Groove: Shared Time and Its Meanings
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Feeling the groove: shared time and its meanings for three jazz trios Abstract The notion of groove is fundamental to jazz culture and the term yields a rich set of understandings for jazz musicians. Within the literature, no single perspective on groove exists and many questions remain about the relationship between timing processes, phenomenal experience and musical structures in making sense of groove. In this account, the experience and meaning of groove is theorised as emerging from two forms of sharedness. Firstly, a primary intersubjectivity that arises through the timing behaviours of the players; this could be likened to the ‘mutual tuning-in’ described in social phenomenology. It is proposed that this tuning-in is accomplished through the mechanism of entrainment. The second form of sharedness is understood as the shared temporal models, the cultural knowledge, that musicians make use of in their playing together. Methodologically, this study makes use of detailed investigation of timing data from live performances by three jazz trios, framed by in-depth, semi-structured interview material and steers a new course between existing ethnographic work on jazz and more psychologically informed studies of timing. The findings of the study point towards significant social and structural effects on the groove between players. The impact of musical role on groove and timing is demonstrated and significant temporal models, whose syntactic relations suggest musical proximity or distance, are shown to have a corresponding effect on timing within the trios. The musician’s experience of groove is discussed as it relates to the objective timing data and reveals a complex set of understandings involving temporality, consciousness and communication. In the light of these findings, groove is summarised as the feeling of entrainment, inflected through cultural models and expressed through the cultural norms of jazz. Feeling the groove: shared time and its meanings for three jazz trios Mark Russell Doffman BA MA Department of Music The Open University Submitted for examination towards the award of Doctor of Philosophy on 6th October 2008 i Table of Contents List of tables, graphs, charts and figures v DVD track listings viii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Aims, questions and approach 2 1.2 Studies of musical time and timing - research context 6 1.3 Groove and temporality in jazz 11 1.4 Summary 16 2 Approaching musical meaning 20 2.1 Semantics 21 2.2 Syntax 23 2.3 Pragmatics 26 2.4 Metapragmatics 31 2.5 Summary 36 3 Musical motion, intersubjectivity and entrainment 37 3.1 Music and motion 38 3.2 Intersubjectivity 44 3.3 Entrainment - naturalising intersubjectivity 53 3.3.1 Musical entrainment 55 3.3.2 Entrainment as social process 65 ii 3.4 Summary 71 4 Cultural models, schemata and the generation of meaning 73 4.1 Cognition and interpretation - approaches to culture 74 4.2 Cultural models 76 4.3 Schemata - mechanisms for meaning 86 4.4 Groove as a model 96 4.5 Summary 101 5 Methodology 104 5.1 Overview of methods 105 5.2 Preliminaries to data collection 108 5.3 Data collection 116 5.4 Data analysis 123 5.5 Performance excerpts - an introduction 132 5.6 Summary 135 6 Three trios - being in time together 136 6.1 Time and timekeeping for jazz musicians 137 6.2 Analysis of individual timing profiles 145 6.3 Timing relations between player pairs 151 6.4 The rhythm section 154 6.5 The soloist and rhythm section 168 6.6 Player pairs' timing relations - summary 184 6.7 Group tempo 188 iii 6.8 Summary 195 7 Three trios - cultural models at work 199 7.1 Overt models 200 7.1.1 Proximal 201 7.1.2 Distal 212 7.1.3 Overt models below beat level 220 7.2 Covert models 221 7.3 Taxonomy of temporal models 226 7.4 Summary 227 7.4.1 The tactus as a basic level category 229 7.4.2 Proximity, distance and illocutionary force 232 8 Three trios - groove 235 8.1 Three performances, three grooves 236 8.2 Analysis of three grooves 238 8.3 Three grooves - summary 255 8.4 Enacting groove - body moves 258 8.5 Feeling the groove 264 8.6 Groove and mechanisms of meaning 276 8.7 Summary 281 9 Concluding Discussion 285 9.1 Relevance of the study 285 9.2 Findings 289 iv 9.3 Future directions and final comments 295 Notes 298 Bibliography 302 Appendices 322 A1 Interview questions and formatting 322 A2 Rhythm transcriptions 324 2.1 JD Trio - 'Evidence' 324 2.2 SC Trio - 'There is no greater love' 331 2.3 DC Group - 'Slippers' 335 v List of Tables, Graphs, Charts and Figures Tables Table 1. Summary of recordings. 117 Table 2. Summary of interviews. 121 Table 3. SC Trio – ‘There is no greater love’. Descriptive statistics. 146 Table 4. DC Group – ‘Slippers’. Descriptive statistics. 147 Table 5. JD Trio – ‘Evidence’. Descriptive statistics. 148 Table 6. Circular descriptive statistics for rhythm section. 161 Table 7. Circular descriptive statistics for solo/rhythm section. 172 Table 8. DC Group – Descriptive statistics for guitarist/bassist. 173 Table 9. SC Trio – Descriptive statistics for pianist/bassist. 178 Table 10. JD Trio – Descriptive statistics for pianist/bassist. 181 Table 11. Tempo variability over 8 measure segment. 194 Table 12. SC Trio – relative asynchrony. 240 Table 13. JD Trio – relative asynchrony. 247 Table 14. DC Group – relative asynchrony of players. 252 Graphs Graph 1. Summaries of phase relationship for each rhythm section. 160 Graph 2. DC Group – linear phase plots. 163 Graph 3. SC Trio – linear phase plots. 164 vi Graph 4. JD Trio –linear phase plots. 166 Graph 5. Summaries of phase relations between soloist and bassist. 171 Graph 6. DC Group – linear phase plots. 174 Graph 7. SC Trio –linear phase plots. 179 Graph 8. JD Trio – linear phase plots. 182 Graph 9. DC Group – tempo plot. 190 Graph 10. SC Trio – tempo plot. 192 Graph 11. JD Trio – tempo plot. 193 Graph 12. SC Trio – ‘There is no greater love’ – groove plot. 239 Graph 13. SC Trio – asynchrony as a function of beat. 245 Graph 14. JD Trio – ‘Evidence’ – groove plot. 246 Graph 15. JD Trio – asynchrony as a function of beat. 250 Graph 16. DC Group – ‘Slippers’ – groove plot. 251 Graph 17. DC Group – asynchrony as a function of beat. 254 Charts Chart 1. Transcription of ‘If I Were A Bell’ . 99 Chart 2. Rhythm transcription of SL walking bass line. 202 Chart 3. Rhythm transcription of bass line from ‘Evidence’ 203 Chart 4. Standard drum pattern combining two temporal models. 204 Chart 5. Ten to ten played at half time in ‘Evidence’. 206 Chart 6. Outline of the multi-layered drum model used in ‘Slippers’. 209 vii Chart 7. Dotted quarter note model used by ST. 214 Chart 8. Second instance of dotted quarter note model. 215 Chart 9. Dotted quarter note model played by guitar and drums. 218 Chart 10. Distinction between straight and swung eighth notes. 220 Chart 11. Idealised combinatory drum model. 227 Chart 12. SC Trio – rhythm transcription (measures 8-16, 50-57). 241 Chart 13. JD Trio – rhythm transcription (measures 97-108). 248 Chart 14. JD Trio – rhythm transcription (measures 115 – 125). 248 Chart 15. DC Group – five note polyrhythm (measures 3-6) 253 Chart 16. DC Group –guitar solo measures with strong body motion. 260 Figures Figure 1. Praat Analysis window. 126 Figure 2. Michael Stewarts' feel spectrum. 142 Figure 3. Taxonomy of temporal models. 226 viii DVD track listings 1. JD Trio – Evidence [full version] 2. SC Trio – There is no greater love [full version] 3. DC Group – Slippers [full version] 4. JD Trio – Evidence [piano solo extract] 5. SC Trio – There is no greater love [piano solo extract] 6. DC Group – Slippers [guitar solo extract] ix Acknowledgements I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people over the course of this study. Firstly, I would like to thank three remarkably patient supervisors, Professor Martin Clayton, Professor Dorothy Miell and Professor Udo Will. Their kind support and insight throughout this project was always well judged and enormously helpful. Colleagues within the Open University made the task of completing the thesis easier through their friendly encouragement. Dr Laura Leante, Dr Byron Dueck and Adrian Poole all played their part in my maintaining a semblance of sanity over three years. Particular thanks go to Andy McGuiness whose remarkable suite of skills in music and music research eased the knotty process of data collection and analysis so much. Thanks also to a number of people outside the EMMP project. Professor Eric Clarke for his support, Dr Jason Toynbee for many helpful comments, my colleague Pete Oxley for his tolerance of my not running a jazz club, and musicians Mark Lockheart and Simon Purcell in assisting with initial contacts for the study. Sincere thanks go to the wonderful musicians who participated so fully in this project. Their great playing, insightful thoughts and tolerance of my strange questions helped me understand this business called ‘groove’ more fully. Final thanks, of course, go to my wife, Anna and my sons, Tom and Luke, for their patience and love. This thesis is dedicated to the memory of David Riley (1955 – 2007), a wonderful friend whom I miss deeply. 1 1 Introduction ‘Just because a record has a groove Don’t make it in the groove But you can tell right away at Letter A When the people start to move’ Stevie Wonder, ‘Sir Duke’ This is a study of jazz musicians grooving together. While for many, the word 'groove' may carry cartoon-like connotations of finger-snapping beatniks, for jazz musicians, being groovy is a serious business.