From the zone: Five in seven in six in four

A little Thanksgiving treat shared on Facebook by my friend Steve Pancerev:

Let's walk through this— it's difficult, but not impossible. I see a jazz rhythm there, and a crazy independent part with a double-beamed rhythm, which means the tempo is going to be slow/medium-slow. There are three sounds happening, and we can default to the standard drum set sounds for them:

• top line = cymbal/right hand
• black noteheads/middle line = snare drum/left hand
• bottom line/black noteheads = bass drum. 

You can revoice those however you want, using whatever limbs you want. I always encourage you to move your left hand parts around the drums, either improvising the moves, or using our standard moves which you should have memorized by now.

Obviously the top line is a jazz cymbal rhythm, with quarter notes and 8th note triplets. The black noteheaded rhythm, which is split between the snare drum and bass drum, is sixtuplets— so every other note lines up with a note of a good old familiar 8th note triplet. Looking for familiar landmarks: the first accent in the sixtuplet part lines up with the last note of an 8th note triplet. The last snare drum double in the second beat, and then the doubles and single bass drum note in the third beat all line up with 8th note triplets. Going into the fourth beat, the second note of each double falls on the 8th note triplet. And the first two 8th note triplet partials in beat 2 fall on the second note of doubles. So the lick is mainly doubles with the first note landing on the triplet, and doubles with the second note landing on the triplet. If I had Finale handy while blogging from my mother's house, I could write you a little preparatory study of that. 

The bracketed 5 and 7 notations indicate the phrasing and voicing of the rhythm— we're accenting the sixtuplets every five notes (starting on the second note of the part), and voicing the rhythm between the drums in a seven note pattern— SSBBSSB. So the seven-note pattern (played three times) with the accents every five notes is SSBBSSB / SSBBSSB / SSBBSSB. You'll really want to get the basic coordination and rhythm together before you add that accents.

I've been meaning for years now to post more of Steve's stuff— maybe I'll actually follow through on that in 2016. In the mean time, you can follow him on Facebook. He's already posted one other crazy thing today. 

If you'd like to have your practice materials featured as a From The Zone item, hit the email link in the sidebar and send them in. Crappy photos of semi-legible manuscript is preferred. I just want things you had to write out because they weren't written anywhere else. 

Stick Control in triplets

Here's a good library companion to my Stick Control implied rhythms piece. This was suggested to me by my friend Steve Pancerev-- I'm not sure if it's something he thought up, or if it was suggested by his old teacher, Ian Froman. The concept is simple enough-- just apply the stickings from the first section of Stick Control to a triplet rhythm-- figuring out on the fly how that lays is more challenging, though, so I've written it out. You might pencil in phrase marks to outline the four note groupings where they're not so easy to make out.

Usually you just run exercises 1-13, but what the heck, I went ahead and wrote up the whole page. The big challenge here is to play the RH part on the snare drum and the LH part on the bass drum along with jazz time on the cymbal and hihat. You could also play the RH part on the cymbal, doubled with the bass drum, and the left hand on the snare drum.

Get the pdf

More on Pinstripes

The distressed font
indicates rockingness to me.

Ever since reading T. Bruce Wittet's piece about the drumming equivalent of the fusion mullet, the Remo Pinstripe, I've been sort of half-determined to try to them out for the first time since the late 80's, this time with a jazz tuning. I had the opportunity the other day on a visit to Portland's wonderful used/vintage drum shop, Revival Drums with my friend (and great drummer) Steve Pancerev, where I snagged a used set they had languishing in the head dump in the back room.

First impression: I got them home and put them on my drums, tuned them up high, and they actually sound OK. The last two-ply head I've used are Remo Emperors, which always tended to sound a little tubby, with a chunky attack; the Pinstripes have a glued-together outer ~1.5", which minimizes that quality somewhat. The Pinstripes have a fuller, bassier tone than the coated G1 Evans I was using previously, and while I was expecting to sacrifice response and some nuance, they feel surprisingly good with a high tuning. Better than you'd expect. I haven't let an uncoated/untextured head near my drums in over 20 years, so that clear-head tonality is something of a novelty- I can't say I'm wild about it. Something trailer-park about it...

Days later: They're not wearing well. What at first seemed full and round is starting to feel decidedly boomy with further playing. Definition suffers substantially on anything denser than 8th notes. The attack is flabby-sounding compared to the coated Ambassadors, Remo Renaissance, or Evans G1s I normally use. The instrument feels less responsive.

Conclusion: The Pinstripe is not as dead and buried as you might have thought, and worth trying. They're usable in a pinch, at the very least. Someone seeking a rounder tone than you get with the standard coated single ply head may dig these a lot. Overall they don't work for me with a jazz tuning.