Reed tweak: filling in 16ths - 02

Boy, if you're not doing all my Reed stuff, you're really missing out. These things square away a ton of stuff that people generally have to put together piecemeal— I had to do that. Figure it out, contact me for a lesson if you need to. 

This is a preliminary item to part 1, but I didn't feel like posting this first. A very simple tweak to the basic RH lead system, filling in the bass drum after each snare drum note. Basically every snare drum note becomes two 16ths, split between the snare and bass. There's an option of filling in a 16th before each snare note as well. 

Take it as a bass drum endurance drill. It should be easy to get it up to a pretty bright tempo— with both systems the bass drum should just flutter. If you're leaning into it with a funk kind of touch, you're dead. 

You can take this a step further and play the snare drum notes with an alternating sticking— each group of two or more snare hits after a cymbal hit— starting with the left hand (or two lefts, if doing the optional filler in patterns 6/9. There's room to develop that more if the reading materials have more space in them— like in Chuck Kerrigan's excellent Syncopated Rhythms book. 

Get the pdf

Feathering by not feathering

Here's kind of a funny video by Alvin Atkinson that was shared by a forum user asking about about feathering the bass drum in jazz— the technique for playing jazz time that includes running quarter notes played barely-audibly on the bass drum. It's a Jazz At Lincoln Center video, so this is officially approved doctrine, now that Mr. Marsalis has forced the existence of such a thing: 

Describing the technique: he proposes “feathering” by tapping quarter notes with your heel, with the bass drum beater buried against the head, rather than activating the beater and hitting the drum. The sound aspect comes from your heel hitting the foot plate, and probably causing some resonance from the stage floor. 

It's basically: “What if we didn't feather, but we called it feathering?”

This is funny to me because, as basically* a non-feathering guy, I've been doing that this whole time with my left foot— there's no good reason this technique has to be done on the bass drum— to the exact same effect. We had to pass it through the feathering filter and give it a name, and suddenly it's an approved technique.

* - I feather the bass drum— actually playing it— more than I used to, deliberately, for a specific reason. I still don't play it as part of my time feel routinely. I really don't do anything routinely, but  that's another topic...

I don't think I know any players who even think this way, with this focus on labeled, required techniques. The actual art form we're involved with is conducted on a different set of terms altogether. And that's another other topic...

Four on the floor

It is said that, on the drum set, there are snare drummers and cymbal players— I would also say there are bass drummers and hihat players. I've always been a hihat player— meaning, I'll often keep a steady rhythm with my left foot, and do most of my playing with the other limbs. “Bass drummers” will be more likely to do that with the bass drum, especially when soloing, and have most of their activity with the hands. For example: 

That happens in a lot of 60s and post-60s rock drumming: on In A Gadda Da Vita; and Ginger Baker did it, Keith Moon did it, Neil Peart did it on his first big famous solo on Working Man. As prevalent as it was, I've never heard John Bonham do it, which made him seem much more modern than the rest of them. I can't really recall Ringo Starr doing it either, though I wouldn't be surprised if he did. 

I never regarded four on the floor as as a real sophisticated way to play, but I do it at times, with some major points of reference for using it— apart from the obvious swing, shuffle, or disco groove:

The English Beat was big when I was in high school, and I spent the next few years listening to them a lot, and learning Everett Morton's ska beat: 

After Ronald Shannon Jackson's great interview in Modern Drummer, I ran out and bought this record, and listened to it a lot:  

In the interview said some things about the bass drum I never forgot, even as I wasn't using that drum as my main driver:

“See, the most important thing is that foot- the master drum. It's the control drum. It's the center. It's the heartbeat, the relaxed pulse, the more musical tonal center as opposed to the more direct speaking tone- that's what settles the music.

In any ethnic group that employs the drum, you're going to find the large drums, like this Trinidadian drum I have- the long drum; the deep drum. That bottom is where music comes from in most folk cultures. In drums themselves, there have always been master drums- especially in African tribal drumming where there's always that pulse, that center to any social or spiritual event. You can take out the speaking rhythms or the communication on top- that which is portraying the event itself; the master drummer can keep everything going. The pulse, the intention, is still there on the bottom, so you can play the same pulse and change the rhythms on top of it. You can do the same thing on the drumset, when you start with that pulse from the heart- BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Now everything on top is good; those rhythms are the enhancers- what we emotionally want to say. But if the heartbeat isn't there, things are unstable.”

For a good 10-12 years I was really into Ed Blackwell's drumming, and he would use the bass drum this way in his grooves. On Chairman Mao (by Old And New Dreams) in particular, he brings in the four on the floor in a powerful way after ~ 1:15— I think about that exact thing all the time: 

A more random item, in the 90s I got to catch the Delta Blues guitarist T Model Ford playing in Portland, and his drummer had a really strong bass drum groove:  

In rock and country acts I've been involved with lately, I'll sometimes play the bass drum under tom fills, to give them some more weight. I noticed John Guerin doing that on some of his recordings I've transcribed, and of course Keith Moon did it, and it's very effective. 

“Feathering” four on the floor on the bass drum is a big part of the online discussion of jazz drumming, with people trying to learn a vestigial way of playing the bass drum without doing the first stages of it, where you play a ton of gigs playing it for effect. For example, Philly Joe Jones, working hard as an R&B drummer early in his career, was definitely playing the bass drum to be heard then. As did all the drummers whose careers bridged the swing and bebop eras— Kenny Clarke for example. Then they used it more subtly as they were doing bop. That's a natural, logical progression.  

This ended up being more about my personal stuff than I intended, but there is a larger point here about how we're supposed to notice things— like, notice what you notice; every little particular momentary thing that strikes your ear becomes part of your musical personality. People look for generic rules about what you're supposed to do in a “style” of music, but it's the particulars that matter. 

Grooving with a feathered bass drum

A couple of weeks ago I made some comments about hearing some younger drummers, and someone asked me to elaborate on this part of it: 

[I was hearing people] feathering the bass drum in a way that doesn't add anything. It seems like more of an obligation than a purposeful thing— they're playing it because they were told it's supposed to be there. It sounds affected if there's not a real deep groove happening otherwise. Do it on purpose, to take the groove where you want it. The goal is to sound like someone who has done a ton of R&B gigs, even if you haven't.

We used to learn to play with very little information, now we're given a ton of very specific information that, we are told, is very important to follow. People are having to process a lot of competing directives they got from the internet and from books. Play the bass drum, but don't play it too loud, I want it lurking in the background like original sin, which is what you'll be committing if you don't do it, also play a lot of hip stuff on the snare drum, and be thinking about your technique, don't play with suboptimal technique now, etc etc. 

Project groove
However you want to read that, “Project: Groove” or project groove.

That's your main job: create groove with the other musicians, and impress it upon the audience. Whatever else happens, it's the main unifying thing for the band, and for everyone in the room. Everything else is secondary.

There was a good line from Billy Hart, about the first time he played with Jimmy Smith, who told him to “play the dance.” When you think in those terms, the role of the bass drum becomes obvious, because you're following a natural musical imperative, rather than just following an instruction on correct jazz musical behavior. 

A total thing
It's not supposed to be an isolated, add-on thing. You have to have a total integrated foundation where you use the bass drum that way all the time. With the original guys, they didn't start out playing the bass drum inaudibly— they played it for effect, and then dropped it out as the style changed. But playing time on the bass drum along with their hands was still their primary orientation. 

The feathering thing is a continuation of a ~125 year old tradition of “double drumming”, where you essentially play rudimental snare drum stuff, with an accompanying beat on the bass drum. That's the  foundation, and it was the major drumming orientation from the 1890s-1930s. So if this were something I were serious about, I would be doing all my snare drum practice that way— Wilcoxon and everything— so that kind of double drumming thing was my main orientation. 

I do something else   
I don't do that. As for most drummers alive today, the permanent four on the floor with the bass drum was never my primary orientation. Most of us have played a lot of rock and funk, and latin music, post bop, free jazz, and a whole lot of other stuff— which generally use the bass drum differently. For me the foot time keeper element was hihat, played Tony Williams style on all four beats, or on 8th notes. And if we're talking about being felt rather than heard, at times stomping a wood floor with the heel of your hihat foot generates some sound and feeling, too.     

If I'm using the bass drum on a swing beat, I'm doing it deliberately to take the groove where I want it. But I also may be playing more feathered bass drum than I'm aware of. Increasingly I've been practicing the bass drum in ways that sketch out a feathered part, rather than thumps it endlessly. 

Undire consequences
People like to present these drumming issues like they're going to make or break your career, but I've never had anyone take issue with this in a real life musical situation. My drum teacher at USC told me about playing with the actual Count Basie band and having the actual Freddie Green ask him why he wasn't playing the bass drum on a fast tune. There's a second hand case. Significantly, he was not fired from the job, and it didn't prevent him from getting hired in the first place. He had that gig for several years.  

This is a topic to take seriously, but ultimately you can't satisfy everyone broadcasting drumming advice. You make your own decisions about your drumming— hopefully through playing real music with people— and you live with them. There's room in this world for a lot of different ways of playing the drums. 

Max on the bass drum

An exchange on the evolution of the bass drum in jazz, from Max Roach, circa 1981, from his Modern Drummer interview with Scott K. Fish.

SF: Back in the '50s and '60s jazz drummers were primarily using the smaller size drums: 18" bass, 12" mounted tom and 14" floor tom. I've heard that one of the main reasons drummers used that size drum was because they were easier to transport than larger drums.

MR: Exactly. It made it easier to get from town to town. Pack up your gear, put it in your car, and off you go. That was one of the main reasons I think.

Plus, the bass drum had begun to become less and less an integral part of the whole musical set-up. It's different now. The bass drum, at that time, would stamp out what was happening with the acoustic bass. Even the pianists would leave that part. They would voice their chords so the bottom of the piano would be in thirds and sevenths instead of tonics and fifths. They left that part for the acoustic bass. So, your bass drum would only be used for accents and supports.

So the small drum was great, plus, you didn't have all the electronics around you, so you didn't need that power there. There were many reasons for it. But, today you do need that power with the electronic scene.

