Stick Control in 7 by Ralph Humphrey

A little item from an old issue of Percussioner International magazine, which I just found in my mom's basement— the Steve Smith issue, from November 1987. 

Here Ralph Humphrey shares some paradiddle-based stick control patterns in 7/8:

Humphrey says:

Practice each exercise with the written accents. But remember that when you begin to apply the patterns to the drum set, you might choose to keep the accents intact, or try a linear approach and set the hands off so that you hear the rhythm that each hand creates. This may change your accents and also change the way the rhythm sounds.

The main drum set application he suggests playing the patterns right hand lead style, with the R on the cymbal and the L on the snare drum (and moving to other drums), adding bass drum as follows: 

The choice of  bass drum placement depends on the style you wish to create, and/or helps to support one of the hands. Notice that not all of one hand's pattern is supported with the kick as this would create a heavy or over-active bass drum part. Learn to abbreviate the kick part so that it supports the hands and stands by itself. Experiment! 

Basically, he adds bass drum along with some, but not all of the RH notes. 

Also see my Stick Control in odd meters posts, and Dahlgren & Fine in 5/4, for some other possibilities for adapting those books into odd meters. And see my Stick Control related posts generally, there's a ton of stuff. 

The big 7

Please pardon the lack of content. I've been occupied with other things this week, like our upcoming cymbal meets in Germany, and those couple of gigs with all the odd meters.  Which worked out well— I learned a lot from it. I'll do a full run down of what we did, but first let's talk about one angle on playing odd meters. 

Usually, when playing odd time signatures with an 8 as the bottom number— 5/8, 7/8, some forms of 9/8, 11/8, etc— the measures will have a lopsided feel, with long beats and short beats: 

Which you play from a foundation of groups of two and three 8th notes: 

Often that will be counted in 2+2+3/8: 1-2-1-2-1-2-3. 

Several of the tunes we played were written in 7/8, but were better felt in 7/4, with a steady quarter note beat, instead of the uneven quarter-quarter-dotted-quarter beat. A couple that were written in 5/4 strongly suggested a 5/8 phrasing. So there was (almost) always a strong feeling of */8 and */4 versions of a meter happening at the same time— 7/8 and 7/4, or 5/8 and 5/4. 

Because of that, many of the grooves had a partido alto-like feel to them— with several quarter notes in a row, alternating with several &s in a row: 

Part of one arrangement was in 6/4, with a similar rhythm: 

There was also a section of a tune in 9/8: 

Which I played like: 

And if you transcribe the main pulses of two measures of the 7/8 rhythm at the top of the post into one measure of 7/4, you get this: 

A notable thing about how you play that, and my main point here: when the tune is written in 7/8, with chords changing on the 1, but you're playing it in a 7/4 feel— the chord will change in the middle of the measure, on the & of 4. So you need to build that anticipation into your main groove. So this will be your rhythm framework, rather than steady quarter notes: 

Playing the big 5 in 5/8 doesn't seem to help much— or it didn't with this music. The problem with 5 generally is that it turns around so fast you're never get fully grounded. More on that later. 

Transcription: both versions of Flower Punk

I can't believe I never posted this. Back in 2017 I transcribed both versions of Frank Zappa's Flower Punk— the original, played by Jimmy Carl Black, on the Mothers of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money, and the version where Zappa had Chad Wackerman re-record the drums, released on The Lumpy Money Project/Object. I was going to do an e-book of Zappa drum transcriptions, but Zappa Corp has such an active legal department, I figured I'd probably get a cease and desist letter, and be forced to take it down. 

I like both versions. The Jimmy Carl Black version is kind of raggedy, but I like the energy with the broken up bass drum. Here are the first two (of four) pages of the transcription:

The Wackerman version is more solid, with some nice tom fills. His drum sound with Zappa is always kind of interesting. I can't recall hearing a sound like that anywhere else. The toms are somewhat reminiscent of Billy Cobham's sound— sort of an 80s version of that sound.

After 10 years I'm starting to feel kind of silly posting so much stuff absolutely free, so let's try something new: if you'd like to get these complete transcriptions, send $3.00 for both to: 

Venmo: @todd-bishop-16
PayPal: toddbishop@[cruiseshipdrummer dot com]  

Include your email, and the thing you want— Flower Punk transcriptions. 

In fact, if you'd like any of my e-books (see the sidebar), and don't feel like going through Amazon, send $5.00 via the above means. Print books you still have to order through Lulu, although I may start carrying them and shipping them myself soon.

