Is the word ''comping'' short for something?
to "comp" is to ac
company
I'm trying to follow the advice heard in an interview to train my ears into when to fill in a jazz tune ..."get one jazz song and, playing quarter notes on the ride, try to identify and memorise where the drummer fills " Davis's Freddy Freeloader is given as a good example to practice on. Only I can't tell fills from common comping .If it was a straight 2 an 4 pattern ,like in rock ,anything deviating from it it would be a fill,I guess.But how can you tell in jazz...?help
the way I see it and the way the greats I studied with saw it is as one flow
I personally hate the word "fill" .... because it suggests that what you are doing is separate from whatever it was that you were doing before and after that "fill"
no matter what type of music you are playing you respond to the music .... in jazz the old school rule of thumb was that we are accompanying the the soloist ..... I for one do not believe that to be true.... I am playing more with others comping than the soloist .....I may respond once and a while to something the soloist plays.... but for the most part I am playing and flowing with the others comping and driving.... the piano and bass for example
to me there are no "fills".... especially in jazz .... of course that term has become so common that it is used to describe certain things so that some people understand what we are talking about .... but to me jazz has no "fills"
this is music of spontaneous expression .... and if that urge to express prompts you to play a flurry on the toms starting on beat 3 of a random measure and land on beat 2 of the next ... then you do so ... as long as you know where you are... it does not matter if you feel that it... (1 adds to the music .... (2 gets across what you intended to express..... and (3 you do not lose the quarter note
I urge all my students to stop thinking in terms of "beats" and "fills".... or in a jazz sense...time/comping and "fills"
....it creates a separation in your thinking process that you are doing two different things and as a result your playing sounds that way ....
listen to this song...Tony is not playing fills ... he is playing music ...listen to his solo even.... he doesn't really change from what he was doing when everyone else was playing ... just keeps playing music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bisN-z_4CnA
while studying with Elvin Jones .... he would tell me every time we were together .....
"don't play drums... play music "