Page o' coordination: basic jazz waltz - 01

After doing this feature for about five years, I finally get around to doing a basic jazz waltz. Doing easy stuff wasn't supposed to be its purpose, but it's a familiar format, and not everyone has the time to laboriously go through Syncopation in 3/4 and work out all the coordination on the fly— the preferred method.

This is not necessarily a page of “comping ideas”; it's for learning basic coordination, so you can do the normal learning process more easily— listening to records, playing with people, getting ideas into your ears, then playing them.

This is a jazz feel, so swing the 8th notes. Learn all of the exercises as written, then learn them again omitting the circled bass drum note. Once you can play all the patterns, you can continue practicing them while doing some stock left hand moves. Try playing it with this loop.

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Cymbals are IN

UPDATE: Videos for most individual cymbals are now on YouTube, including the Swish and Krut. Videos for more Holy Grail cymbals coming tomorrow.

Amazing day Friday picking out cymbals at Cymbal & Gong headquarters here in Portland. I continued to be amazed at the quality and consistency of their products.

Among the things I picked up, and currently available for sale on my Cymbalistic site:


• 18, 20, and 22″ Holy Grail — These are the classic K sound. Ten fantastic rides and crashes, all in jazz weight. Many folks have been interested in 20 and 22″ rides, but these 18″ crashes are GREAT— I encourage you to consider them.

• One set of 15″ thin Holy Grail hihats. That thin, washy, dark 50s sound. I played several equally good sets.

• 20″ Mersey Beat ride— I have two currently available.

• 22″ custom Turk-style ride— or “Krut”, as the smiths call it— unlathed, thin, with a low, complex sound, with good definition.

• 20″ Swish. I’ve never gotten to play C&G’s Swish cymbals before, and they were very interesting, with a unique profile— larger bell and wider flange than is found on most other brands. Medium-thin, available sizes from 18-24″.


I got to play another interesting custom line, “Midnight Lamp.” It is cosmetically similar to another brand’s “Anniversary” series, but these are a whole different thing. Dark, well-defined, somewhat more aggressive than the Holy Grails. These were special-ordered by a dealer in California, who has first option to buy them. I think they’re very cool, and will buy them if that dealer passes.

Here is a very rough edit of the video from the session, with me and company owner Tim Ennis. Videos and descriptions of the cymbals I picked out will be coming on the Cymbalistic site in coming days.



List of cymbal models played and times after the break:

Syncopation p. 37: rub-a-dub method, mach 1

Now this is the level of drum geekery I aspire to, with the defiantly gibberish post title, and everything. I was writing out a very laborious explanation of the next steps in my evolving quasi-Mel Lewis “rub-a-dub” practice method, but... let's do this: I'll show you what I've done with Exercise 1 from Progressive Steps to Syncopation— on p. 37 or 38, depending on the edition— and you can figure out how it works.

The key rhythms in interpreting this long exercise are the three-beat pattern I outlined in the last post— being able to recognize it wherever it falls in the measure, with rests or not— and the two-beat 8th-quarter-8th note rhythm, also with rests. See measure 5 in the pdf below to see how that rhythm is handled.

Those two things cover most of what happens in this piece. There are a few leftover quarter notes that don't fit within either of them; for now we'll play those on the snare drum, with no cymbal. The only other place I deviate from this basic system is when there is a quarter note on 3 and a rest on 4; I treat those as actual stops. If I was following the system exactly, there would be a double on the cymbal on 3.

First look this over and compare it to the p. 37 exercise in the book, then play it as written, with a swing interpretation, or straight 8ths. Then begin moving the unaccented cymbal notes to the tom toms or snare drum— with your right hand. Then move the left hand notes around the toms, then both hands. It's best to try to make the interpretation while reading out of Reed; but my written-out version may be helpful for initially getting the moves to the tom toms.

Next I'll attempt the same thing with Exercise 2 from Reed, which has much more rhythmic activity that does not fit neatly into the basic system. Ex. 2 has always been a big pain in the neck.

We'll see how this develops. Ideally, we want to be able to sight read the other full page exercises in Syncopation, and eventually do it while reading actual charts, while making the appropriate ensemble hits reliably. It's no good as a method for big band kicks unless we can catch the cymbals when we're supposed to while following a real chart.

