Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Practicing Chaffee phrases

Some things I do when practicing these recent Chaffee linear phrases, or any of the rest of them, beyond playing them as written. 

First, at faster tempos, the ones ending with two bass drum notes are a pain— we have to play three 16ths in a row to land on the 1. In addition to the ways I mentioned in the original post, you can also just end the measure with singles on the snare drum: 


These are thought of as fusion vocabulary, but for me, for some reason, at full speed (quarter note = 140-150+) these fall most naturally within a jazz feel. To that end I can start them on beat 4 and end them on 4. With the above phrase:


That also makes it more feasible to play the pattern with the ending double on the bass drum, followed by the snare drum, and a kick on the & of 4: 


I never fully work out complete licks to play verbatim— for me the patterns are conditioning for improvised soloing or filling. I can't tell you if that's the best way of producing reliably flashy results, but it's what I do. I'm noticing the ways these phrases begin: 


I'm also noticing the way they end. A lot of them end like this, which I'll practice as licks themselves, independent of the longer phrase:


I can't think of a close to this, so: enjoy! 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I practiced the stuff from technique patterns pretty hard for a while a couple years ago. The three notes on the bass drum at the end is hard, but it's worth it if you ask me.

Todd Bishop said...

I like to separate that stuff out, work on it separately. I don't want people to be held up by little technical things that are really not the main point of the thing.