Red Garland- the "and " of 2&4

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Within the 8 points in 4/4, I really love the "and" of 2& 4. Those points give an expanding and a leaning forward type of feeling to the music. That's what I feel anyways, when listening to a song like Miles Davis  "Four".  Another good  example is the way Red Garland often comps. He can  play several measures just playing his left hand  on the "and" of 2 & 4. which seems to propel his beautiful right lines forward. 

 

Check out his rendition of "C Jam Blues"  Pay close attention to his left hand comping during his solo. 

 

 

I have always just let my left fall where it wants when soloing with a rhythm section backing me up, and I never tried playing a more static pattern like Red Garland often did. Well, it turns out that it harder than I thought! I am having to go back to basic right hand lines that I already know, very slowly, stumble around, and work out the coordination. I am hoping eventually my left hand will go on autopilot, but until then I am feeling like a beginner. I guess that's the great thing about our instrument- there's always something new to learn, but I can't help but wonder, did Red Garland have workout the coordination or did it just come natural to him? 

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Paul, I don't think anything "comes natural", I think it "BEcomes natural" with enough practice. Bass lines are more natural to me but that's from years of playing jazz organ. Still, left hand comping on either piano or organ, feels pretty 'natural' to me because it not only provides the harmonic structure but (in the right hands) also contributes to the rhythmic feel. In a piano/bass/drum trio, it IS the 'rhythm guitar'. I tend to like the strong rhythmic players like Les McCann (who just happens to be a friend of our own Capt Russ - from same hometown). Great topic though, and certainly a weak area for a lot of keyboard players.

chas

Erroll Garner had a great driving LH to replace a guitar. The LH is often neglected but some masters can coordinate some great rhythms with it and the RH.
Interesting topic here as I think most Arranger players just hold chords with the LH. Playing an Arranger like a piano can be a lot of fun and I occasionally do it that way just for myself

I consider myself somewhere in the middle between Chas and many that simply use the left hand to designate chords. Chas is right about LH comping being a learned process. I started when I played organ only, and needed some sort of rhythmic movement. I started with simple 9th,aug, 8th, and experimented. I started to learn running bass lines, but no cigar. I have started to use more piano for LH, and this is where it really comes in handy. Everything is a learning process, but one has to keep at it.

Thanks Chas, good insight. I've been practicing my "ands" of 2&4 and it's getting there little by little. I feel like a kid learning to riding a bike. I get going and sometimes lose my balance and fall on my backside, but so far I haven't broken anything! I guess if everything was easy, maybe music would be boring for me? Anyways, the great thing about our artform is that there is always something new to learn, and polish what we already know.

Yes, Erroll Garner had a beautiful quarter note flow in his left hand, kind of reminds of Count Baisie's guitar player Freddie Greene.

Yes, arranger keyboard can put extreme musical restriction on our left hand. That's why I am absolutely thrilled to finally have a chord looper/sequencer on my Yamaha SX900. That alone made it a worthwhile upgrade from the 950 for me. Total game changer!

Bernie, I would like to encourage you to not give up walking bass. I know, it's really hard. It's taken me years to get to the point where I can walk a bass line over a jazz/ blues progression with turn arounds while my right hand improvises.

I'd recommend to start the basic I, IV V ( 3 chord blues) and learn some basic boogie left hand patterns and just play chords in the right hand. Once that is solid start adding some easy melodies, like C Jam Blues. Another tip I can give you is play a walking bass line and sing what you right would be playing with the right hand. It's a good way to trick the brain so the coordination comes a bit easier.

My goal is to walk bass lines in my LH, while the RH plays melodies and improvises over standards like "All The Things You are" "Autumn Leaves " but I'm still a long way from that goal, but I'm such a stubborn/ hardheaded bastard that the only thing that will stop me is death or some kind of illness, hopefully none of things happen too soon!

Another word for the ‘and’ is the ‘swing factor’, a much missed (at least by me!) feature on earlier, simpler arrangers and drum machines.

There was so much ‘groove’ you could impart to a straight style by just a few percentage points of slight swing to the groove. Not enough to hear, just enough to ‘feel’..!

As with most music, the best stuff is the space BETWEEN the notes, not the notes themselves. It’s not what you play, it’s what you DON’T play! 🎹😎

Right. A famous quote from Count Basie.
Mel

I think you can achieve that 'swing feel' without the help of the arranger by the way you play OVER the STRAIGHT beat. In fact, to ME, it sounds more natural that way. JMO though. Everybody feels 'groove' differently, some people, not at all. My poor wife was that way. You could set a metronome by her playing but she had no feel for 'groove' ('feel', 'syncopation', whatever) at all (and she was good enough to play in the Philadelphia Summer Orchestra - that was the Philadelphia Orchestra without the First chairs). It MAY not be teachable. It could be one of those things where you either feel it or you don't. If you don't, then maybe that's where that machine-generated 'swing factor' could be useful. Hmmm, wonder why they dropped it as a feature?

chas

Chas, I think your wife's issue was that she was coming from a classical tradition, which is great, but I think it behooves us all sometime to put away the notation and try to feel it, play by ear, improvise...

Reading music is a very valuable skill, but for many it can become a crouch, and even a hindrance to music making.

My daughter is an outstanding violinist, currently in college majoring in violin performance, did not start note reading until she was playing for several years. This was by her instructors design and it paid off. We did a wedding gig together the other day, and she played 'Wave" and other standards, and she never opened the book. If she's heard the tune enough, she can play it.

The big problem with providing the inside groove to an arranger beat is that, for instance, with an eighth note feet in total, you have to look for a style with a fourth note beat otherwise your “groove“ will clash with the hi hats or the rides’ groove. Similarly, all you can do with an eighth beat straight style is groove on the sixteenths.

There IS a PITA workaround though to regain a bit of the old swing factor knob control…

Find a nice old straight style, eight beat or sixteenth, doesn’t matter, and then go into the style edit section and, if your style edit can do it, apply a triplet quantization, BUT ONLY BY A SMALL PERCENTAGE. In other words, move the eighth (or 16th) notes towards the full triplet feel (you might have to slide the entire track forward a few ticks to ensure the off beats go towards the next division, not backwards to the earlier one) but only by a small amount.

You end up with something not straight, but not swung. Adjust to taste.

Be warned, this tends to only work on older styles that tended to be pretty hard quantized, most modern styles have a fair bit more feel in them. But a little bit of this can help get the drums and inside stuff match YOUR inside stuff if you fee l there’s a bit of fighting going on!

And, of course, if your arranger supports it, it is always best to simply export the style divisions as MIDI and work on them in a DAW, which will offer much superior groove quantizing options.

But dammit! It would be so nice just to have the old ‘swing’ knob back!