THE JAZZ BOX
JANE MILLER
Metronome Practice: Tune of the Day
Got Time?
Dedicated guitarists will stay up working on
hip chord voicings and progressions until the
birds begin to chirp and hardly notice the hour.
Practicing improvisers will happily spend all of
a gorgeous summer day indoors shedding licks
and scales over changes. Add to that a similar
level of enthusiasm for committing to tempo
and groove, and you’ve got yourself good
time. Playing with good time helps musicians
in a band communicate with each other on a
high level. Notice in conversation when someone chimes in with all of the right words, but
it’s apparent that they are missing some key
implied point that the others are in on. That’s a
little like rushing a phrase musically, or comping
in a way that just doesn’t get what the drummer and bass player are talking about, however
cool the melodic idea or harmonic tensions
may be. This month’s practice idea will help you
to feel time reliably, and get you having more
fun with the band.
Get the Machine
Working with a metronome is essential for
checking yourself out during individual practice
time. It’s like using a tuner to get your guitar
in tune as accurately as possible. Even if you
could find a human being with freakishly metronomic time, it would be asking a lot of them to
click away for you while you practice all afternoon. Make friends with the metronome, and it
will be appreciated by all concerned.
Here’s a daily routine that I developed
for myself—and my students—after being
intrigued and inspired by conversations
with Mick Goodrick and Emily Remler about
the importance of working with a metronome. Plan on spending about forty-five
minutes or so with this.
Pick a Tune of the Day
It can be anything: a standard tune that
you feel comfortable with, a tune that is
new for you, something you have memorized, something you have to read, a new
original piece you’re working on, a blues,
something in an odd meter. Just stay with
the same tune throughout this exercise and
make it your tune of the day.
Choose Four Different Tempos
I like to spread them out. For example, start
with 48, 66, 84, 112.
Play
Play two or three choruses in each of the fol-
lowing categories:
1. Melody alone
2. Comping alone
3. Bass line alone
4. Chords and bass together
5. Chords and melody together
6. Improvising: steady eighth notes; steady
eighth-note triplets; steady sixteenth notes;
anything you want
7. Go back to the tune in some way (melody,
comping, bass, etc.)
Playing with good time
helps musicians in
a band communicate
with each other on a
high level.
8. Repeat the process for next tempo
Observe, Notice
At what tempo do sixteenth notes get difficult? Do you notice any speeding up or slowing down at the point of transitions between,
say, playing chords and improvising? What
transitions are smooth? When you finally allow
yourself to play anything you want in the improvised section, when do you leave space? What
rhythms do you favor most? Do you feel as
though the metronome is too slow sometimes
or too fast sometimes?
Be Creative
Adapt this exercise to fit your needs once
you get comfortable practicing regularly with
the metronome. Try it twice a day. I spent
one summer warming up with the routine in
the morning and then going through it all
again at night with the Red Sox games on TV.
Maybe you need a quiet space. Maybe you
need someone else in the room. You might
find that it’s great practice for focusing on
the time above all else by having some other
distraction in the room, like a radio.
Working with a slow tempo, such as 48, you
can make each click represent a quarter note,
or you can decide that each click represents
beats 2 and 4 in 4/4 time. That’s a useful way
to practice a swing feel. It takes practice to feel
it that way, but it is a very rewarding groove to
catch on to. Listen to swing drummers to hear
the 2 and 4 emphasis. It will become a natural
thing to play against, around and with. On
the other hand, if the groove is straight eighth
notes, such as Latin or rock grooves, assign the
clicks to be on 1 and 3.
For slow tempos in 3/4 time, you could
hear each click as a quarter note. But the
slower metronome settings also give you the
chance to experiment with other time values
for each click. Try thinking of each click as a
dotted quarter note in 3/4 time, so that you
will feel two evenly spaced clicks per measure (a two-against-three feel). Try just one
click per measure in 3/4 to feel each click as
a dotted half note. The longer the time is
between clicks, the more challenging it will
be to land on the next one in time.
This sort of rhythmic awareness can bring a
deliberate sense of authority to your playing.
In soloing, you will find yourself paying more
attention to your choice of rhythms and probably will want to mix them up in some interesting ways. If you’ve had “triplet-itis,” you might
start intentionally using more eighth notes or
sixteenth notes instead. If you’ve loaded up
every possible space with sound, you may find
yourself now wanting to frame your ideas with
a rest on each end to make them stand out. As
an accompanist, you will be particularly sensitive to the tempo and groove in a way that
best supports the melody player, and you will
get those very cool nods from the drummer
and bass player.
Jane Miller
Jane Miller is a guitarist, composer, and arranger
with roots in both jazz and folk. In addition to leading her own jazz instrumental quartet, she is in a
working chamber jazz trio with saxophonist Cercie
Miller and bassist David Clark. The Jane Miller Group
has released three CDs on Jane’s label, Pink Bubble
Records. Jane joined the Guitar Department faculty at
Berklee College of Music in 1994. janemillergroup.com