By the way, I'm pretty certain that Mel did not develop this as systematically as we are doing it here. It really seems like something developed in the field, on stage, while constantly performing. Players like that sound different from today's very practiced players. It's real easy for us to sound mannered. 

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Chaffee linear patterns in context - 02

Yes, I'm determined to finally resolve some minor issues I have in practicing Gary Chaffee's linear thing. Today let's work through a short phrase that will be useful in jazz settings, starting after the 1, and ending with a cymbal accent on the last note of the pattern, on the swing &-of-4:

As you can see from the practice examples at the bottom of the page, you can easily play these exercises in 3, 4, or 5. Vary the accents and move your hands around the drums. The hihat can be substituted for the bass drum on all notes except the ending cymbal accent— if you're doing that, ignore the stems-down hihat ostinato part during the fill, of course. That ending cymbal hit is tied though the following beat 1; let the accent ring through beat 1 after the repeat, and come back in on 2, paying special attention to the timing— people tend to rush it.

As I was practicing this I realized I could do the same thing with the patterns in the book (Patterns, vol. III by Gary Chaffee), all forty of them. But sometimes it's nice to pare things down to something you can cover in a tight 15-20 minutes. And these exercises cover all the major moves— working through the complete set of patterns involves a lot of duplication.

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Practice loop: Sivad

This is a fun one, and just about my favorite ~45 seconds of music in the world: the opening of Sivad, from the Miles Davis album Live Evil. Tempo is 86 bpm. Rock out.

Developing a method for rub-a-dub

I've been working up a practice method for learning what Mel Lewis called rub-a-dub— I hate to use his term, because I only just saw it explained for the first time in Chris Smith's video. I don't know enough about how it applies to Lewis's playing to claim I'm doing his thing. But I've used the same basic idea for many years, usually in the context of a modern, ECM-type feel. I can write about that, and work out a way of applying it to ensemble figures, and maybe approximate Mel's thing as explained by Smith. Or maybe it will just be something different, but still useful.

Basically it's a simple all-purpose idea for playing and filling around big band figures, and I'll be exploring some ways of working it up using the syncopation exercises from Progressive Steps to Syncopation (pp. 32-44 in the old edition). This will certainly evolve as I continue working with it. For now I'm trying to develop a very basic interpretation so we'll have some hope of executing it on the fly with the full page exercises in Reed.

Here's the basic rub-a-dub lick, played with the left hand on the snare and the right hand on the cymbal:

The snare and bass rhythm without the cymbal:

That rhythm written as one voice occurs throughout Syncopation, so that will be our main place for introducing the rub-a-dub:

Here's the rhythm in Syncopation— we most often see it starting on beat 1 or 3, less frequently as an equivalent rhythm starting on beat 2 or 4:

A basic way of playing that figure rub-a-dub style would be:

That ending quarter note could be played on the snare or bass drum.

In other instances that 8th-quarter-8th rhythm includes rests, which could be played by just dropping snare drum hits to match the written rhythm:

The 8th-quarter-8th rhythm repeating give a clue on how to handle running 8th notes:

This is only a beginning, of course. We're reconciling a few different concerns: doing the rub-a-dub lick, designing a system that will be readable with the long exercises in Reed, while making sense in terms of playing big band figures. Somewhere on the radar should be the idea of suggesting a standard time feel— jazz, funk, or samba— for when there is no obvious rub-a-dub type interpretation for a rhythmic passage, or when we need some variety.

Playing out of the book will be challenging, especially with the full-page exercises; interpretation is very dependent on the context. The way you play a rhythm will depend on what comes before and after it, so you may play a rhythm differently in the full-page exercises than in the one-line exercise. You can use a simple long-note/short-note interpretation with the cymbal in unison to get through parts where it's not obvious what to do.

Anyone actually playing around with this rub-a-dub idea should also check out Jack Dejohnette and Charlie Perry's book— they outline a method very similar to what Smith describes, that will be very helpful in working it up.

Chaffee linear patterns in context - 01

Gary Chaffee's linear system— found in book 3 of his Patterns series— is a major entry in the literature of drumming, but it has always felt unfinished to me. There are some extra steps required to put it into a musical context, and I was never able to improvise a way of practicing it that I felt was very effective.

