Sight Reading: Rhythms & Rests

PRACTICE RHYTHMS
Jazz is a very rhythmic music and many rhythmic figures appear repeatedly in published charts. Many jazz “conception” etude books focus on the basic rhythms found in jazz and these are a good source for building a vocabulary of rhythms.

Whereas notes (musical pitches) are associated with vibrations at frequencies in the aural range (approximately 50 Hz to 20 kHz), rhythms deal with “vibrations” in the range of physical (mechanical) perception – i.e. you feel rhythms in your body. This is why tapping a foot to the beat helps you stay aligned with the metric pulse. Practicing rhythms by involving the body in physical motion (hand clapping or foot stomping) can help embed a rhythmic vocabulary in your memory. I suggest tapping a foot (or both feet), while simultaneously clapping and speaking the rhythmic figure being practiced. Use of a metronome is also indispensable here.

COUNT THE RESTS
Music, like fine art and effective graphic design, is composed of positive and negative space: sound and silence. The boundary between the positive and negative space defines contours and gives shape to the image (visual or aural).
Larry Liberson, Assistant Principle Clarinetist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, once told me the number one mistake made by candidates auditioning for a position with this world-class orchestra is a failure to count the rests. While practicing or playing a piece of music unaccompanied, the general rule is to count out all rests with a duration of two measures or less. If the measures are “short” (e.g. cut time) or if a fast tempo is indicated, count rests up to four measures in length. When playing in an ensemble, especially when sight-reading, count all multi-measure rests carefully – do not assume that your next entrance will occur at a “predictable” place or that the conductor will cue you.

The meaning of a musical rest is not “relax”, but rather “be silent”. Give as much attention to playing the rests as you do to playing the notes. Most people are not naturally comfortable with silence – we instinctively want to fill the empty space with sound. John Cage took this idea to an extreme with his composition 4’33”.

John Cage’s 4’33”

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III

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