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Double Bass How do you approach improvised changes in time signature?

scrubhelmet

scrubhelmet

Nov 18, 2024
291
478
Taiwan
#1
Last night, I was drinking with my friends in our jazz club, and our saxophonist friend told us that he hates musicians who don't play with open ears, even in non-jazz genres such as pop. Then our drummer friend told us that while it might be easier to do this in pop and rock, it's not that easy for jazz. She also mentioned that because of her experience in pop music, she usually wants to play as close to the click as possible. But then you guys know what happens in open jams; you're playing in 4/4 swing then during the pianist's solo, he might do two bars of a 3/4 lick and then the drummer and bass would just follow like they telepathically messaged each other.

So I realized that I haven't read much anything about how to approach improvised changes in time signature as a bass player. I usually just observed these stuff through listening to records and watching both live and YouTube jazz performances, and I think being receptive to this stuff helped me react accordingly during open jams.

(Also, take note that our jazz club doesn't really provide formal training in jazz. The ensemble class teacher would give us history about the different subgenres in jazz, teach melodies and scales relevant to the tune that he'd be teaching, and then let us play as a band. But other instrumental nuances such as walking bass, I had to learn by myself. The teacher's background is also in pop music.)
 
#3
I have never seen a situation where the soloist went outside the established time signature and intended for the rest of the band to follow them. I might play accents to emphasize what they did but I can't think of a single time in 25 years of gigging where a soloist would have actually wanted the band to completely abandon the established meter to follow them.

If anything, the more solid you play and hold things down, the more free the soloist is to play across the bar line. If I'm playing with a great drummer I'll play interesting phrases or metric modulation, but if the drummer isn't 100% solid regardless of what I play then I'm not going to go there during my solo and risk derailing the entire tune.
 
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#4
Hold the form. Keep the time. Let the soloist come back to you or just leave that beat at the end before starting the next chorus.

This is one of the hardest things for me about playing creative "original music songwriter" types. They often conceive of and practice these things on their own without noticing that they do things like this and expect it all just to magically work out when they hire people to play with them.

In straight ahead jazz? Never. Unless the song is written or arranged to have some variable time signature thing in it, everyone needs to play the form. It's what separates us from the animals.
 
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#5
Off the top of my head. (and not sure this is what you mean)

You might go back and fourth between 2 and 4. You might go between compound time and simple time or swing vs straight. You may go between swing and latin. You might go to double time. This is just playing twice as fast. To revert, you go to half time and play half as fast. You might go to double time feel. Double time feels means you play twice as fast but the `melody and chord changes stay at the same tempo. I usually think of it as doubling the tempo and doubling the bar length. Half time feel is the opposite of double time feel.

Knowledge and context are important. Certain songs have a tradition of using certain strategies. Probably best to work things out in advance to be sure it works and you can pull it off. Discussing the matter with group members is also a good idea.
 
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#6
Here's an example:

I might play a given bar in 1, 2, or 3
1762649717755.png
 
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#7
I can only think of a few Bill Evans recordings when he left the meter, playing a bar or two or 3/4 in an otherwise 4/4 tune, even adding a beat to make it 5/4 for a bar or two, very rarely. I think that kind of changing the meter on the fly is a very high skill with bandmates who know each other and the tunes very well, and even then mostly on intros, not during a solo, and the meter during those intros is more rubato then a constant meter. It seems feasible if you know the tune well and are aiming for the landmarks more than just altering the meter to fit the soloist's melody. I've never had a soloist intentionally alter the meter but have had it happen a few times by mistake and then, once I hear where they are, I lop off or add a couple of beats to put us back in the same place but my lines probably sound like a hiccup, not played as intended.
 
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#8
Something similar goes on here:

The meter is 5/4 broken down as 3 + 2. The prevailing feel in the bass is 2 against 3 for the first part of the bar. So it's sort of 2 + 2 where 2 does not equal 2 ;). You can also break into a walking in 5/4
1762650233227.png

5/4
 
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#11
Wasnex said:
Off the top of my head. (and not sure this is what you mean)

...
Click to expand...

I don't think that's the question, but @scrubhelmet please clarify for us.

What I think he's asking about is the soloist or vocalist adds or drops a beat and doesn't get why the band doesn't just move the barline to make it seem like they didn't.

I tend to run into this with genres other than jazz, almost always by the bandleader. My snide take is that someone wants to claim that this is an artistic choice and everyone should "use their ears" and drop or add whatever beats they did, when in actuality, I generally think that they need to practice with a metronome and work out their licks and phrases to fit the form, rather than expect everyone who does in fact work with a metronome and "use their ears" to cover for them.

I don't remember this ever happening with someone who was hired by a leader to play on a gig. It's always the leader and its usually either their music or songs that they've chosen. I got into a project like that last year. They had good gigs and I generally liked their music, but it just doesn't feel right and I struggle with believing that its really about the music and not just them needing to practice more.

Singer/songwriter types who perform solo for years and then try to put a band together to do their songs struggle with this and in my experience, they are usually unaware of it. When it becomes a problem with a band and someone breaks it down for them, this is usually where "listen to my home recording of it and practice with that" or "just use your ears" comes in vs the realization that they need to clean their playing up.

Not saying that I never drop or add a beat, especially in my solos, but I don't defend it as an artistic choice. When I do, I appreciate the band being rock solid to the time and form so that I didn't bend the song. Occasionally someone will really blow the form, go to the bridge early or something, and the band will make eye contact and decide to go to them to keep the train on the tracks at the gig, but that's not the same thing.
 
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#12
Wasnex said:
Here's an example:

I might play a given bar in 1, 2, or 3
View attachment 7364427
Click to expand...

