Simple four limb unison warmups

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. 

Get the pdf

[h/t to my student Matt S. for mentioning #5 as something Dejohnette was doing, setting this whole thing off.]