Displacement exercises
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what i've figured out at least is that if i'm going to displace my rhythm, the common way i've heard it done is to always start the phrase starting with quarter notes on the offbeat. or a quarter note triplet, started on the down or upbeat. once you start changing the line to eight notes, it seems to lose the displacement effect unless you heavily accent the offbeat. and then you go back in time again. typically, you hear a triplet eight used to restore the original time. that seems to be a release mechanism.
in my experimentation with this, the way i've listened to the masters is that the rhythmic displacement is a tension that needs to be released later in the line.
i think the key here for me, as far as exercises, is the practice offbeat quarter notes and offbeat triplet quarters, or even on the beat triplet quarters. i remember doing this by saying the 1-and-uh.. loudly so i don't lose my place.
i never see much ever written about this so hopefully my comments will spur some more ideas.
as far as polyrhythms go, i haven't really attempted that as much although i listen to it a lot especially from brad mehldau. i'm preparing for this in a way. i'm practicing constantly doing opposing ratios on my lh/rh scales. 1:2, 1:3, etc. i'm learning that some of this will come from accenting as the accent seems to change the rhythmic feel. playing a scale in sets of 3 eights for example on the rh while the lh does quarter notes will not have a polyrhythmic feel in my mind unless i accent the rh on the first eight note of each set of three.
anyway, this is my own analysis of this and there may be other ways of doing this that i haven't yet figured out. obviously these are very advanced techniques.
i think this requires a lot of preparation.
i have been working on different exercises. i try to group my eight note lines into groups of five or three. i have tried to work on the hanon exercises this way. a great way to practice technique while you get the odd sound into your ears. in addition to this i have just a drumbook that has different exercises with accents on different parts of an eight note line. i try to use these accents in my lines.
i have also worked on a solo by lennie tristano, line uo. a great solo where he uses a lot of displacements, mostly by accents on odd places. another tip is to get your hands on tristano heads and play them. they are the school og displacement. for example lennies pennies.
my ensemble teacher recommended me to listen to early chick corea. he uses a lot of different accents and displacements... any other suggestions?
https://www.melmartin.com/html_pages/articles/rhythm.html
true rhythmic displacement in my mind is errol garner where he actually drags the beat as his predominant style.
7 gives some great ideas here. another way i can think of to expand on what he said is to break the time differently. for example if the music is 4/4, you can play it in eights as 3+5. hard to imagine some of this without listening to the masters demonstrate this. i have this dr. berger rhythmic training cd from homespun tapes where he demonstrates this although the example is not straight ahead jazz though. however it is a very clear explanation.
polyrhythm may remove the swing feel though. rhythmic displacement enhances swing.
i and my friends think this sounds great and it makes me feel great when i play this against my 2-bar rhythm. if anyone can understand what i'm saying, then my questions are: (1) does anyone know what this is called?, and (2) where can i move on from this simple displacement figure?
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