Here I've organized the patterns to end easily with a cymbal and bass drum on beat 1; you'll notice none of the measures end with the 4, 6, or 8 note patterns, which end with two notes on the bass drum— meaning you have to play three in a row to make the crash on the downbeat, which I don't like. I've also included some fills that end with just the hands: RLRL. 

They also flow easily from a cymbal and bass drum note on beat 1. When you're playing time, it's easier to do that than it is to start the fill right on 1. We're aiming to exploit the path of least resistance here.

Use the stickings at the top of the page, and vary the accents/dynamics. Play each pattern many times, then play them as a fill in a two or four measure phrase, improvising a groove in the other measures. Move your hands around the toms, or keep your right hand on the hihat or ride. I don't think there's anything to be gained by first learning the patterns in a “neutral” way: at an even volume on the snare drum. Except maybe the very first time you play them; after that, move them around, play dynamics, and make them sound like music.

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CYMBALISTIC is on line

OK, it's time to go public with this sucker:

CYMBALISTIC, my new site retailing Cymbal & Gong cymbals is now on line.

In case you hadn't heard, Cymbal & Gong is a Portland company which produces limited quantities of some of the world’s finest traditional hand-crafted cymbals, created by artisan cymbal smiths in Turkey, and then beautifully patinated for a vintage look and sound. I love these cymbals, and have spent a lot of my own hard-earned money buying them so I can play them. Their Holy Grail series is well named.

The site's main features are:

• A page of specially selected new cymbals for sale, with audio. Chosen for excellent performance in real-world playing and recording, these are individual cymbals I would want to own, that I believe any player interested in this site's content would be thrilled to play.

• A quality blog of cymbal-related stuff, some new, some reprinted from this site. There's a cool feature where we listen to and analyze some classic recorded cymbal sounds, reminiscent of things we can get from Cymbal & Gong. I'm also scouring interview archives for great players' comments on cymbals.

Cymbal & Gong makes a full line of cymbals, but stock on hand can be very limited, so let me know if you're looking for a particular model, size, or sound, and I can select one specially for you. We're emphasizing personalized service here. There's no normal store front where you just place your order and go— we're handling transactions by phone and/or email, using PayPal.

There is a new shipment of cymbals arriving on October 18th, so this is an excellent time to get your requests in.

Please pay the site a visit, check out the cymbals, and sign up for our mailing list to be notified about the latest arrivals, upcoming shipments, and tour information. Also visit Cymbal & Gong's website for more info.

Mel Lewis rub-a-dub

Well, we ignore the blog Four On The Floor at our peril. I hadn't visited in awhile, and then yesterday,  BLAM, there's a great post with a video from Chris Smith— he's the author of The View From The Back Of The Band, an invaluable book about Mel Lewis's career. If you've listened to the recordings of Lewis's jazz drumming history, you heard him mention something he calls “rub-a-dub.” He doesn't talk about it in detail, except to say it's a way of playing figures while filling in around the drums.

I was wondering about it, because the recorded example in reference is pretty bad ass. In this video Smith explains it:



It's very much the kind of thing we're into here at CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER!: a simple idea that sounds great and is easy to improvise with. It's actually very similar to something I've been doing for many years, that I picked up from Jack Dejohnette's book. The explanation and context is different, but it's the same idea. I always felt it was covered pretty poorly in Jack's book, so I'm working up a way of practicing it using Syncopation, of course. Stay tuned for that...

Be sure to follow/subscribe to FOTF, and Chris Smith's Drum Hang channel on YouTube. Hell, follow me while you're at it. Scroll down to where it says “followers” on the right.

A minor rant: Elvin's 18

In Elvin Jones's 1982 Modern Drummer interview, Rick Mattingly asked him about his use of an 18" bass drum:

RM: I've heard various explanations of why jazz drummers started using 18" bass drums. Some people go into detail about the function of the bass drum in modern jazz, and give reasons why the 18" drum was more suited to the music. Others contend that the only reason the smaller drum was used was because it was easier to carry around. 

