Listening: Delfeayo's Dilemma

Responding to a forum question, referencing Delfeayo's Dilemma, a Wynton Marsalis tune, as recorded by Kenny Garrett on his record Triology, with Blade on drums.

How does one even beginning practicing playing time the way someone like Brian Blade does? There are some modern jazz drummers such as Brian Blade who almost never sound like they’re playing a groove or pattern. They’re constantly reacting to what’s happening around them.

So let's listen to that a bunch of times, and talk about it. 

First, what Brian Blade is doing is not primarily reacting, he's proactively playing the form. The main thing is the form. You and Brian Blade both have the same job playing this tune: keep up and play the form. That's what all the drum stuff is in aid of. 

In fact that's all let's talk about— the question is not how do I play that drum stuff, it's how do I have the same job as him. Once you know what your job is, you can play whatever you want— know the vibe you're after, and try to make it with whatever playing resources you have available.  

Here's a chart, which I found on some sleazebag pdf site. The first few listens through make sure you can follow the chart, and hear harmonic movement in the bass— look at the chords on the page, and listen to the changes in color from the bass. Count out loud if you have to.  

It goes down exactly like the chart— they play from the top of the page, take the first ending, play from the top of the page again, take the second ending, play the solo form however many times they play it, go back to the top of the chart, play to the coda sign, take the coda, and you're done. 

The form is 6 + 6  |  4 + 4  |  3 + 1 bar 3/4 + 4 (or 2 the second time, head only). We could call that ABC—  12 bars + 8 bars + 8* bars. 

* - Don't screw up the 3/4 bar!

And no, there is no good bloody reason to have the 3/4 bar— it has zero effect, it's just there to trap and punish people. Typical Marsalis BS. 

When you can keep up with the form, listen to the solo choruses. Here's the solo form helpfully color coded to make it easy to correspond what you hear Blade playing with where it falls in the phrase. Listen many times while following this, and notice where the activity is happening. Where do the big cymbal accents happen? Where do the big fills or big comping statements happen? Where do the big dynamic/density changes happen? How contained is he within the phrases?

This video has a transcription of Garrett's playing— you can follow along to hear how Blade's playing interacts with it, but don't hang too much on the interaction aspect. The form is what's important. 

So yeah, I suggest listening about 20 times. The solo begins at 0:47.

Transcription: Brian Blade - Alabama

Here's an easy look at some medium tempo playing by Brian Blade, on the swing portion of the tune Alabama. From Pursuance, Kenny Garrett's album of the music of John Coltrane. The transcription begins where the bass comes in with time after 1:50 in the track.

Garrett's trio plays this section with a different vibe from the way Coltrane's band played it— with a rather Ornette-like, “free bop” feel, not leaning on the four bar phrases as strongly as Coltrane. Blade plays some superficially Elvin-like things here, but clearly things are happening for a different reason with him. 8th notes are swung, of course, and Blade's cymbal rhythm here tends toward a dotted-8th/16th interpretation, though there is also a triplet interpretation very present in the comping. A lot of people seem to have a misunderstanding about jazz rhythm— typically everything is not worked out to a single subdivision grid. 

Get the pdf

Another Brian Blade performance

Since I've established a precedent of writing about it when I see Brian Blade play, I should write something feeble about last night's show. Blade was playing with the guitarist/composer Joel Harrison, in a pretty all-star group including trumpet player Cuong Vu and bassist Kermit Driscoll, and bassoonist Paul Hanson. The band had mostly just met each other a few days earlier, and was playing very hard music. Sitting in the little balcony at Mississippi Studios, the sound was about one million times better than the last time I saw him play.

So, a few hastily-written impressions. I can't promise I didn't miss the big lessons of the performance (they're probably unwritable, anyway), or misapprehend what was really going on, but we have to start somewhere:

Everything he plays has dynamic shape; everything goes somewhere, usually in a way you can't miss. He shapes his lines dramatically, even while staying at a very low volume.

Most of his playing occurred in the pp-mf range— in a zone of very low stick heights for the drumset— and he appeared to be very comfortable expressing the music at that level.  The bigger, more dramatic stuff, in the zone Blade is famous for, was very occasional; the group wasn't quite at an Inglourious Basterds-level  build up : actual action ratio, but they were getting there.


He is a master at following a soloist's line.

Absolute confidence in the other players, that the time and the form will be there no matter what he does. I wonder how he would play with weaker musicians; you would think he would have to play more straightforwardly for them, but you also suspect he does his thing so well that he induces people to play far above their normal level, and that they will be able to play with him in spite of themselves.

He always seems to have a higher gear.

He has a right hand worthy of some of the Brazilian players I've been listening to— capable of playing very fast, very soft 8th notes.


Very little repetition. Gives the impression of very little straight functional drumming; plays his functional things in a fractured way— I want to say “displaced”, but that conjures up an area of drummer-jive that was not at all present in the performance. Let's say he moves things around from where you expect them to be, while still maintaining the feel. Plays more in terms of lines and colors.


Very post-Tony Williams— 60's Tony Williams. Very much in the “jazz percussion” mode I've talked about before— I've nibbled at the edges of understanding it, anyway.

He pays attention to sound, drawing a lot of different timbres out of the instrument.

When he needs to switch sticks during a song, he lays the unused set across his lap. Never used brushes, did use mallets.

He used some interesting— sticks, I guess?— possibly home made. They appeared to be sticks fully wrapped in soft material, with some padding. Laid a cloth across his floor tom during one tune.

Comping instruments should not jump on the drummer's rhythm when the drummer does a cross-rhythm; we've all heard it done a thousand times, to the point that we think it's good, but it isn't. It's a pretty crass form of playing for effect; an easy, highly abused device for giving the audience some tension and release. Still, a lot of very good players do it, and last night there seemed to be a couple of instances where the guitar Mickey Moused (that's Peter Erskine's term for it) Blade's cross-rhythm during a big crescendo, and Blade pulled away, declining to make the easy payoff.

Nothing to to with Blade, but Kermit Driscoll is an incredible musician.

Brian Blade transcription

Drummer/blogger Sam Nadel of London has given us a nice, heavy transcription of Brian Blade's solo on Jazz Crimes, along with a whole lot of other good stuff.

Give a listen to the audio after the break, then go download the complete transcription:

Cracking 5/4: listening

Here's the first in a series on playing in 5/4. Since everything in music follows from listening (and this is the easiest type of post for me to write), we'll start with some recorded examples:

5/4 Thing - Elvin Jones / Coalition - drums by Elvin Jones
I've got a partial transcription of this one lurking somewhere. I'll try to dig it up and isolate something like a primary groove out of it:



Much more after the break:

Some observations on a Brian Blade performance

Last night Brian Blade played in town, and I thought I'd share a few impressions from it. I can't promise they hold any sway outside of that concert as perceived by me from the side of the room, around row 15. Some of them are contradictory, and none of them are criticism- except regarding the sound of the room. That was just bad. 

- Here's an example of a drummer generating energy by his engagement and his presence. The vibraphonist, Joe Locke, would've filled that role if Blade hadn't been present.

- Huge range of dynamics, of course. There were brief moments when the drums were the loudest instrument on stage. Maybe once per tune, or less, and for just a few notes at most. Not always at the obvious spot in the form, or at the peak of the arc, and usually not in unison with another instrument. The music had a notably more one-dimensional feel when he wasn't making those; the more sustained-dynamic sections would've fared better on a recording, or in a more intimate setting. The take-away: make big punctuations, but judiciously.

- Noting to myself the difference between music designed to wow a large live audience and music made for other purposes. At one point in my life these massive climactic moments seemed to be the central purpose of music; now I see them more as a device for appealing to a festival audience. I don't especially look for them in recorded music.

- Those Gretsch hoops sure sound clunky. They're part of the terrain of jazz drumming, but they really don't make a musical rim shots.


More astute observations and a few BB YouTube clips after the break: