Jazz Articulation | how to tongue bebop on sax
Summary
TLDRIn his saxophone instructional video, Dr. Wally Wallace discusses key concepts for jazz articulation and tonguing. He identifies core techniques like tonguing the offbeat and slurring to the downbeat, as well as tonguing the highest notes of motives. Wallace stresses the importance of listening to jazz masters, stating it's the 'master key' for learning proper articulation, phrasing and style.
Takeaways
- 🎷 La transcripción de big band a menudo no incluye articulaciones, lo que requiere interpretación del músico.
- 🎵 Es crucial saber cuándo usar el ligado y cuándo la articulación con la lengua en el saxofón.
- 📚 Se utiliza un método inductivo de enseñanza, comenzando con ejemplos pequeños y expandiéndose a más material.
- 🎶 Para un estilo bebop, se mantienen las corcheas generalmente rectas sin mucho balanceo, dependiendo del tempo.
- 👅 La articulación en el jazz incluye acentuar los tiempos débiles con la lengua y ligar hacia los tiempos fuertes.
- 💡 Es importante evitar cortar las notas largas al aplicar la articulación correcta.
- 🎼 En arpegios descendentes, se recomienda acentuar y articular la primera nota y ligar las siguientes tres.
- 🔑 La clave maestra para aprender articulación es la escucha activa de grabaciones de jazz, especialmente bebop.
- 📖 La tradición oral del jazz es rica y compleja, haciendo indispensable la escucha para una interpretación auténtica.
- 🏋️ Practicar la articulación sin marcarla en la partitura fomenta el aprendizaje y la escucha activa.
Q & A
What is the main topic discussed in the transcript?
-The main topic is jazz articulation and techniques for tonguing and slurring.
What is the 'master key' that is important for learning jazz articulation?
-The 'master key' is listening closely to recordings of jazz masters like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
What is the first core concept discussed for jazz articulation?
-The first concept is tonguing the offbeats and slurring to the downbeats.
What common mistake do beginners make when trying to apply this concept?
-Beginners often clip or cut off the downbeats when tonguing the offbeats.
What exercise is given to fix this mistake?
-The fix is to first slur all the notes smoothly, then add light tonguing on the offbeats without changing the air stream.
What is the second core concept discussed?
-The second concept is to tongue and slightly accent the tops of motives or musical ideas.
When would we tongue 1 note and slur 3?
-We use this pattern frequently in bebop over arpeggios or falling musical lines.
What is 'ghosting' a note?
-Ghosting means to back off on a note dynamically without fully omitting the note.
Why is listening more important than written articulation markings?
-Jazz is an oral tradition that can't be fully captured through notation - you have to listen to native speakers.
How much more should you spend listening versus playing?
-You should spend about twice as much time listening than playing.
Outlines
Introducing articulation concepts for jazz saxophone
The paragraph introduces the video lesson, which will teach concepts related to articulation and tonguing technique for jazz saxophone. It previews that the main ideas covered will include when to tongue versus slur, how to properly tongue rhythms to achieve swing feel, and the importance of listening to jazz masters.
