Metric modulation a la Silverman - 01

A student brought in a copy of Chuck Silverman's Practical Applications: Afro-Caribbean Rhythms for Drum Set, and we worked through a part of it together, dealing with metric modulations— or more accurately superimposed metric modulations (Vinnie Colaiuta's term).

It means an illusory tempo/time change while remaining in the original meter. It's a drumming hot topic; as a musical device it's mainly a trap, a bad decision. But it's worth pursuing a little bit to learn something about rhythm. 

Patterns 1 and 2 are warm ups; line 3 is the pattern as it appears in Silverman's book. Lines 4-10 are my own variations, making some basic funk rhythms, superimposed. 

As an exercise, you could play four measures of a simple half time feel groove with the same cymbal rhythm, alternating with four measures of the above patterns: 

Try it along with a Afro 6 type loop— here's a reasonable-tempo one, and a faster one. 

Here's a similar page I wrote in 2019. 

Get the pdf

Paradiddle round-up

In case you haven't gotten enough to work on with the paradiddle things I've posted, here are some exercises gathered from around the web. I've only linked to pages that actually use notation- I'm a little fed up with people who present things with video only- write them out, doodz. Anyway, there should be something in here for just about everyone:

First, via my pals at Drum! Magazine, here from Danny Gottlieb is a Joe Morello exercise for developing uptempo jazz.

Good Lord. PIT's Chuck Silverman gives us a big page of stuff- you'll likely get sidetracked on the way to the paradiddles. Here's another page of his using paradiddles to outline clave. This will probably get its own post later on.

Here's something very special, via Music For Drummers: a free download of Dave Tough's paradiddle book. It's out of print, and God knows who owns the rights to it. According to MFD there are three library copies in existence. If that link goes dead, you can try one of these.

Bill Rotella's Drum Beatings has a pretty hefty offering of paradiddle inversions in 16th notes and triplets, plus a couple of serious "diddle mania" pages, plus a page of paradiddles extended within 5, 7, and 9 note odd rhythms.

Tiger Bill's Drum Beat has a decent page of paradiddle inversions and combinations, along with several Accents-and-Rebounds-type applications.

A number of other worthwhile things, from basic to advanced, after the break: