Soling: staccato?
i often hear pianists like kenny barron, hank jones, barry harris hitting the notes in their solo lines almost staccato like... is this something we all should do in playing jazz (not like a dogma or anything just because it swings the hardest)??
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beginners and intermediate players should practice smoothly.
only when you're able to play fluent/smooth solos, with nice sound, you can take the liberty to add staccato notes to spice up your choruses. it's my opinion.
by the way, perhaps you thought they play staccato because of the recording quality ?
???
when your have a solo staccato note which is an 1/8 note (or 1/16 etc.) you hit the key while immediately lifting your hands from the keyboard (hence bottom to top).... this gives another attack to the note, as you hit the snare of the piano in another way (which is keeping your hands on the keyboard having played the note, or top to bottom, what you do with quarter notes etc.)....
i was presuming maybe jazz-pianist use this techniques in soloing...
but this is only in cases like: rest quarternote rest , see what i mean?
so i am not presuming anymore that jazz-pianists use these techniques lol :)
in jazz, the articulation is not quite staccato -- it's just detached. imo chick corea is the master of that.
hey ayolt, what do you think of tommy flanagan?
jv'
i'll listen to chick also! thx cynbad
"not if you are a beginner...
beginners and intermediate players should practice smoothly.
only when you're able to play fluent/smooth solos, with nice sound, you can take the liberty to add staccato notes to spice up your choruses. it's my opinion."
i agree with that and i would add that you should also try to phrase in the pocket slightly behind the beat.
many classically-trained pianists start out by playing everything legato. the first thing a jazz teacher has to break them of is playing everything legato or staccato. they teach you to play more detached, and stop pedalling everything.
in bebop, the general articulation rules for big band section phrasing are:
1)eighth notes are played legato except when followed by a rest.
2)quarter notes are played detached.
please. staccato should not really be used in jazz playing -- rarely, maybe.
listen to the detached style of chick corea. he rarely, if ever, plays legato. but it is not staccato. horn lines are not always "legato". there's this little thing called "tonguing".
"1)eighth notes are played legato except when followed by a rest.
2)quarter notes are played detached. "
rh should sound like a horn player, lh should sound like a bass player.
this is almost word per word what i was taught... don't want to get into this argument, but i'm just stating what my teacher taught me.
peace.
rc
those are probably accents and or marcato notes, usually not staccato. monk and joe sample use staccato.
maybe a piano should sound like a piano!
it also sounds like some of your teachers would have flunked chick corea.
he definitely does not play legato. i'm not sure he can even do it.
i'm a big fan of chick corea. but most of his music does not conform to jazz swing phrasing imho. a beginner will most likely not learn to play chick corea tunes first. wont't they will likely start with the standards and learn swing eights to break away from playing classical straight eights?
in this particular case (playing swing tunes), should i tell my teacher he's wrong? as he often reminds me, jazz is not classical music and the standard representation of the notes on a music sheet belies the music that is implied underneath.
i am certainly not looking for an argument as i am not knowledgeable enough to argue. i'm just trying to fit what you say into what he says. is my teacher wrong? but given his professional background, it would be extremely hard for me to disagree with him without more info to go on.
peace
rc
it does not matter if you call it jazz or anything else. i understand that beginners often need to be given some "rules" to follow in the beginning, so they get the basic idea, the basic sound.
but eventually you will outgrow the "rules" and learn to play what you hear in your head.
perhaps young children are taught legato because it's somewhat easier than playing evenly using staccato or using a combination of techniques in order to phrase a line musically. most likely it makes the job which the music teacher has to perform easier -- he or she simply has to deliver an edict, such as "play notes connected," which, however, could certainly be a valid goal for its own sake, when approached within the context of learning to emulate a specific performer.
the canonical piece in jazz piano for legato touch is bud's "parisian thoroughfare" -- if one wanted to learn to play smoothly, one could try to learn the head to this piece off the record. most of his repertoire did not use legato lines particularly exclusively, in the heads or the improvisations. chick in the youtube video says "flowing," about bud's ideas, which is entirely different.
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