{"id":940,"date":"2017-04-20T21:55:20","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T01:55:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/?p=940"},"modified":"2023-10-07T13:01:37","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T17:01:37","slug":"talking-and-taking-the-words-away-a-visit-from-stefon-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/2017\/04\/20\/talking-and-taking-the-words-away-a-visit-from-stefon-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"Talking and taking the words away: a visit from Stefon Harris (The State of the Blues, Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent master class with my students at UVM, Stefon Harris talked about the connection between language and melody in an improvised solo.\u00a0 While discussing the performance of a student group, he said: \u2018The details of rhythm are connected to the way that you speak.\u00a0 You\u2019ve heard people say that music, it\u2019s a language and we\u2019re communicating with each other when we\u2019re on stage\u2026well, it literally comes from language.\u00a0 So when I\u2019m playing, for example, I\u2019m always talking\u2026sometimes people think that I\u2019m singing, but actually I\u2019m talking and I\u2019m taking the words away.\u2019\u00a0 He then demonstrated this by first speaking in scat syllables, then mixing them with English words: \u2018ba-da du da-da, du-du da-da, du da-da\u2026you understand, da-dl-ah?\u00a0 Oh! Now you see my phrasing\u2026\u2019\u00a0 He then used the vibraphone to add pitches to his spoken scat syllables.\u00a0\u00a0 During this quick demonstration Harris made his instrument mimic his own voice laughing and asking the question \u2018whaaaat?\u2019 with a rise in pitch.\u00a0 (Making instruments laugh is a long tradition in jazz; Mr. Harris’ laughing vibraphone reminded me of Clark Terry’s trumpet laughs in solos such as \u2018Incoherent Blues<\/a>\u2019, which have been echoed more recently by his former student, Wynton Marsalis.)<\/p>\n

Harris then asked the student group on stage to play a blues with him, during which he played a solo in which his phrasing on the vibes was guided by his simultaneous vocalizations (or perhaps the other way around, or perhaps both.)\u00a0 After a few choruses, he stopped and said: \u2018I\u2019m not playing the rhythm, I\u2019m not thinking the triplet, I\u2019m just talking, I\u2019m telling a story.\u00a0 So when you do hear a melody, it should be connected to that type of fluid communication.\u2019<\/p>\n

A rising inflection evoking the pitch pattern of an inquisitive speaker also makes an appearance in a solo by Harris that I have been studying with my improvisation class at UVM.\u00a0 It\u2019s the third and final chorus of his solo on Harry \u2018Sweets\u2019 Edison\u2019s D flat blues \u2018Centerpiece\u2019 from the Rodney Whitaker album \u2018Ballads and Blues: The Brooklyn Sessions.\u2019<\/a>\u00a0 (With Stefon\u2019s permission, I have included my transcription of this solo below.)\u00a0 In this chorus, Harris brilliantly uses a number of basic elements from what I call \u2018the improviser\u2019s toolbox\u2019: varied uses of a repeated motive (the same two beat idea is used in m. 2 and 5, but on two different beats and in two different registers), referencing the original melody of the tune (in m. 4), and \u2018making the changes\u2019 i.e. using new notes \u2018made available\u2019 by a particular chord change, as he does in m. 9 and 13, where he uses notes that are not part of the pentatonic-based pitch collections he employs in m. 1-8.\u00a0 One of the most challenging tools to use in the improviser\u2019s toolbox, space, is demonstrated by the full measure of rest in m. 6.\u00a0 (One of my students is working on transcribing the rest of this solo, so I\u2019ll be adding the earlier choruses soon.)\u00a0 In light of his comments from the master class, it is also clear that Stefon is not employing each of these techniques in some isolated, abstract way, but that they come from the deep connection his phrasing has to speech and movement.<\/p>\n

Before the discussion of the connection between spoken language and melody, Stefon began his comments on the performance of my student\u2019s trio by discussing the connection between full-body movement (i.e. dance) and rhythmic awareness in musical performance.\u00a0 He said: \u2018When you played the intro the first time I noticed that you weren\u2019t really moving your feet.\u00a0 And the thing is rhythm, it\u2019s primarily connected to coordination.\u00a0 It has nothing to do with triplets and sixteenth notes or anything like that, it’s like, can you rub your belly and make your hand go that way, right (pats head)?\u00a0 So it starts with this idea of can you move your body\u2026(taps foot on 2 and 4 and vocalizes syncopated rhythms)\u2026you see what I\u2019m singing is so connected to the way I\u2019m moving my body (here he drew out the word \u2018body\u2019)\u2026you understand, it\u2019s a whole body experience, it starts with how you move first\u2026so before you play this intro I want us to become a unit by tapping our feet together\u2026and actually tapping is too polite.\u2019\u00a0 Here he had the trio stomp their feet together in time to the tempo of the song.\u00a0 After this exercise the students did indeed play the song with more rhythmic connection.<\/p>\n

Stefon\u2019s comments reminded me that I (like many piano teachers) suggest that my students not tap their feet while playing the piano, as it adds one more task to the already complex multitasking of playing the piano, which typically involves both hands and often requires at least one foot to move in a way that is not aligned with the downbeat.\u00a0 This advice was handed down to me from a number of my teachers, and I think it can be helpful in the context of trying to simplify various aspects of a piece while practicing, in the same way one works to find the simplest fingering for a passage or practices one hand separately.\u00a0 However, Stefon\u2019s comments and his demonstration at the master class reminded me that swing feel, or indeed any dance rhythm, in music is always an expression of a wider cultural phenomenon that includes the physical act of dance.\u00a0 He reminded me that certain kinds of moving before playing and certain kinds of moving while playing can improve a musical performance.\u00a0 Stefon\u2019s way of having the students move together before playing together resulted in a more rhythmically connected performance.<\/p>\n

Stefon was also encouraging and yet persistent in requiring the students to not only listen to one another, but leave space in their playing to react to one another\u2019s improvised ideas.\u00a0 This was a great reminder that while music, like any form of communication, requires everyone to contribute ideas, it is also requires everyone to leave space: not just space to take a breath before your own next idea, but space to hear the ideas of others, so you can say (or play) something that shows you have been listening and supports a collective conversation (rather than an isolated monologue.)\u00a0 Stefon\u2019s work in getting students to listen and react to one another reminded me that listening is not simply waiting quietly for someone else to leave a space you can fill with your own ideas, but actually taking in and considering the ideas of others enough to be able to reproduce, rephrase or react to them yourself.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent master class with my students at UVM, Stefon Harris talked about the connection between language and melody in an improvised solo.\u00a0 While discussing the performance of a student group, he said: \u2018The details of rhythm are connected … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=940"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2283,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/940\/revisions\/2283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/tgcleary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}