EXCERPT 2

The Doing Time series of books is designed to help the student develop a better internal sense of time. This is accomplished by requiring the student to "feel time" rather than relying on the steady click of a metronome. The idea is to slowly wean yourself away from an external device and rely on your internal/natural sense of time. Each volume of "Doing Time with 32 Bars" gives you a book filled with exercises and a CD to play along with these exercises. The first CD contains 8 tracks at different tempos with a metronome click marking time every 4 bars and another extra click every 32 to outline the 32 bar form. With each progressive volume of "Doing Time with 32 Bars," this metronome pulse happens at wider and wider periods of time. This requires the student to rely more and more on their own internal sense of time.

First let's discuss the proper approach to this book and the idea of developing your own internal feel for time. This strong sense of time is not achieved by subdividing it in your head nor is it helped by tapping your foot or moving your body. It is achieved by trusting your internal clock based on a feeling rather than an intellectual or mechanical subdivision. Your goal is to just feel these larger groups of time, not to think about them. Humans have a remarkable built-in sense of time. If you give yourself the proper tools and the proper frame of mind you will find that through working with the CD and exercises presented in this book, you will be able to feel very large spaces of time; up to a minute without counting! Of course this will not happen overnight but most students find that within a month or two of work their time sense is stronger.

This method also develops a sense of time for larger forms. You will find that by working with the 32 bar form you will develop a very strong sense of a 32 bar span of time. This larger sense of form is one of the keys to playing contemporary jazz and free improvisation. Professional players have this sense, and because of it are able to play just about anything over this period of time and still feel the 32 bar form. Once you start to get a feel for larger spaces of time it will open up whole new fields of musical possibilities. Some of these possibilities will be explored in this book.

It should be mentioned at this point, that developing time takes time. Stopping your old process of counting time and beginning to just feel it is something that will develop over a period of weeks, not days. Stick with it though, and you will start to really enjoy practicing with the CD. For each exercise find a tempo that is comfortable for you to begin with and eventually try more challenging tempos. It is recommended that you also get "The Big Metronome" ISBN #1-890944-37-8 which will give you all the metronome markings in this same style but without the 32 bar form. This additional book is a great resource for practicing anything you usually do with a metronome, with the added advantage that it strengthens your time as it keeps time. After you've worked with these CDs you will find it hard to go back to a regular metronome because it will seem overbearing and intrusive. Also if you find this way of developing your sense of time and form useful, check out another book in the series entitled "Doing Time with the Blues" which works with the 12 bar form so common in contemporary music.