Recommended Reading
The word 'groove' for most of us probably sounds like a throw-back from the 60s, a term best left in the hands of Austin Powers, but in musical circles it's used more than you might think. It generally suggests something quite intangible, an 'ideal' state which musicians aim to achieve when playing together; it's a wordless understanding between performers, when everything is sitting 'in the pocket' (another great jazz term). Jazz, as a style which is largely improvised, relies on the creativity and sensibility of performers to establish and maintain this musical nirvana, and the results when they do can be electrifying: Jaco Pastorius's dancing bass-lines, Michael Brecker's roaring sax solos, Jack DeJohnette's pounding drums. But what is this thing called 'groove'? Is it just for the jazzers, or is there something in it which all musicians can draw from?
In my work as a part-time PhD student at Brunel University I've spent a lot of time considering groove and what it means; a lot of the research I do is focused on so-called 'free improvisation' - a form of music-making without rules, based entirely on listening - how could groove relate to this kind of anarchic activity? One theory that particularly caught my eye was that of the American musicologist Charles Keil, who suggests that 'groove' is the product of differences between performers, a subconscious acknowledgement of a 'hypothetical unison' which players move around independently (both rhythmically and harmonically). But in 'free improvisation' there are no rules, and therefore no unison, yet good performers still manage to sound unified in the chaos; how? I was back to square one.
It was at this point that I began to wonder if the thing that unified this potentially random music was a focus on what was being said and not how it was being said. Great free improvisers such as Evan Parker, Wadada Leo Smith and John Russell have the ability to play the strangest sounds on their instrument, but still maintain a central feeling, mood, or colour with their co-performers. I realised that not only did this apply back to great jazz as well, but to great orchestral performances, great folk bands and punk bands, all manner of different musics - and different grooves.
Now I consider this as an essential part of my teaching, not only for trumpet lessons but also in composition. Musicians are communicators; what is being said (and whether it could be said any better) is and will always be up for debate. Conductors know this; listen to a conductor rehearsing a group and count the number of times a non-musical word is used to describe what needs to happen - colour, light, heat, emotion, movement - this is where the real music happens. (Peter Wiegold, my PhD supervisor and a great conductor, once asked a percussionist to hit a cymbal 'like he was punching someone in Dagenham in the 1950s' - the result was spectacular)
So next time you go to make music try giving special attention to the groove, to what is being said. It doesn't matter if you're right, what matters is that you're saying it.
