Re: What is Groove?
Originally Posted by
T.D.Nydn
I don't think groove is really timing,it's two different things,it involves timing,but "finding the groove" is deeper,like when your whole body and soul is one with the tune..
I sometimes have difficulty with musical terminology. Definitions are important as we don't want to be talking about different things while using the same terms. Still, music came before definitions of music; "groove" isn't a term invented in the academy to refer to some particular technique. More likely, it comes from reefer-fueled jazz bars where everyone knew when they were "in the groove." I heard a blues musician on the radio, talking about Howlin' Wolf playing his regular gig in a Chicago club. He said that before any songs started, the band would "play a groove" for about twenty minutes, by which time, the crowd would be quiet, with everyone fixated on the band, moving heads and bodies to the music. I find this easy to imagine when I listen to the Grisman and Wooten videos above. As T.D. says, everyone's "whole body and soul is one with the tune." I've heard musicians speak of "laying down a groove", basically meaning playing a repetitive pattern -- again, they're attempting to get the band on the same wavelength musically, then improvising around the pattern. I suppose I'm partially defining "groove," but to some degree, I'm of the opinion that, to use the OP's words, in music, "I know it when I hear it" is sometimes valid.
Now can anyone tell us what "on the same wavelength musically" means? No, please don't.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
Bookmarks