I just finished reading a great post by Ronan Guilfoyle about the (over)use of complicated rhythms in jazz today.  Ronan is an excellent bassist, amazing jazz educator and real authority on rhythm (he literally wrote the book on it).  It is interesting to me that Ronan isn’t criticizing the use of polyrhythms and metric modulation, but the idea that modern jazz musicians use those techniques as an end in itself.

Via Ronan’s Blog

Instead, it seems to me that often a new explicit statement of the form seems to have appeared. Rather than having the form be something that is invisible — a guiding structure that only the musicians are aware of — the new orthodoxy seems to be to create music that is not only rhythmically complex but is explicitly so — wearing its mathematical heart on its sleeve so to speak. Pieces are played with mathematical precision, and having achieved the technical wherewithal to deal with these new complex rhythms a lot of musicians seem to be happy to leave it at that. They seem to be proud to be able to play five over three, for example, as if the act of achieving an accurate representation of this is an end in itself. The fives and the threes are rigidly marked off and flagged, as if the musicians want to display the nuts and bolts of their achievement to an admiring crowd. It’s a reversal of the other tradition i mentioned — rather than have the form act as a kind of internalised guiding principle, the form of the piece in this more recent approach is used as a kind of exoskeleton that is worn proudly by the musicians as they negotiate the treacherous twists and turns of their rhythmic high wire act.

Many times in college we worked on exercises and techniques that opened our eyes and ears to different rhythmic concepts.  Sometimes they worked, others not so much.  I also feel that in order to make these concepts sound natural and organic, you must go through a period of living, breathing and playing them.  Many times when I listen to groups, I feel like when everything they play is in a different time signature it does begin to sound stale to me.  However, I need to side with Ronan on this one.  Lately it seems like in order to be a jazz musician, you need to use some form of rhythmic trickery on every tune. Not so.

I am preparing a blog post on some of my favorite exercises using more complicated rhythmic ideas, but until then what are your favorite ways of “hiding the one”?