so as long as I’m thinking four four bar phrases with that thing that doesn’t have chord changes in it or doesn’t change I can still organize what I play in the same way that I would if it were over a song that did have chords so that sounds like this check it [Music] out check it out a especially in a Groove situation like the thing about phrasing which is how we organize The Melodies that we play or the the the ideas that we play when we play them where they start where they end that’s one definition of that word for me um if you’re presented with a song form it’s like a function of form like usually when people play when they improvise take solos whatever they do it in a song over a song they’re playing a band there’s a part of the song where it’s time for a guitar solo let’s say or any kind of solo to a degree like what people do phrasing wise in those situations is kind of dictated by the form like check it out if there was um if there was a song that had a form like uh let’s see like um like um um you know [Music] like when I play over that the chords are going to tell me when to play check it [Music] out [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] right right the chords changing tell me when I need to play melodies to address those chords but what if there are no chords like in a jam situation when you’re just grooving out on in some key some people call that playing one chord I don’t like to call it that because I like to change the chords even if there’s just one tonal Center if it’s in D I don’t want to have to think D minor for half an hour so to me it’s just D anything but typically people say yeah we’ll just Groove and DM minor for a while like when you say that there’s no song form attached to it so that’s when the phrasing gets a little confused and typically in jams like in my experience when I hear jams other people doing them or when I’m in one and there’s no attention paid to the form that’s when it gets rambly that’s when ideas for me just kind of shoot off into space without any real uh anchor for the other people in the band to hang on to because what you know whoever it is what Jerry Garcia was thinking about where one is of the form uh you know Phil Lees the bass player The Grateful Dead might have been thinking something else was one of the form so what’s the result of that the result of that kind of jamming is that sometimes it sounds good and sometimes it doesn’t now that’s okay if we’re just hanging out with our friends and there’s no audience but if people are paying to see it that’s when I start feeling responsibility about trying to make make it as good as it can be every time maybe it’s not quite as great as it was last night or tomorrow night but still pretty good and one real important factor relating to phrasing that has to do with that is what kind of forms we play so even if it’s a Groove without chord changes to tell us we borrow the same kinds of forms from songs that do have chords in them for me that’s 48 and 16 bars like check out if I’m playing this uh you know like 1 2 [Music] 3 four 2 3 4 right um one two 3 4 so as long as I’m thinking four four bar phrases with that thing that doesn’t have chord changes in it or doesn’t change I can still organize what I play in the same way that I would if it were over a song that did have chords so that sounds like this check it out [Music] one two [Music] three two three chuga chea [Music] crash 2 3 repeat that [Music] tension [Music] [Applause] one 1 2 3 [Music] 4 now if even if I’m playing off the of the [Music] grid [Music] one here here it [Music] comes one [Music] one now I’m going to play some out [Music] stuff here it comes one check it out though keep [Music] counting [Music] one one here’s the phrase here comes the phrase you see what I’m doing like I’m organizing what I’m playing as if the entire which the which you’d have to have this conversation with the entire band like the entire band is phrasing in four and eight bar phrases and 16 Bar phrases so all the fills that happen have you you probably had this experience I remember before I started realizing oh yeah we have to use form when we when we Jam because if we don’t it’s just half the time it’s unlistenable um if you were playing with a drummer for example and you haven’t had this conversation with them a lot of drummers naturally phrase like that because they grow up playing R&B Funk Rock to some degree and they just automatically phrase in fours and eights but unless you really tell them that’s what you’re going to do sometimes they can let it slide especially if what you’re playing is confusing because they might hear that as Oh’s he’s giving up the form so I’ll just do whatever I want um but unless you do agree on that you’ll hear like drummers filling into beat three and stuff like you’re jamming and you got your phrase in your head and you think it’s going like this and all of a sudden the drummer just did a fill like on one and came in on B2 as if it were the new one and you kind of have to shift over and all that kind of stuff which which translates to like lack of clarity in the band like there’s no way unless everybody’s on the same page when in a jam with each other in terms of where the phrase is it’s exactly like you’re playing a song it’s like you’re playing Smoke on the Water and the bass player is playing the bridge while you’re playing the verse it’s the same thing you’re not in the same place that can accidentally sound good but it’ll never sound good consistently and most of the time it doesn’t sound good so that’s the biggest thing about phrasing I can relate I can say is it relates very strongly to the form try it the next time you do it a jam with your friends in F for an hour um have a conversation about can we keep like four bars straight like one one way to practice that that sometimes uh can be helpful is um like sometimes if I’m trying to kind of figure some out rhythms out or something in 44 or in any time signature I do this thing where I count quarter notes with my right hand and bars with my left so so it looks like 1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 4 2 three four one two that’s one of the phrase two three four so then an idea can be like down one two three 4 down [Music] down two three chaa crash like that thing where I was doing that note at the end if the drummer didn’t know that you were going to resolve that on the first beat of the phrase they’d think what is it where are we what are we doing here and maybe they do a fill into the and of four or something so this idea of having phrase in your head the band together I mean I can tell you that you know most of what I’ve done in the last 20 years anyway with Trio has been largely improvised and the thing that unites us the thing that makes it possible for us to sound like we know what we’re doing among many other things is we share a phrase there’s no phrase written like on the piece of paper that I give the guys when I write something it’s just it’s just one bar with repeats around it and it says open E flat that’s it but they know because we’ve had the conversation that everything that we do everything is phrased in 48s or 16s and that unifies us it makes it possible to make these drastic left turns in the music all the time together it lets us know where to create tension and when to resolve it um I could never be comfortable in a Groove situation an open Groove situation without that I’d feel lost and you know it it is a limitation right you could say artistically that is a limitation that we have and it’s true but within that limitation there are many many many things to do to
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