Freddie Green Rhythm

The first rhythm in this lesson is inspired by the comping of the great jazz guitarist Freddie Green, and consists of
steady quarter-note pulses. Freddie was known for his rock-steady sense of time, and his use of quarter notes to
propel the rhythm forward in the Count Basie Band. To get you started, here’s an example of the Freddie Green
rhythm applied to a ii V I VI progression using shell voicings.
 Charleston Rhythm
Now that you can play a steady quarter-note rhythm, you add syncopation to your lines in the following chord
exercises. This rhythm, called the Charleston, is built by playing a chord on beat 1 and the & of 2 in each bar.
When playing this rhythm, you use syncopation when you play the & of 2 in each bar. Syncopation is a term used to
describe playing on the up-beats of any given bar, the &’s rather than the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th beats.
Here’s an example of the Charleston rhythm over a ii V I VI progression, using drop 2 chords to outline the changes.

To take the Charleston rhythm further in your playing, here’s an A minor blues progression using that rhythm to
outline each chord.
 Upbeats on 1 and 3
Moving on, you now up the syncopation in your comping as you place a chord on the & of 1 and 3 in each bar.
Here’s an example of this rhythm over a ii V I VI progression in C major using triads, or triad based chords, to
outline the changes.

To finish your study of chords on the & of 1 and 3, here’s a Summertime chord etude using three-note shapes and
only that rhythm.
 Upbeats on 2 and 4
One of the most common jazz guitar rhythms is playing chords on the & of 2 and 4 in each measure.
For example, when you play a Dm7-G7 progression, the G7 chord first appears on the & of 4 in the Dm7 bar.

To take this rhythm to a musical situation, here’s a comping study over the Miles Davis tune “Tune Up.”
 Dotted Quarter Notes
The final jazz comping rhythm is the dotted quarter note.
Dotted quarter notes are built exactly like their name implies, you chain together a series of dotted quarter notes.
When doing so, it takes three bars to come back to the first beat of the bar with your chords, causing a high level of
syncopation along the way.
To begin, here’s an example of a ii V I VI in C using drop 2 & 4 chords to outline each change with dotted quarter
notes.

Here’s a chord study over the Herbie Hancock tune “Cantaloupe Island” that you can apply to your jazz practice
routine.
 Jazz Rhythms for Soloing
Single Rhythm Exercises
One of the biggest hurdles jazz guitarists face in their soloing, is that you play “fast,” you play “slow,” but you don’t
know the exact rhythms you’re playing.
This causes your lines to be sloppy and not rhythmically clear, or for your lines to not lock in with the rhythm
section.
To help you avoid, or correct, this issue, you can practice single rhythm exercises in the woodshed.
By working one rhythm at a time, you always know exactly what rhythm you’re using in your solos, and recognize
specific rhythms in your band mates’ solos.
Both increase your ability to improvise on the guitar in a jazz context.
Here are the steps to applying this exercise to your jazz guitar practice routine.

 Pick a rhythm to study, such as quarter notes.

 Solo over a tune or progression using only that rhythm.
 You can use rests, but they must equal the rhythm you chose.
 Repeat with other single rhythms in your studies.

When working this exercise in your practice routine, start with the following essential jazz rhythms.
From there, branch off into more advanced rhythms such as groups of 5 and 7 notes over one beat.
But, even without those advanced groupings, these rhythms build your knowledge and confidence with jazz
rhythms.

 Whole Notes
 Half Notes
 Quarter Notes
 8th Notes
 Triplets
 16th Notes
 16th Note Triplets

After you work these rhythms on their own in your studies, feel free to mix a few together.
But, make sure that you’re doing this in an organized fashion.
Avoid just playing random rhythms; instead focus on mixing two exact rhythms in your playing.
This helps you become more rhythmically versatile, and know exactly what rhythms you’re playing in your solos at
all times.

Rhythmic Motives
Another effective way to develop your rhythmic vocabulary is to work rhythmic motives in your solos.
These short phrases, often one bar or less in length, are rhythmic melodies that you came back to time and again in
your solos.
In the same way that you come back to a melody in your solos, you can create rhythmic motives that do the same
thing.
The exercise is fairly straightforward on paper, but takes time to become comfortable in your practicing and
performing.

 Pick a short rhythm to work on.

 Solo over a progression using only that rhythm.
 You change the notes, but the rhythm stays the same.
 Repeat with other rhythms and other progressions.

Here’s an example of a short rhythmic motive played over a C turnaround chord progression.
To keep things simple, the line is built with a quarter note and two 8th notes, with a half note rest in the second half
of each bar.
Using rests like this not only breaks up your lines, but makes it easier to hear and plan ahead when soloing over
jazz standards.
 After you can play this example, put on the backing track and solo over the progression using only this sample
rhythm.
From there, come up with your own rhythms to work on in this exercise, as well as find other progressions to apply
them to in your practicing.
Once you can do this comfortably with one rhythm, you can move on to the next exercises where you learn how to
expand rhythms in your solos.

Reverse Rhythmic Motives

Once you can solo with a single rhythmic motive in your practicing, begin altering that motive to expand it in your
solos.
The first way to go about expanding a rhythmic motive is to play it backwards.
This means that you take the rhythms in the original motive, and play them back to front in your lines.
For example, in the previous exercise you played a quarter note and two 8th notes.
So, the reverse of that motive would be two 8th notes and a quarter note.
Here are the steps to take when working on this exercise in the woodshed.

 Pick a rhythmic motive to practice.

 Solo over a progression with that motive.
 Reverse the rhythms of that motive.
 Solo with the reversed motive over the same progression.
 Repeat with other rhythmic motives.

Here’s an example of the reversed motive from the previous section over a turnaround progression in C.
After you learn this lick, solo over the backing track using this new rhythmic motive in your lines.
From there, come up with your own original rhythms, then practice reversing them as you expand upon your ideas
in the woodshed.

Now that you know how to expand rhythmic motives by reversing them, you can extend rhythms to full measures or
longer in your playing.

Rhythmic Pairing
With your original and reversed rhythmic motive in hand, you can now pair those two ideas up to produce a longer
idea in your solos.
To do this, you play the first motive immediately followed by the second motive in your lines.
Using the examples from the previous two sections, here’s how that would come together to form the longer motive.

 Quarter Note
 Two 8th Notes
 Two 8th Notes
 Quarter Notes

As you can see, the first two beats are the original rhythmic motive, and the second two beats and the reversed
rhythmic motive.
Here’s how that looks on paper.
After you can play this lick, solo over the backing track and make up your own notes while sticking to the given
rhythm in the example.

Now that you’ve seen a sample of how to combine an original and reversed rhythmic motive in your playing, you
can make up your own to practice.
Here are the steps to build these longer rhythms in your studies.

 Pick a short rhythm to study.

 Solo over a progression with that motive.
 Work out the reversed version of that rhythm.
 Solo over a progression with that reversed motive.
 Combine both rhythms to form a longer phrase.
 Solo over a progression with that combined rhythm.

With this longer rhythmic motive under your fingers, you can expand upon this longer idea in your practice routine.

Reverse Rhythmic Pairing

As you did with the original rhythm, you can now reverse your longer, paired rhythm in your studies.
To do so, you use the following steps build this exercise.

 Pick a short rhythm to practice.

 Solo with that rhythm over a chord progression.
 Reverse the original rhythm.
 Solo with the reversed rhythm over the progression.
 Combine the rhythms by playing the reversed rhythm first then original.
 Solo with this combined rhythm over the chord progression.

Here’s an example of how to reverse a combined rhythm using the original rhythmic motive from earlier in this
section of the lesson.
After you have this lick under your fingers, put on the backing track and solo using the given rhythm, but you make
up the notes as you go.
Now that you can build and expand any rhythmic motive, go back and repeat these exercises with new rhythms that
you come up with on your own. You can also take rhythmic motives from transcriptions as you learn them by ear
from your favorite jazz guitarsolos.
When you’re comfortable with these exercises, move on to the last section of this lesson, learning how to transpose
rhythms in your solos.
Rhythmic Transposition
Now that you have an original rhythm to work with, you can move this rhythm around the bar by starting it on
different beats of each measure.
To begin, here’s a reminder of the original rhythmic motive.

Now, here’s an example of how this rhythm would look and sound when starting on the & of 1 in each bar.
After you can play this sample lick, put on the backing track and solo over the changes using the same rhythm, but
improvise the notes. From there, you can move the rhythm to other parts of the bar by starting it on beat 2, the & of
2, beat 3, etc. in your soloing.

Following the exercises that you did earlier in this lesson, you now combine the original rhythm and the transposed
rhythm in your soloing.
Here’s an example of how that would look with the original rhythm in bar one and the transposed rhythm in bar two,
repeating from there in the line.
Once you have this sample line down, solo with this rhythmic group while improvising the notes in your line.
Then, you can practice combining other transposed rhythms in your soloing practice routine from there.

The final exercise finds you pairing up your original and transposed rhythms, but this time you play the transposed rhythm first,
followed by the original rhythm. Here’s an example of this approach over a C turnaround progression.
Work this line in your studies, then when ready, solo over the backing track with the same rhythm, but you improvise the notes.
From there, you can expand upon this rhythmic exercise by applying it to other rhythms and transpositions in your studies.

As you can see, transposing a rhythm around the bar will allow you to create new rhythmic ideas from a single
phrase. From there, you can create dozens of variations by combining transposed rhythms and reversing those
combinations in your playing.