How to Master Old School Jazz - feat. Patrick Bartley

Every era of jazz has its lessons—and trad jazz is no exception. Trad jazz (or what you might call early jazz or Dixieland jazz) is the earliest form of jazz. This style of jazz was what emerged out of New Orleans and moved to Chicago and New York. Artists like Sidney Bechet and Louis Armstrong are some of the popular names you may think of from this era. 

Everything that we talk about today can be found in Patrick’s course with Jazz Lesson Videos, Early Jazz Soloing Concepts. You can also check out our accompanying YouTube video “How to Master Old School Jazz” to see how Patrick plays through these examples.

Let’s get playing!

Contents

Embrace the 1

Approaching minor chords

Motivic development

Embrace the 1

This first one might seem obvious, but it’s a good reminder—embrace the 1.

In the way that we're normally taught jazz, which starts in 1940 and moves onward instead of going back before 1940. A lot of times we're used to resolving and cadencing on the “and” of 4, or maybe right on beat 4, possibly the “and” of one. 

This gives us the feeling of bebop, post-bop, or just the modern jazz sound. However, the music that was played in New Orleans and then later went to Chicago and New York, that music was a little different, and it was made for a different type of dancing.

When we say embrace the 1, if you're playing a line, or if you're playing any type of music rhythmically, when you're improvising, try to make sure that you embrace this feeling of gravity. You might call it stomp music, like big band stomp music. 

How do you apply this when playing? Let’s look at a Charlie Parker line.

So here we’re ending on the “and” of 1. Now how can we make this more trad sounding?

It’s important to remember that Charlie Parker was a kid when trad jazz was popular, and so it’s something that he heard. And as the jazz language evolved with bebop, it added in extra notes to offset the sound. 

Resolving on the 1 is a very solid and stable resolution, which looks back to older styles of music. You can also resolve/cadence on not just the 1, but beat 4 is okay, and the “and” of 3 is also nice. We can call it “Sonny Greer/Duke Ellington shuffle”. 

This is a different type of feeling, and if you do it right, you might notice your body start to move in a little bit of a different kind of way too, right? It's supposed to evoke a certain feeling that only this music can evoke for you. 

Approaching minor chords

Something we really want to highlight with trad jazz is that minor chords have a life of their own. 

For example, in the fourth bar of “Ain’t Misbehavin’” there’s an Ab major chord going to an Ab minor chord. And you might notice that the melody has a G natural in it, right? It’s a really melancholy sound. 

And one of the reasons why it's so important to point this out, is because normally when we think of minor chords in modern jazz, we think of them as passing chords. We think about them as a set up to a cadence, like ii-V. It's a part of another sequence.

But one thing Patrick really likes about minor chords in Trad settings is that the minor chords almost feel like tonic chords. There’s a stability in them. That m6 example is a very interesting sound.

Something you can try is when you have a iv-I or a iv-iii or whatever it might be, instead of using a m7 chord, try using a m6 chord. 

If we were thinking about it in a bebop kind of way, we might try to insert a ii-V over it or something, but in this case, we’re going to let it breathe and be as it is.

Some other places you can use this is on “Just Friends,” “After You’ve Gone,” and more. Try it, and see if you can get that melancholy trad jazz sound!

Motivic development

Motivic development is arguably the most important skill to have when it comes to improvising, because it allows you to develop momentum in your solo, stay interesting, and also be able to be understood. You want to be able to be understood, because improvising in jazz is all about communicating. 

Today we’ll look at three types of motivic development, and within these three types or categories, there's a myriad of different things you can do within them. But because these are the three most essential elements that make music, melody, rhythm and harmony, we’re going to be talking about these three different ways that you can develop a motif. 

Our first type of motivic development is melodic development. Melodic development is taking one specific phrase or melodic grouping—one bar, two bars, four bars, or whatever type of phrase you like—and modulating it through a given chord progression or section of a song to make it fit as the song moves. 

Today, the song we're going to be using for all the examples is “After You've Gone.” And the reason why we’ve picked this tune is because there's a really interesting set of harmonic groupings that fit really well together as two and two, and two and two. It makes sense to see it in context that way. 

In this example, we’re going to be taking one two-bar melodic cell, and we’re going to move it through the different changes and see how we can keep the same exact melodic shape, but just move it through the chord progression.

The second type of motivic development we're going to talk about is harmonic development. And harmonic development, especially in this exercise, may seem a little similar to melodic development, but there is one specific difference, and that is that we are changing our chord tones within a specific melody or melodic shape to fit the changing harmony, and this means that the rhythm and the specific melody might be changing. 

We’re not keeping the same exact melody intervals, but we’re matching it with the same style as our first melodic idea. It's a subtle difference, but you can hear it once you hear it in context. So let's check it out.

This last example for motivic development is probably the simplest for anybody to understand, because you can do it even without an instrument. You can do it by patting your legs or tapping the table or whatever. So of course we're talking about rhythmic development. 

Rhythmic development is really special in the sense that you can basically take one type of rhythmic phrase and use it as inspiration and momentum. And what Patrick likes to do is keep maybe two or four bars playing the same rhythm, and then maybe adding on to that. Try adding another rhythm, maybe take the rhythm away, or increase the speed, whatever. But most importantly, you're keeping one note. 

Now you don’t have to fully restrict yourself to just one note, but for the sake of this exercise, to keep it simple, we’ll look at how you can make a really good sounding solo with just one note. Granted, you don't want to do one note for five choruses, people will get bored, but at least for one chorus, half a chorus, anything like that, you can actually do this. 

Sonny Rollins did this type of thing all the time. Louis Armstrong did this in his St Louis Blues recording. There are so many different recordings where you can find people taking one note and rhythmically developing it throughout their solo. 

In this example, we’re just playing D concert, which is B on the alto, and wer’re just going for it. Some advice to everyone who is trying to do more rhythmic development and trying to get more rhythm in their playing, check in with yourself. “How do I like what I’m playing? How do I feel? Good?”

But if you’re asking yourself “how do I get more rhythm variety?” Listen to drums. Listen to any type of rhythmic percussion, or even some piano players. Try to think like you're a drummer. Try to imagine that this note doesn't exist and you're completely tone deaf. You can only hear one tone, and then just go with it. 

In the end, the point is to keep it simple. Think about the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. 

Well that’s all we have for today, but if you’re interested in diving even deeper on this topic, make sure to check out our accompanying YouTube video, as well as Patrick’s course on Jazz Lesson Videos, “Early Jazz Soloing Concepts.”

See you next time!