One note / two notes

A little rhythm project, building rhythms based on sequences of one and two notes, spaced in a natural way for one hand— bell rhythms, essentially. It's a good approach for teaching people who are new to Latin rhythms, and not very skilled at reading complex rhythms. And good for anyone to grasp those kinds of rhythms more directly, without the interloping notation and counting.

Let's notate some simple combinations without time signatures, as single long notes, and short/long doubles.

⦿ = short note / 8th note, ⦾ = long note / quarter note

1-1:  ⦾  ⦾

2-2:  ⦿⦾  ⦿⦾

1-2:  ⦾  ⦿⦾  

1-1-2:  ⦾  ⦾  ⦿⦾

1-2-2:  ⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦿⦾ 

1-1-2-2:  ⦾  ⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦿⦾

If you count those out, you'll notice we found a natural entry to some odd meters; though a lot of people will round those rhythms out to fit in more conventional meters. The 1-2-2 group makes the familiar cinquillo rhythm.

The same rhythms notated normally: 

Longer combinations create a number of odd meters; I'm most interested in the rhythms that resolve to 4/4 or 12/8, like:
  

1-2-1-2-2:  ⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦾  ⦾  ⦿⦾

If you displace that so the second beat is the 1, you get the African “long” bell rhythm, with one of the doubles crossing the barline on the repeat, ending on the 1:

 

The same thing happens with a similar pattern metered in 4: 

1-2-1-2-2-2: ⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦿⦾  ⦿⦾

If you displace that so the last note falls on 1, you get a Mozambique rhythm, again with one of the doubles bridging the barline on the repeat: 

And inverting the cinquillo rhythm— the 1-2-2 pattern— so each of the doubles end on 1, we get a couple easily recognizable Latin rhythms, or roots of Latin rhythms: 

So, some Afro/Latin bell rhythms are composed out of single notes and doubles, with the metered beginning of the pattern often falling on the second note of a double— a clue about how we should be feeling those rhythms. The idea of a “1” seems to clearly be an import from a European metering conception.

The 1 is important to us now, to the way music is understood, played, written, and arranged— it's just deceptive. It's the beginning of the the rhythm visually; musically the rhythm may start more naturally from the pickups, before the 1:

Or we could treat the 1 as the end of the rhythm, and the natural beginning is after the 1, which happens to be the same form as the original 1-2-1-2-2-2 rhythm above:  

So there's a little ambiguity there, having the start of the pattern being felt as a syncopation, different from the metered 1. Good to remember when learning these types of rhythms on the drums— don't always start on the 1.  

And just as a rhythm study we can sense its evolution as a multicultural thing— a complex intersection of natural and formalized rhythm; simple sequences of singles and doubles comfortably played with one hand, combined with a walking or dancing pulse, resolved into a European-style metered structure. 

Groove o' the day: two by Elvin Jones

I have a couple of larger transcriptions going right now, from a couple of Elvin Jones live albums, but don't have time to complete them, so here are the major grooves from them. 

The first one is an Afro 6/8, on Tin Tin Deo on the album Very R.A.R.E.: 

He is using three tom toms there, but it barely matters. 

Note on the word feel, here: you see it's written in 4/4 as 8th note triplets— because the tune is in 4/4, if you were looking at a lead sheet. The 6/8 or 12/8 groove is being played as a feel within the 4/4 time, with the beat in the same place, which makes the 6/8 rhythm into triplets. Calling it 6/8 or whatever refers to the normal meter of the groove, not the meter of this setting. 

The other is on A Love Supreme, from Elvin Jones Jazz Machine Live in Japan— a Latin groove with a Mozambique rhythm on the cymbal bell— very timely as we've been working on an “Elvinized” Mozambique lately. Here's the groove as he plays it with one note on the tom tom, and with two: 

Again, he's playing this in 16th notes as a double time feel— the feet are stating the underlying 4/4, and they're in half time compared to what we would normally expect with this groove. 