EJ: Well, that's the reason why I used it. Twenty years ago, we traveled a great deal by car. We would throw all of our stuff in a station wagon or a car, then we'd all pile in and off on the road we would go. That's the way bands traveled then. So it made a difference if you had a compact unit of equipment. I only used two tom-toms in those days: the floor tom-tom was 14 x 14, and the small tom-tom was 8 x 12. 

But when I used a 20" bass drum, it just would not fit in the trunk of the car. If I put it in the back seat, that took up the space where two people could sit. So that made it necessary to tie the damn thing down on top of the car on a rack. I ruined a lot of drums that way. Whenever it would rain, with the car going sixty miles an hour, the rain would be forced right through the case, onto the drum itself. So the drum was a soggy mess when we arrived at where we were supposed to go. And then there were times that the ropes would slip and the drum would fall off on the highway.  

So when I got an 18" bass drum, there was no problem at all. My drums would all fit comfortably into the trunk of a car, along with a suitcase, and perhaps even some golf clubs. So the drums had to be as practical as they were functional. 

Another good reason for having the smaller set was that it fit in with the overall image of the group. If there were only four or five people on the bandstand, the drumset was not obtrusive; it blended with that whole image.

This subject came up often with MD writers in the 80s, and it's still a popular topic today, mainly among non-jazz drummers seeking justice for their large bass drums. They always sound like they're trying to talk their way out of the last ~55 years of jazz history. There seems to be a kind of originalist mentality in effect, as if everyone since c. 1961 is only using that size of drum on Elvin's authority... so if Elvin's reason is no good any more, why are you laughing at me for bringing a 22" drum on a jazz gig? It's all a big scam!

Mattingly brought it up a couple of years later with Tony Williams:

RM: Some people have several drumsets. If they're playing with a big band, they'll use a 24" bass drum. If they're playing with a trio, they'll use an 18", and so on and so forth. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, you use the same set from electric music to the Great Jazz Trio. Is there something to be said about controlling the sound? 

TW: Yeah, I think so. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what I'm trying to portray. People I've worked with have asked me why I don't get a smaller bass drum. Why should I? 

RM: Tell them to get a smaller piano. 

TW: Yeah. "Play on two strings. Get out of here." I really like the drums. That's what I'm about. If we're playing soft and I have a 24" bass drum, I can play it there. One of the reasons I don't play an 18" anymore is that I got to the point where I was playing harder. If you know anything about physics, if I'm hitting the drums and they're not responding, I'm going to hit harder, and then I'm going to wear myself out. So that little drum sounds nice, but from back here where I'm sitting I'm not going to hear it. So I needed a little more weight, especially when I started playing in an electric situation. And when I played in the Great Jazz Trio, on my solo I could open up. A little drumset is nice. I like the 18". It's cute. It's really nice looking— easy to carry. It fits in the backseat of my car. 

RM: When I started playing jazz, I was coming out of rock and I had a 22" bass drum. When I played at jazz sessions, people would say, "That's not a jazz bass drum." 

[...] 

RM : People were giving me all these profound reasons why Max and Elvin used an 18" bass. I finally had a chance to meet Elvin and Max and ask, "Why did you start using an 18" bass drum?" They said, "Well, we were on the road ..." 

Elvin and Max are not the only people who get to decide what kind of instrument is correct. Succeeding generations of drumming artists have spoken on the subject by continuing to use that size of drum, for a lot of other good reasons besides can I fit four guys in the car with it. (Which is still a very good reason, if you ever travel to play a gig.)

In his interview with Scott Fish, Max Roach talks about it a little bit:

SF: Back in the '50s and '60s jazz drummers were primarily using the smaller size drums: 18" bass, 12" mounted tom and 14" floor tom. I've heard that one of the main reasons drummers used that size drum was because they were easier to transport than larger drums.  

MR: Exactly. It made it easier to get from town to town. Pack up your gear, put it in your car, and off you go. That was one of the main reasons I think. Plus, the bass drum had begun to become less and less an integral part of the whole musical set-up. It's different now. The bass drum, at that time, would stamp out what was happening with the acoustic bass. Even the pianists would leave that part. They would voice their chords so the bottom of the piano would be in thirds and sevenths instead of tonics and fifths. They left that part for the acoustic bass. So, your bass drum would only be used for accents and supports. So the small drum was great, plus, you didn't have all the electronics around you, so you didn't need that power there. There were many reasons for it. But, today you do need that power with the electronic scene. 

