An extended quote— extended is the only way to quote him— from George Lawrence Stone's Technique of Percussion, which has been on my mind a lot lately:
An instructor inquires what to do with a “gabby” pupil who insists on stopping whenever he makes a mistake in the lesson to tell the teacher all about it, thus consuming valuable time and slowing down the lesson. “I want to be a gentleman,” complains the instructor, “and I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I sometimes feel that such a lesson is being taken right out of my hands.”
The several remedies that first come to mind are against the law, but why not simply have a heart-to-heart with such a pupil and explain that he is supposed to come to his lessons not so much to talk as to listen. An instructor takes a defeatist attitude, not in keeping with his profession, when he hesitates to assume and retain control of the lesson period.
It often happens that an eager pupil (not necessarily a gabby one) will stop at some minor error, fearing that his teacher may have been inattentive of disinclined to bother over trifles. Tell such a pupil that this shouldering of the teacher's burden is unnecessary, for the experienced teacher is trained to notice errors, however minor their nature. If he doesn't stop at each one and deliver a lecture upon it, there is generally some good reason why. It might surprise the eager beaver if he but knew that for every one error he himself detects, you, his teacher may have noticed several of them and stored them up in your mind for attention and correction at some future and more propitious time.
Then, too, you might explain that an instructor often overlooks minor errors deliberately, especially when his efforts are centered on the development or correction of a major phase of the lesson. For a pupil to stop at a time like this— when the poor teacher is sweating blood to get him to comprehend, say, some rhythmic figure in its entirety— just to disclose the fact that he omitted a grace note of some flam, is to throw teacher completely off the track, distract his own attention from the matter in hand and delay progress.
Fastened to the wall of a well known percussion studio, right where it can be seen by a pupil while taking a lesson, is the following card:
Dear Pupil:
If, perchance, you should make a slight mistake while playing your lesson—
Don't waste the time you are paying for to tell me about it.
I NOTICED IT!
Teacher.
End quote. By the way, everyone with a serious is interest in the modern history of percussion is going to want to get this book: Technique of Percussion by George Lawrence Stone. I reviewed it a lifetime ago, in March 2020, and it is essential literature.
Once every dozen years of blogging, I like to write about ballads— slow tunes you play on jazz gigs. They do exist. Possibly I don't write about them much because I learned to play them completely on the job, through playing with others; I don't have any kind of cohesive drumming theory about handling them.
Ballads are kind of complicated with regards to tempo, time and feel. Sometimes they'll have a persistent triplet-based swing feel, or they'll pull strongly towards a double time feel, or be played semi rubato. The bassist may play whole notes, play in 2, or walk, embellishing with triplets, straight 8ths, or 16th notes, or swing 8ths in double time. Often all of the above will happen in the course of the tune, or all at once.
Almost always someone calls the tune and counts it off and you play whatever. I've only ever had one band leader make a distinction between ballad feels when calling tunes— he would say walking ballad when he wanted the bass to play in 4 the whole time, or 12/8 ballad when he wanted a triplet-based swing feel all the way through, no double time— that didn't mean he wanted me to play triplets the whole time, like we were playing Unchained Melody. Most often in modern playing, the drummer has a lot of freedom to play texturally, and not just hold down the time.
Getting the tempos off the records is more complicated than normal, because tempos often tend to not be 100% locked down for the whole duration of the tune. So consider these to be approximate. There are some more notes at the end.
45 - Body And Soul - Freddie Hubbard / Here To Stay 47 - Body And Soul - Stan Getz / Billy High Street Samba 49 - Body And Soul - Sarah Vaughn / The Essential 49 - Lonely Woman - Pat Metheny / Rejoicing 49 - I Fall In Love To Easily - Miles Davis / Seven Steps To Heaven
50 - I Loves You Porgy - Bill Evans / Waltz For Debby 51 - Body And Soul - Pee Wee Russel / College Concert 52 - Infant Eyes - Wayne Shorter / Speak No Evil 55 - Blue In Green - Miles Davis / Kind Of Blue 55 - Spring Is Here - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz
56 - Flamenco Sketches - Miles Davis / Kind Of Blue 56 - Lush Life - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman 56 - Virgo - Wayne Shorter / Night Dreamer 56 - Body And Soul - Tony Williams / Young At Heart 57 - I Thought About You - Miles Davis / Someday My Prince Will Come
57 - It Never Entered My Mind - Miles Davis / Vol. 1 57 - It Never Entered My Mind - Miles Davis / Workin' 57 - The Peacocks - Stan Getz / The Peacocks 59 - Stella By Starlight - Miles Davis / My Funny Valentine 60 - Naima - John Coltrane / Giant Steps
60 - You Are Too Beautiful - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman 61 - Dedicated To You - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman 61 - I Wish I Knew - John Coltrane / Ballads 62 - Body And Soul - Don Cherry / Art Deco 62 - I Remember You - Stanley Turrentine & Milt Jackson / Cherry
62 - My Funny Valentine - Miles Davis / My Funny Valentine 62 - Old Folks - Pat Metheny / Question & Answer 63 - My One And Only Love - John Coltrane / & Johnny Hartman 63 - Too Young To Go Steady - John Coltrane / Ballads 64 - How Deep Is The Ocean - Miles Davis / Vol. 1
64 - When I Fall In Love - Miles Davis / Steamin' 65 - Lover Man - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters 65 - Nancy (With The Laughing Face) - Cannonball Adderley / Know What I Mean? 66 - Body And Soul - Sonny Stitt / New York Jazz 66 - It's Easy To Remember - John Coltrane / Ballads
66 - There Is No Greater Love - Miles Davis / The New Quintet 67 - Blue In Grean - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz 67 - Dancing In The Dark - Cannonball Adderly - Somethin' Else 67 - Say It (Over And Over Again) - John Coltrane / Ballads 68 - Body And Soul - Buddy Rich / Keep The Customer Satisfied
68 - Body And Soul - Frank Sinatra / Beautiful Ballads And Love Songs 68 - Nancy (With The Laughing Face) - John Coltrane / Ballads 69 - Out Of Nowhere - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters 70 - Body And Soul - Stan Getz / Body And Soul 72 - Body And Soul - John Coltrane / Coltrane's Sound
72 - Soul Eyes - John Coltrane / Coltrane 74 - Crazy He Calls Me - Ahmad Jamal / The Piano Scene 76 - Body And Soul - Stan Kenton / Artistry In Rhythm 76 - Central Park West - John Coltrane / Coltrane's Sound 77 - Body And Soul - Duke Ellington / Centennial
78 - What's New - Ahmad Jamal / Legendary Trio 78 - Body And Soul - Sarah Vaughan / Complete Recordings With Clifford Brown 78 - Embraceable You - Charlie Parker / Complete Dial Masters 79 - Body And Soul - Thelonious Monk / Monk's Dream 80 - Moonlight In Vermont - Ahmad Jamal / Legendary Trio
82 - Fall - Miles Davis / Nefertiti 85 - Body And Soul - Lester Young / Masters Of Jazz 89 - Come Rain Or Come Shine - Bill Evans / Portrait In Jazz 92 - Body And Soul - Coleman Hawkins / Jazz Masters 110 - Body And Soul - Lee Konitz / Peacemeal
I grabbed quite a few versions of Body And Soul— it's an extremely popular ballad, but it also seems to have the double time feel built into it— even when you're playing the slow tempo, you suggest the double time, that's how you play it. So I was curious if artists tended to gravitate to a certain tempo range when playing it— obviously, they don't.
The Charlie Parker recordings mostly are brighter tempos, and played in 4, with a walking bass.
Most of these are popular tunes and recordings, and this is a good listening assignment for anyone wanting get their ballad playing together. The list seems to want some further analysis, so maybe I'll post about that later.
I'm just thinking about a VOQOTD from 2017 today— from the painter Robert Henri:
“An art student must be a master from the beginning; that is, he must be master of such as he has. By being a master of such as he has there is promise that he will be a master in the future.”
That dated phrase “such as he has” meaning whatever abilities you have at present.
You could approach that a couple of ways. A lot of serious drum students will think it means you have to be really good at all the stuff you can do right now. That's how we think as student drummers, about what we can do. So we could reduce that to a very mundane: make sure you cover the basics. Which everyone does now, to a fault. Ho hum.
I take master to mean being a full blown creative performer. So you approach every performance directly, like a master. It's very different from a student attitude, where you're mainly concerned with sounding good and doing everything right and not making mistakes and not getting negative comments.
I saw two great examples of this when I was a teenager. I was really into drumming then, and saw and heard lots great players. I also saw these two drummers who hadn't gone through proper drummery channels, who didn't sound like my idea of good drummers, but who were really playing and really performing. I resisted them, but what they were doing was undeniable, and they changed my thinking completely.
Jimmy Velez was just a kid in the 8th grade playing in a punk band with my friend Chris Higgins. I saw him play one time in a talent show, doing a kind of non-specific full-body lashing at the drums. Brad Boynton* was the star drummer at my high school, who was into music in the right way, and who was actually playing. I was just preoccupied with working out hip drum crap then. The way Brad played was pure improvisation, that purely fit the music— while being quite assertive, with no worked out hip drum crap whatsoever.
A lot of people will think of this attitude in terms of personality traits, like assertiveness, aggressiveness, self-confidence; for me it was simply that the desire to create energy** was bigger than my student fears.
Roy Haynes playing behind Herbie Hancock's solo, on the title track of Jackie McLean's record It's Time. There's a lot of what people call “broken” time here, and meter-within-meter playing. The tune is in 4, but Haynes is playing with a strong broken up 3 feel all the way through. If you check out my “world's shortest Roy Haynes lesson”, and play those 3/4 patterns over 4/4, you'll have some similar stuff.
Tempo is 266— generally the range where a swing feel evens out into straight 8ths. Haynes is playing a very legato swing feel here— almost straight 8ths, not quite. It would be a good analysis project to print this out and add phrase markings indicating his two, three, and four beat phrases.
The transcription was a little tricky to make, and may be a little deceptive— there are lots of tied notes and ghosted notes— there's so much quiet stuff happening, it suggests a lot of physical activity where no notes are sounding, or barely sounding. The transcription could turn into a real nightmare of random looking stuff if I tried catching all of that, which is really not central to the main idea of what he's playing.
There are a lot of unisons happening— both hands together, both feet together, and everything together with the cymbal. Not much linearity, or “independent” lines against an ostinato. The hihat is quite sparse, and often in unison with accents on the bass or snare. A few times he'll play it on 2 after a couple of measures of floating meter-within-meter playing. The bass drum is less sparse, and there seems to be more activity than I was able to notate. For the most part the bass drum is not loud— his playing here seems centered mostly on the hands.
For a long time I've been thinking about developing a system of analysis for drumming, like the harmonic analysis you do in college theory courses, deciding the function of every note in a composition. Doing something like that for drumming would require a different approach. I don't care about the theory aspect— this would be for clarity in thinking about our instrument, in teaching, listening, and playing.
Probably some doctoral student has already thought of this, but I'm not optimistic about the value of that for players. I've tried reading scholarly pieces on subjects in which I would normally be interested, and I couldn't do it— the academic language and format just wipes out whatever value they might have had for me.
In the broadest sense, this is about understanding “what is the drummer doing? What was the purpose of playing that? What's the function?”
We could start by thinking about the broad categories of playing:
Composed parts The drummer is playing fixed, pre-composed “parts.” Often worked out in the studio with a producer, or by drummers who are just oriented that way. For example Dave Grohl playing on Nevermind, or Neil Peart playing his worked-out parts, or Terry Bozzio playing Frank Zappa's The Black Page.
Reading performances
Big band drumming, studio drumming, show and theater drumming— professional situations where there are complex written arrangements. The drumming is largely functional within the arrangement, but the drummer has some freedom to interpret.
Ad lib performances The drummer shows up and plays. Perhaps this suggests that the drummer's musical personality may be featured, to some extent. Much of jazz drumming falls in this category. In rock, perhaps Mitch Mitchell or Keith Moon.
Genre performances
A kind of ad lib performance, but the player mostly just states the genre. For example, Rockabilly, some Blues, Gypsy Jazz, some Latin styles.
Tracked performances Drumming performance is assembled in the studio in multiple passes, possibly some sequenced parts, possibly by more than one drummer. See: a lot of heavily-produced music since the 80s.