Here's the groove written out as a two measure, 8th note based rhythm, which is how I would normally write it. Obviously the feet are in half time there, with the bass drum on 1 and the hihat on 3: 

He plays the repeating rhythm without a lot of major variations or fills, but he does a lot with it dynamically. At times he'll lean into these accents in the bell part: 

The groove comes in after the opening rubato section— it takes a few bars before it develops into the grooves we see here: 

Mozambique inversions

Library item that occurred to me while writing that last post. That Mozambique bell rhythm seems significant beyond just using it to play a Latin beat, hence this page, running it through its inversions. Half of them. You want to be psycho about it you can get the remainder of them by playing the second measure first.  

On line 1 you can easily see how the rhythm is constructed: a single note plus a double, then a single plus three doubles, like: 

⦾  ⦿⦿  ⦾  ⦿⦿  ⦿⦿  ⦿⦿

The actual Mozambique rhythm, which is on line 3, is an inversion of that. As is another common rhythm associated with Guaguanco, on line 6:

I have of course shared endless other ways of applying these type so rhythms to the drum set.  

Also see this roundup page with a lot more of this type of thing— up to January '23, at least— especially the tresillo/cinquillo inversion pages, and partido alto inversion pages.  

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Elvinized Mozambique

An item I was working out with a student— making an Elvin Jones-like Latin groove/texture out of a Mozambique rhythm, for medium tempos, with swing 8th notes. It's an entry, just the first, most obvious things I could think of for taking the groove that direction. 

Swing the 8ths on everything here. At the top of the page is a Mozambique bell rhythm written Syncopation-style, then some basic left hand variations, which you can move around the drums however you like.

Then there is the bell rhythm written out as RH lead triplets— RH plays the complete cymbal part, LH plays the complete snare part. Which you can play as a fill at the end of the groove— note the circled bass drum notes on patterns 6-9, play them with those notes, and without them. As illustrated, you can end the fill with a cymbal/BD accent on 1, or on the end of beat 4.  

With item 10, as it says, play the hand parts with one, some, or all of the written bass drum notes. Try some combinations. We'll explore that more fully in another installment. 

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Groove o' the day: Billy Higgins Latin

Addendum to yesterday's Billy Higgins transcription— here's the Latin groove he plays on the A sections of the head on Moose the Mooche, from Joshua Redman's album Wish. 

More or less— it takes a couple of measures to settle on it, and he moves his hands around a little bit. This appears to be the core groove:
 

You can see it's a kind of simplified Mozambique— Idris Muhammad used the same bell rhythm on a Melvin Sparks record. Billy Higgins does the same hip move between the high and low toms that I picked up from Portland drummer Ron Steen years ago, that has been a basic feature of this rhythm the way I play it ever since. 

Page o' coodination: prep for subtractive method with Mozambique bell

I wrote this for my own use— I was attempting to do that recent subtractive Reed method with the more complex Mozambique bell rhythm, and it will go much faster to see the warm up patterns written out. As I pointed out, that BSSB-SBBS rhythm sketches out a tresillo rhythm in the bass drum, and suggests the 2 side of clave in the snare drum, which makes it an attractive idea to develop for a Latin context. 

There are a lot of patterns, so we're getting quite a bit done even if we never get around to applying this method on the fly reading out of Syncopation.  

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Page o' coordination: pseudo-Latin in 7 - 01

A page of independence patterns for a quasi-Latin groove in 7/4. The cymbal part is based on a Mozambique rhythm, and there the similarity to any real Latin music ends. This is not a style, that I'm aware of, but things like this turn up in modern music. The idea is just to learn how to play in 7 better by doing something familiar. Hopefully you can already play the Mozambique rhythm before doing this. 

The bass drum and hihat parts are pretty minimal, and you can omit them at first if you want. You can also try them without the circled snare drum notes. Learn the page, then practice it using all of my stock left hand moves.   

