Thursday, June 01, 2023

Reed interpretation: slow tempo / fast singles

I guess you could do this with Reed— or just practice the page below by itself and start using it.

NOTE: After completing this post, I see that I wrote two very similar things back in 2014— I like this way better than either of those— hit those links to check them out. 

This is based one of the basic Reed systems, right hand lead triplets— swing the book rhythm, played on a cymbal with the RH, with BD in unison, filling in the triplets on the snare drum with the LH. 

Here we're going to fill the spaces in the book rhythm with 16th triplets— each triplet partial of filler gets a 16th triplet. We'll play them as singles, always starting with the RH. 

With a couple of modifications:

•  Let's catch the second cymbal hit with the left when they're on adjacent triplet partials (see exercises 3-5, 9-10). Use a cymbal on the left for that. On some of those you hit the cymbal with the R the first time, with the L on the repeat. 
•  We want the singles to start and end with the RH, so where there's just one triplet of filler, stick them RLL or RRL, or just play a left handed flam (see ex. 3-4). Where there is a full beat of filler, play 32nd notes instead— eight notes (exs. 6-7, 8, 11).

I'm not even going to spell out again how these exercises connect to the rhythms in Reed— if you should doing this, it should be obvious: 


We see hear some of this kind of thing from Jack Dejohnette on John Scofield's Time On My Hands record— playing fast on a slow tempo. Peter Erksine, who produced that record, gave a master class at the U. of Oregon about this time, and remarked that Dejohnette was the only person he knew who could do that. Of course you have to be able to hear it as well as do it. 

I was doing this with a loop of Mr. Syms, from Coltrane Plays The Blues, tempo about 98 bpm, and that's getting close to the practical speed limit on this idea. You can do it faster, hyper speed singles just start sounding ridiculous at some point. 

Get the pdf

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