7/8 practice rhythms plus stickings

This was partially covered in '15 with a similar post, but I wrote this up, so I'll post it. Small differences in format, or in which rhythms you choose to include, can make a difference in how you use practice materials. That's basically the entire premise of this site. These are some syncopation rhythms in 7/8, with their accompanying Stick Control-like pattern— the rhythm played with the right hand, and the 8th note grid filled out with the left. I've included only rhythms that give stickings or one or two notes in a row per hand.

We're in 3+2+2 phrasing here, so this is great for using with our old friend, the John Zorn Solitaire loop (I like practicing with that loop). The left hand column is in Ted Reed format, with a bass drum rhythm included— I always ignore that stems-down part. I just like using that traditional format. You can use that part as beat marks, to help you read the top-line rhythm.

Quick rundown of first practice options: play the left hand column rhythm on bass drum or snare drum, or a combination of the two (alternating, or 8th notes on SD/quarter notes on BD), along with any cymbal rhythm of your choice. Play the right hand column with left hand on snare drum, right hand on snare or toms, or any cymbal plus bass drum in unison. You can also play the rhythm and accents of the right hand column, with an alternating sticking.

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Stick Control in odd meters - 02

Continuing from the previous post on adapting roll exercises in Stick Control to odd meters— see that post for an explanation; I'll just give examples of a few more possibilities.

Like this rather advanced way of doing the p. 27 exercises:

Play the 8th notes as an 8th note triplet, and play the “10-tuplet” as 16th notes. That adds up to 7/8— we'll phrase it 2+2+3:

So the exercises are played like this:

Once again, you'll want a metronome that can click those accents— quarter note/quarter note/dotted quarter note, or 2+2+3. I use a free program called Open Metronome. These settings will get you that click:

With the p. 38 exercises, you can easily make a fast, simple 5/4:

Just ignore the tuplet indication over the quarter notes:

You can do these on the drumset by adding a bass drum note after each of the quarter notes.

You could also add a bass drum on every beat 1, along with a cymbal, played with whichever hand is indicated. I haven't written an example for that, but it's similar to what we did in the first post.

With exercises 9-12, you'll just get running 8th notes in 5/4:

There are many more possibilities, if you just ignore, add, or change tuplet indications, and figure out the resulting meter, as we've done here. Have fun!

Linear phrases in 7/8 - two measures

Dropping the other shoe here, so to speak, following the one-measure linear patterns in 7/8 from last week. I think we've got all the two measure patterns here that can't be made by combining the previous phrases. Or maybe I had to make a selection to fit it all on one page. I forget. It doesn't matter— one page is enough.

See the previous entry or consult your teacher (or me) if you need any instructions. This mathematical framework is Gary Chaffee's— look it up in Vol. 3 of his Patterns series of books. Using it requires a little bit of caution: viewing these phrases as series of numbered patterns all adding up to two measures of 7/8, it's easy to play abstractly and lose the beat and the barline. You should be putting a little emphasis (mentally, at least) on the downbeat and on the “4”— which is actually the 2 since we're in a fast 7/8, and really feeling it in 2, as 3+4/8.

The pdf includes a second page with the same patterns beamed with the more common 2+2+3 phrasing. If you don't mind the way the notes are beamed, you can also play these as one measure of 7/4, of course.

Get the pdf

Linear phrases in 7/8 - one measure

More fun with linear patterns in 7/8 time, with more to come. Using Gary Chaffee's 3-8 note linear patterns, we'll look at the only three possible combinations that fit in a single measure of 7/8: 3+4, 4+3, and 7, along with all possible inversions— the same phrases starting on each note of the first pattern. We've done this before. I've beamed the patterns the patterns in the 3+2+2 phrasing for use with our favorite John Zorn practice loop; on page 2 I wrote them out in the more common 2+2+3 phrasing.

The idea is to use these for soloing or timekeeping, so you can move your hands around the drums, or play with your right hand on a cymbal and left hand on the snare drum. Do whatever you like with your left foot; play the hihat on the first and/or fourth notes of the measure.

Also play all two-measure combinations of the first versions of each measure:

3+4 / 4+3

3+4 / 7

4+3 / 3+4

4+3 / 7

7 / 3+4

7 / 4+3

You could do two measure combinations of equivalent inversions, but that's getting a little much— unless for some reason you particularly like the inversions starting on the left hand, or starting with the bass drum.

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Linear patterns in 7/8 - RLBB

UPDATED 8/27: Added one thing to the pdf.

Another page of stuff to play with last year's smoking John Zorn “Solitaire” practice loop in 7/8, this time developing a very common four-note linear pattern, RLBB— an easy pattern to get lost with when playing in that meter. I make no promises about how useful/essential this is in everyday life, but it's fun to practice even if you're not doing a lot of odd meter playing. I take it on faith that it will have positive effects on other areas of my playing.

