Canadian Musician - January / February 2020

WOODWINDS Andy Ballantyne is a noted Canadian saxophonist, composer, and educator. He is a member of the Juno Award-winning Rex Hotel Orchestra and has also performed with jazz greats Rob McConnell, Don Thompson, Maria Schneider, Carla Bley, and Bill Mays. Andy is on faculty at Humber College in Toronto. His latest recording, Play on Words, is available on G-B Records. www.andyballantyne.com. By Andy Ballantyne Every Instrument Is a Drum M Part 2 y column in the last issue dealt with the importance of time feel for woodwind players and gave some general approaches to metronome use in daily practice. In this column, I will show some specific exercises I have been using with my students and give some suggestions for more advanced applications of this concept. While the following exercises use material from the standard jazz rep- ertoire, they could easily be adapted to almost any style of music. Playing with a slow metronome providing only one click per bar would encourage accurate subdivision in the allegro movements of a Baroque or Classical sonata, for example. It’s best to start this process with an eighth note-based melody in 4/4 time, so we’ll use the melody of “Ornithology” by Charlie Parker as an initial exercise. Set the metronome to 40 bpm. That click represents a whole note (so you will actually be playing the song at 160 bpm), but the click is not beat one; it is the “and” of beat four. Getting your head around this may take some time, and I strongly recommend singing the melody first before attempting to play it. You may also find tapping your foot on beats one and three while you sing (and play) helpful. Ex. 1 is the first few bars of “Ornithology” (transposed for alto sax) with arrows showing the notes that should line up with the metronome click: Ex. 1 The goal is to play the entire tune with the metronome on the “and” of beat four. Go ahead and play with a swing feel if that feels natural to you. Remember that the metronome is only there to confirm that you are playing in time. Don’t just guess where the click is going to land; feel the subdivision internally and play with confidence. If it doesn’t line up, notice if you are ahead or behind, make an adjustment, and then try again. There are a few different ways to play the last four bars of “Ornithology.” I recommend Ex. 2: Ex. 2 This is actually the most difficult part of the exercise for most people be- cause the emphasis is on the strong downbeats of one and three instead of the “and” of four. I often “loop” these four bars and do them over and over again with my students until it feels solid. Simpler tunes are actually more challenging because you have to feel the subdivision internally during sustained notes or rests. For the second tune, we will work with “Blue Bossa” by Kenny Dorham. The metronome is the same: 40 bpm representing the “and” of beat four. Keep the eighth notes perfectly straight (not swung) to match the Latin feel of the song. Ex. 3 Ex. 3 is the first few bars with arrows showing the click. Just getting started with this one is a challenge because you have to play the pickup on beat four and then land on beat one of the next bar with a click exactly in between those two notes. It’s easy to get thrown off. There is a deceptively tricky bit near the end of “Blue Bossa.” Notice what happens in bars 13 and 14 of the melody (Ex. 4): Ex. 4 For some reason, most people find it difficult to play this rhythm accu- rately; it tends to get behind in the second bar. You may think you are playing it accurately (l know I did before I worked on this exercise), but the metronome never lies! This leads back to another point I mentioned in part one: even if you aren’t completely successful, you are still improving your rhythmic feel just by attempting these exercises. Try to embrace the challenge and don’t get discouraged. And if you are worried that this will make your playing sound too rigid or mechanical, rest assured that woodwind play- ers generally sound all too “human” when it comes to time feel. This won’t turn you into a robot. Of course, the “and” of four is just one option for this approach. As you get comfortable with the concept, you can (and should) shift the click around to any eighth note in the bar. Then you can devise other ways of subdividing the bar and explore different time signatures. As a somewhat extreme example, I’ve been working on a study in 5/16 from Guy Lacour’s 28 Etudes pour Saxophone with the metronome on the fourth sixteenth note of every bar. And yes, it’s hard! Follow me @andyballantynemusic on Facebook or Instagram and I will post some videos over the next few weeks demonstrating these concepts. CANADIAN MUSICIAN 29

Canadian Musician - January / February 2020 | Page 29