UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took them out, and added one more rock phrase.
Big item, closely connected with the other recent things we've been doing with fills— see especially this beats to fills post, and this one, and this collection of right hand lead tweaks. The general idea is to hang the fills off of 8ths notes, and including the surrounding cymbal/bass drum hits in the equation— it's all about frameworks for doing that, and what to do on the fill itself.
Here I've written a lot of fill possibilities to play over the space of three 8th notes— a cymbal hit, plus two 8ths of drums— covering the full gamut of fills from simple and functional, to very dense and soloistic.
Play each of the fills, in each sticking, many times, working out moves around the drums, and accent possibilities— and any further embellishments that occur to you. On the mixed sticking patterns, you can accent the singles. There are a lot of fill ideas, but any single one of them that you learn to use really well is a big deal.
At the top of the page we have the basic framework, with the 3/8 idea played once in 3/8 time, and twice in 3/4 time, and as a running pattern over three measures of 4/4 time. Accents are the important cymbal crashes, slashes are to be replaced by any of the fill options. On the second page there are some practice phrases for practicing them in rock, jazz, jazz waltz, and 12/8 feels:
Everything other than the slashes and accent is ad lib time— play what I've written, or whatever you want in that style.
An interesting article by Fritz Steger, author of A History Of Drums Made In Germany, written in German: Welches Becken passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise? In English that's “Which cymbal suits my music and playing style?”— which is a little misleading, because before he gets to talking about which cymbals passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise, he gives a pretty detailed history of cymbal manufacturing, mainly in Europe, mainly since the 1800s.
For you non-German speakers, and myself, also a non-German speaker, here is the English translation (from Google translate) of the history portion. Thanks for DFO user type85 for sharing the link— he has a cool YouTube channel you'll want to subscribe to.
This article is intended to provide a basis for the development of drum cymbals and their various metal compounds from ancient times to the present day. After a historical introduction and presentation of the important manufacturers, the second part deals with the sound properties of cymbals and the various alloys with their advantages and disadvantages.
Part I: Where do cymbals actually come from?
Cymbals are of Asian origin and can be found on Assyrian monuments (2nd millennium BC). They were also part of Indonesian gamelan music in the form of tuned bronze gongs. According to Greek belief, they took away the power of demons, so they were beaten at funerals for the deceased. Western miniatures show them up until the 15th century; then they seem to have been forgotten, probably because the art of hammering them was lost. 200 years later, they reappeared in what is now Turkey and found their way into local military music with their Janissary music during the Turkish wars. Soon after, they also found their place in classical music.
In the 1913 Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, cymbals are defined as “a percussion instrument made of two convex bronze plates, hammered to the same thickness, about 40 cm wide, made in all sizes, without a specific pitch, with leather handles threaded through the hump.” “For special effects, the edges are gently clinked together or one of the cymbals is struck with a timpani mallet. Art music makes sparing use of this instrument; but in military orchestras and lower-ranking bands, which of course attach one cymbal to the bass drum and thus coarsen the effect, it has become indispensable.”
Since then, hand-made cymbals have fascinated drummers and percussionists in Europe and the “new world” with their complex sounds, rich overtones and unique character. But what makes them so special? The starting point of every cymbal is its alloy – the metal mixture that gives it its basic sound properties.
Here we are, the latest archive of all my sampled practice loops, mostly categorized by style, mostly with tempos. I also have folders with all the loops I use the most, and with the ones that will be most useful to the most people, in all styles.
Put them on your device and run them through headphones, and practice whatever you're practicing. I think it's the best way to practice, because:
A. It's real music from real records. All the playalongs recorded for that purpose that I've used seem phony. Playing with them is not the same experience. B. I believe your memory for recorded sounds is very good. Memorized recorded sounds are a natural form of this mythical “internal clock” people are so fond of theorizing about. C. Because of that, I think this way of practicing is very good for your musical time— so long as you're actively concentrating on your time and accuracy while you're doing it. The only thing better is to play with a slow click— metronome sounding the 1 only, or every other 1. In fact you should do both of those things. D. Playing with loops gives all the dumb things you have to practice a chance to sound like music— you play them musically, with a musical touch, in a way that matches the vibe of the recording. In essence you're testing out musical ideas vs. the music of the loop. E. It's fun and tricks you into practicing longer.
In light of this splendid gift I've given you, this is a great time to contribute a little something to the site— a recurring cash contribution (see the sidebar), buy a book (sidebar), or buy one of these wonderful Cymbal & Gong cymbals you have inexplicably not bought yet. Or get some lessons— in person if you're in Portland, or on line. I don't make significant money through this site, so a few people doing any of those things are a big encouragement for me in doing it. Thanks! tb
Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and this puts most of them together on one page. These are all pretty tight rhythms, with no greater than quarter note spacing between notes.
These will make good jazz solo phrases, in a right hand lead triplet interpretation, here based on pattern 8 on the page (written here with the RH part on cym/bad; the other usual way to do this has RH playing accents on the snare/toms, no bass drum, and LH ghosted on the snare):
They'll also make slightly less-good funk phrases, with a half time feel funk rhythm in the first measure, and straight 8th right hand lead in the second (again, RH in second measure can also be played on SD/toms, no BD):
I've been listening to a lot of John Scofield this week, and realized I basically never talk about Bill Stewart here. It's weird, he's on anyone's short list of top living jazz drummers, particularly of those who became known in the past 35 years. As a massively influential drummer, he became well known right between Joey Baron and Brian Blade.
I first heard him on Scofield's 1991 record Meant To Be, and it was one of those epochal moments, like the first time I heard Dave Weckl— like this undeniably is the new thing. I associated what I was hearing with Roy Haynes, who was getting revived about that time via Pat Metheny's record Question & Answer, and it seemed cool that Stewart seemed to be influenced by him.
In particular there was one spot where he just played some quarter notes— Big Fun, the track below, at the end of the head— from which I took a big lesson, about using the full range of what you could play, having creative access to all of it. Any time something like that jumps out at you, it's a big deal.
He definitely seemed like a completely fresh animal, a new generation of player— highly musical, a highly skilled improvisor, clearly with broad tastes, a very sharp musical intellect, and creative with all four limbs. He seemed to be on a new level with all of that, while not being merely amazing.
He has been massively influential in terms of sound— I'm thinking about his sound on three fairly early recordings, that were very influential on me, at least: Scofield / Meant To Be, Pat Metheny & John Scofield / I Can See Your House From Here, and Joe Lovano / Landmarks. It's a very cute sound, with a cranked snare drum, and high, round-sounding toms and bass drum. It's very clean, pretty, and musical— maybe Jack Dejohnette's sound was the closest recent influence to it. It's so ubuquitous now that it seems inevitable, but the other big people before Stewart were Joey Baron and Jeff Watts, both of whom used bigger bass drums, and had punchy or medium tunings with their toms, respectively.
His cymbal didn't jump out at me so much, but it's clearly an exemplary sound— a smaller, more transparent K sound than Brian Blade's, the other big recent influence in that area. Youtubers have turned his sound and technique into a meme— of course it came simply through him dealing with a slightly too-light cymbal, a familiar situation:
And listen: I'm not being disparaging calling his sound cute, it's a particular vibe to me, like Jan Garbarek here:
He has a distinctive touch on the snare drum as well— expressed here in a New Orleans-type street beat groove, which was hip “new” thing about that time. Since then it has become an expected regular type of groove in jazz, largely* off the strength of what Stewart was doing with Scofield.
Finally, here's a great interview with him, by Pablo Held— I hadn't listened to it before writing this, and I'm happy to see a couple of my observations confirmed.
There's a great part about improving time at about 43 minutes in:
So, I don't know why I don't talk about him much— partly I've been more immersed in older players since I've been writing this site. He's clearly a durable artist, he's doing the real stuff— I'll listen to some players, and they may be great, but their concerns clearly seem different from mine, and I can't sustain a lot of interest. Stewart is not in that category, I'll be listening to him a lot more in coming weeks.
Looking at two little books co-authored by Peter Erskine and Dave Black— The Drummer's Lifeline, and The Musician's Lifeline, subtitled, respectively, as Quick Fixes, Hacks, And Tips Of The Trade, and Advice For All Musicians, Student to Professional.
