Figure Control: 4/4 - Nexus riff

Let's do one of these for the rhythm in the Nexus practice loop. You'll recall, with this Funk Control / Figure Control series what I do is take a single performance rhythm and put a lot of common Reed style interpretations on it, all on one page, so you can practice playing them together easily and completely.

You could do that without me writing it out, but as you're first becoming familiar with this kind of thing, it's good to see it all together. You'll probably end up doing some combinations of things you wouldn't get to if you were just working from memory.

The top portion of the page just gives you the basic rhythm and foundational interpretations of it— there's no special need to practice them, but take a moment to study them and figure out how they relate to the base rhythm. Learn each of the practice patterns individually, then play all possible combinations of them:

A-B, A-C, A-D, through A-O

B-C, B-D, B-E, through B-O

C-D, C-E, etc

For each combination, play each measure once or twice:

ABAB

AABBAABB

Practice each sequence above many times, of course. Take care with the transitions between patterns— get them right in the practice room and you'll have better control when improvising on stage. Don't be too hihat-centric in your practicing— use all the cymbals. Pattern C and the hand unisons in patterns L and N can be played on cym/snare or toms/snare. Move patterns K and O around the drums.

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Figure and fills: Rover

Here's a page of drum orchestrations and fills based on a rhythmic figure from the tune Rover, on my album Travelogue, along with a practice loop sampled from it. The fills/orchestrations start very simply, building up to fairly complex. Learn to play them in your own way, and make your own variations on them.

We did a similar thing a few years ago with Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island. I should write more of these!

Drum parts can and should be played on any drum, the cymbal part can be played on any cymbal. Vary the stickings as you see fit; the natural sticking for the drum set is to play the right hand on the cymbal, and the left hand on the drums, bringing your right hand to the drums as needed— in which case you can either play an alternating sticking, or doubles, or doubles mixed with singles, or a rudimental sticking. On items that don't have the hands in unison, you can also experiment with an alternating sticking— which will have your left hand moving to the cymbal sometimes. Whatever works for you.

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The tune was co-composed by me and Jasnam Daya Singh (née Weber Iago, née Weber Drummond), the pianist on the album. The loop is sampled from the intro, which was written by Jasnam:

Stairway to Heaven figure

This is something I did for a student who was looking for some help playing Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin. On the out chorus— or whatever you want to call it; the song is basically just a four bar verse plus a bridge and a C section, and doesn't really have a chorus— there is a rhythmic figure which John Bonham plays a few different ways, and uses as the basis for his fills. I haven't transcribed what he plays exactly, but I wrote out some obvious ways of playing the figure which are very similar to what he's doing.

Learn the orchestrations individually, then practice them as part of the two-measure practice phrase— which happens to be the same way it happens in the song. When you have it up to speed, run them along with the practice loop. The orchestrations are not meant to be married to any particular drum or cymbal. They also don't need to be played exactly; you can improvise your own way of playing each basic idea.

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Figure Control: 6-4 - Lilin - 01

Let's just assume every post begins with an apology for the light posting— I've just been very busy with playing, teaching, and getting ready for an art show this past few weeks.

This Funk Control/Figure Control/Whatever Control format I've been working with lately is proving to be quite a useful concept— taking interpretations commonly applied to Syncopation, and using them with a single rhythm, and then combining them. Today we've got another rhythm in 6/4, based on the bass vamp from Lilin, a tune played by John Zorn's Masada.

There will be a practice loop to use with this page forthcoming in the next couple of days. The tempo is more reasonable than that of the Free Design loop we used with the previous page in 6.

Play through the base rhythm and iterations at the top of the page once,  just so you can be familiar with the foundations of the lettered exercises. Then learn the individual lettered exercises, repeating each of them many times. Then practice combining lettered exercises, in the following template:

A-B, A-C, A-D, etc... B-C, B-D, B-E, etc... C-D, C-E, C-F, etc...

Follow that system until you've played all combinations of patterns. Note that you don't have to work backwards; when you get to the combinations starting with B, you don't have to do B-A, because you already did A-B when you did the As.

With each combination, play each component pattern one or two times, repeating the entire combination phrase many times:

||: A-A-B-B :|| 

||: A-B :||

With all of the pages in this series, there are so many exercises and combinations of exercises to learn, that if you really have a problem with any of them at a certain tempo, there's no problem with just cutting those exercises from your routine. Learning to play the exercises is just the first part of this system— what's more important is learning to combine whatever patterns you can play really well. There's no point in including a pattern you're really struggling with in practicing that part of the system.

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Figure Control - 6/4 - 02

Another page of Funk Control type exercises for use with my Stereolab/Free Design practice loop. We're calling this portion of the series Figure Control since it's not really funk, and we're basing the exercises on a specific rhythmic figure— I'm still working it out the concept. The practice variations are slightly different from the first page in 6/4, too. The tempo of the Stereolab loop is pretty cooking, so you might find a slower one to work these up.

You remember the methodology: learn each of the lettered practice exercises, and play them many times, say for one minute each. Then combine them; play every combination of patterns:

A-B, A-C, A-D, etc / B-C, B-D, B-E, etc / C-D, C-E, etc

For whatever letter exercise is first in the combination, you only have to combine it with letters that come after it. For example you don't have to practice B-A, because you already did A-B when you practiced the As.

Play each exercise in the combination one or two times; play the sequence many times:

||: A - B :||
||: A - A- B - B :||

The cymbal part in the exercises can be played on any cymbal; if an open hihat is indicated, play that exercise on the hihat. The drum parts can be played on the snare drum or moving around the drums.

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FIGURE CONTROL: 6/4 - Free Design riff

Stretching the concept of my Funk Control series a little bit. Here we're just doing some basic orchestrations with a rhythmic figure, the vamp in 6/4 from Stereolab's The Free Design, which I posted before as a fun practice loop.

The idea behind this and the Funk Control series is to learn all the patterns, play them many times, then do all possible combinations of patterns using the following logic:

A-B, A-C, A-D... B-C, B-D, B-F... C-D, C-E... etc

Play each combination many times, playing each component pattern one or two times:

||: A - B :||  or  ||: A - A - B - B :||


Feel free to move your hands around the drums and cymbals. The cymbal part can be played on the ride cymbal or hihat— obviously any that include open hihat must be played on the hihat. There are some places where the hands are in unison; feel free to play the right hand on a tom tom instead of the cymbal. The part written on the snare drum line in the middle of the staff can be played on the snare, or on any drum.

The first two lines just illustrate the foundation rhythm, and the basic orchestrations from which the other orchestrations are derived.

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