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Grooves o' the day: Art Blakey Latin

Two very similar Latin grooves recorded by Art Blakey in 1960 and '61. On both of them the bell pattern has that little syncopated move across the barline that we see a few years later in the Mozambique rhythm. There was a lot of Latin music happening in New York in the 40s-50s, but I'm nowhere near informed enough about it to try speculate on where Blakey and others got that motif; it does also happen in Cuban conga de comparsa, from which the Mozambique is derived. 

Johnny's Blue, from the Jazz Messengers album Like Someone In Love:

There's no audible bass drum on either thing. On both tracks when Blakey comes in he starts with an accent on the high tom on beat 1. Note that he swings the cymbal rhythm when he first comes in.




El Toro, from the Jazz Messengers album The Freedom Rider:

A little brighter tempo, using two tom toms, with a broken rhythm on the cymbal in the first measure.

Groove o' the day: John Von Ohlen - Love for Sale

A Latin groove played by John Von Ohlen on Love For Sale, arranged for the Blue Wisp Big Band by Carroll DeCamp. From their famous album Butterfly. This was one of the first serious big band arrangements I ever played, in high school. It's funny, I barely remember working out a Latin groove for this, but I must have played something.

The groove is another quasi-Mozambique— at least Von Ohlen settles on that standard bell pattern by bar 5. He plays the bass drum lightly throughout; I've only written the accents. By the third measure he's playing half notes, then quarter notes around the fourth measure. The ending fill is played with both hands almost in unison on the same drum.

There's no YouTube link for this, but you should already have it. If you don't you'll have to scrounge it up from somewhere.

Filling a Mozambique

This is something I was working through with a student recently: filling during a Mozambique groove. Latin grooves need to be worked out more than other things, so it's a good idea to break it down substantially, so you can get back to the groove after the fill. Start by practicing these mostly non-repeating: play them one time, stop, and play them again. I've put all of the fills on the high tom tom in these examples; you can move them around however you like, vary the accents, play rim shots, embellish with flams or ruffs, use whatever sticking you like.

Here's the basic groove— for hands only. Learn to play it, if you haven't already:

There are a few key points: the & of 4 of the first measure, where we'll be breaking to get into the fill; the & of 1 of the second measure, where we'll be starting the fill; the 2 of the first measure, where we'll often be getting back into the groove pattern.

First, practice starting the groove on 2:

Then build a simple fill with alternating 8th notes, starting with two rights. Practice each of the following phrases repeating, then add two measures of the groove at the beginning, making a four measure phrase with the fill at the end. Note that the first four notes of the fill have the same rhythm and sticking as the second measure of the groove pattern: RRLR.

Then grab some rhythms from the book Syncopation, and play them as a lead-in to the groove pattern, accenting the last note of the syncopation rhythm— if possible with a cymbal in unison. If the fill ends with running 8th notes, just end it with a rim shot. Then come in with the groove on beat 2:

Then play some syncopation rhythms as a fill, with the complete context. Use rhythms that start with an 8th rest, and start the fill with your right hand. So these fills all start the same way as the previous one. Play the first measure of the groove, break on the & of 4, play the fill, accenting the last note as above, and come back in with the groove on beat 2:

I suggest practicing these last two things non-repeating; stop after a couple of measures of the groove at the end, and restart. You can easily use this same structure to practice hitting a bass drum/cymbal accent on beat 1 after the fill, which isn't that hip, but you will do it a lot.

Groove o' the day: Charli Latin

One more item from that tune Fuss Budget, by Curtis Fuller, from the album Two Bones: there is a few bars of a Latin groove on the head of the tune, during which Charli Persip plays this:

That should look very familiar— there's barely even cause to share it, except to say haha, look, another example of someone using that same Mozambique-type bell rhythm. It's a very useful, hip rhythm for a lot of different Latin styles in jazz. It just flows nicely from the middle of the first bar to the ending 1:

Persip seemingly plays the bass drum on the first 1 only; 1 and the & of 2 is another good possibility for jazz applications— though not correct for clave-based music. A good generic bass drum rhythm for occasions when clave is being observed is & of 2 of both measures. That would work here, since the bassist is playing a quasi-Cuban rhythm on that section.

