Practice Habits Ep. 1: Knowing Yourself, the Phantom Menace

I'm interrupting my "Rhythm Studies" to post about some thoughts on practice (which, I hate to break it to you, is more rhythm study).

Lately I've found a steady pace in improvement when it comes to practice, rather than hitting a bunch of obvious plateaus. I think this is due in part to a recommendation for practice I found in Matt Garstka's (Animals as Leaders drummer) video for Drumeo:

One thing he mentioned in this video was a troubleshooting method, a lot like "guess and check" in mathematics, in which you're "jammin'" in practice and you find one thing you are not good at, basically working through it as many different ways you can. Essentially what it will boil down to is creating etudes out of a single device. As a bass player, I've encountered several things which have been botching my groove. Using the above method I found the following hiccups in my playing over a single groove:

• String crossing
• Chromaticism on one string--quickly
• The index-to-pinky speed in the left hand
• Deadening strings 
• Tension in the right hand at faster tempos

Now, these problems seemed like they could be "easily" solved over the course of a few hours with the metronome over several days. But what I found after sort of breaking down the "vitamin deficiency" in my playing was the core issue that greatly affected the others: string crossing. Now, how might that effect everything else? Well, it involves both hands moving from a static position of movement to suddenly going from moving up and down to the bass to across the bass, in which both hands have to make several motions in time effectively and cleanly. What's the usual solution for all new problems in music?: Slow it down! You don't get better by rushing sixteenths in a sixteenth-note groove. You slow them way down and find where the pocket lies for the whole groove. I found that it was a matter of creating etudes which create independence in both limbs and not a single finger or the other. Tackling the problem will take longer by creating a series of devices to enhance one's abilities (Matt says in the video that eight hours is not enough to practice in a day), but the catch is your playing overall gets better (it should after eight hours!).

What helps one identify these problems? Record with a metronome. I've heard many of my friends who are musical hobbyists mention that the metronome is stifling. Well, the fact to face is that it's not: it's actually quite liberating once you understand what the metronome is truly used for. It's like facing a mirror of one's true conception of time. Without it, we're walking through a valley of darkness. The second (or first part with respect to the statement, "record with a metronome") is to record yourself. One thing that's been super healthy has been recording myself at the beginning of practice, taking a break, listening to the recording, identifying the problem spots, troubleshooting/etude-ing, and recording again to compare the two. The end result: the musician at the end of the session always sounds more professional than the one at the beginning.

So let's break that down into a practice routine:

1. Jam and record
2. Take a short break (for coffee if you're me or food if you're me around 12pm)
3. Listen back
4. Identify any problem spots
5. Create solutions and work on them (taking breaks as you see fit)
6. Re-record
7. Take a break
8. Listen to the second recording
9. Listen to the first recording

Cool, now we have nine steps to a program that'll make you sound better in small chunks. "Practice-rs Anonymous."

What else have I been doing? 

Well, I feel like sometimes my groove is a little pale (no pun intended... being a white male). So I want my groove to pop a little more. What can I change in the above that might do the same for me, but get a little bit deeper into my rhythm?: 

1. Jam and record
2. Take a short break
3. Listen back
4. Transcribe the groove, note for note

Stop at number 4. If you need any method to work on your ear or your reading, physically understanding on paper where you are at makes you leaps and bounds better than the day before. I did this recently for the Ancient Sun tune "Dance Around It," since there are days this tune doesn't pop as much as I want. So where do you go after 1-4?:

1. Find your syncopations/accents in the groove
2. Create etudes based on moving your accents without changing the groove
3. Create etudes that add to, but don't take away the groove (Stevie Wonder's bass player, Nathan Watts, is an excellent example of this on "Do I Do")
4. Practice with a click in small to large chunks
5. Record
6. Take a break
7. Revel in glory (at being less pale) 

If there is anything I learned from Cannonball Adderley, it's that you can create a groove with just quarter notes. He walks basslines better than most bass players. Every solo I hear is like looking at a painting of extraordinary rhythms. Besides Parker, Coleman, and Mahanthappa, he's one of my favorite rhythmic alto players. It's good to keep in mind the pulse at all times.

This brings us back to rhythm. 

Pulse is number one! Don't practice anything with a click until you can do it without mistakes. Otherwise you'll quadruple your practice time simply by not knowing the material. Steve Coleman says that you should be able to sing rhythms and feel them internally before you play them. Dizzy Gillespie said he thought of the rhythms first and inserted the notes later. It might be best to start writing things down to know where they are at in the sonic spectrum. Sibelius (the notation software) has this wonderful panorama view of a score when you're working on things. It makes a lot of sense. You can't go backwards in music, only forwards.  

Before I leave you, I will say listen to this band Now Vs Now play "Big Pump." It's a tune in 11/8 that has a real interesting, natural feel. Yet, trying to play it the first time isn't easy (it took me a few good hours of sitting and counting to truly internalize the groove). I'll be looking at this in my next post which I've been working on for  months as I come up with different strategies for practicing and ingraining odd meters and odd note groupings. Happy practicing!:

Self-Study For Rhythms: Vijay Iyer's "Machine Days"

The purpose of Konnakol is not unlike being able to sing any given interval and its inverse. When we talk about singing groups of five rhythms--say the syllables “ta-ka-di-mi-tom” for example--we are not just referring to western “quintuplets,” but both macro and micro pulses of five rhythms which repeat  themselves in groups. Thus, when we put spaces between those syllables, say in the sense of making a macro-grouping of seven notes in a group of five (ta „ ta , ta / ka „ ka , ka,/ etc. sung as sixteenth notes in a western 4 pulse in the hands), we begin to see how this applies to phrasing polyrhythms. The reverse of this process, then, would be to count groups of 4 while counting a pulse of 7 in the hands, facilitates odd meters without changing any rhythms, only the emphasis of these rhythms and the “generic” or perhaps “agreement” pulse in which the band feels the music. When listening to an artist like Vijay Iyer, we hear that sometimes these 4 counts are put on top of pulses in groups of four, seven, eleven, or even general mixed meter on top of larger counting structures.

Larger counting structures might be a 32 count form which would be two bars of 4/4 sixteenth notes in which the pulse becomes subtracted (since they are not superimposed upon one another and happen sequentially… 4+4+4+4+4+3+3+3+3=32 or 4+4+4+5+5+5+5=32) constitute smaller phrases which end up in an even larger structure of let’s say 8 of these 32-count forms, giving us 16 bars of 4/4 music.

Let’s look at one of Vijay Iyer’s tunes, “Machine Days,” labeled with the time signature 9/16. If you get a chance to look at the written music wherein the form is taken for the solos (the “B” section of the melody), the 16-bar form of 9/16 is broken into five larger sections of polyrhythms. It consists of what I call the first theme (34 sixteenths) and the second theme (21 sixteenths), given the accents of the chords changing as indicators that these themes are alternating. The easiest way to begin to be able to count a tune like this is to begin to understand the designated pulse of the bass or “agreement” pulse in 9/16 which seems to be 6 and 3 (a dotted quarter followed by a dotted eighth) only variegating by the accents in the melody/rhythmic themes. Those themes are further divided in smaller pulses which I’ll go ahead and write out:

Theme 1:
4+5+5+5+5+5+5=34
Theme 2:
7+7+7=21

If we look at the “A” section, a 16-bar phrase is still divided into smaller sections, this time simply being divided into 7 groups of 4 (+ 6) and 4 groups of 4 (+5) (alternating in a larger block of five of these). Again, the evidence in the score comes with the accents of chords changing.
Thus, 9x16=144. So 34 (x3) + 21 (x2)= 144. Essentially in the piece, he broke down the groups of 34 and 21 into two different counting manifests seen here:

Theme 1 in A and B
A: 4+4+4+4+4+4+4+6=34
B: 4+5+5+5+5+5+5=34
Theme 2 in A and B
A: 4+4+4+4+5= 21
B: 7+7+7=21

Thus, the title of the piece really fits. “Machine Days” does work as a name for the tune.

Last words on VI’s MD: the 3-bar pick-up plays by these same rules.

27 sixteenth notes-> 6+6+5+5+5=27

Lesson learned: counting is everything. The next great innovators will not have something harmonic for us, but something rhythmic.
Watch and listen to "Machine Days" by Vijay Iyer on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhGre0ReuE4

For further study on Konnakol, please visit the following links:
http://languageofrhythm.com/indian/konnakol/
http://lisayoungmusic.com/about/indian-music-konnakol/
http://lisayoungmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/masters/masters.pdf