The method here is pretty straightforward: just play all of the patterns with the practice loop. Feel free to move your hands to any drums or cymbals you want. You can add rests to the patterns to make them fit with the two-measure phrases of the loop— add measures of rest so the practice phrase has an even number of measures. Also see my other materials for use with the Solitaire loop.

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Best books: Odd Meter Calisthenics by Mitchell Peters

Odd Meter Calisthenics for the Snare Drummer 
by Mitchell Peters - 79 pages

I own several books by Mitchell Peters, and though they're mostly excellent, I approached this one with caution. I was not wild about his other straight technique book I own, Developing Dexterity— which isn't bad, I just do not find myself using it very productively. I blame the book when I don't practice it. But Odd Meter Calisthenics, it turns out, is excellent. I would say that (along with Gary Chaffee's Odd Time Stickings and Ralph Humphrey's Even In The Odds) it's an essential library item for anyone interested in odd meters generally— the odd */8 meters especially.

It's sort of a Stick Control for odd meters, but more performance oriented, and just better and more fun in general. It covers the major technical essentials, mainly accents, singles, doubles, mixed stickings , flams, and rolls in */8 meters— mostly in 5/8 and 7/8, with some 10/8, 11/8, and other meters. The exercises are well organized into one or two page workouts, and the learning curve for any one section is not steep; the emphasis is more on practical dexterity in these meters, rather than demanding technical combinations. Taken as a whole, the book is basically a complete practical language for the hands for improvising in these meters. Highly recommended.

As a companion to this book, I also recommend Peters's Odd Meter Rudimental Etudes, a book of fairly traditional rudimental etudes along the lines of Haskell Harr, mainly in 5/8 and 7/8.

Flam accents in 7/8 — same-handed

Well, it's been a whirlwind of OTHER STUFF lately, hence the lack of posts— I won't bore you with that. This came up while working with our recent John Zorn loop in 7/8; it's a page of flammed and accented singles in 7/8, starting every measure with the left hand. I find the concept works well for soloing. For some reason, the double left leading into each downbeat helps the thing stay anchored— with a strictly alternating sticking, the lead changes hands every measure, and it's easier to lose it. We could've started every measure with the right hand, but it just plays hipper leading with the left. Since these patterns end with RLRL, it's easy to get out of it, too— you can just end with a RLRLR, and you're back into leading with your right.

A flam accent is of course a specific rudiment, and is mostly not in evidence here, but this thing has a similar feel to my old same-handed flam accent thing— also very useful in soloing— and I have had so little coffee yet that I'm not going to sweat the arguably misleading title. The exercises are not dramatically different from one another, so burn through this in page-at-once mode. Play these with brushes as well as with sticks.

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Dahlgren & Fine in 7/8 — 01

This is a continuation of a thing we did before, in which we worked on playing a very standard three note pattern, RLF, in 7/8, phrased 3+2+2— as it is in the tune Solitaire, by John Zorn, which has been our context for this series. If you're like me, you play a lot of three-note patterns, and have learned to do them well in 4/4 and 3/4 without getting lost. It's considerably more challenging in this fast 7/8. Here we'll take some triplet patterns from page 10 of  the book 4-Way Coordination, by Marvin Dahlgren and Elliot Fine, and learn to fit them into one measure of 7/8, creating a two measure phrase, alternating with an easy right hand-lead pattern in the second measure— a sticking pattern of RLLRLRL, with the RH on the cymbal, playing the bass drum along with the cymbal:

Mainly our job here is 1) to figure out what one measure of the three note pattern feels like— played all the way to beat one of the next measure, and 2) to figure out how to get into the second-measure RLLRLRL pattern, when, due to job 1, the first note may be a RH, RF, LH, or LF. And do it in a way that makes the downbeats clear to the people you're playing with.

On the page are several examples of a sequence of exercises for developing this idea— apply them to each of the 48 one-beat patterns on p. 10 of 4WC. We're using a Dahlgren & Fine-style staff, with each line representing a specified hand or foot. We're assuming the right hand is on a cymbal, the left hand on the snare drum, right foot on bass drum, left foot on hihat. You'll notice there's a black note head in the right hand part in the second and fourth examples— play those notes on the snare drum. In those cases, our three-note pattern ended on a left hand, and to get into the second measure pattern, we're starting it with a LRL on the snare drum. Also, in the fourth example, you'll notice that the second measure of the last exercise ends with a quarter note; that's just to avoid doing three notes in a row with the left hand on the repeat— one of my biases in my practice methods is that I'll try to avoid more than two hits in a row with any limb. It makes it easier to go faster, and lessens the need for developing a lot of chops. It's just a basic philosophy of mine— I don't want my playing to be dependent on having a lot of technical prowess. You can do whatever you want, of course. Just put together one measure of the three note pattern with one measure of RLLRLRL, and connect them however you see fit.