Page o' coordination: Idris Mozambique

A page of exercises for learning basic performance vocabulary using Idris Muhammad's Mozambique-like cymbal rhythm from this recent groove o' the day.

Play each of the hand patterns many times— if you need to, start with the LH on the snare only, then add the moves to the toms. Then add the various bass drum rhythms. Add the hihat on beats 2 and 4, or put it wherever you want it, or don't. See this page for more Latin bass drum rhythms, or this page to take it a more funk like direction, using pattern 11.

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Groove o' the day: Idris Muhammad Mozambique

Here is Idris Muhammad playing a Mozambique-like Latin groove with Melvin Sparks, on Speak Low, from the album Sparkling. Muhammad isn't on many of the records I listen to all the time, but he is one of my favorite players just for his general vibe; he's got the New Orleans thing happening, a deep R&B pocket, and he always gets a full sound. And he's not a real finicky subdivision guy— I'm always hearing the broader phrase with him.

Muhammad feathers the bass drum on beats 1 and 3 throughout— the written bass drum notes are accents. One thing I have noticed in doing a million billion transcriptions for this site is how sparingly many drummers use their left foot— it may be moving while they're playing, but there's often not much sound actually making it onto the recording.

I call this a Mozambique-like groove only for the bell rhythm— it has the familiar 8th notes/rest on 4 and 1 going into the second measure. Otherwise the bell rhythm is quarter notes— it's sort of a New Orleans Mozambique, in fact, with a strong R&B flavor.

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Best books: Rhythms and Techniques for Latin Timbales

UPDATE: I just realized we've already shared another excellent free-online book by Rendon, Timbale Solo Transcriptions. Get that too, if you haven't.

Rhythms and Techniques for Latin Timbales by Victor Rendon is sort of the anti-Uribe book. You'll recall from my review that Ed Uribe's Latin book is huge, intimidating, and very demanding; Rendon's book is very approachable, concise bordering on terse, and is learnable in a reasonable amount of time. And timbales are the Latin percussion instrument most similar to the drum set, so all of this can book can be played on the drums by just choosing equivalent sounds, and adding a basic bass drum part.

It's mostly a style guide, showing some ways of playing each of the major Latin styles, including Mozambique, Guaguanco, 6/8 styles, Songo, and Cha Cha— the styles we've been most interested in on the blog. He discusses lead-ins— the abanico— and gives some contexts for practicing it, and fills. There are also longer sections on developing bell patterns, and left hand independence in 2/2 and in 6/8, each of which are several pages long. There are also several pages looking at the playing of Changuito, the timbalero for Los Van Van and inventor of the Songo rhythm.

A nice thing is that this is a free book— at least it's a pdf found multiple places on the internet, that is semi-ethical to download, since the book appears to be out of print and is not available to purchase. You can compensate Rendon for his work by buying his newer book, The Art of Playing Timbales, which is available at the Amazon links below.

Page o' coordination: Mozambique - hands only - 01

A page of technical independence patterns for a Mozambique bell part— a hip, very useful bell rhythm. For more practical left hand parts for this bell rhythm, see my updated Page of Mozambique. Also see my other posts about Mozambique for listening and background on this style.

Play the left hand on the snare drum as a rim click, then you can move between the snare and the high tom, or do all my usual tom moves. You can practice this along with this Cal Tjader practice loop— the bell/cascara rhythms are slightly different, but they're both in the 2-3 clave orientation

The hihat part is optional; you could do this page with your hands alone. There are other hihat rhythms you might want to use in an actual Salsa/Cuban-style music setting; this one works best when playing with jazz musicians. If you want to add bass drum, start by putting it on the & of 2 of the second measure, or of both measures.

