From the zone: Five in seven in six in four

A little Thanksgiving treat shared on Facebook by my friend Steve Pancerev:

Let's walk through this— it's difficult, but not impossible. I see a jazz rhythm there, and a crazy independent part with a double-beamed rhythm, which means the tempo is going to be slow/medium-slow. There are three sounds happening, and we can default to the standard drum set sounds for them:

• top line = cymbal/right hand
• black noteheads/middle line = snare drum/left hand
• bottom line/black noteheads = bass drum. 

You can revoice those however you want, using whatever limbs you want. I always encourage you to move your left hand parts around the drums, either improvising the moves, or using our standard moves which you should have memorized by now.

Obviously the top line is a jazz cymbal rhythm, with quarter notes and 8th note triplets. The black noteheaded rhythm, which is split between the snare drum and bass drum, is sixtuplets— so every other note lines up with a note of a good old familiar 8th note triplet. Looking for familiar landmarks: the first accent in the sixtuplet part lines up with the last note of an 8th note triplet. The last snare drum double in the second beat, and then the doubles and single bass drum note in the third beat all line up with 8th note triplets. Going into the fourth beat, the second note of each double falls on the 8th note triplet. And the first two 8th note triplet partials in beat 2 fall on the second note of doubles. So the lick is mainly doubles with the first note landing on the triplet, and doubles with the second note landing on the triplet. If I had Finale handy while blogging from my mother's house, I could write you a little preparatory study of that. 

The bracketed 5 and 7 notations indicate the phrasing and voicing of the rhythm— we're accenting the sixtuplets every five notes (starting on the second note of the part), and voicing the rhythm between the drums in a seven note pattern— SSBBSSB. So the seven-note pattern (played three times) with the accents every five notes is SSBBSSB / SSBBSSB / SSBBSSB. You'll really want to get the basic coordination and rhythm together before you add that accents.

I've been meaning for years now to post more of Steve's stuff— maybe I'll actually follow through on that in 2016. In the mean time, you can follow him on Facebook. He's already posted one other crazy thing today. 

If you'd like to have your practice materials featured as a From The Zone item, hit the email link in the sidebar and send them in. Crappy photos of semi-legible manuscript is preferred. I just want things you had to write out because they weren't written anywhere else.