Afro 6/8 - basic coordination

This is something I've been working with daily for several weeks now- getting the usual jazz coordination/comping stuff together with the Afro-Cuban/Bembe/Naningo bell pattern. It's pretty tricky, and it's a good idea to do it with the preparatory ostinatos before attempting the main pattern.

One thing I did early on was play just one or two measures of an ostinato followed by the same number of measures of just hi-hat, playing the coordination patterns the whole time- this is especially good to do with the quarter note/8th note bell pattern (the first pattern on the third line on the page).

As it says in the notes, once you're comfortable with the given ways of practice, you can take a stab at using the common jazz coordination sources, like Chapin, Syncopation, etc. Ed Soph's Essential Techniques has been really useful for this, as well as Rick Mattingly's Creative Timekeeping, and especially Joel Rothman's Compleat Jazz Drummer, which has a comprehensive section on triplet coordination, written in 2/4.

Get the pdf.