Sunday, April 13, 2014

Straight 8ths within Afro 6/8

I keep feeling like I have to justify doing so much with the Afro 6/8. I'm just working with it a lot, and here we are nothing if not personal and idiosyncratic. I also feel that this is an essential rhythm— meaning not that it's a drumming style you'll be asked to play a lot, but more that it's a rhythm that has been around for a very long time, and our bodies just want to play it. In doing so much heavy coordination work with this feel, we're building some subterranean structures that will surface in other areas in interesting and unexpected ways. You could do that with anything— there are numerous methods out there— but using this rhythm we're basing it on something real.

So, what we're doing here is developing one of C.K. Ladzekpo's basic polyrhythms played with the 6/8 bell pattern— straight 8th notes. The first kind-of-hairy one:




Run the exercises as written, then add the feet. It wouldn't be a bad idea to keep play the left foot part the whole time, if you're at all shaky with the bell pattern. The very bold can try playing the exercises with the feet, along with the left hand part at the bottom of the page. If you want to get really silly with it, you could split the independent part between limbs— that's getting into the realm of pure abstract independence practice.

Get the pdf

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