chick Corea / Now He Sings, Now He Sobs - Roy Haynes

(I think we've found the Roy Haynes tempo!)

294/147 - Syzygy - Michael Brecker / Michael Brecker - Jack Dejohnette
298/149 - Got a Match? - Chick Corea / Elektric Band - Dave Weckl
296/148 - Koko - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters - Max Roach
300/150 - Reaching Fourth - McCoy Tyner / Reaching Fourth - Roy Haynes
300/150 - Surrey with the Fringe on Top - Ahmad Jamal / Live at the Pershing - Vernell Fournier

312/156 - Tune Up - Miles Davis / Cookin' - Philly Joe Jones
320/160 - Limehouse Blues - John Coltrane / Cannonball and Coltrane - Jimmy Cobb
320/160 - Rejoicing - Pat Metheny / Rejoicing - Billy Higgins
330/165 - Cherokee - Ahmad Jamal / Live at the Pershing - Vernell Fournier
332/166 - The Bridge - Sonny Rollins / The Bridge - Mickey Roker

336/168 - Dr. Jackle (blowing) - Miles Davis / Milestones - Philly Joe Jones
360/180 - Salt Peanuts - Miles Davis / Steamin' - Philly Joe Jones
390/195 - Eventually - Ornette Coleman / Shape of Jazz to Come - Billy Higgins
396/198 - The Alchemy of Scott LaFaro - Ornette Coleman / Art of the Improvisers

B. Swift and B. Quick from Sonny Rollins' Tour de Force are the fastest things I know of. I'm not even going to try to get a precise tempo, for obvious reasons. Half notes appear to be above 210:

Bonus Miles Davis' Four and More: These may be a little rough- several of them pick up quite a bit just from the intro to the head; often tempos will settle a bit on the head out, so I've given the peak tempos at the end of the solos:

292/146 - Walkin' (beginning)
372/186 - Walkin' (end of blowing)
270/135 - So What (beginning)
324/162 - So What (end of blowing)
256/128 - Four (beginning)
348/174 - Four (end of blowing)
308/154 - Seven Steps to Heaven (beginning)
356/178 - Seven Steps to Heaven (end of blowing)

Know your tempos: Rolling Stones

I've been keeping a little tempos database, containing information on as many very familiar tracks as I can manage- mainly tempo, meter, and style. These are a handy mnemonic device for picking tempos out of the air, and are just good general knowledge of the terrain of music, so I'll be posting more of these from time to time, on a variety of themes. Today it's also a good excuse to take a minute and appreciate the Rolling Stones:

Heart of Stone (12/8) - 59  
Wild Horses - 68
You Can't Always Get What You Want - 85
Beast of Burden - 97
Miss You - 97
Play With Fire - 106
Sympathy for the Devil - 113
Waiting On A Friend - 114
Gimme Shelter - 115
Start Me Up - 120
Undercover - 120
Under My Thumb - 124
Street Fighting Man - 126
It's Only Rock & Roll - 126
Brown Sugar - 127
Bitch - 134
Little T & A - 134
Satisfaction - 135
Jumpin' Jack Flash - 136
She's So Cold - 137
Shattered - 138
Let's Spend the Night Together - 139
Hang Fire - 150
She Was Hot - 150
Paint It Black - 158
Mother's Little Helper (two beat) -158
The Last Time (two beat) - 170
19th Nervous Breakdown (shuffle) - 193