Tonguing the offbeat and slurring to the downbeat
The paragraph demonstrates the technique of tonguing the offbeat notes and slurring into the downbeats to properly articulate swing rhythms. It contrasts this with incorrectly clipping the downbeat notes. It provides an exercise to develop this technique properly.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡articulation
💡bebop
💡tonguing
💡slurring
💡ghosting
💡offbeat
💡downbeat
💡motive
💡listening
💡airstream
Highlights
Introduce conceptos básicos de cuándo y dónde usar la lengua al tocar saxofón de jazz
Usa el ejercicio mensual gratuito como ejemplo para enseñar articulación de jazz
Explica la importancia de escuchar a los grandes maestros de jazz para aprender articulación correcta
Compara aprender jazz solo leyendo partituras versus escuchando grabaciones de maestros
Demuestra sonidos incorrectos de articular todas las notas o usar solo 'swing feel'
Enseña concepto básico de lengueta en contratiempos y ligaduras a tiempos fuertes
Advierte sobre error común de acortar las notas ligadas a los tiempos fuertes
Da ejercicio para practicar fraseo ligado suave sin alterar el flujo de aire
Introduce segundo concepto de lengueta y acento en las cimas de motivos
Explica patrón común de lengueta 1, ligadura 3 notas en frases de bebop
Menciona técnica de 'ghosting' la 3ra nota ligada, se explicará más en futuro
Acentúa que hay muchas excepciones a estas reglas según estilo de jazz
Insiste que la única forma de aprender es escuchando grabaciones de los maestros
No marca articulaciones en los ejercicios para forzar al alumno a escuchar y aplicar
Enfatiza la importancia crítica de escuchar jazz tanto o más que se practica tocar
Transcripts
[Music]
you open up a big band charter your
transcription book it's likely you may
not see
any articulations marked at all so how
do we know when to slur
and when to tongue and do we use the
tongue at all
yeah we're gonna chunk so let's talk
about it
[Music]
hi and welcome to the saxophone academy
i'm dr wally wallace and if you're
interested in saxophone master classes
please do subscribe
be sure to hit the like button to
improve your swing feel
now today we're talking about jazz
articulation i'm going to introduce some
core
concepts of when and where to tongue and
how to tongue
we're going to be using our free monthly
etude as an example you can download it
in the link
below now before we get started i need
to announce that you will need the
master key
to unlock all questions related to
articulation
so stick around and we'll cover that as
well but first a tiny bit of
housekeeping we're in week
two of the free fundamentals course and
as many of you have noticed
our advanced etude is very challenging
so i've added a more intermediate
blues etude for those of you that aren't
quite up to speed on the faster etude
go ahead and download that it's free as
well and each month i'm gonna also try
to offer
an easier blues a2 to help get some of
you up to speed
secondly many of you have asked how do i
keep up with the monthly assignments
what happens if i fall behind don't
worry although i'm introducing free
content and free etudes each month
the course isn't going away it's going
to stick around long after we've
introduced a year
worth of content i'm going to make this
the first building block and what will
hopefully be a very large
library of free educational saxophone
content so take your time
and enjoy the course there's no rush now
today for articulation we're going to be
using the january etude and we're going
to be using the inductive
method of teaching we're going to take a
small sample and then later you can
extrapolate that
to more material so we're going to start
taking a look at
bar 12 in the etude so the first thing
you'll notice is there's
nary an articulation in sight and this
is by design
but you can't play this the way you
would literally read it in 6th grade
band class
[Music]
because obviously that's no good and i
know you know that but then you might
think okay well it just needs the swing
style
so i'll add the triplet feel and that'll
fix it right
obviously that doesn't work either now
we will add
a little bit of a lilt or kind of a
triplet feel
especially depending on tempo and the
genre of jazz we're playing
but for today because this is a bebop
style etude we're gonna largely keep the
eighth notes
generally straight in a smoother motion
with very
little if any lilt depending on tempo
the faster you go
the less lilt you're going to feel so
the end result hopefully for this phrase
will sound something like this
[Music]
now slowing this down a bit we're going
to hear the first core concept we're
talking about today
tonguing the offbeat and slurring to the
[Music]
downbeat
now depending on who you're listening to
and what era of jazz
you're going to hear different levels of
inflection or accent on those
offbeats but in general we want a fairly
light accent especially as we go
faster and remember the accents are done
with air
not the tongue the tongue ends the
previous note
air starts the accent accents are done
with air
not a heavy tongue sound now a common
trap that beginners fall into when they
start
tonguing the offbeat and slurring to the
downbeat is they start to clip
the down beam
[Music]
now i've obviously over exaggerated the
problem so you can really see what i'm
talking about
though some players do get very close to
that now if you or someone you love
is doing this how do we fix it well the
fix is actually fairly simple
step one remove any lilt and play the
eights completely straight
and then slur them
[Music]
we want to keep our airstream constant
the entire time playing one
long smooth slurred phrase don't let
your airstream
sag then lightly tongue the offbeats
without
altering your airstream and it may be
helpful to think of yourself as
crescendoing
to the end of the phrase to keep your
airstream supported the entire time
[Music]
now this concept alone will get you a
lot of mileage there's a lot of bebop
era tunes and jazz charts
where if you just tongue the offbeat to
the downbeat you're gonna get a pretty
decent swing or bob feel
but there's certainly exceptions we
don't want to always group our notes in
pairs of two
there's times where groups of three are
great like blind mice and
little pigs and wishes and also falling
arpeggiated figures
so let's take a look at the second half
of the bridge now bridge is just a fancy
music term
for the middle section this is an a a b
a
form it's the rhythm changes or i got
rhythm chord changes this is the end of
the b section we're talking about
starting in measure 22.
