Monday, February 21, 2022

Reed interpretations: 16th notes in a triplet feel

A simple system here, that nevertheless has a number of possibilities, that I was playing using with my own book, Syncopation in 3/4, along with the Bill Frisell / Where In The World loop in 9/8. It's fast filler for slower triplet-feel tempos. I was also sloppy in writing this, creating an opening to make your own decisions on how to do it.  

Here are the basic things you do with any single beat of rhythm in Syncopation. As always, we're interpreting the top line rhythm from the book, ignoring the bottom line part. 



So if you see this rhythm in the book, you'd play:




There's nothing sounding on beat 4 there, so you fill out the entire beat with the triplet 16ths*. Also note the sticking on beat 3— the basic interpretation has all of the cymbal notes played with the right hand, but you can alternate when there are two cymbal note in a row with triplet spacing. You can then make the quick move to fill the middle of the triplet with either hand, or leave it open, as in the next example. 

You don't need to play wall-to-wall notes— you can introduce some space to mostly do only five stroke singles as filler, like so: 
 


Let's review the options for this rhythm:


The basic thing, alternating all the 16ths:  


With some space added:


If you have any problem with the timing of the 16th notes, play the fill as left handed flams, triplet rhythm— a good thing to practice in its own right:



After that's very solid, you can adjust the timing of the left hand to make the 16th notes. 


* - Sidebar: about 16th notes in a triplet-feel environment
The 16th notes here are played at the same rate as ordinary sixtuplets, but we're playing them off of a three-note, 8th note triplet subdivision, like 16th notes in compound meters— 6/8 or 12/8:



Regular sixtuplets and 16th note triplets in 4/4 have an implicit 8th note subdivision:


The rhythm is exactly the same, but with this system we're basing them off of 8th note triplets rather than 8th notes. 

Here's the loop I was using— and again, I was practicing out of my book, Syncopation in 3/4... which you can purchase instantly in an abbreviated form in e-book format.



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