The Musician's Lifeline is the larger and more broadly focused of the two, and is more interesting to me. It's packed with advice from a whole lot of famous players, relating to every aspect of doing music as a job, career, and art form, largely in one-liner format. It's a little values sketch of a particular community* of musicians— many top jazz and studio professionals, performers, educators, and the tier under them— what they think about, how they generally look at things. It will be most valuable to jazz studies majors— this is the field your education is for.
* - And it's my same community, though in terms of career accomplishment I'm in the category scrappers below the least-biggest person here. Everyone in the book is doing big gigs, or more likely is the big gig. But I know a few of these people, been in workshops with many of them in school, and/or there's one degree of separation with many more of them, via my peers.
The Drummer's Lifeline is shorter, with a lot of duplicate materials, but with more that is narrowly of interest to drummers, mostly from Erskine and Black. The unique materials are largely minutia, mostly related to gear— I don't sense a larger philosophical center to it as with the other book.
Much of what the books cover will be familiar to professionals, and to many serious students. There are some choice bits that were new to me. And it's good to have obvious things restated and reinforced. There's a lot that will be good for people to hear early in their playing life, before they learn it the hard way.
On the other hand, we live in a neurotic age. If you're prone to general anxiety over ever doing anything wrong... or prone to focusing on minutia at the expense of actually playing your instrument... or to preparation neurosis, where you're permanently in a state of feeling a need to do more to be ready to play with people... maybe you don't need more voices in your head issuing dire instructions. Musician's Lifeline in particular gets a little overbearing just from the sheer volume of wonderful advice.
At least the sources are unimpeachable— these are not just a bunch of chattering youtubers. You can readily dismiss any contrary advice you've been worrying about. And there is some helpful advice dismissing some areas of worry— like where Erskine realistically assesses the variety and difficulty of most of the reading he has had to do in his career (that is, basically never any Zappa level stuff).
They're worthwhile, and you should be buying books. Get them from Steve Weiss Music:
Updating a very crummy looking page I wrote in 2012— some calisthenic patterns moving the highly hip and useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion around the drums.
Drill them blazing fast, and also for control and accuracy at moderate tempos. Don't have a big hole where you sound bad with these because the tempo isn't fast enough. As it says, practice ending the patterns with a bass drum on the last 16th note in the measure, plus a cymbal/bass drum.
Here's a set of simple four limb warm ups, that are heavy on the unisons... an underrated practice item. Take your pick, run p. 38 of Syncopation with 4-5 of these, at a reasonably bright speed, before a rehearsal or gig.
If you can't do any of them— take half an hour and work them out, you may be missing the boat on something basic coordination-wise, there's a hidden weak spot in there that may be interfering with you in other areas.
Summaries of all of those systems:
1. Play the melody rhythm with all limbs in unison. 2-4. Play melody rhythm on cymbal and bass drum, fill in spaces with snare drum/hihat (played w/foot).
Play with R on cym / L on snare
L on cym / R on snare
alternating sticking
5. Play melody rhythm with both hands in unison, fill in spaces with both feet in unison.
6-9. Play melody rhythm with three limbs in unison, running 8th note on remaining limb:
hands + BD over HH (foot) hands + HH (foot) over bass drum feet + LH over RH feet + RH over LH
10-12. Same as 2-4, with swing interpretation, filling in triplets.
13. Same as 5, swing interpretation filling in triplets.
14-17. Same as 6-9, swing interpretation with triplets.
And of course, you may want to do the 8th note things in a swing interpretation.
A page of meter-within-meter phrases— three beat rhythms played over four measures of 4/4:
You'll want to be very familiar and comfortable with this kind of rhythm— it happens a lot in jazz, and if you get lost you're dead. Count through the sounding rhythm of each phrase:
Also play just the first two measures of each line, played twice to make a four measure phrase.
You can do this with my book Syncopation in 3/4— four measures of any materials in 3/4 = three measures of 4/4.
Another little oddball Stick Control related item, for drum set: some Stone-type sticking patterns with accented unisons added, on beats 2-4, and on beat 3. Introducing the idea— if you like it, you could obviously go a lot further working out of Stick Control itself.
