Lesson #43 (Jazz #7 1/29/12): Bowing, Rhythm/Timing & Repertoire (March The First & Question and Answer)

Wow, jazz is hard… *sigh*  I think I bit off more than I can chew!
We’re still focusing and working on rhythm, something I don’t want to work on, but its definitely a weak point of mine, which is the reason I asked Clayton if we could focus on rhythm more.

March The First 

• Rhythm 
• I practiced stomping and clapping this at home, so I was much more coordinated and on beat during this lesson! Yaay! But during the lesson, I started focusing on trying to have a good solid beat and my fingering went awry, which is really sad because the notes are SUPER simple – Twinkle easy! 
• It’s so weird, as long as I play something and don't worry about rhythm, I can play it just fine, but I think thinking I know how to play a piece without actually knowing the note's time value or its relationship to the meter is the real underlying issue. If don’t know/understand how long the note should be, than how am I supposed to play on time right? ...darn...no avoiding learning this... 
• “Play it convincingly”
• Clayton mentioned that having good rhythm is something the audience senses, whether or not they understand what is going on. If someone plays a piece with really good rhythm (even with bad intonation) they will come across as being confident in what they're playing. So for me, to play a piece "convincingly," even though I might not feel confident inside, I have to play something on time and with a good beat - easier said than done! 
• Bowing
• With the Up-Up bowing with the chords, I need to make sure that I release the strings to avoid the harsh sounding sound.  I have a tendency to really put a lot of weight when playing two strings at the same time
• The recording of the piece I'm working, which was included with the method book:

Question And Answer

• We started on this piece which also looks really easy, but there are a lot of different notes in this piece - quarter, eight, sixteenth and half notes.
• I've put 'March The First' and 'Question and Answer' in a loop at work so I'm listening to them one after another for eight hours because I'm not familiar with these rhythms.   
• The recording of this piece:

Reading Notes

• We went through and looked at the notes to make sure I knew what each note meant...ummmm...and I have to say I didn't know! ...kind of embarrassing.. Its been awhile since I reviewed reading notes, so I only recognized quarter notes, half notes and whole notes. I didn't know eighth, sixteenth or thirty-second notes. Oops! 
• To read the timing / rhythm of the piece, Clayton said to first look through the entire piece to determine what is the fastest note. If that note can be found throughout the piece, than I should count at that tempo, but if the fastest note is in a small measure only, than its okay to count only a few measures ahead of where that note is located instead of the whole piece
• I have to admit, I still don't quite understand how to count it out! I'll have to work on my assignment a bit more and see if it clicks. 
• Meter 
• We went over the meters that showed up in our method book: 4/4, 2/4, 6/8 and how that's affected by what notes are played, i.e. how the notes are grouped together. 

This is still a mystery to me, so I'll have to revisit this again during my next lesson.