RHYTHM

       Much has been written about the role of rhythm in jazz, and about 90% has been demonstrated over the course of time to be unjustified generalizations. For example, how many times have you heard people say things like:

Jazz is fast and snappy. (What about all the slow, beautiful ballads played and improvised by jazz artists?)

Jazz sounds jazzy. (A circular definition, but the speaker probably means that jazz has a well-defined beat, probably syncopated. Yet much contemporary jazz has shown this view to be premature.)

The accent is always on the off-beat in jazz. (Oh really? Which off-beat? Two? Four? So many exceptions can quickly be though of that this observation is sadly out of date.)

Jazz swings (Well, maybe. Depends upon how you define swing. Duke Ellington said “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” But think of Bill Evan’s Peace Piece. Does that swing? Certainly not in the popular sense of the word, and yet it is one of the most creative improvisations in modern jazz.

     The fact of the matter seems to be that almost any rhythm that has occurred in any other kind of music also turns up, sooner or later, in jazz. Maybe because jazz musicians often like to “play with the rhythm” – experiment around and see what they can come up with.

     Despite what I have just said, it is still probably true that jazz pianists use more “off-beat” accents than other pianists, and more syncopation, and more anticipation and delay techniques.

      For example, take a simple melody like Billy Boy:

      A jazz musician might alter the rhythmical structure in the following way (or a thousand other ways):

     It is obvious that a jazz pianist has at his option thousands of rhythmic possibilities, and the best way to develop these possibilities is to:

1.  Listen to other pianists, in person and on recordings.

2.  Experiment with a wide variety of rhythmical patterns.

3. Take a good course in rhythm such as the one mentioned below: