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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Stone on drumset: sixtuplet exercise

We're doing quite a bit with the book Stick Control on the drumset these days. There are a lot of things I don't like about the book— mainly that it's based on abstract sequences of Rs and Ls over a single rhythm, and there's no musical reference for that. But real players do use it, and it's such a familiar book that it's good to try to connect it with other things we do. And I think playing it on the drumset also helps make it more valuable as a snare drum book— a drumset orchestration gives those Rs and Ls some actual musical meaning.

This is a little thing you can do with the triplet portion of the book— exercises 1-12 on page 8, and all of page 9. We're playing in cut time, with two beats per measure.

On the 8th notes portion we're using the same orchestration as on my recent Stone drumset exercises: play the RH on any cymbal, with bass drum in unison, play the LH on any drum. On the triplet portion we'll plug in a standard triplet lick, RLB. So ex. 1 from p.8 of Stick Control:

Would be played:

For the LH-leading exercises you could do the same triplet lick reversed— LRB— but I like to do LBR. So for exercise 2 from Stone:

 I play:

So any time the triplet portion begins with the right I play RLB, and anytime it begins with the left I play LBR. So exercise 5:

Would be played:

Of course, you can plug in anything you want on the triplet portion. For example:

Whatever you like. Keep your hands moving around the drums and cymbals. Get this thoroughly together in the half note = 60-90 range before worrying about getting it faster.  

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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FUNK CONTROL: alternative set 1 - complete

I'm working out the format for putting this “Basic Funk Ideas” series into book form, tentatively titled “Funk Control.” The top of the page, labeled “Basic rhythm and iterations” shows the source rhythmic idea for the page, along with the other forms of it, from which we create the exercises— you don't need to practice these, just understand how they relate to the starting rhythm. I've changed the presentation to give all of the variations for one pattern on one page.

Anyway, here's a new page of stuff, using a pattern, and a few variations, which is not on the previous pages:

Same suggestions as always: learn the exercises individually, then play them in combinations, playing each lettered exercise 1, 2, or 4 times each. On variations N-P, move around the drums freely; you can also improvise the sticking for variation N.

With all my materials I like to be able cover one page completely in half an hour or less, but this system is a little long for that. There are 120 total combinations of patterns, and blasting straight through them at quarter note = 80 bpm, playing each measure one time, takes 6 minutes. Playing each combo twice would take 12 minutes; playing each combo and measure twice would take 24 minutes. I like practicing them playing each measure 1x and 2x, so at that tempo the shortest possible session would be 36 minutes. Doing additional repetitions where you actually practice takes longer than that, so you may want to split each page into two practice sessions; you could do combinations starting with A-E the first day, and F-P the second. Or do it in three sessions: A-C, D-G, and H-O.

UPDATE: Oh, there's a typo— the sixtuplet sticking at the top of the page gives a 6-stroke roll type sticking, but we want to do all of the accents with the right hand. It should be RLL RLR LLR LRL, if you want to pencil it in. The stickings in the actual exercises are all correct.

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Basic funk ideas in 6/8: four iterations - 01

I'm not happy with this title for this series, but I'm going to hang with it as long as we're posting on the blog. It's rapidly evolving into a Stick Control-like system for funk drumming (only way more fun), and the possible subject for a book (“FUNK CONTROL”???). I'm feeling very good about this system, and believe it's worth dedicating significant effort to working through it thoroughly. I think this is a more direct route to playing modern, creative funk than I've seen in any book.

So let's expand on it a little bit, with 16th notes in 6/8:

To review the practice routine:

Practice one line at a time. Learn all four lettered patterns individually, then play them in all combinations, one to four times each:

AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, CD

You might play these along with a slow 12/8 recording at first, like Led Zeppelin's You Shook Me. Maybe you can fit them over a fast, modern jazz waltz or 6/4— you could make your own loop of Footprints. In writing them I've been playing along with an Afro 6/8 loop like this. They look an awful lot like sixtuplets in a */4 meter, but I wouldn't start there— playing them with a sixtuplet groove in 4/4. Hell, you could do them along with Natural Woman, really concentrating on finding a pocket— it's slow, but it's not easy.

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Basic funk ideas: four iterations - 03

Another page of this modern funk method— we're going to need a better name for this thing, as we're getting well beyond basic. This is turning into quite an epic. Normally, working on fairly demanding materials, I like to practice a full page at a time— working through a full page of stuff pretty thoroughly in 15-30 minutes of practicing. With this we're now looking at about 15-30 minutes per numbered row of exercises— doing all the combinations, using all three pages. So you could take nine days to get through the whole thing; it is a solid method and I think it is worth that level of commitment— I encourage you to actually do that.

The method, again: After getting basically familiar with the patterns by playing them several times individually, begin combining patterns as follows, playing each lettered pattern 4x, 2x, and 1x:

AB, AC AD... BC, BD... CD...

Do that across all the pages, so you'll be combining all patterns from the same numbered row on all three pages. Not a small assignment. It wouldn't be a bad idea to play through each page by the vertical column, just playing the patterns 4x each. No need to do combinations when working that way.

Our relation to the original patterns is getting slightly less obvious, so here's what's going on: Column A is a groove with a baiao-style hihat rhythm; column B has the cymbal in unison with the bass drum on beat 1, in unison with the snare drum on beat 2; column C has open hihat on single bass drum notes, and on the second bass drum note of any doubles; column D is alternating sixtuplets, playing cymbal accents in unison with the bass drum— this will be harder to do at faster tempos, so I would cut that from the routine rather than let it prevent me from doing the system fast.

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