A different kind of march

Playing a traditional/military-style march is something we have to do occasionally as drummers, so we may as well learn a few different ways of doing it. This is a hip, interesting take on the concept by Lalo Schifrin, from the soundtrack of the 1970 Clint Eastwood movie Kelly's Heroes. The rhythms here have more to do with samba than they do with Haskell Harr. I don't know who the percussionists are on it— I assume Emil Richards is in there, Joe Porcaro, maybe Paul Humphrey. The part is certainly written by Schifrin.

There are two snare drums being played on the recording, and sometimes the parts differ slightly. There are probably more flams being played than I have notated. That's traditionally the nature of percussion in a quasi-military band— the composer writes out a basic rhythmic part, and the drummer makes whatever rudimental embellishments he can get away with. Here the differing parts fatten up the sound and contribute to the ragtag vibe they're certainly going for with the composition. There are cymbals played in unison with all of the bass drum notes; if you wanted to work this up on the drums, you could play both feet in unison for that.

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Transcription: John Guerin — Dirty Harry, Main Title

Here's a whole lot of kickass 70s stuff. The drumming here is by John Guerin, one of the great L.A. studio drummers of the era. He plays a large set here, with five concert toms, and, fairly or not— to everyone else— he kind of owns the giant 70s tom fill in my mind. The piece is Lalo Schifrin's Main Title from the Dirty Harry Soundtrack. Lalo himself is the king of burning 70s TV and movie soundtracks, and this is one of my favorites.

The tempo is pretty cooking, but the 16ths swing a little bit on much of this, which is rather difficult to pull off. There's a good amount of somewhat linear playing, with the right leading, and the left hand filling in, especially on the tom fills. Guerin has a little non-independent method for making those open hihats: he plays both feet in unison on the close notes— almost all of them.

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Audio after the break: