Todd's waltz — two measure phrase

Well, we should all have developed a pretty crushing medium-tempo waltz by the time we're done here. Elaborating on my earlier “Todd's waltz” piece— so-called (by me alone) because I don't very often hear this particular hihat pattern that I tend to play a lot. What we have here is actually the form in which it usually comes up in my playing— a two-measure phrase without the ending hihat note from the last entry. In the spirit of the recent Elvin series, I've added a bass drum part as well:

Like I say every time, do the tom moves. They're a real value-amplifier. I also suggest trying this one without the bass drum on beat 1.

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Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern, in 5/4 -- part 1

Extending this recent series of Dahlgren & Fine/Elvin-style coordination studies a bit further, here's part one of the dotted quarter series, converted into 5/4:

Swing the 8th notes and do the tom moves when you practice this. You know the drill.

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Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern - part 2

Here's part two of our series of Elvin-esque four way coordination in a waltz feel, with a dotted-quarter note cymbal rhythm. Here the bass drum is in unison with the cymbal, and it's a little easier than the last entry.  It would've made a nice part one for that reason, but that's blogging for you-- things don't always follow logical sequence. Maybe I'll switch them around in next year's Book of the Blog.

In addition to our previous instructions, I think it's a good idea to count out loud while working these out-- it's rather challenging at first on the 4/4 phrase-- count "1 2 3 4 2 2 3 4 3 2 3 4 4 2 3 4" there. A good variation to make on these would be to add another cymbal note on the & of 3, completing the metric modulation-- we'll get into that later.

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Coordination with a dotted-quarter cymbal pattern - part 1

There's got to be a better title for that, but I don't know what it is. Frankly, I'm just lucky if I can get anything posted at all at this point. Here we're looking at developing dotted-quarter time within 3/4 and 4/4-- an extremely common thing in Elvin Jones's playing, among others-- starting with another challenging page of coordination in the tradition of my Elvin's Afro Waltz series of posts:

Learn them in 3/4, then apply them to the 4/4 phrase at the end of the page. It's probably a good idea to put a few measures of time in 3/4 or 4/4 in between exercises. As always, play these with the tom moves, while keeping track of the four-measure phrase. If necessary, you can simplify the ostinato by eliminating the bass drum on the & of beat 3.

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