Four in three in four in 4/4

This an item inspired by Elvin Jones' rolling triplet thing, written by my friend Stephen Pancerev- we just spent an afternoon rifling through his notebooks of original exercises, cryptic scribblings, etc, and this is the one we decided to write up. "The illusion of speeding up and slowing down is rooted within," he tells me, somewhat enigmatically. It uses accelerating rhythms, with a three note pattern (RLF applied to duple rhythms), or a four note pattern (RLFF applied to triplet rhythms), hence the four in three / three in four title.

There are some instructions at the end of the piece for places you can go with this- changing the pattern of limbs, starting at a different place in the pattern, or changing sounds you play. You could also try adding the hihat with the foot on quarter notes, or on beats two and four, or doubling one part of the pattern with it. Or you can add sixtuplet, half note triplet, or dotted 8th note rhythmic values into the mix.

Get the pdf.