Practice This! is an educational project of Earshot Jazz with sponsorship from The Seattle Drum School. Each month in Earshot Jazz a new lesson by a different local jazz artist will appear for students to learn from and for non-musician readers to gain insight into the craft of improvising.
Elastic phrasing essentially tries to move beyond the strict subdivisions of metronomic time into a zone of more fluid, flexible time phrasing. Generally speaking, musicians tend to play phrases that break down into whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, triplets and sixteenth notes. However, in jazz and other forms of improvised music, we have the freedom to get away from this rhythmic system of subdivision, just as jazz musicians might stretch or extend basic harmonic concepts.
One example of elastic phrasing is feeling where the band is expressing the pulse, or beat or time, while playing a different feel on top of it. Most musicians tend to group notes and phrases in even-number groups, four or eight or six notes to a phrase. With this in mind, a way to develop rhythmic freedom is to practice groups of fives or sevens, which most musicians find to be uncomfortable. With a little practice, odd subdivisions can become quite natural and will lead to a new world of rhythmic possibilities.
Another example is playing phrases that speed up or slow down over the pulse of the tune. One way I practice this on the drum set is to play a samba beat. I begin by keeping my feet moving at a set, steady tempo while speeding up and slowing down my hands on the snare drum. If you play a horn, for example, you can try tapping your foot along with a metronome set to one tempo and improvising to another tempo. There are many ways to go about practicing this, and you can hear a few of them at www.earshot.org.
One of the challenges of elastic phrasing lies in simply keeping your place in the tune. Anyone can improvise by stretching the time and playing in different tempos, but it’s important to keep your place in the tune and maintain a sense of the pulse with the rest of the band.
Some of this might seem odd or not directly applicable to a musical situation. However, in the bigger scheme of things, by being able to feel two different sets of pulse in my body at the same time, without necessarily needing them to line up together like a polyrhythm, I feel that I have developed a greater sense of rhythmic freedom.
Earshot Jazz is a Seattle based nonprofit music, arts and service organization formed in 1984 to support jazz and increase awareness in the community. Earshot Jazz publishes a monthly newsletter, presents creative music and educational programs, assists jazz artists, increases listenership, complements existing services and programs, and networks with the national and international jazz community.
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