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Mozambique listening

Here is a YouTube playlist of the tracks cited in the Mozambique variations post, plus a few things:



After the break I'll give some brief notes on some of the tracks:

Mozambique variations

With apologies for the late lack of posting, here is a little bit of a retread/refinement of my earlier Page of Mozambique. I've been working with this feel quite a bit, but have struggled to come up with a reasonable method for developing it; which is not shocking, me being the Salsa/Cuban music tourist that I am. The patterns here are based on the New York/Eddie Palmieri classic version of the style— apparently it has not a lot in common with the original Cuban Mozambique, which was a craze for a little while in the 60s, and then died out. The clave orientation here is 2-3 Son— that's usually the case on Palmieri's recordings.

Learn all the patterns, listen to (and play along with) the suggested tracks at the bottom of the pdf, and then improvise your own variations— mainly, moving the left hand more freely, using different sounds (especially rim shots and dead strokes).

Do the listening and you'll learn how to prioritize the variations to stay with the style; there's a sort of hierarchy to the notes you play on the drums:

• & of 2 (“bombo”— primary) of the second measure — always present, always strong
• & of 2 (bombo— secondary) of the first measure — often/usually present, usually strong, or pretty strong
• 4 of either measure (“ponche”)  — emphasized, but not as strongly as the prior two; usually stronger in the second measure
• 1 of the first measure — usually not played on the drums, definitely not strongly (this is contrary to the popular Steve Gadd/fusion version of the groove, which plays the one strongly).
• 1 of the second measure — same, but even less so

You might also try running the bell part and bass drum variations with the left hand parts in our generic Latin method— as written they fit with the 2-3 clave orientation of these patterns. Review all of my previous posts on Mozambique, as well.

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Daily best music in the world: Mozambique

Melao Para El Sapo, a New York-style Mozambique by Eddie Palmieri. I'm finding that my page of Mozambique from 2013 is holding up pretty well as a method for getting some basic fluency with this groove, which also serves well as a generic Cuban-style Latin groove when playing jazz. I suck at identifying Cuban song styles, but NY Mozambique seems recognizable by the bell pattern, the tumbao (the & of 2 and 4, especially on the 3 side of clave) played strongly by the timbales, and the vocal “Mozambique” riff.

Rumba clave basic coordination — hands only

Per the title, here we have some basic coordination with rumba clave, for hands only. The first set are just logical patterns based on clave— notes in unison with it, before it, after it, or filling in all of the gaps in it. The other sets build some common bell patterns from scratch, one part at a time, so you can be sure the coordination is completely solid.

If you want to add your feet, some obvious default patterns would be:

Hihat: 2 and 4, 1 and 3, or all four beats
Bass drum: & of 2 of both measures, or & of 2 of the first measure.

You could also do the exercises with your right hand + your left foot playing clave.

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Snare studies for developing some Afro-Cuban bell patterns

There is so much heavy coordination involved in learning the Afro-Cuban styles that it's easy to neglect simply getting the bell patterns right— which is a lot like playing jazz without spending any time working on your ride pattern. So what I've done here is make some snare drum exercises which will help work on one aspect of that: conditioning the hands to consistently hit the right accents. In the left hand column there are some stock salsa bell patterns, and on the right are the matching exercises:

That looks like a lot of heavy mixed stickings and flams, but the difficult part of each of them uses this one flam pattern:

It may help to see the same thing written in 6/8— count each of these out loud when you work them up:

After you can play those warmups, learn the patterns for the Chacha, the Songo, and the Abakua, and then the rest of the patterns. It may be helpful to exaggerate the dynamics at first, being especially careful not to accent the flammed notes. Don't fixate on attaining absolute, mechanistic, precision; the end result we're after is a nice, grooving, bell pattern, with a little bit of that special Afro-Cuban swing, if possible— playing and listening to the music will get you to the correct interpretation.

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