Integrating New Rhythms Into Your Playing

Rhythm is often thrown to the wayside, in favor of working on harmony and

melody. Perhaps this disregard is caused by a lack of understanding about how to
approach this aspect of improvisation. Heres a simple and effective process to find
and incorporate new rhythms into your playing.

Step 1: Choose a chorus

Youll need a chorus from a solo. Throughout the article Ill use the first chorus of
Miles Davis soloing on So What to illustrate the concepts discussed. Pick
something thats at a medium tempo, where the soloist plays distinct phrases with
clear and interesting rhythmic ideas. Solos of Miles are perfect candidates.

Step 2: Transcribe the rhythms

When you transcribe, you do not want to write the solo down as youre learning it.
If I write a solo down, it will often be months after Ive internalized the entire solo
and can play it flawlessly. You always want to make sure youre not depending on a
written copy of the solo to remember it or to play it; youre writing the solo down
to strengthen your ability to notate what you hear and to analyze it more closely.
In this exercise you actually will write down what youre transcribing as you do it
because your reasons for transcribing are highly specific: to identify each rhythm
the soloist uses, understand them, notate them, and integrate them into your
playing. Youre not trying to learn language. Youre not worried about the melodic
or harmonic components. All youre concerned with is the rhythms. That is why in
this particular case, youre writing stuff down as youre doing it.

Transcribing just the rhythms from a solo will help strengthen your rhythmic
awareness. Because you dont need to know the pitches, its something you can do
while riding the subway or waiting for an appointment, so no need to waste your
valuable practice time. Listen to the first phrase of the chorus. Hear it in your mind
and repeat it a few times in your head. Then slow it down in your mind and hear it
even more clearly.

Now ask yourself: What beat does the phrase start on? What beat does it end on?
What are the rhythmic values of each note in the phrase? Once you can confidently
answer these questions, visualize the phrases rhythm in your mind; just select any
pitch for the entire rhythm. And finally, write it down.

For example, from the Miles chorus, the first phrase starts on beat 3. It ends on
beat 3 of the following measure. Its made up of a dotted quarter note, an eighth
note, and a half note. I then visualize the phrase, seeing it clearly in my mind, and
then write it down. So, notating just the rhythm, I would write down:

Continue through the entire chorus in this manner, writing each phrase down as
illustrated in the following example. Ive included the video again so you can listen
to it while you look at the transcription. Notate the rhythms as best you can. Often
the rhythms played are slightly different than whats possible to write down. This
is why its imperative to stay closely connected with the recording even after you
write everything down.

Step 3: Select your favorite rhythms

Once youve transcribed the choruss rhythms in the manner prescribed in step 2,
look through your work and find the rhythms that appeal the most to you. Often
we forget how crucial this step is. We have the freedom to select exactly what we
want to incorporate into our playing. These decisions are what make people sound
the way they do. Be conscious of this selection process and choose what resonates
with you.
Choose your top three, the ones that jump out at you the most, and use only those
for now in the following exercises. You can always go back and incorporate more.
Its always better to work with a small amount of information, truly master it and
make it a part of you.

Here are three rhythms that seem interesting to me from the Miles solo.

Step 4: Integrate a new rhythm into your playing

From your top three, choose one.

Now, playing over a blues or a tune youre working on, use the rhythm exclusively
in your improvisation. Heres an example over a G blues using the second rhythm
from my selected three.
The second rhythm is:

Now I take that and utilize it over a blues:

Once you practice using the rhythm exclusively, practice using it every other
phrase. Then try using it twice in a chorus in predetermined bars. And then finally,
use it randomly, mixing it freely with other material and concepts.
Emulating the concept behind the rhythm is another way to start to incorporating
these new rhythms into your playing. Ask yourself why you find the particular
rhythms you chose interesting. For instance, I found the last rhythm interesting
because of the half note in the middle of the phrase, occupying beats 2 and 3.

Knowing that, I could then work on creating phrases that use this half-note in the
middle of the line. Its always beneficial to know what attracts you to a particular
phrase or rhythm because then you can simply emulate the concept behind the
line.

Finding and integrating new rhythms

The straightforward process described throughout this article will help you easily
find and integrate new rhythmic ideas and concepts into your playing.

Choose a chorus which contains lots of defined rhythmic ideas

Transcribe all the rhythms and write them down
Select your favorites
Play over a blues or standard using your selected rhythms in creative ways

Following this process, in only a few hours, its possible to tear apart the inner
workings of Miles Davis or another masters intricate rhythms, understood them,
notate them, and began to integrate them into your playing. Im sure going through
this rhythmic practice will convince you how important rhythm truly is and that
its quite easy to work on.