Hal Galper’s Syncopated Wisdom
Hal Galper
In this post we continue our pursuit of the fundamental Jazz Practices that form the foundation of our work at the Jazz Leadership Project. Your Sound and Syncopation are the focal point, for which we bring in Jimmy Heath, Michael Carvin, Stephen Covey, and Hal Galper to elucidate.
Your Sound
“Man, you need to work on your sound,” is a common refrain in jazz. In an aural medium like jazz music, where individual expression via improvisation and melodic sensitivity is prized, Your Sound is key to development of mastery.
Beginners just learning a craft or art must focus on the fundamentals. Drummers learn the 26 rudiments, horn players the scales. Intermediate-level artists expand upon the fundamentals and often have exemplars they imitate and model. To become a master, one must develop an imprint that clarifies your identity to yourself and others.
Your sound signals your voice, style, unique approach to life, situations, and events. Your sound is evidence of your identity, is as much proof as your unique fingerprint or footprint. Your sound is found in your unique rhythms and cadences too.
In spring 2019, I took a Swing University class, “The Great Jazz Drummers,” at Jazz at Lincoln Center with master drum teacher Michael Carvin.
Michael Carvin
In each session, he focused on one great jazz drummer such as Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, or Elvin Jones and the special rhythmic pattern that each used as “his sound.” Drummer Chico Hamilton, for instance, was able to take a basic quarter note pattern to the bank.
But as important as a unique sound and voice is for each person, the principle extends beyond the individual.
Stephen Covey, author of the modern classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, published an essay in 2006, “Leading in the Knowledge Worker Age.” His description of voice aligns with the jazz practice of developing “your sound.”
“It is the voice of the human spirit—full of hope and intelligence, resilient by nature, boundless in its potential to serve the common good. This voice also encompasses the soul of organizations that will survive, thrive, and have a profound impact on the future of the world.
Voice is unique personal significance—significance that is revealed as we face our greatest challenges and that makes us equal to them.”
Your sound, then, is a foundation for facing challenges—antagonistic cooperation—as well as the unexpected changes (syncopation) in the infinite game of life.
Syncopation
Jazz composers generally use more syncopated rhythms than in classical music since it comes from the African end of the music.
—Jimmy Heath
In our post on JLP’s Jazz Principles, we riffed briefly on Syncopation: In life and work, syncopation is being prepared for the shifts and changes that arise.
Now let’s say more. Another way of describing the musical term syncopation is accenting the weak beats rather than the strong beats of a measure. In march music, the emphasis is on the 1 and 3 of a four-beat measure: ONE-two-THREE-four. And not only is syncopation accenting the two and four, it’s the beats in-between those too. Allow me to explain.
Don’t worry if you can’t read music—the explanation is basic math. If you can divide by two, you’ll get it.
If there are four beats in a bar or measure of music, and you played or sang one note for that measure, that’s called a whole note. Divide that whole note into two, and you have two half notes, which become four quarters when divided by two. Quarter notes divided by two become eighths, and so on, as you see above.
The turn of the 19th century American musical style called ragtime was based on Syncopation: the pianists left hand would, say, play two beats per measure in a steady march-like beat, on the ONE and THREE, with the right hand accenting the third beat of a 8-beat series:
RIGHT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | 1 LEFT 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1
The effect, combining a steady march-beat with a more polyrhythmic approach felt “ragged,” hence a basis of the term “ragtime.”
Ragtime, however, was fully composed, without improvisation. Jazz kept elements of the syncopated feeling of accenting unexpected or so-called “weak” beats, and added improvisation, the blues, vocal effects, and other elements that synthesized more African, European, and Afro-Cuban ingredients into a uniquely American art form.
We use Syncopation as a metaphor in our business workshops to help clients better prepare for, manage, and even appreciate the unexpected that will arise, whether they want it to or not. Since you know it’s coming, why not learn to groove with it?
Hal Galper’s Syncopated Wisdom
The author, Hal Galper, and Barry Harris
In our most recent post, a tribute to the late, great Jimmy Heath, I mentioned that for health reasons he couldn’t be a guest at a class I curated on Improvisation at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Fortunately, two grandmaster teachers of the music, Hal Galper and Barry Harris were able to participate.
Whereas Harris emphasized jazz as the continuation of Western classical music traditions, Galper focused on the African influence on jazz. Syncopation, as Jimmy Heath said in the quote above, is one of those influences.
In a series of profound videos by Bret Primack (the “Jazz Video Guy”), Galper teaches masterclasses on jazz. In the one titled “Rhythm and Syncopation,” Galper drops a semester’s worth of knowledge in 11 minutes. The implications of this statement alone is profound:
Syncopation has a quality totally unique to any other construct in the universe… syncopation allows you to retain your own individuality and way of playing rhythm and still maintain a group effort. Syncopation is the glue that holds a performing group together.
—Hal Galper
At the Jazz Leadership Project, we love Hal’s wisdom for the way it affirms the democratic ethos of jazz while maintaining the music’s unique cosmic address. He also relates Your Sound (“your own individuality and way of playing rhythm”) and Syncopation within the context of a performing group, which extends from a jazz ensemble to families and teams in the workplace.