Warm ups for Alan Dawson's “Para Bossa” system

Alan Dawson's Para Bossa system, from John Ramsay's book, The Drummer's Complete Vocabulary, is a way of interpreting exercises in Ted Reed's Syncopation as 16th note paradiddles, and extended paradiddles, with a samba rhythm in the feet. I was going over it with a student yesterday, and we thought it would be helpful to write out some warmups. Mainly for lining it up with the feet. 

For each line, on the left is the rhythm written as it appears (or would appear) in Syncopation, on the right is the interpreted pattern for it: 

No, there's no 6/4, in Syncopation, but if you play these exercises you'll be covered for all the ways the similar rhythms do appear there. 

Play all the warm ups— starting with the left hand, as well— then practice the system reading from Synopation, pp. 30-45. First with hands only, then add samba rhythm with the feet. 

Get the pdf

Very occasional quote of the day: groove interference

“Coordination is a nice thing to have going, don't get me wrong. But taken to extremes, you set up rhythmic interference instead of maintaining a groove. It's not that you're being too busy. It's just a case of having things running so counter to each other that the whole thing stops swinging. Grooving means getting into whatever's happening around you in the band. Basically, it means following the path of least resistance.”

—Alan Dawson, Modern Drummer, July '1977

Now you're talking

Here's what I like to see— London drummer/blogger Sam Yadel has adapted Alan Dawson's “Rudimental Ritual” into 5/4:

I'm not much of a RR guy— it was just never a part of the drumming culture out here— but I heartily endorse this; go pay Sam a visit to get all five pages of it.

UPDATE: Part 2 is up.

Alan Dawson's “Ruff Bossa”

We're laying it on pretty thick with the Reed interpretations right now, but I just went over this with a student, so I need to put up one more. It's a swing interpretation with partially filled-in triplets, using the 8th note rest and syncopation sections of Reed (pp. 29-44 in the old edition). Alan Dawson called this the “Ruff Bossa” interpretation for reasons I can't fathom— there are no ruffs involved, and I can't discern the Bossa Nova connection.

So here's how to interpret each written beat of the exercises, based on how the notes sound; after p. 32  you'll be dealing with rhythms that are equivalent to the ones below, but are written differently.

Play written 8th notes as alternating swing 8ths:

Play written quarter notes (or the equivalent) as an 8th note triplet with a RLL sticking, accenting the right hand:

Play notes sounding on an & only as a triplet with a RRL sticking, accenting left:

On beats where there's no note sounding— like if there's a rest, or the end of a tied/dotted note, or some combination thereof— use whichever triplet sticking you like, but don't accent.

Examples after the break:

Ralph Peterson interview

Here's a nice interview with Ralph Peterson by now-Portland pianist George Colligan. They talk about a lot of things, but I've pulled out the bits most related to actually hitting the drums, because that's what we do around here- definitely go read the entire piece.

Andrew Hare @ The Melodic Drummer has a little Peterson post up now as well, with a clip from the Jazz Heaven site.


Alan Dawson's method
So, I was always talking about my philosophy regarding any kind of musical information: take what you need and leave the rest. And don’t buy in lock -stock-and-barrel to any philosophy that is not based in your own experience. Because then you are not living your life. You are living somebody else’s.

And so, to the extent that the program is now moving back towards a complete embracing – of every idea that Alan had, every idea that Alan has is not going to work for everybody, and what Alan taught, he lived, and he might have taught it differently to Kenwood Dennard, and then differently to Terri Lynne Carrington, and that might have been different from the way he taught John Ramsay. Because Alan is making you do three rudiments at a time, and you don’t get anymore rudiments until you come back for the next lesson. Maybe it's because he doesn’t think you can handle any more information than that. Maybe another student who has either a better work ethic... or ability to absorb information at a greater rate… they might get more. You can give information many different ways. But I‘m personally not going to hold somebody back based on a pre-described formula.


Tunes
Drummers have to learn tunes. The other thing I teach is break your dependence on the Real Book. First of all, 60% of the Real Book is wrong. The other thing is if you only learn repertoire out of the book? Then you won't learn application. You won't learn the syntax and the language.You will learn the syntax and the language by listening to the recording. And you can learn the melody, but, to hear how the melody was..... most creatively improvised on, you have to listen to the records.

Something key

Jon McCaslin presents a very core principle of modern jazz drumming, via a lesson from Alan Dawson. The 3/8-within-4/4 polyrhythm has been present in a variety of forms in jazz since the beginning, and became a core part of the rhythm section concept  with the Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans groups of the early '60's. It comes from African music, and is a very elemental way of conceiving and expressing time and meter.

In Dawson's approach, as presented by McCaslin, it's treated as a melodic idea, in the bebop fashion- the recurring dotted quarter (and rhythms derived from it) is something of a special occasion within distinctly 4/4 bop playing. In post-60's playing, I regard it as more or less ever-present, whether it's stated directly or not- I may be a little bit of an extremist that way. It's often used (and abused) as a tension-producing device- "metric modulation", the currently popular pre-packaged indicator of amazingness, is the most egregious example of this.