[Music]
now listen carefully to the falling
arpeggios that in this phrase
we're going to hear the second core
concept we're going to talk about today
which is to tongue and slitely accent
the tops of motives
now if we applied the previous concept
of always slurring
the offbeat to the downbeat that would
create a leap up
to the peak of the second arpeggio we
would slur up to it and it would sound
like this
as you can hear it puts the emphasis on
the wrong syllable it's not really bebop
style
so instead we're going to do another
very common pattern we see in bebop and
jazz
tongue 1 and slur 3.
you'll also find that in the slurred
group of three another concept comes
into play that we're not gonna talk
about in this video but go into much
more in depth
in a future video that the third note of
the slur or the little piggy that
made his house out of bricks is often
ghosted now that doesn't mean he doesn't
text his brothers back
it simply means that we're going to back
off this note there's a variety of ways
and techniques to do that and we're
going to talk about that much more in a
future video but right now just know
that ghosting is going to be very common
especially in the third note of the
grouping of three which really sets us
up to have a nice accent
on the peak of the motive now aside from
arpeggios there's tons of times we're
going to tongue 1 and group 3.
there's lots of more instances where
you're going to ghost a note you're
going to tongue off beats tongue down
beats
there's tons of exceptions and
variations depending on the style
and genre of jazz and who you're
listening to so how do we know when to
learn to tongue how do we learn
all these rules well that's where the
master key comes into play
and if you've watched this channel for
any length of time you've probably
guessed what the master key is so say it
with me and you can roll your eyes while
you say it
the master key is listening
charlie parker and dizzy gillespie
changed the face of music forever an
entire new language emerged in the 1940s
now they didn't give us a treatise or a
book on how to play bebop but they gave
us something better
a lot of recordings even if your teacher
marks
every slur in accent on the paper and
you're not doing the listening
it's not going to come out right jazz is
a rich oral tradition and every bit as
complex as the most complex
classical music it simply can't be
translated completely
to a piece of paper that's where
listening comes in it's a rich
oral tradition imagine trying to learn a
foreign accent by
reading a book you'd never really get
there you have to listen to native
speakers and that's where i know i sound
like a broken record
but there's just no substitute for
listening to the greats
it's also why in this fundamentals
course i'm not marking articulations
for you i need you listening to the
examples and applying that
to the etude if i mark them in for you
you're not getting the learning it's
like
paying someone else to do your push-ups
and that's just weird
so start listening to the provided
examples in the etudes and start
listening to the masters in this month's
musicianship assignment you're listening
to charlie parker and you really
you should be listening about twice as
much as you spend playing
and that's a good thing listening to the
greats is fun and if you don't enjoy
listening to jazz
why do you want to play it get to work
and we're going to talk about more of
these concepts
very soon including ghosting in an
upcoming video and talk about some
techniques
to make that happen now you will have
questions let me know in the comments
below
or in the course itself i will get to
the comments as fast as i possibly can
we've got more content coming up next
week and until then
go practice
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