Interesting that you should post this. Back in the 80s, I loaned my Real Book to my roommate, Michael Malone, who was extremely creative, adventurous (listening to practicing microtonal solfège was pretty awesome) and practiced with maniacal intensity. This song came back looking like the following, with various time signature changes. It was fun to play!

(He and I were involved in the recital that made the Berklee College of Music decide that they needed rules about recitals, but that's another story. Sadly, he passed of AIDS when people didn't really know what was going on. I miss him terribly.)

tempImagep7uiU4.png
 
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#13
I'll just echo what a few of the previous posters mentioned in that I've never experienced something like that in pop or jazz music. The only time I've experienced weird time signatures changes like that is in my originals band where the guitar player sometimes comes to us with new tunes where the time signature isn't really well defined or is changing like every other bar and he doesn't know how to describe it to us so we end up having to take a break and dissect what is actually happening. (I should clarify that we're a prog band so that's not totally unexpected but I can also see how an issue like that might occur with 'indie' singer-songwriter styles where maybe the musician isn't classically trained)

I have a hard time imagining a player in a jazz setting doing a solo and just changing time signatures and expecting the rest of the band to know in real time that is happening. For instance, if the tune is in 4/4 and a piano player takes a solo and throws in a bar of 3/4, how would the rest of the band know that the soloist has changed to 3/4 before the 4th beat has happened to even know that a change was made? Maybe if there was an obvious motif going on where with each repetition a beat was being dropped or something but otherwise they're expecting the band to be psychic it seems. As others have said, just have the band keep going at the actual timing of the song and let the soloist be the one to play against the bands time for whatever effect they're going for.
 
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#15
In tango, it's common to change the tempo or feel and marking model (the rhythmic pattern of the measure) every 2-8 measures in a song, including in an improvised context (called "a la parrilla"--on the grill).

This could be like changing from a 4 beat marking model (marcato, analogous to a walking bass in jazz) to a 2 beat model (blancas, for a half note feel). Or overlaying 6/8 on a 3/4 for a few measures in a vals. Sometimes it's switching to a syncopated rhythm for a few bars, or to a 3-3-2 rhythm (named for how the 8th notes are subdivided). There are also measures of rubato with flexible tempo, accelerandos, and ritardandos.

None of these are time signature changes, per se.

What makes this possible (other than a near psychic connection between the bass and the pianist, who usually doubles bass with his left hand) are:

-No drums--This forces all the instruments to have to carry and communicate the rhythm within their melodies
-melodic/rhythmic phrases anticipating the downbeat by 1-3 8th notes
-subdivided 8th or 16th notes

Examples
A bowed bass often starts on beat 4, or the & of beat 4, with an arrastre (dragged, kind of a glissando) to anticipate and communicate the downbeat. This changes the beat from a steady punctuated thing, to a flexible thing that is communicated in most measures somehow.

To change tempo, the bass can play a combo of 8th and 16th notes chromatic or scalar runs leading to the one (e.g. an 8th note on the 5th of the next measures chord. played on the & of beat 3, and beat 4 subdivided into 16th notes running chromatically up to the root for beat 1-- bom-di-di-di-di-DUM). The subdivided notes can be really helpful to reset the tempo, or perform an accel. or ritard.

The soloist playing the melody or countermelody does a version of this too. Often, a melodic phrase starts at the end of the last melodic phrase, in the middle of the measure, before the next downbeat. The soloist can change the tempo or feel (from rhythmic feel to a more expressive melodic feel) with 2 or 3 notes. 8th and 16th notes make it easier to change the tempo. It's near impossible to change or set the feel or tempo with half notes or whole notes.

And if the melodic phrase that's ending doesn't have another melodic phrase taking over immediately, like in between verses or song sections, there's a connector phrase, a sort of counter melody to help bridge the gap, and it usually has 8th note runs.

---

To get this to happen in Jazz, you would probably need to lean more into call and response structure, and drums would probably have to use brushes more. Because you need to be able to stretch and anticipate the beat, instead of punctuating the beat.
 
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#16
Don Kasper said:
Citation Needed...Plz post an example.
Please?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
I thought someone might call me out on that and am not surprised that it's you. I had to rack my brain to remember but found this transcription vid on YT. I agree with the transcriber's meter notations of the unaccompanied intro where Bill plays the head very loosely. Once the tune starts in earnest, I think it stays in 3/4 but didn't watch it all the way through again to be sure. But if you listen to the intro, I think it's as I described, the head played almost rubato but still with a pulse and the meter isn't consistent. Scotty doesn't play on the intro, but I think that if he had stuck to landing beat one, he probably could have, based on my experiences accompanying a recitative. I think Dave Liebman might do some similar meter shenanigans when he's playing with very high level players too like Rufus and Steve Allee. I've heard them do some very unusual things to the form but I can't usually figure out just what they've done during a live concert because I'd need to listen many more times.

 
#19
To me, this wouldn't be a time time signature change per se, though it is transcribed that way for convenience and communication. However, treating it as time signature changes makes it impossible for a group improvisation context.

Treating the downbeat (or beats 1 and 3 in 4/4) as the "meeting point and relying on a melody that leads to the downbeat and is based on 8th notes, the time between the downbeats can be stretched infinitely without changing the time signature.

Here are two examples of tempo, feel, rhythmic pattern changes in an improvised context.



0:17-0:26
0:35-0:41
1:00-1:03 6/8 overlayed over 3/4 (dotted 1/4 note bass pattern)
1:10-1:28
2:02-2:06 6/8 bass again



0:34
0:54
2:27-3:00
3:27 6/8 hemiola overlayed over 3/4
 

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