This isn't exactly a how-to piece, but you can begin to introduce this into your playing by following the instructions at 4OTF, by getting very familiar with the way 3/8 and 3/4 lay against various 4/4 phrases, by getting your snare drum stuff together in 3/8 and 3/4 (here's a clue for how to begin applying that to the drums), by studying the difference between/similarity of 3/4 and 6/8, and especially by doing a lot of listening to the great drummers since the 1960's, including Elvin Jones, Roy Haynes, Jack Dejohnette, Bob Moses, Billy Hart, Jon Christiansen, Barry Altschul, et al, and to African, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian drumming. I didn't say it was easy...

Two Stone applications by Alan Dawson

Here are a couple of Stick Control applications by Alan Dawson, from JohnW in Massachusetts, a knowledgeable Drummerworld.com forum contributor who studied with him in 1982-83.

For the hands:

Use Stick Control p. 5, ex. 1-12, starting ~1/2 note= 72 BPM. Play quarter notes on the bass drum, 2 and 4 on the hi-hat.

Play each exercise one time, followed by 4R 4L 4R 4L after each line.

After ex. 12, go back to the beginning and play ex. 1-12 one time,  followed 8R 8L 8R 8L.

Repeat process, following each line with 16R, 16L, 16R, 16L.

Repeat the process, following each line with a 16th note single stroke roll lasting as long as one exercise line- two measures of 2/2 or 4/4.  End on the downbeat of the next bar, then rest for the remainder of the measure. "The key is to start the single strokes with the OPPOSITE hand of the last note in the line preceding it."

"He also had a shortcut version, where you played lines 1-4 with each line followed by 4 Rights 4 Lefts, 4 Rights 4 Lefts, 5-8 followed by 8R 8L, 8R 8L, then 9-12 followed by 16R 16L, 16R 16L."


For drumset:

R=SNARE, L=BASS DRUM.

Sing "Take the A-Train", metronome at half note=72

Play 4 bars of jazz time: swing pattern on cymbal, hihat on 2 and 4, feather bass drum (or tap heel) on quarters, snare rim click on beat 4.

Follow with 4 bars of ex. 1, swinging the 8th notes, with jazz time continuing on cymbal and hihat.

Repeat process for ex. 2-4, which will take one full chorus of A-Train (A-A-B-A). Repeat the process for ex. 5-8 and 9-12.

After the break, John shares some of his memories of studying with Dawson:

1978 Modern Drummer interview: Tony Williams

From the Modern Drummer digital archive, here are some excerpts from a 1978 interview with Tony Williams. I've edited out the large hunks of it where they discuss single-headed toms, the merits of fiberglass drums, the new electronics the kids are using, and CS Black Dots vs. calf heads, keeping just the essence of what I thought was interesting. The subject headings are also mine.

STARTED AT AGE: Nine.

FIRST SET OF DRUMS: An old Radio King set. It consisted of a very large bass drum, 28 or 30 inches, and a 16" tom that was mounted on the bass. It was a very old type of set, probably made in the early forties. There was also a snare and a hihat. The hi-hat cymbals were almost all bell. The bell used up more space than the flat section. They were only about 12 or 13 inches, with this huge bell - about nine inches. I got rid of those pretty quickly.

FORMAL STUDY: After about four or five years on my own, I took lessons with Alan Dawson. Private lessons. I never did play in school because there were no musical facilities in my high school.

PRACTICING: When I was practicing every day, I was doing nothing else but that. I'd get up in the morning and not even bother getting dressed. I'd just move to the drums in my pajamas. I would be playing on the pad while I watched TV, and I'd go over another drummer's house and play with him. All drumming - all day. I practiced on the pad to develop my hands. I started reading when I began studying with Alan. I feel that my hands are the most important thing. But I also liked to practice for at least an hour on the drums. No routines, no books.

1985 Modern Drummer interview: Alan Dawson

Have I mentioned lately what a great resource the Modern Drummer digital archive is? Here are my excerpts from a 1985 Modern Drummer interview with one of the great teachers of the drums, Alan Dawson.

Wikipedia describes his methods:

His teaching style emphasized the music as a whole rather than concentrate on percussion alone. He stressed the importance of learning the melody and structure of the tune to better fulfill the role of accompaniment. For this purpose, he had students play over standards while also singing the melody out loud. He constantly strived for balance between musical ideas and strict technique. He was big on rudiments and wrote extensive exercises intended to be practiced with brushes. He believed using brushes with his "Rudimental Ritual" would reduce stick rebound allowing the sense of "picking up" the sticks. 

The interview:

SWINGING:
[T]here are a lot of analogies between dancing and playing. In fact, I use that a lot if I talk about the cymbal rhythm. I always use the vision that the player should have the stick dancing on the cymbal. I think about that as a definite contrast between the approach to dancing and the approach to marching. When you march, you tend to march on your heels. I was in the army, of course. They told you to march on your heels. The reason is that it keeps you from bouncing up and down. When you walk on your toes, you bounce, and that's too nonuniform for marching. But if you dance, you dance on your toes to get that buoyant feeling, rather than clomping around.

That, I suppose, is the basic difference between a person having a good beat and a person swinging something and having a buoyant feeling. There's a difference. Having a good beat would be laying the beat down and being definite about it with straight tempo. If that was all there was to it, then a metronome would be better than any drummer.