Batucada on the drum set

We haven't done anything new with samba in awhile, because I'm still digesting all of the stuff we've done previously. But here's something new that came up yesterday, using open and muffled tones on the bass drum to emulate the surdo. It would also be helpful to run the third surdo parts from O Batuque Carioca, as well as my bossa bass drum variations, and the standard dotted-8th/16th samba pattern with this. This feel combines well with samba cruzado, which we've discussed before.

Notes: 
- Play the snare drum with the "tripteenth" feel; the '#' and the 'a' of each beat of 16ths line up almost exactly with the first and last notes of a triplet. Play with or without the buzz on the 'e', with sticks or brushes.
- Use either hihat pattern. The second pattern uses a closed note on beat 1, and a splash on beat 2.
- Play staccato bass drum notes as a dead stroke- bury the beater in the head to make a muffled sound. Play the tenuto notes as an open tone, allowing the beater to rebound. This works best with a drum with little or no muffling.
- Bass drum patterns with rests are preparatory studies. Patterns without rests are performance patterns.
- Also substitute dotted-8th/16th rhythm for the 8th notes or the 16th-8th-16th rhythm on the performance patterns.

Get the pdf


YouTube examples after the break:

Best books: The Essence of Brazilian Percussion and Drum Set by Ed Uribe

The Essence of Brazilian Percussion and Drum Set is the little sister of Uribe's massive volume on Afro-Cuban percussion. I've been using it almost daily for several months now, and not only is it a model of what a genre book should be, it's quickly turning into one of my favorite drum books, period. It reads and operates- very appealingly- more like a professional manual than a typical drum book (Ralph Humphrey's Even in the Odds would be another one with that feeling about it).

In 144 pages it presents a huge amount of information in very concise, manageable chapters. In addition to practice material, there are sections with historical background of Brazilian music and history, notes on sound of the instruments, explanations of the various song styles, examples of rhythm section parts, and a very useful glossary. Styles covered include bossa nova (in 4, 5, 6, and 7/4), samba (in 2, 3, and 7, plus batucada-style, samba with brushes, samba cruzado) , baiao, samba marcha, partido alto, marcha and frevo, choro/chorinho, afoxe, and catarete. With a number of simple but very robust creative methods presented, it has an extremely open system, and I think no two players approaching it would come out sounding the same.

A large portion of the book is dedicated to introducing each of the common percussion instruments used in samba, which is important even if, like me, you aren't particularly interested in learning to play them all. They are the basis for each of the parts of the drum set grooves, and being familiar with them is one of the keys to playing creatively with any authenticity. That does seem to be Uribe's major point in including them- he does not give a lot of instruction on how to run or play in a bateria.

In some genre books, there is a fairly inescapable feeling that the user is an outsider to the music, and that a high degree of deference is expected. Rather than presenting the music in a folkloric manner, in which the music is more or less fixed, this book has improvisation at the core of its method; the music is presented as very much a living thing, and though not of the culture, the user is treated as a creator and participant.

One of my few reservations about it is that the unique Brazilian swing feel is handled imprecisely, with only general instructions that are maybe a bit misleading (or which at least require a demonstration)- the essence of Uribe's explanation is to slur the "a 1 e" of the repinicado rhythm, and "pull back a little on the time". As you can see from my posts on the subject, my philosophy is that, like with swing in jazz, it should be reduced to something quantifiable and reasonably close- from there it's a short leap for the player to get to an authentic feel through listening and playing. It's one of the most difficult subjects related to this music, so it's an easy shortcoming to forgive, but it would've been nice to see the usage and relationships between even 16ths, triplets, and "tripteenths"- all of which occur in Brazilian music- explored and explained more deeply.

But this is a great book- a true player's book. Highly recommended.

Samba Cruzado - third surdo warm-ups

Here are some new preparatory studies for working with samba cruzado, and for getting this third surdo thing happening with the bass drum- I've refined my methods a bit as I've been working with this in my own practice.

To briefly explain what we're about to readers who haven't been following me on this: in a samba bateria, the first and second surdos provide the structural bass drum parts, and the third surdo plays a more syncopated solo line. In samba cruzado, played on the drum set, the left hand crosses over the right to play the first and second surdo parts on the toms (often suggesting the third as well), while the right hand emulates the tamborim or caixa on the snare drum. The bass drum usually plays a generic ostinato, which is actually made redundant by the left hand part.

So what we're developing here is the use of the bass drum as that independent third surdo voice, while using the right hand effectively. If we were strictly trying to copy a bateria, the right hand could play a two-measure tamborim part, with variations, while the bass drum plays a four-measure semi-improvised third surdo part. Realistically, you're probably going to have to choose between concentrating either on the right hand, with simplified bass drum accompaniment, or on the bass drum, with the right hand filling in where it can. And that usually makes the most musical sense as well- you will often want to emphasize one over the other.


Get the pdf.

Todd's Methods: adding bass and snare to samba cruzado

Well, we're all samba all the time around here these days, but what the heck- the point of this enterprise is for me to post things I'm interested in, and working on, and right now I happen to be doing a lot with samba.

Samba cruzado is a way of playing samba on the drum set in which the left hand crosses over the right to play the toms. This is a style I resisted doing for some time, because role of the hands is reversed- the right hand does the filling in while the left keeps the "ride" part. For that reason none of my regular instinctive stuff works- you have to relearn how to make a phrase ending, how to fill in with the "off" hand. The reason for the crossing over is to compensate for weak left hands- apparently it was easier for Brazilian drummers to reverse the lead than it was to develop the left so it could play the snare parts cleanly.

What I've done here is begin to integrate the cruzado thing with the third surdo parts from O Bataque Carioca, played on the bass drum, while filling in with the right hand on the snare to outline caixa-type patterns. In batucada, the third surdo is the lead voice of the surdo section, filling out the quarter notes of the first and second surdos.

The exercises here are mostly little more than warm-ups- once you've gotten comfortable introducing the snare drum parts, do most of your reading from the O Bataque... page. It's a good idea to review the other samba things I've posted (under the labels at the bottom of the post, hit "samba") as well as Ed Uribe's and Duduka's books. And listen to and play as much samba as you can, of course.

Download the pdf.

After the break- clip of Dom Um Romao playing this style: