Common Accents: Jazz, Rock and ‘Giant Steps’

Dan Adler

May 2003

In the late 60’s and 70’s, as rock music started pushing jazz to the sidelines, some jazz musicians noticed an interesting “parallel universe” that exists between the jazz swing beat and the “heavy 3” rock beat (heavy emphasis on the 3^rd beat).

The idea is that a swing beat, with its heavy emphasis on 2 & 4 can be interpreted as a double-time rock beat with strong emphasis on 3. The example below demonstrates this: the top line is the swing beat, and the bottom line is a rock beat with exactly the same accents in exactly the same places:

Figure 1: Jazz Swing Beat in quarter notes (top) equals a Rock Beat in eighth notes (bottom)

This idea was heavily utilized by the ‘Jazz Rock’ musicians of the 70’s. In an interview I read with Michael Brecker, he said that during those days if they played with a jazz feel over a rock beat the audience was interested, but if they played the same thing over a swing beat, the audience was bored.

This relationship between the jazz and rock beats also works in the opposite direction: creating a rock feel over a jazz swing feel can create a lot of excitement. This has been extensively utilized by the post-Coltrane saxophonists such as Brecker, Bob Berg, Steve Grossman, etc. as well as guitarists like George Benson, as well as the Brazilian-influenced musicians like Stan Getz, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny who have found the same parallels between the feel of the Bossa Nova and the double-time Samba feel.

If you keep the accents in the same place, and go down one more level to 16^th notes, you will find that the accent now becomes the first beat of every other group of four consecutive 16^th notes. This idea has been explored heavily by John Coltrane in the context of the jazz swing feel. The best example is his famous solo on ‘Giant Steps’ (actually, most solos from that period). In that particular case, the solo is in 8^th notes, but it is over a 2-feel, so that becomes equivalent to a 16^th note feel over a standard 4/4 jazz swing feel.

Figure 2: ‘Giant Steps’ phrasing over a jazz swing beat and over a rock beat

In later recordings, Coltrane sometimes isolated this rhythmic element and played it over static modal harmonies. In his famous album with Duke Ellington, Coltrane would often use this rhythmic device to create continuity and rhythmic variety at the same time:

Where the combination of the quarter note with the strong accent falling right on the 2 & 4 beat creates a lot of power and excitement within a context of the 16^th note feel.

John McLaughlin in his Mahavishnu orchestra, and many of the post-Coltrane saxophonists isolated this rhythmic idea and found that it works equally well on top of a rock beat, especially when coupled with notes taken from the pentatonic scale.

This idea continues to live on today, as many of the contemporary jazz players continue to explore 16^th note phrasing against a rock or swing feel, as well as swing phrasing over a rock beat and vice versa.

In order to develop the facility of playing on different rhythmic planes at the same time, it is useful to practice all permutations. Try to improvise with a ½-time jazz swing feel over a pop/rock tune that has a heavy 3 accent. Try to improvise with a double-time rock feel over a medium jazz swing tune, and try to get the ‘Giant Steps’ 16^th note rhythmic feel happening over both of them.