...what an ugly mass of verbiage. If I were you, I wouldn't read it— I'd just look at what's on the page, and try to figure out why it is the way it is, and apply it to the other patterns in 4WC.

Other suggestions: It's a good idea to accent the first note of each measure, and also the fourth note: 1-2-3-1-2-1-2. When the second measure starts with a solo right hand, play the bass drum along with it; when it starts with a solo bass drum, play the cymbal along with it— if you don't have to do anything awkward to do that. Whatever you do, go for the easiest, most flowing thing, that also states the downbeats clearly.

More of this type of thing coming soon...

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Stick Control exercises in 7/8

I was going to try to spread these 7/8 things out a little more, but I've been so occupied with other stuff— like, I'm getting married in a couple of weeks— I'm getting a little desperate to put something, anything up. And I happen to be working on this a lot right now. Between all of these several other pages on this, we should all fairly well have our stuff together for blowing in 7/8 in pretty short order.

Use these just like Stick Control— I play them on the snare drum for one minute each. To move them to the drum set, play your right hand on the cymbal or hihat, left hand on the snare drum, and play the bass drum with some or all of the cymbal notes. Move your left hand around the drums using our same old tom moves, if you'd like— that's a value-multiplier for anything you do on the drumset, actually.

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Practice loop: fast 7

At long last, here's that practice loop to go with all the stuff in 7 I've been posting of late. This is sampled from the tune Solitaire, from John Zorn's album O'o, which you should own. Joey Baron is on drums, and has a pretty killing solo on this tune. If you rip an mp3 from the video, using one of those barely-legal web browser extensions, and move it to your mp3 player, the track will loop cleanly— you can play along with this all day, if you want.

RLF pattern in 7/8!!!

UPDATE: I made a couple of small changes which I found helpful in practicing the patterns— in the first set of exercises there are some optional notes in parentheses, and I've changed line 6. I've also posted the practice loop. Get the new pdf here.

People, we've got a series going here— several pages aimed at getting basic vocabulary together for an up tempo 7/8— specifically, Solitaire, from John Zorn's album O'o. It's not usually that challenging an odd meter, but this tempo makes it not-easy in a couple of ways. Don't take this attention we're lavishing upon it to mean that I think this is a really important subject; but if you're playing a lot of modern music, someone's probably going to hit you with a fast 7/8, sometime. Maybe. Today we're looking at staying oriented playing the super-useful, super-familiar 3/8 pattern RLF:

The goal here is just to be able to improvise with this 3/8 pattern in 7/8 without getting lost— it won't be a technical challenge; everyone can play RLF at the speed required. You really need a point of reference, so it's best to play this page along with the practice loop, or with a metronome that can give you a dotted-quarter/quarter/quarter note rhythm.

The method here is very straightforward— just repeat each pattern many times, listening closely to the loop/click. You can your hands around the drums as you like. Also play these with the measures reversed, as well— it's easy to feel the two measures of 7/8 as one measure of 7/4, with a riff of 1-2-3--&-&-&--, which obviously can put the second measure on slightly odd footing.

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Never enough 7/8

Hey, it's what I'm working on this week. I can't help it if it's not especially high-priority. This is an easy Stick Control-based method in 7/8 time. Together with the other pages, including a couple more that are yet to come, and a reasonable amount of practicing, you should be in pretty good shape to survive an encounter with a fast 7/8.

I haven't broken down the method completely for you here, but it should be apparent enough if you are ready to practice it. We're playing a four note cymbal rhythm with the right hand on the cymbal, and playing the bass drum and snare drum in unison with it, based on the sticking patterns on the first thirteen exercises in the first section of Stick Control. R means bass drum, L means snare drum, so if the pattern in the book is RLRL, you'll play bass-snare-bass-snare, in the same rhythm as the cymbal part. Look— compare the exercises here with the same-numbered exercises in Stone:

At the bottom of the page are some examples of variations you can do with each of the patterns, which I recommend. Get all the patterns together as written, then do whatever variations you can come up with, with each of the patterns. On the second page of the pdf, there's a set of exercises for developing a lick which you'll certainly use a lot in improvising in this style. I've put the hihat on the 1, but you could also put it on the fourth 8th note of the measure— the “2” of the lopsided 3 that is 7/8.

I should probably get you the practice loop I'm using, hey? It's coming...

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Page o' coordination: blazing Zorn 7/8

More 7/8, this one specifically for very fast tempos, based on the riff from a tune called Solitaire, from John Zorn's album O'o. It's a short, simple, but very challenging vehicle for a drum solo, and Joey Baron absolutely kills it. I don't know if there's a real good reason to work this up if you're not playing a lot of modern music. I do get asked to play hard stuff, and the idea of having a piece like this put in front of me on a recording date, and me eating it as badly as I do practicing along with the recording, gives me hives. So I want to take a few minutes to learn to cover it.

The measures are phrased 3+2+2— unusual— but the tune is basically played “in 1”— one seven-note-subdivided-beat per measure. The format of the exercises is different than we usually do for the POCs— the left hand column  has the cymbal rhythm, with both feet on the downbeat, and a variety of left hand parts; the right hand column has the same patterns with additional bass drum notes.

Play it down in columns, go left to right down the page, whatever you want. I think if you're not able to whip through this up to speed in less than half an hour, you should probably be working on something else. Don't screw around.

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No YouTube for this one, which is just as well. Buy the track here, or the whole album. I wish I could give a link that forces you to go to your local record store and buy it there, instead of from Amazon. But it's good, buy it. 

Paradiddle exercises in 7/8

UPDATE: Man, I am getting sloppy. There were a bunch of typos and duplicate exercises in the original pdf— I've updated it, and included some accent variations in the triple paradiddle exercises. 

Hey, breaking our little dry spell, here's something to go with our last set of stuff in 7/8— some paradiddle exercises, using a variety of inversions and variations:

On the RLLR/LRRL inversions you can lose either of the accents for each beat— practice them with both accents, without the second accent, and without the first accent. Moving these to the drumset, you can play every 1 on the cymbal together with the bass drum; or play all the accents on a cymbal with the bass drum; or play the RH on the cymbal or hihat and the LH on the snare, with the bass drum in unison with some or all of the RH notes.

Get the pdf

7/8 rhythms

I got sort of lightly burned at a session recently, when a player pulled up a tune he had written which was in a fast 7/8. I've been working on my odd meters quite a bit in recent years— for the better part of my career I felt they were a relic of the 70s, and not very happening. I was more about finding a lot of freedom in 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8; with the odd meters I felt you were back in the stone age, playing a lot of downbeats. Now everyone's playing them again, and I needed to get them together for real. I thought I was pretty happening with it, until that fast 7/8, which took me a few minutes of fumbling around to find my vocabulary. I still feel the */8 odd meters are a leetle bit jive, as they put a little rhythmic straight jacket on you— you always have to catch the 2+2+3— it's almost a clave— or it falls apart. Maybe I just lack vision.

Or maybe I just need to work on it more. So here are a few basic rhythms in 7/8, in plain form (plus the beat written out, a la Ted Reed), and filled in. The right hand column has the rhythm played on the cymbal, filled out on the snare drum to make running 8th notes.

Get the pdf, and after the break I'll give some ways of using this.

Transcription: Ralph Humphrey — Don't Eat The Yellow Snow

Here's a nice introduction to rock in drumming in 7: Ralph Humphrey's part from Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, from Apostrophe by Frank Zappa. I go way back with this song, to 1974 when I was 7 and my brother brought the record home. I think this was the first thing I ever heard that it occurred to me to ask who it was who was playing it.

It's mostly in 7/4, with a few measures of 7/8. The 7/4 is a half-time feel, phrased as 2+2+3 quarter notes, and the 7/8 is a 16th note rock feel, and breaks down to 2+2+3 eighth notes. The feel change on top of the meter change may be a little confusing, but the underlying pulse is consistent between meters. It's tempting to try to explain it, but you can figure it out if you follow along with the recording a few times. Go ahead and count through the rests at the end— get a feel for how the 4/4 contrasts with the 7/4.

Get the pdf

Audio after the break:

Groove o' the day: Billy Cobham in 7/8

Today we have another odd-meter Billy Cobham groove from the track "b. Spectrum" from his 1973 album Spectrum:

He plays the unaccented notes stronger than is customary today, and puts a light accent on the last note of the triplet; the natural sticking for that is LRL. If you're looking for opportunities to make variations, easy things would be to add a bass drum on the & of 2, or play it along with the hihat on the "&-a's" of 1 and 3.

From early in the track, here's a variation without the 16th note triplet, with an extra open hihat, and a different second beat:

YouTube audio after the break: