Lesson 1 - Intro & Rhythm

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The information in this book is arranged sequentially, and the first reading of the
material is probably best accomplished in that sequence. But the information wasnt
acquired that way, doesnt exist that way in the writers mind, and wont be used that
way by the reader after it has been learned and integrated. We learn things best by
immersion, the way we learned to speak our native language as children. Any
language that we learn later, through books and courses of instruction, is learned less
efficiently. There is no substitute for learning the language of music by writing it, and
hearing it played. Unlike learning to fly a plane, mistakes will cause no permanent
damage and may turn out to be memorably instructive.
.
Music notation software and the Garritan Personal Orchestra Jazz Library make it
possible to include easily accessible playback of the jazz arranging examples in this
book. Together, they allow an arranger who doesnt have easy access to live
musicians to examine a variety of musical choices and play back a sketch version of
the results. A performance by live musicians is the best feedback, but this method
can provide an informative step along the way to finding the sounds and balances
that define a composer/arrangers personal style. High quality sketch playback can
bring the composer/arranger closer to the end product and improve communication
with musicians by providing a good representation of a basic interpretation of the
notation.
As long as the composers intention is to achieve results that are recognizable as
being in the jazz style, its essential to have some listening background in the history
of jazz arranging, so that elements of existing styles can be used as building blocks
for the development of new music. Jelly Roll Mortons march-based polyphony,
Fletcher Hendersons early big band swing, the Kansas City tradition as developed by
Count Basies arrangers, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorns expansive variety of
techniques, Tadd Damerons bebop sounds, Horace Silvers mastery of small group
forms, Gil Evans developments of more typically orchestral ideas, Oliver Nelson, J.J.
Johnson, Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer, Dave Berger the list is a long one, and
familiarity with successful pieces written by masterful musicians can save a new
arranger a lot of time by pointing to effective established techniques.

Of course, the assumption is that a creative musician will go beyond mimicry and use
historical precedent as a starting point for new uses of established ideas, but there is
rarely a need for a self-conscious search for originality. Most of us will naturally (and
often unconsciously) insert enough elements of our point of view to provide the
music with its own personality. There is no reason to fear that experience with, and
understanding of, historically successful techniques will lead to a lack of creativity.
More often than not, familiarity with examples of great music leads to efficiency in
achieving the goal of effective personal expression.
The most important things in music are: rhythm, rhythm, and rhythm, in that order.
The most important thing in jazz rhythm is the democratization of the beats, the
equalization of emphasis on all parts of the measure. This is not music theory. This is
music fact, and it is what makes jazz swing in its idiomatic way. Musical elements
that help balance the rhythms add to the propulsive forward motion of jazz; those
that unbalance the rhythms impede that propulsion. (The Brazilian word for swing
is balance.)
In jazz and most popular music, harmonic changes take place on the first and third
beats of common time music. The accents on the second and fourth beats in jazz
function to balance the emphasis that accrues to the down beats as a result of the
changes of harmony, and should be played as strongly as they need to be to fulfill
that function and no stronger. Accenting the second and fourth beats heavily, as so
many school musicians are taught to do, only serves to unbalance the music in the
other direction and is as destructive to the swing as overemphasizing one and three.
The only time heavy accents are needed on the off beats is when there is an equally
strong emphasis on the down beats in a passage that needs a powerful two beat
feel. In that case, the heavier off beats restore the balance.
Beyond the world of half note and quarter note rhythms, smaller subdivisions of the
pulse are also equally emphasized in jazz. There is no better or more characteristic
demonstration of how this works than the music of Louis Armstrong, the genius of
jazz expression who perfected this style. Louis singing and trumpet playing provide
the quintessential basic templates for the understanding and creation of swinging
jazz music. Everything that follows flows from the example set by his music.
Some of the history of this style goes back to the West African need for songs and
music to maintain historical tradition in a culture that did not use written language.
Expressive singing was more than entertainment, it carried essential historical
connections, and it had to be related to speech closely enough to make resonant
sense to the listeners. This singing tradition began to show up in this country in the
music of early Delta Blues singers and in the singing of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
Louis Armstrong applied this conversational style to a broader range of material, as
he was encouraged to record the popular songs of his day in order for his music to
reach a wider audience.
The rhythms in Armstrongs trumpet playing are directly related to those in his
conversational singing style, the prototype for American interpretation of popular
music lyrics. Jazz rhythms come from the way the originators of the style heard and
spoke the English language, and familiarity with the sound of the language goes a
long way towards suggesting ways to notate swinging jazz rhythms. Normally

expressive spoken rhythms are full of nuances of timing, things that surge forward
and things that hold back. And if those surface timings are experienced in relation to
an underlying tempo of speech, they will show a balance of accents and stresses,
some of which fall into regular predictable patterns, and some that are surprising in
their syncopations and cross relationships with the general tempo.
That is a pretty good parallel with the swinging rhythms of jazz. In order to have a
good effect, those rhythms need to have predictable elements that establish
expectation in the listener, and unpredictable elements that disturb that expectation
soon enough and for a long enough time to be interesting, but neither too early nor
for too long to obscure the memory of the established expectations. There is no
substitute for immersion in the sounds and rhythms of good jazz in order to absorb
them on an intuitive level. Still, something can be gained by looking at the way
elements of jazz forms are interrelated and how they can be used to control the sense
of expectation and surprise.
Consider the way rhythmic expectations function in the first 16 measures of a 32measure AABA song form. Whatever happens on the first beat of the 1st measure is
deeply related to what will happen on the first beat of the 9th measure, slightly less
deeply related to the first beat of the 5th measure, and another level less (though still
connected) to what happens at the beginning of the 3rd measure. Corresponding
relationships exist among other similar rhythmic positions in the form, and
awareness of these relationships allows the jazz musician to use the mathematical
predictability of the form as a background on which to superimpose elements that
provide a felicitous balance of expectation and surprise.
Here is the rhythm scheme of the first 16 measures of a simple standard popular
song, as it might be performed by a, rhythmically-aware, singer or instrumentalist:

This is a simplified example, and is only a rough template designed to show how
parts of popular song form relate to one another. The benefits to be gained from
careful listening and analysis of the recordings of great jazz singers cannot be over
emphasized as a starting point for understanding how to create swinging jazz
phrases. There are wonderful, challenging, examples among the recordings of Joe
Williams, some of which are so rhythmically complex and sophisticated that they
nearly defy notation.
Changing pitches has less effect on our perception of music than changing meter and
rhythm. Here is a simple example of how much more difference changing the rhythm
makes than changing only the pitches.