We're not playing 18s just to honor Elvin's logistical requirements, just like we haven't universally dumped that dumb old 13/16/22 configuration just to poop on Joe Morello and Philly Joe. Likewise, 16" bass drums have been commercially available for a long time, but they are still a niche item, because smallness-wise, they're a bridge too far. Who wouldn't prefer shlepping a 16" if it sounded great?*

I don't believe drumming would have developed the same way if everyone was just playing 22" bass drums. Or even 20". I dusted off my 20" Gretsch recently and— yeah— it's just not as nimble for modern playing. It's a different instrument. Tony certainly didn't play his 24 the same way he played the 18. He sounded way better on the 18. The big drums are good for big band, or trad jazz where you're feathering and dropping occasional bombs; the small drum is better for modern playing in acoustic small group settings.

Almost as important: it's what everyone expects you to have. You have to have some credibility with the other musicians to show up to a quartet gig with anything larger than a 20. They may not know much about the drums, but they know when someone has a weird instrument. And lest anyone protest Who cares what they think?— you should care, if you want them to keep calling you for gigs.

It's a credibility sap. You want people to think you know what you're doing. If you don't play super great, or you play something weird they don't get, or you can't control that 22 as well as you think you do, and you annoy them with it, they'll file you as that clueless weirdo with the wrong size drums and not call you back.

Finally, I don't want anyone to think I'm dumping on Mattingly**— him litigating this in print 35 years ago is amusing in a good-natured collegial way, but it's only an issue now because other people continue talking about it.

* - Note to self: try making a 16" Sonor Phonic tom tom into a bass drum, I'll bet it would sound great.
** - Buy his book Creative Timekeeping! 

Chop busters in 5/8 - 01

Hey, two odd meter things in two days. I've really turned around my thinking on the value of this subject— it really forces you to have a heightened awareness of rhythm, which is a good thing. I used to be more of a exterminate rational thought kind of guy— still am, at times— but it's nice to be able to play and know what you're doing sometimes.

So here is a page of technical exercises in 5/8, format, concept, and title borrowed from Ron Fink. I still use his book regularly— it's nice for when you don't feel like drilling whole pages of Stick Control or whatever.

I've given the tempos in 8th notes; you can do the calculations to set your metronome however you like. Tempos are in the high range for normal usage of the underlying ideas— most people will have to work to them up to that speed, some maniacs will do them faster.

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Groove o' the day: Tombo in 7/4

More from Airto's great record Fingers. I got burned last time crediting the drumming to Airto when it was really another great drummer da América do Sul, Osvaldo Fattoruso; this time I think it really is Airto on this track, but I was pretty sure last time, too, so... I guess I have to seek out a lot more of Fattoruso's playing and learn to recognize him.

These are the grooves for the major sections from Tombo in 7/4. It's a samba in 7, which in principle sounds like an insane and wrong concept, but it's not— Brazilian musicians have only been playing them for 50-60 years. Once you get the hang of it it's just a slightly different flavor of samba. The tune is in one of the major fake books, so odds are fairly good you'll have to play it some day.

The grooves are played pretty repetitively; variations are usually pretty subtle, and it's obvious when the player breaks from that to fill or improvise briefly. Pay attention to the timbres of the snare drum— the major rimshot accents sound almost like repique. On the first groove the tenuto/staccato markings indicate half-open and closed hihat notes.

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Page o' coordination: RLH in 3

Slightly different format for a Page o'coordination. Usually we have an ostinato with a variable left hand part; here the cymbal part and bass drum part change. This is sort of an appendix to some things we did with the Elvin-style waltz in 2012, with a dotted quarter note cymbal rhythm— we're filling in some coordination gaps, setting the stage for being able to improvise better.

Try this Eddie Palmieri loop to do this page with straight 8ths (that's in 6/8, but it's easy to count the bass line in 3), or this Miles Davis loop to play it swing. You could also use this Jimmy Garrison loop. Play all of the bass drum parts with patterns 1-8. Do the left hand tom moves if you have some time to kill— it's a long page of stuff even without that.

