YouTube solo analyzed

Elaborating on a question I answered on a forum— someone was asking about the playing in the video below. Here is a little bit of analysis of it, and some suggestions about how you should proceed in learning to play like this.  

The drummer sent a transcription of part of this, written as 16th notes in 6/8 time, but it's plainly in 3/4 time. 

Here is the main groove, played after the short little intro fill. He's improvising, it's not played as a strictly repeating thing. 

And the same thing written in 6/8:

To be 6/8, it has to be stated somewhere— either in the drumming or in the context. Maybe he was getting it from the metronome, and playing off of it. If so, we don't hear it, all we have is his drumming, which, with the dotted 8th/16th BD rhythm at the beginning, and SD backbeat on 3, clearly states 3/4. Both those things are contrary to stating 6/8— they're suggestive of a cross rhythm. 

The form is an 8 measure phrase, with fills every two bars, and a long fill at the end of the phrase. Longer fills come more frequently towards the end of the video. The bass drum rhythm at the beginning of the measure is the major unifying thing throughout it. 

The solo activity is mostly alternating singles, with a lot of hand movement— with both hands— and embellishments. There is some right hand lead activity— or you could call them mixed diddle stickings. And a little bit of hands in unison. And a little bit of linear activity with the bass drum, a few single notes inserted in the ongoing 16th texture. There are a few spots where he plays with rhythm a little bit, and he plays across the barline on the longer fills, often leaving some space in the first measure of the new phrase. 

To copy this way of playing, you can't get caught up in the particulars. There are a number of general things (“skills”, I guess) you would have to be fluent improvising with: 

1. Learn the basic groove as above. I've written it as a linear pattern, which is what he plays there, but much of the time he just plays alternating 16ths there. Which fits with the linear pattern, which uses natural sticking.

2. Play alternating 16th notes in 3, moving both hands around the drums, and cymbals. Open ended, practicing the movements. Play over the bass drum rhythm, or add bass drum later.

3. Add dynamics— accents, crescendo/decrescendo. These should follow naturally from the hand movements. You would have to be reasonably fluent with making accents just on a practice pad, reading snare drum solos or exercises. 

4. Add embellishments, broad fill ideas:

• Short 32nd note singles— three notes or five notes
• 16th triplets, one or two
• Mixed 16th stickings— diddles, RH lead
• Flammed 16ths— adding one flam to the ongoing alternating texture
• Solo rhythm with both hands in unison on snare and cymbal

5. Starting and ending fills— fills start loosely, part of the continuing alternating 16ths of the groove. Fills ending with a cymbal accent usually end on the 1, or on the a of 3. Or the & of 3, or on 3. There is one spot where he ends with two crashes, on the a of 3 and & of 1.   

6. Add space— usually that comes after the big phrase ending cymbal accent on 1, or near the 1. The groove returns in the middle of the measure, after a short rest. 

7. Figure out the funny rhythmic things he does early in the solo: 

• At 0:28 he plays two cym/SD accents with bass drum in between. Clue: the first note falls on the a of the beat, the second two fall on the last two partials of an 8th note triplet. 
• At 0:30 he plays something between the snare and high tom. You could get there by fooling around with an 8th note quintuplet, plus some very wide flams. Starting off a downbeat and ending before a downbeat.
• Everything else falls on a 16th grid, except for the obvious 16th note triplets. 

He gets his left hand onto the cymbals enough that it gives the illusion of switching leads, or playing “open handed” or whatever. But the whole thing leads with the right. Just hitting a cymbal with your left hand doesn't change that. 

This is the level you have to deal with things to improvise— broad fluency with basic things. You can't get too hung up in specifics. A transcription would clarify a few things, but the incidental details would obscure what's important. Which is: this is fundamentally pretty simple. 

A player's analysis of drumming

For a long time I've been thinking about developing a system of analysis for drumming, like the harmonic analysis you do in college theory courses, deciding the function of every note in a composition. Doing something like that for drumming would require a different approach. I don't care about the theory aspect— this would be for clarity in thinking about our instrument, in teaching, listening, and playing.

Probably some doctoral student has already thought of this, but I'm not optimistic about the value of that for players. I've tried reading scholarly pieces on subjects in which I would normally be interested, and I couldn't do it— the academic language and format just wipes out whatever value they might have had for me.

In the broadest sense, this is about understanding “what is the drummer doing? What was the purpose of playing that? What's the function?”

We could start by thinking about the broad categories of playing: 

Composed parts 
The drummer is playing fixed, pre-composed “parts.” Often worked out in the studio with a producer, or by drummers who are just oriented that way. For example Dave Grohl playing on Nevermind, or Neil Peart playing his worked-out parts, or Terry Bozzio playing Frank Zappa's The Black Page. 

Reading performances

Big band drumming, studio drumming, show and theater drumming— professional situations where there are complex written arrangements. The drumming is largely functional within the arrangement, but the drummer has some freedom to interpret. 

Ad lib performances
The drummer shows up and plays. Perhaps this suggests that the drummer's musical personality may be featured, to some extent. Much of jazz drumming falls in this category. In rock, perhaps Mitch Mitchell or Keith Moon. 

Genre performances

A kind of ad lib performance, but the player mostly just states the genre. For example, Rockabilly, some Blues, Gypsy Jazz, some Latin styles.  

Tracked performances
Drumming performance is assembled in the studio in multiple passes, possibly some sequenced parts, possibly by more than one drummer. See: a lot of heavily-produced music since the 80s. 

Sampled performances
The drumming performance is digitally assembled by a producer— re-inventing a track a drummer recorded specifically for that record, or sampling the drumming from someone else's previously released record. 

We can also talk about broad categories of time feels:

Simple pulse
Think Motown, some Country, possibly Phil Rudd with AC/DC, or Ndugu Leon Chancler playing Billie Jean. 

Genre pattern
A stock pattern communicating a style— a jazz cymbal rhythm, a shuffle, a surf beat, DC Go Go, most Latin patterns.  

Composed pattern
A unique pattern created by the drummer for a particular piece of music, a la 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Changuito with Los Van Van.  

Quasi ad lib pattern
A partly or mostly non-repeating genre feel. A lot of modern jazz might fall in this category— Elvin Jones on McCoy Tyner's Passion Dance, Tony Williams on Walkin', from Four & More. 


Free groove

A mostly non-repeating time feel, not in a particular genre, for example an ECM-type feel— see Jon Christiansen playing with Keith Jarrett, or Bob Moses on Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life.  

Percussion
“Spacy stuff” as we use to say in high school— percussion colors. Think Tony Williams on Fall, recorded by Miles Davis. 

Free
Playing free texture not stating a particular tempo. Rashied Ali on Coltrane's Interstellar Space. 



We can also decide what the drummer is doing right now, on this part of this tune: 

Playing time
Playing a groove, of whatever description— genre, ad lib, composed, whatever.

Playing ensemble figures
Hitting drums and cymbals in unison with something the band is playing. 

Filling 
Playing between ensemble figures, filling open spaces in the arrangement. 

Breaking
Stopping and resting as part of an arrangement, or as an ad lib arrangement element.  


Laying out
Drummer doesn't play on this tune, or this section of the tune. 

Soloing
Or co-soloing. Or otherwise creating free texture. Maybe an intro, or solo break, or featured solo or duo. 

Of course many of these categories will overlap— not many will be strictly one thing or another. And I don't know if this really constitutes analysis yet. But it's a starting place for a conversation. I'll look at a particular recording on these terms soon, and see what that gives us. 

And maybe on another day we can get into this on a more granular level, looking at individual notes— which ones state the main idea, which are filling out a texture, which are embellishments or extemporaneous— and see if that kind of thinking has any value. 

Elvin Jones analysis - Big Nick

Here's a little analysis- or catalog of ideas- extracted from my transcription of Elvin Jones playing on Big Nick, from Coltrane's album with Duke Ellington. It's a good introduction to Elvin's playing for novice drummers- the tempo is nice and relaxed, and the ideas are straightforward. It's divided into four sections- phrase endings, comping patterns, hi-hat independence, and 3/4-within-4/4.

Get my e-book 5 Elvin Jones Transcriptions for a complete transcription of Big Nick