To The Ragtime & Stride Piano Music Parlor
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What Is Stride Piano? by Irwin Schwartz The term stride comes from the action of the left hand, which supplies a constant beat against a melodious right hand. The left hand jumps from strong upbeats (either single-note, octaves or tenths) to chord and downbeats (usually triads or tetrads, but sometimes single notes). Variety is given to the left-hand accompaniment through a walking-bass pattern, melodic episodes, arpeggiation and other techniques). Although people associate stride music with tour-de-force presentation, stride can also be played slowly and introspectively (listen to "Blueberry Rhyme," for example). However, the music is, in fact, generally played at a fast pace. Like
ragtime, there are three giants of stride piano: James P.
Johnson, Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller and Willie "The Lion"
Smith. Of this trio, Johnson (1891 - 1955) is recognized
as the seminal influence; some students of the subject credit
him with creating stride piano (originally called "shout"
piano). He was Fats Waller's mentor. Fats (1904 - 1943),
of course, went on to compose dozens of tunes, many of which
have become standards. However, he never lost his enthusiasm
for stride. He was also the most "commercial" of the Big
Three. William Henry Joseph Bonaparte Berthloff (Willie
"The Lion") Smith (1897 - 1973) was a classically-trained
musician who claimed to have developed his left hand by
playing Bach. A note from Dick Hyman in Riccardo Scivales' folio of Dick Wellstood transcriptions, Hyman quotes from Wellstood's liner notes for an LP collection of Donald Lambert performances. It is the best and most succinct description of stride piano that I have yet found. "I would say, first, that I don't like the term 'Stride' any more than I like the term 'Jazz.' When I was a kid, the old-timers used to call stride piano 'shout piano,' an agreeably expressive description, and when once I mentioned stride to Eubie Blake, he replied, 'My God, what won't they call ragtime next?' May I say that stride is indeed a sort of ragtime, looser than Joplin's 'classic rag,' but sharing with it the march-like structures and oom-pah bass. Conventional wisdom has it that striding is largely a matter of playing a heavy oom-pah in the left hand, but conventional wisdom is mistaken, as usual. Franz Liszt, Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner, and Pauline Alpert all monger a good many oom-pahs, and whatever their other many virtues, none of them play[s] stride. To begin with, stride playing requires a certain characteristic rhythmic articulation, for the nature of which I can only refer you to recordings by such as Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Willie 'The Lion' Smith and Donald Lambert. The feel of stride is a kind of soft-shoe 12/8 rather than the 8/8 of ragtime, and, although the left hand often plays oom-pahs, the total feeling is frequently an accented four-beat rather than the two-beat you might expect. . . . By pulling and tugging at the (steady) rhythms of the left hand, the right hand provides the swing. Today, stride piano is in the capable hands of such people as Dick Hyman, Judy Carmichael, Mike Lipskin, Jay McShann, Ralph Sutton and John Gill. See John Roache's Page for more information about and some real-time performances by Gill, who is an Australian pianist often appearing at ragtime festivals throughout the United States. |
Stride Piano Midi's About A Quarter To 9
Fats Waller
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What Is Ragtime? A
style of music that emerged in 1890's America. A forerunner
of jazz, typified by piano playing with evenly syncopated
march-like rhythms. Noted ragtime composers include Scott
Joplin, Eubie Blake and Jelly Roll Morton.
Scott Joplin Ragtime is probably the first pure American popular musical genre. It is characterized by a heavily syncopated melody over a regularly accented bass. Like any musical style, Ragtime had its roots in a broad range of earlier music and experience, including traveling minstrel-shows, plantation songs, brass bands, cakewalks and other music with strong African-American influences - even the parodies of white musicians imitating black musical forms. Ragtime was originally created by itinerant professional performers in the saloons and brothels of the post civil-war years. The artists rarely sold their work, making enough money to live well by way of the tips that accompanied their performances in bars and on stage. Ragtime began showing up in various places, mostly saloons and brothels in the South, giving the budding musical genre an immediate reputation as "lower-class" and "un-Victorian." But soon the upbeat and gay melodies spread like wildfire around the United States. The style of Ragtime was one reason why it was so popular. The style of the music was not that of any Classical or Baroque music, but of a style in and of itself. The complexity of the pieces were unmatched. Syncopation and other complex rhythms created a different, but altogether pleasant sound and flow. Ragtime could be played almost anywhere because of the need for only a piano and occasionally a bass or banjo; there was no need for an Orchestra or Band. Despite its extreme popularity, there were people who opposed Ragtime. One avid opponent of the music was, ironically, John Philip Sousa, a black composer. Sousa stated "Ragtime's primitive rhythms... excite the basic human instincts." Unlike previous music forms, Ragtime boldly ventured in the realm of syncopation. The Ragtime music being produced was unconventional. Ragtime was influenced much by the lower class of America, the social class untouched by the upper and middle class's "Victorian Moral Code." Ragtime is an extremely sophisticated genre that requires a great amount of technical skill. Ragtime evolved as a style through the years as piano players began to compete with each other to see who could play these exuberant songs in the most RAGGED or syncopated manner. It was eventually widely distributed in the form of both piano rolls and printed music. The period when Ragtime was popular extended from about 1900 until the beginning of World War I. This was known as the "Golden Age of Ragtime". During this period Ragtime reached what is known as its classic form under the leadership of the composer known today as the King Of Ragtime Writers, Scott Joplin. Joplin established a structure and form for ragtime compositions to which the majority of the composers of the time adhered. Basic Ragtime is best defined as a left hand bass part consisting of octaves and chords played on the beat and a right hand melody part which contains several notes which were played between the beats. This is called syncopation. The musical composition for the piano comprises three or four sections containing sixteen measures each, which combines a syncopated melody accompanied by an even, steady rhythm." Actually, they have described a "piano rag," not ragtime in general. Ragtime is characteristically a syncopated (or "off the beat") melody over a march-type (oom-pah) bass. Ragtime has also been written in other forms, like waltzes and 5/4 time. Two other forms of ragtime are the "cakewalk," which was originally a dance that later became associated with a particular type of syncopation; and the ragtime song, which has two themes (verse and chorus), the rhythmic characteristics of a rag, and of course, words. The common characteristic is, however, a steady, impulsive bass beat with a syncopated melody.
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