Sampled performances The drumming performance is digitally assembled by a producer— re-inventing a track a drummer recorded specifically for that record, or sampling the drumming from someone else's previously released record.
We can also talk about broad categories of time feels:
Simple pulse Think Motown, some Country, possibly Phil Rudd with AC/DC, or Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Billie Jean.
Genre pattern A stock pattern communicating a style— a jazz cymbal rhythm, a shuffle, a surf beat, DC Go Go, most Latin patterns.
Composed pattern A unique pattern created by the drummer for a particular piece of music, a la 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Changuito with Los Van Van.
Quasi ad lib pattern A partly or mostly non-repeating genre feel. A lot of modern jazz might fall in this category— Elvin Jones on McCoy Tyner's Passion Dance, Tony Williams on Walkin', from Four & More.
Free groove
A mostly non-repeating time feel, not in a particular genre, for example an ECM-type feel— see Jon Christiansen playing with Keith Jarrett, or Bob Moses on Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life.
Percussion “Spacy stuff” as we use to say in high school— percussion colors. Think Tony Williams on Fall, recorded by Miles Davis.
Free Playing free texture not stating a particular tempo. Rashied Ali on Coltrane's Interstellar Space.
We can also decide what the drummer is doing right now, on this part of this tune:
Playing time Playing a groove, of whatever description— genre, ad lib, composed, whatever.
Playing ensemble figures Hitting drums and cymbals in unison with something the band is playing.
Filling Playing between ensemble figures, filling open spaces in the arrangement.
Breaking Stopping and resting as part of an arrangement, or as an ad lib arrangement element.
Laying out Drummer doesn't play on this tune, or this section of the tune.
Soloing Or co-soloing. Or otherwise creating free texture. Maybe an intro, or solo break, or featured solo or duo.
Of course many of these categories will overlap— not many will be strictly one thing or another. And I don't know if this really constitutes analysis yet. But it's a starting place for a conversation. I'll look at a particular recording on these terms soon, and see what that gives us.
And maybe on another day we can get into this on a more granular level, looking at individual notes— which ones state the main idea, which are filling out a texture, which are embellishments or extemporaneous— and see if that kind of thinking has any value.
The idea is to play all of the patterns along with all of the other patterns, playing each measure once or twice, to make a two or four measure solo phrase. "Theoretically" you should play any two measure combination in both possible orders: A-B and B-A. That would be extremely time consuming, so it will be up to you to figure out a way to practice it that makes sense. Another possibility would be to play three measures of one thing, and one measure of the other. Use your judgement.
Handle this loosely. It's not meant to be a technical workout, so feel free to simplify any part of it that's too difficult for you at whatever tempo you choose. To ease some transitions, you can put a quarter note on 4, or a quarter or 8th rest on 1. The patterns ending with a triplet or with 16th notes are going to want a release on 1, so you might add that the first time through transitioning to patterns starting with a rest. These are jazz patterns, but there's no need to religiously triplify all of the 8th notes. Think legato, not necessarily triplets.
Move things around the drums, and vary the accents and stickings, however you see fit— Rs, Ls, both hands, flams, stick shots, whatever. Get fluent with the ideas, and connecting the ideas.
A small item for your consideration and experimentation.
On a drumming forum, a user was complaining that practicing paradiddles didn't seem to improve his hand independence— he was working on some Chapin Advanced Techniques patterns, and was hoping the paradiddles would improve his facility with that. The answers given were all over the map, and largely based on misconceptions stemming from the use of the word independence. Aided, I think, by the notational convention of writing drum patterns as separate rhythms, as if they're played by multiple performers.
My answer was, sure paradiddles are independent, you're doing two totally different rhythms with each hand; the right hand plays 1 &a e and the left hand plays e 2 &a. You may say psha those are just backward versions of each other... and I arrogantly retort: that means you're playing the same rhythm forward and backward at the same time! Sounds pretty independent to me.
Like, look, independence:
In fact, independence = you playing one thing.
Whatever people's theories about how independence works, we're dealing with one controller— you— playing one rhythm— that of all the parts combined— using sequences of Rs, Ls, and both hands in unison. That's 100% of what hand independence is. What else is it?
If paradiddles aren't independent-seeming enough, add some unisons— play the following patterns with your right hand on the hihat, left hand on the snare. B = both hands at the same time.
Those are all at least as hard as the patterns in Chapin, and they sound independent, but done this way, they're easy to execute. So what's the difference? Mainly, they're non-mysterious, and there is no misguiding notation or language tricking you into thinking about it, and doing, it the hardest way possible.
I'm interested in other things right now, but this may be a productive way of practicing for someone: Go through the first pages of stick control and play each note of the patterns as Bs. People who have their flam rudiments together may find it easier to think of the both-hands notes as flams.
RLRR will be very helpful with those Chapin exercises— try replacing two and three Rs with Bs, and you'll have most of those patterns covered.
At the very least, a little bit of this kind of practice should be good conditioning for other systems of independence coordination, and for completely resetting your approach to this topic.
I wrote this for a couple of my younger students— it's a collection of simple jazz patterns that we went over verbally in a lesson. It's meant to be very loose introduction to a type of playing that is different from the rock/funk they've already done, in which I've included some things they can get quickly.
In the lesson we run the patterns, and I tell them a few basic, important things, and I give them a listening assignment, including things like:
Freddie the Freeloader - Miles Davis / Kind Of Blue Blue Seven - Sonny Rollins / Saxophone Colossus Moanin' - Art Blakey / Moanin' Stolen Moments - Oliver Nelson / Blues And The Abstract Truth
The next steps might be my recent easy jazz solo page, or any number of my EZ methods, as is appropriate. The idea is not to try to form these kids into jazz drummers via drum lessons— I don't believe that's possible, or desirable— it's to acquaint them with the music and the way it's played, so when they (hopefully) get into jazz band in school, they'll have some idea of what to do. Give them a chance to get interested in it. Then they can begin becoming jazz (or jazz-capable) drummers, if they choose, by playing music.
I'm feeling a little irked at the existence of YouTube drumming videos today, so let's do a search of a subject near and dear to me, practicing the book Progressive Steps to Syncopation, and see what the YouTube folk have to say about it, and I'll write my thoughts about them. I've been wondering about this; the Reed-associated methods are the professional system for becoming a reading, improvising professional drummer, yet very few people on the web talk about them. And the few that do, don't seem to grasp their full implications.
I'll talk about the first videos that come up, in order. I'll list but not imbed any I just can't take. For example, the first one: an Expert Village thing entitled Syncopation for Drums : Drum Techniques—but every Expert Village video absolutely sucks going in. So I'm skipping that one. Or number 2: 15 Famous Syncopated Rock Grooves (That Inspire Creativity), a drum cover video in the guise of a lesson. I'm sorry, I cannot look at a clean young guy rocking out for the camera— all of these guys look that same to me. God love him, best of luck, I know he's going to get a million views, I just can't.
So, the actual videos:
Bruce Becker “Syncopation” Lesson Series 01: Left Hand Separation Four minute video, obviously a great teacher, great drummer. Here one pattern is covered, briefly, with a whole lot of side comments. Hopefully he gets more in depth in the other videos.
I don't dig using the word “separation.” It's not separation, it's coordination— the limbs are both plainly attached to the same human torso. If not, something is drastically wrong. Coordination is simply hands/feet playing opposite each other, and in unison with each other, to make a new, combined rhythm. Words matter, and words like separation and independence communicate a false concept of drumming coordination— the reality of which is we have a single controlling entity, the drummer, coordinating different body parts to create a drumming performance.
I think a difficulty with prestige teachers like Becker, is that you get the impression that he has all the answers, and that they are the correct answers for everyone. So your study stops becoming a search, and starts becoming about how well are you doing what he says. But if you're into Mickey Roker, and a guy isn't reflecting any of that in his presentation, you may need to look elsewhere for those qualities. For me the exploration is more important than having this level of correct answer Becker gives. The answers you come up with yourself through seriously studying and performing music, will be at least correct enough for you to play well.
It would be dumb to ignore information, and Becker has plenty. But it's one man's answer, which is not even directed at you personally— it's a video made for a general audience to demonstrate and share his general expertise, it's not a lesson plan for your development as a performer and artist.
How to use Ted Reed’s Syncopation - Episode #1 jazz basics Not a jazz drummer, but the verbal explanations are pretty solid. Strange cymbal technique, like a lot of these guys— they copied a video really hard, and took it to the next, wrong level. You get the feeling he did some studying and made the video, and luckily he basically studied the right stuff. Ends with some BS playing the ride cymbal with the left hand. No, no, no. But basically solid otherwise. It is not your imagination, on the demo starting at 2:30, he plays straight 8th and swing rhythms exactly the same— he swings them both.
I play Ted Reed's "Syncopation" for 3 hours straight Rock drummer plays Reed for 3 hours. Starts with a not great explanation of a complicated four limb triplet system. Weird mix, loud snare drum, everything else too quiet. I actually don't mind his cymbal technique. I could never do this— just flatly drill patterns for hours and hours. I need to practice like I'm playing something. It's not a question of “optimal practice techniques”, that's just how I live.
Syncopated Funk Groove I Drum Lesson
A Mike Johnston video, and I just. Can't. Do it. This is everything that is wrong with videos. Teaching a single hip(?) groove— the essence of hack teaching— that bull sh*t Drumeo manuscript, with one measure stretched across the whole screen, like that makes it easier to read. I don't need to you wish me an amazing day, I don't want to see your dog.
I'm not linking to this— I'm sure he's a lovely man— I mean obviously, listen to him, his loveliness unavoidable, even as you thought you signed on to learn something about the drums. But I can't. Search the video if you want to see it.
Mel Brown Beat Syncopation Exercise Here we go, the GREAT Mel Brown— Motown drummer, Diana Ross's drummer for many years, winner of a national Playboy Jazz award, student of Philly Joe Jones. And he taught my older brother. Catching his quintet at The Hobbit in Portland was one of the performance highlights of my college years. A GREAT drummer, band leader, and teacher.
He goes over all of the major basic jazz systems used with Reed, and one funk thing I've never done(!!!). Take the structure of this lesson seriously, everything about this is 100% correct and informative, right down to the short pants, and the cymbal that is pingier than you or I would like. If there's anything “wrong” with it, it's only because that thing doesn't matter.
Using Ted Reed's "Syncopation" for Drumming Independence Demonstrations of some basic methods on an electric set. They're not technically flawless, but so what. He does something close to my(""?) cut time funk thing. This is actually a reasonable video, even if it's not exactly dripping with jazz cred— real or fraudulent— so you're not going to take it over-seriously— it's just a demonstration of playing the notes and for that it's good. I like that he just demonstrates and doesn't talk.
12 Ways to Use Reed's Syncopation - Part 1 Good teacher, nice clear way of explaining the premise. On topic the whole time. I don't need to hear about somebody's day, or listen to them butter me up with a lot of bro crap. Not exactly a real sophisticated jazz touch, but it seems more designed to demonstrate a feeling to her students. I prefer this to the hyper navel gazing technocratic style of the big video accounts. She shows you the thing, and a few things to try with it, and a few little special touches. And then you get to figure out where to go with it yourself. Teachers aren't supposed to be the last word on everything, they're supposed to show you how to something, and inspire you a little bit to go and do something with it.
Syncopation: Expert Mode - Drum Lesson Here we go. Why do people have to be so FULL OF IT. I understand that people put themselves under a lot of pressure to be on and to be appealing. By the time he gets to explaining the musical part I'm bored, I'm done, spent. Demonstrates some weird systems for practicing Reed, I don't have any use for any of them. This project, this playing of the drums, is not just about thinking up hard stuff. If we're going to do hard stuff, there's got to be a reason.
Helpful Jazz Exercises for Drummers! Good video, that is actually worth its 18 minute duration, and some further analysis to get the more advanced things he's talking about. The exercises he calls right hand lead and right foot lead are really important. A little bit of that macho L.A. touch on the drums with the hickory 5A sticks, that reminds me of Tom Brechtlein— that doesn't really fly as a default volume unless you're playing with fusion musicians. That's a minor quibble, it's an excellent video, and he's obviously a knowledgeable teacher and an excellent drummer.
