*New Master class, Using the 15 Stylistic Elements, Plus a Few More w/Dave Frank

[dfrankjazz]

Join Dave for a spinoff of his popular YT video "15 Stylistic Elements for the Advanced Jazz Pianist". New elements include Ghost Notes, 2 level LH, Smashcords, Phunny Phrases, Basslines on 2+4, Shifting Time Signatures, and others. Dave concludes the video with 4 Improv flows on All the Things You are with screen titles highlighting the shifting elements as they appear.

Phree for thee.

Blessings and keep swingin!

[ted]

Thank you Dave. As usual, I found much to ponder on here, and again, most of these elements have application in piano music and improvisation outside the world of jazz.

Of particular interest to me is the section on changing metre. I have to say that while you play a continuous flow of relatively unaccented notes, I cannot perceive a metre at all, or perhaps more accurately, my listening brain can impose any time signature with validity. In other words, aside from clearly accented series, it is perfectly possible for the listening ear to feel a metre different from the performer's or composer's intention.

The first time this happened to me I was very young and listening to some Schumann. "Gosh", I thought, "that's nice and syncopated for classical music." It wasn't until months later that I realised I was perceiving the piece displaced by one beat. The same phenomenon has happened to me so many times over the years I have lost count. It's rather like one of those drawings of cubes which pop visually from facing inwards to facing outwards by an effort of will. I first heard Scott Kirby's delightful little ragtime waltz as 6/8 until I corrected myself with a surprising effort of will. But here's an important question - is it really "wrong", I wonder, to feel a rhythm contrary to a creator's intention ? I suggest it is not, and that in fact ambiguity of metrical, and more generally, rhythmic perception is a truly wonderful musical tool and mental springboard both during listening and during improvisation.

Musicians with whom I have raised this question usually dismiss it out of hand as an eccentric, improvising amateur's not having learned music properly. But I think there is something much deeper at work here, and that generation and perception of rhythm is vastly beautiful and complex compared to, for instance, discrete chords and harmony, which both classical and jazz musicians seem to present endless diatribes and analysis about.

That's what I like about your videos; they don't issue "shoulds", "musts"  and "ought tos", but rather, by way of suggestion and implication, get the viewers' minds thinking for themselves.





   

[dfrankjazz]

Hi Ted, you have an interesting point here, certainly rhythm/meter changes can be subtle and hard to identify especially as part of an ongoing flow. I can easily see diffferent people hearing it differently, viva la differance