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Double Bass Keeping steady rhythm in ballads

#21
Lovebown said:
...IT IS common to play ballads rubato. ...saying that playing a ballad with a steady pulse is "harder" than playing a ballad with a good rubato feel, is not true IMO.
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I typically hear rubato-type stuff in the beginning and ending of a ballad, if I understand correctly the term rubato. I don't really consider that common. But I do consider it noticeable, and I like to attribute it to groups that have either been around for a while together and have a bond of some sort, or are really good listeners, or both...an option for advanced players.

I remember seeing a West 54th Street Session on PBS with Brandford Marsalis and his group, where they played a song that didn't ask for a beat and tempo that stayed static. Branford tried to describe it as an opera song, where the singer calls all the shots and the orchestra must play follow-up. Maybe that's akin to rubato, I don't really know, but the rest of the group played follow-up to Branford's lines, all schmaltzed up and romantically delivered. It was pretty darn cool.
 
#22
I think we're all basically in agreement here;
-It's important to be able to feel and play good regular time.
-You have to know where straight time is in order to play broken time around it.
-Playing any particular 'feel' well, whether it's swing, latin, rubato, whatever, requires practice both in the shed and in a group context.

And, of course, T-Bal makes good points regarding the need for conductors and SUBDIVIDING.

Is it maybe more noticeable when one stumbles playing straight time than when playing rubato? That's what I had in mind when I said 'harder to play'.

I guess my regular playing situation is different from most around here, in that it's with a big band and we play a lot of dances, so 98% of my playing is straight time of some sort. The only rubato we play is the odd intro/ ending, usually conducted by the vocalist or someone in the front line.
 
#23
FILL AND THE BLANKS - I dint poo-poo too much, likewise A-RON, as I said, if it worked for you, it worked for you. All I can relate is my experience of people who it ain't worked out so well for, yet insist on doing it.

LOAFBROWNED - IT IS common to play ballads rubato. OK, name 3. Sorry, another Firesign Theatre reference. But are you saying that playing ballads without tempo is the norm and playing ballads in tempo is an unusual approach? Are you getting this from the same source that gave you the info that jazz players of late 30's and 40s couldn't read music?

saying that playing a ballad with a steady pulse is "harder" than playing a ballad with a good rubato feel, is not true IMO. Who said that? I do stand by my statement that you're gonna have a better shot of futzing with the time, if you got the time to begin with.

But hey, you keep doing what you're doing and I'll keep doing what I'm doing and we'll see how that works out.


This has nothing to do with what I said about playing a ballad rubato. I never said you shouldn't be able to keep time, or even state it obviously if you want to. But that IS the cat's question right? KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM IN BALLADS, right? Not WHAT ELSE CAN I DO or WHAT OTHER APPROACHES TO BALLAD PLAYING ARE THERE or even WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON APPROACH TO BALLAD PLAYING. He asks about KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM.

Is that what rubato means?
 
#24
T-Bal said:
Kenny Washington's work on Bill Charlap's CDs is a good example and the snare drum is really audible.
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Kenny Washington tells a funny story about playing ballads with Betty Carter (who is unusual, apparently, in her insistence on playing ballads in tempo), they would play them painfully slow and all she wanted from the drummer was a stick on the ride cymbal on 1 and 3 and a hi-hat "chik" on 2 and 4. And that's it.
 
#26
Eric Jackson said:
I've heard other 18-year olds that played nuthin' but rubato, unconducted, all tempos,...
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Now, now. It shouldn't matter that some advice is coming from people who have been playing this music for more than 18 years and some is coming from people who have been alive for 18 years. Everybody has opinions and advice and is elitist and arrogant to think that just because someone's advice is based on years and years of practical experience playing ballads it is going to be better informed than someone who has listened to some records. It's just not so. We are all God's children and All God's Children Got Rhythm.

Plus, it's not rushing and dragging, it's being creative.

Eric Jackson said:
But, hey, We're all Bozos on This Bus.
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Go on, give the Wheeze a squeeze.
 
#32
Lovebown said:
That's a cool generalization to make. Remind me how old Lee Morgan was when he came unto the scene? ... Something like 18?
Hmmm....
/lovebown
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I'll be more than happy to reconsider my appraisal of your level of experience upon receipt of a recording of you playing like an 18 year old Lee Morgan.

Or any writings of Lee Morgan wherein he states that ballads are more commonly played rubato, that playing in time during a ballad is an unusual occurrence or that his approach when asked of how to work on steady time is "Play more rubato".


You want to futz around some more with alla this s**t, fine. I got all day. But you still have not answered the question

But that IS the cat's question right? KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM IN BALLADS, right? Not WHAT ELSE CAN I DO or WHAT OTHER APPROACHES TO BALLAD PLAYING ARE THERE or even WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON APPROACH TO BALLAD PLAYING. He asks about KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM.

Is that what rubato means?

We can talk about Lee Morgan and Bobo Stenson and Art Lande and Tony Williams and Wingy Manone all day long if you want to. That has about as much to do with answering the cats' question as your original response.
 
#33
Sometimes you have to subdivide to survive. Years ago I
played with the late Phineas Newborn, Jr. in his trio. One
night during a Memphis In May festival he launched into
Misty. I was counting 12/8 measures beweeen quarter
notes and listening hard to Phineas and drummer Bill Tyus
looking for landmarks. A recording someone made of it
clocked the tempo at 22bpm. Took almost six minutes to
play the head - then came the solo! Phineas' time was
unimpeachable for three more choruses. At the time I
thought he was a genius or crazy in his ability to pull it off.
Actually, it was a little of both along with a lot of dues,
which were ultimately too expensive to pay. Brilliant cat.
 
#35
scott reed said:
Sometimes you have to subdivide to survive. Years ago I
played with the late Phineas Newborn, Jr. in his trio. One
night during a Memphis In May festival he launched into
Misty. I was counting 12/8 measures beweeen quarter
notes and listening hard to Phineas and drummer Bill Tyus
looking for landmarks. A recording someone made of it
clocked the tempo at 22bpm. Took almost six minutes to
play the head - then came the solo! Phineas' time was
unimpeachable for three more choruses. At the time I
thought he was a genius or crazy in his ability to pull it off.
Actually, it was a little of both along with a lot of dues,
which were ultimately too expensive to pay. Brilliant cat.
Click to expand...

Maybe you were playing rubato and didn't know it...
 
#36
Ed Fuqua said:
I'll be more than happy to reconsider my appraisal of your level of experience upon receipt of a recording of you playing like an 18 year old Lee Morgan.

Or any writings of Lee Morgan wherein he states that ballads are more commonly played rubato, that playing in time during a ballad is an unusual occurrence or that his approach when asked of how to work on steady time is "Play more rubato".


You want to futz around some more with alla this s**t, fine. I got all day. But you still have not answered the question

But that IS the cat's question right? KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM IN BALLADS, right? Not WHAT ELSE CAN I DO or WHAT OTHER APPROACHES TO BALLAD PLAYING ARE THERE or even WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON APPROACH TO BALLAD PLAYING. He asks about KEEPING A STEADY RHYTHM.

Is that what rubato means?

We can talk about Lee Morgan and Bobo Stenson and Art Lande and Tony Williams and Wingy Manone all day long if you want to. That has about as much to do with answering the cats' question as your original response.
Click to expand...

Actually I did post my thoughts on how he could improve his time with a metronome, but I guess you missed those huh?
also, recording is very useful... with a metronome or something so you can here where the notes are in relation to the constant time, which I pointed out as well.
/lovebown
 
#38
Nope, and the question still stands. Do you think that the original question was

WHAT ARE OTHER APPROACHES TO BALLAD PLAYING

or
WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON APPROACH TO BALLAD PLAYING

or what? Me, I thought it was how to go about KEEPING STEADY TIME, which rubato does not mean. But I can see how I was probably wrong about that.

So Dmitri, feel free to disregard everything I've said here, it's only based on my experience which, admittedly, is not the same as Lovebown's. You should probably also disregard the tens of thousands of recorded ballads done in tempo out there, LOVE says the most common way to play ballads is rubato, so it must be true.

Hey, GLOVE, you wanna correct anything else I've said?
 
#39
scott reed said:
Ed, I'd play rubato with those two guys at any tempo!
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The only problem with that guy was that the other end of his metronome went past mine, too.

Bill's playing I don't know, is he on anything? All the vinyl I got with Phineas is Max or Kenny, the only CD I got is Elvin.
 
#40
Ed Fuqua said:
.

So Dmitri, feel free to disregard everything I've said here, it's only based on my experience which, admittedly, is not the same as Lovebown's. You should probably also disregard the tens of thousands of recorded ballads done in tempo out there, LOVE says the most common way to play ballads is rubato, so it must be true.

Hey, GLOVE, you wanna correct anything else I've said?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I never said playing rubato is the most common way of playing a ballad. Try reading my posts a little closer if you want to slam my opinions. All I was saying was that playing a ballad rubato is a viable option. Don't see what all the fuss is about really.

/lovebown
 

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