+ Deep Dive Three: Elvin Jones Comping +
PART ONE:
INSPIRATION
LISTEN TO ELVIN
FOR GOD’S SAKE
If you could go back in time and meet one person, who would it be? Some people might say Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, or Genghis Kahn. For me, the answer is easy. Elvin Jones. He was a phenomenal spirit and a treasure of a human being, and you can hear that in the music he plays. I will be a lifelong student of him, and this Deep Dive is focused on his slow to mid-tempo time playing. It’s hard to imagine anything so sophisticated and yet raw and intense at the same time. 100% genius.
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PART TWO:
IMITATION
Transcription:
“LONNIES LAMENT”
1964’s “Crescent” was the album released right before the infamous “A Love Supreme.” The track I transcribed here is the medium-slow swing standard, “Lonnie’s Lament.” After the head, McCoy Tyner takes a several chorus-long solo and Elvin supports and lifts the music the entire time.
His comping and time feel are so deep and personal. He has full mastery of the triplet, pulling out accents and spreading the rhythms through all his limbs. His cymbal phrasing is a mixture of accents, some on downbeats and some on the skip beats of the ride pattern. It’s always interesting, it pushes and pulls and drives forward but is also laid back.
He holds different rhythms in his phrases simultaneously- at times you can hear triplets over dotted quarters, and quarter note triplets with triplets filled in between the spaces. He also uses triplets to phrase different parts of song melodies, taking swung rhythmic structures and “tripletizing” them. I think I just made that word up. Regardless, there is a lot to learn in this piece of playing.
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PART THREE:
INNOVATION
Elvin mastered the triplet. That’s safe to say, right? Well, I would also like to master the triplet, but have a bit of a ways to go. So, in this section of adaptations, I am working with triplets in a couple of different ways. First, as I was learning the Lonnie’s Lament transcription, I began practicing triplet phrases against a metronome heard as dotted quarter notes. So as I was playing, I was having to hear both dotted quarters and triplets and how they layer upon themselves. I probably wouldn’t play much of that as comping a ton of the time, but it seems to strengthen triplet phrases between the limbs. Here’s how those rhythms line up:
Second, Elvin didn’t just play triplets haphazardly, he often would play dynamically rhythmic chatter and pull accents out of those phrases to accentuate a spot in the melody or to respond to something a soloist played. “Tripletizing” simple combinations of swung eighth notes, giving a blueprint of where to play triplet phrases while keeping time. This is a simple notation of a few ways to do that:
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Some of this feels weird to break into sections and concepts since Elvin’s playing is so organic and loose and always changing, and you’d never play any of this in a vaccuum. It’s all meant to support other people you’re playing with. But, while I still have a long way to go to grasp his feel and his Elvin-icities, I do feel like these different bits below helped strengthen my time. They also allowed me to play things based on various melodies, which is cool.
TLDR: Elvin and triplets:
One:
TIME AGAINST
DOTTED QUARTERS
Here, I’m starting out just playing time while setting the metronome to 70 BPM and hearing those notes as dotted quarters. This was deceptively hard, and tough for me to really lock in with and make it feel like the metronome was grooving. I will probably continue to use this in my bag of metronome practice to help solidify my time.
Two:
TRIPLETS WITH
DOTTED QUARTERS
Same idea: dotted quarters on the metronome, but now playing more triplets to hear more of the triplets with or “against” the dotted quarter pulse. Again, hard to make it really groove with the metronome, which means it’s worth working on until I can get it to sound good.
Three:
TRIPLETS WITH
DOTTED QUARTERS
Next, adding some more complexity to the triplets under the dotted quarter pulse. Here, I experiment with a 3-beat phrase of triplets: RLB, RLB, RLH. Elvin played lots of three-beat ideas, so this one starts sounding more like some of the things he would do.
Four:
LAYERING RHYTHMS
Now, starting in on playing the various rhythms with different limbs. Here, I’m stacking dotted quarter rhythm (hands) and quarter note triplet rhythm (bass drum) underneath time. Alternating paradiddle orchestration between the toms.
Five:
LAYERING
SOME MORE
Here, I reverse that. I’m stacking dotted quarter rhythm (bass drum) and quarter note triplet rhythm (hands) underneath time. Alternating paradiddle orchestration between the toms.
Six:
TRIPLETIZED
DOTTED QUARTERS
Now shifting over to playing rhythms that are filled out with triplets. So, here is a take at tripletizing a dotted quarter note rhythm that goes over the barline.
Seven:
TRIPLETIZED
QUARTER NOTE TRIPLETS
Again, playing rhythms that are filled out with triplets. So, here is a take at tripletizing a quarter note triplet rhythm.
Eight:
TRIPLETIZED
5/8 RHYTHM
Last one of this type of exercise, here are tripletized 5/8 rhythms that also go over the barline and take 5 bars to resolve.
Nine:
ELVI-DENCE
Now taking the “tripletize” idea and applying it to standard melodies. First, a sparse one from “Evidence” but when you tripletize it, it becomes “Elvi-dence.” True story.
Ten:
LET’S COOL ONE
Tripletizing more melody. This time, applying it to “Let’s Cool One.” And trying here to make it more organic and less like I’m following an exercise or strict rule. Trying to tripletize but not sound like I’m locked into anything.