Play the right hand on the cymbal, left hand on the snare drum. Ghost the non-accented LH hand notes, play all the RH notes at an even volume. Add bass drum however you like— a particular kind of nut case could use the reading in New Breed for that.
See also this other oddball item, and the right hand lead with a backbeat Syncopation system. Similar minor items. These things exist in the cracks between the actual major drumming vocabulary items, to create openings for other things to happen.
CYMBALISTIC: A fresh round of cymbals is in— it's been a rather slow year, so I haven't been getting a ton of new stock. You should be using these things. Cymbals. Made by Cymbal & Gong. Every time I play I'm delighted to be using them.
Let's round up everything I have in stock, all by Cymbal & Gong— hit that link for videos/descriptions of all of them. These are all “jazz-weight” cymbals— considerably lighter than your average A. Zildjian. I use them for all kinds of music, I haven't felt the need for anything heavier.
10/2 UPDATE: Videos are up for two new Special Janavars, 20" and 22" and a newly-patinated 20" Extra Special Janavar. Check them out.... Also, fair warning: The few Janavars (Special and Extra Special) I have in stock will likely be the last ones available before Spring 2025. If you want one, you'd better act fast...
Two thin 22" A-type Holy Grails - heavy patina These are Blakey-style bruisers, with a big, aggressive sound. Very responsive dynamically— you can make some big mistakes with these, but they get out of your way fast. A skillful player should be able to do something great with these.
NEW - 20 and 22" Special Janavar The 22 is only slightly heavier than those two A-types, but is a whole different experience. Controlled and focused jazz sound, but with the feel and fullness you associate with a lighter cymbal.
Two 20" A-type Holy Grails They're modeled after “trans stamp” era A Zildjians, and everyone should have one. These are absolute work horse cymbals— which is not real inspiring as a sales pitch, except it is actually a big deal when you get a cymbal that just sounds like a cymbal, that you can do everything with. And they're not without character. They're jazz weight, but seem to function more like a light-medium.
22" and two 20" Extra Special Janavars These have been extremely popular— Janavars with K-type hammering and lathing. The 22 has the regular Holy Grail patina, and it's a very full, lush jazz ride sound. If you found a Turkish K that sounded like this you'd go out of your mind, and you would dedicate years learning to play it. One 20" has the customary heavy patina, that gives it a drier, more funky tone.
NEW: The other 20" Extra Spacial Janavar is a fascinating case— in its natural state it was problematic, with an indistinct stick sound and a rather viscious high pitched squeal. I had Tim at Cymbal & Gong give it a heavy patina, and now it behaves like an old, heavily played basher:
20" Special Janavar Crash-Ride, and 15" Hihats Ordinary Janavars are bright, full, fairly uncomplex cymbals. The heavy patina (hence the "Special") gives them much more character, a bright-but-funky jazz sound. I have a couple of online students who have these, and I always enjoy listening to them in the lesson. People have been loving them.
UPDATE: Two more of these coming next week— a 20 and a 22!
Other Holy Grails— 16" Crash, 14" hihats The 16" crash isn't a real hip size these days— see my list of cymbal size bigotry— but I've been using one lately, and I get it, the 16 has its own niche. This one is medium thin, and is very similar to my own. Rides well, like all Cymbal & Gong crashes. The hihats are a solid set of light-mediums, with a slightly exotic bottom cymbal that gives them a little wild edge when played open. Cool cymbals.
14" Wide China Seems like a niche effect item, but these are very fun. Not just for wailing on, you can touch it occasionally and it brightens up the whole timbre of your sound, in a slightly wild way. I keep one set up about half the time, and it blends nicely with the other cymbals.
I'm pleased to see so few Cymbal & Gong cymbals available used, and there are a lot of them in circulation by now— people hang onto them. The solo artisan guys are getting a lot of attention at the moment, but I see many more of their cymbals for sale used, despite having vastly fewer cymbals in circulation. Curious.
Anyway, hit the “email Todd” link here or the contact form on Cymbalistic to get one of these, or if you'd like me to select one for you at Cymbal & Gong, or custom order something for you!
