Jazz Rhythms – Essential Patterns, Grooves, and Exercises

mattwarnockguitar.com/jazz-rhythms

January 29,
2019

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Charleston Rhythm

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Upbeats on 1 and 3

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Upbeats on 2 and 4

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Dotted Quarter Notes

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Jazz Rhythms for Soloing
Apart from working on jazz rhythms in your comping routine, you can apply rhythmic
exercises to your soloing workout.

By doing so, you’ll bring a secure sense of rhythmic control to your solos, as well as build
your confidence with specific jazz rhythms in your lines.

The exercises in this section are designed to expand your knowledge of jazz rhythms, but
also to help you develop these rhythms in your playing.

By working rhythms as you would melodies, you’ll be able to dig deep on a single rhythm
in your playing, rather than constantly moving from one to the next.

This’ll create a rhythmic thread in your lines that both listeners and your band mates can
follow, which creates a deeper connection to your audience on stage.

These exercises are easy to understand, but can take time to master on the guitar.

So, take your time, work one exercise for a long period of time, and when you’re ready
move on to the next exercise in your routine.

And, most importantly, have fun!

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.

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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
8 th 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 solose, 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.

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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 8 th 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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 16

Vm
jazz rhythms 16
00:00
R
P

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.
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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 8 th notes.

So, the reverse of that motive would be two 8 th 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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 17

Vm
jazz rhythms 17
00:00
R
P

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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 8 th Notes
Two 8 th 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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 18

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Vm
jazz rhythms 18
00:00
R
P

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.

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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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 19

Vm
jazz rhythms 19
00:00
R
P

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 guitar solos.

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.

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C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 20

Vm
jazz rhythms 20
00:00
R
P

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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 21

Vm
jazz rhythms 21
00:00
R
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P

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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 22

Vm
jazz rhythms 22
00:00
R
P

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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.

C Turnaround Backing Track 2516 C Major Backing

Vm
2516 C Major Backing
00:00
R
P
Click to hear jazz rhythms 23

Vm
jazz rhythms 23
00:00
R
P

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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.

Have fun with these exercises; though they may seem tough at first, over time they
greatly expand your rhythmic vocabulary and improvisational skills on guitar.

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