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Groove o' the day: Jack Dejohnette - On the Nile

Here's Jack Dejohnette early in his career, soon after his move from Chicago to New York. He's playing in a very Elvin Jones-like mode with Jackie McLean, who is himself writing in a Coltrane Quartet-like mode. The tune is On The Nile, from the record Jack Knife.

This is the groove from the head of the tune. Swing the 8th notes. 

He plays this on the solo vamp:

He plays these grooves pretty repetitively throughout, which is interesting. For some reason it reminds me of Robert Rauschenberg's Factum I and Factum II, where the famously freewheeling painter made two identical pictures. On the solo vamp Dejohnette sometimes plays 16th notes a la Elvin in the second measure—just double the middle note of the triplet and spread it all out to make legato 16th notes.

First jazz lesson

Here's an item for teachers. This is a process I improvised in a lesson with a 6th grade student yesterday, to introduce him to playing the jazz rhythm on the drums.

We did this verbally, reading only p. 11 from Syncopation, lines 11 (running 8th notes) and 15 (jazz cymbal rhythm). I only intended to teach him to count 8th notes with a swing interpretation, but as we started playing line 14 on the cymbal, the lesson evolved into teaching him some basic drumset coordination.

Steps we used were:
1. Counting the rhythms normally.
2. Counting the rhythms in a swing interpretation. Swing is an interpretation of 8th notes, and I explained it as a legato feeling with the &s of the rhythm falling late. I then sang the rhythms for him, and we sang them together. At no point did I mention triplets. Students tend to sing swing rhythms very staccato at first, so we took a moment to get a legato feeling in his singing.
3. Learning a logical series of simple playing exercises for putting the rhythm on the drum set.

Note that all exercises should be finished on beat 1; don't end exercises with “4-&.” The lone beginning quarter note can be confusing to some students, so you can also start the exercises on 2— taking care to get the counting right. After learning these patterns, I had my student play through them all without stopping— again, the only written music we were using was line 15 from Syncopation, p. 11.

Depending on the student, I might take these steps in a different order, or go another direction entirely. Subsequent steps might be to learn a few more obvious coordination ideas, or to improvise with the combinations learned so far. Teachers who emphasize quarter notes on the bass drum as part of the basic jazz beat will probably want to develop a slightly different sequence of exercises to teach that.

With this student my next steps will likely be to reinforce counting swing 8th notes, to introduce the idea of writing swing 8th notes as triplets, and to teach him some coordination using my “skiplet” concept. He instinctively understood the premise of that method— that the cymbal rhythm is oriented around 2 and 4. In playing the exercises, he would often start on 2. It will take a little bit of creative teaching to exploit that, while making sure he still understands where the 1 is.

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Groove o' the day PLUS : Airto - Fingers

UPDATE: Correction from the comments, it is Fattoruso on drums! I'll put the correct credit in the 2018 Book of the Blog. Until then, you'll have to pencil it in onto your printout. 

Here is a SUPER-ENHANCED groove o' the day— it includes not only the groove for this tune, but the intro, and a couple of brief shout choruses with a lot of fills happening. It's from the album Fingers by Airto, and it's an early fusion samba played either by Airto, or by the Uruguayan drummer Osvaldo Fattoruso, who passed away a few years ago. They both have drum credits on the album, and since I don't have the LP, I don't know if there is a personnel listing for each track. It sounds like Airto; it could be Fatturuso.

...no excuse for not having the LP, by the way; Airto's stuff is massively available used. I've heard this record my whole life, but just never owned it. CTI must have really papered the radio stations with promo copies...

The ensemble figure from the intro happens a few times throughout the tune, and the drummer always plays the same set part behind it, with very minor variations. He cuts loose more on the drum breaks on the shout choruses at the bottom of the page. The main groove for the tune is in the fourth line. You can see that the right hand is very busy with the running 16th notes, in typical Brazilian style. There's also a fast left hand move required— a small tom hit right before a rim click. I can do that move pretty fast, but I haven't tried it with this groove at this tempo. It may be that there's something else happening there— just get the sounds right. The small tom is the main left hand voice through out this tune.

Something has happened with music in the last 30 years— people have gotten really fascinated with subdivisions. You shouldn't sound like you're fascinated by subdivisions. If you listen to a lot of music from the early to mid 70s, there's an overwhelming energy and enthusiasm. I think people should try to sound like that.

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