 
The italics are mine, and it's maybe a revealing part of the comment. Max typically played the bass drum in the way we now call feathering, but he doesn't bring it up as a role of the bass drum in modern jazz. It's important to note that at the time of the interview, larger bass drums were generally in favor— usually 20-22". And at that time bebop was not the only thing happening in jazz— many big players of the 60s had moved in a more fusion direction. 

But imagine Mel Lewis addressing this topic— well, we don't have to. He's rather strident on it. Art Blakey said something similar in his '80s MD interview: 

Like playing the bass drum: A lot of drummers today have no bottom. They talk about punctuating, but they don't keep that feeling in there, and that bass drum is the basis of the whole thing. And if you let that go it sounds like s*t to me. 

I don't know what Max would say if he was asked specifically about it— he absolutely might agree with Lewis and Blakey. Maybe somebody reading has talked to him or studied with him, or been to a clinic. But feathering the bass drum in a bop setting has become such a dogmatic thing, especially with jazz hobbyists on the internet, and I thought it was an interesting omission.

I originally wrote about this in 2012, and my thinking has changed a little bit— maybe it's time to revisit that. 

A minor rant: Elvin's 18

In Elvin Jones's 1982 Modern Drummer interview, Rick Mattingly asked him about his use of an 18" bass drum:

RM: I've heard various explanations of why jazz drummers started using 18" bass drums. Some people go into detail about the function of the bass drum in modern jazz, and give reasons why the 18" drum was more suited to the music. Others contend that the only reason the smaller drum was used was because it was easier to carry around. 

EJ: Well, that's the reason why I used it. Twenty years ago, we traveled a great deal by car. We would throw all of our stuff in a station wagon or a car, then we'd all pile in and off on the road we would go. That's the way bands traveled then. So it made a difference if you had a compact unit of equipment. I only used two tom-toms in those days: the floor tom-tom was 14 x 14, and the small tom-tom was 8 x 12. 

But when I used a 20" bass drum, it just would not fit in the trunk of the car. If I put it in the back seat, that took up the space where two people could sit. So that made it necessary to tie the damn thing down on top of the car on a rack. I ruined a lot of drums that way. Whenever it would rain, with the car going sixty miles an hour, the rain would be forced right through the case, onto the drum itself. So the drum was a soggy mess when we arrived at where we were supposed to go. And then there were times that the ropes would slip and the drum would fall off on the highway.  

So when I got an 18" bass drum, there was no problem at all. My drums would all fit comfortably into the trunk of a car, along with a suitcase, and perhaps even some golf clubs. So the drums had to be as practical as they were functional. 

Another good reason for having the smaller set was that it fit in with the overall image of the group. If there were only four or five people on the bandstand, the drumset was not obtrusive; it blended with that whole image.

This subject came up often with MD writers in the 80s, and it's still a popular topic today, mainly among non-jazz drummers seeking justice for their large bass drums. They always sound like they're trying to talk their way out of the last ~55 years of jazz history. There seems to be a kind of originalist mentality in effect, as if everyone since c. 1961 is only using that size of drum on Elvin's authority... so if Elvin's reason is no good any more, why are you laughing at me for bringing a 22" drum on a jazz gig? It's all a big scam!

Mattingly brought it up a couple of years later with Tony Williams:

RM: Some people have several drumsets. If they're playing with a big band, they'll use a 24" bass drum. If they're playing with a trio, they'll use an 18", and so on and so forth. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I know, you use the same set from electric music to the Great Jazz Trio. Is there something to be said about controlling the sound? 

TW: Yeah, I think so. That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what I'm trying to portray. People I've worked with have asked me why I don't get a smaller bass drum. Why should I? 

RM: Tell them to get a smaller piano. 

TW: Yeah. "Play on two strings. Get out of here." I really like the drums. That's what I'm about. If we're playing soft and I have a 24" bass drum, I can play it there. One of the reasons I don't play an 18" anymore is that I got to the point where I was playing harder. If you know anything about physics, if I'm hitting the drums and they're not responding, I'm going to hit harder, and then I'm going to wear myself out. So that little drum sounds nice, but from back here where I'm sitting I'm not going to hear it. So I needed a little more weight, especially when I started playing in an electric situation. And when I played in the Great Jazz Trio, on my solo I could open up. A little drumset is nice. I like the 18". It's cute. It's really nice looking— easy to carry. It fits in the backseat of my car. 

RM: When I started playing jazz, I was coming out of rock and I had a 22" bass drum. When I played at jazz sessions, people would say, "That's not a jazz bass drum." 

[...] 

RM : People were giving me all these profound reasons why Max and Elvin used an 18" bass. I finally had a chance to meet Elvin and Max and ask, "Why did you start using an 18" bass drum?" They said, "Well, we were on the road ..." 

Elvin and Max are not the only people who get to decide what kind of instrument is correct. Succeeding generations of drumming artists have spoken on the subject by continuing to use that size of drum, for a lot of other good reasons besides can I fit four guys in the car with it. (Which is still a very good reason, if you ever travel to play a gig.)

In his interview with Scott Fish, Max Roach talks about it a little bit:

SF: Back in the '50s and '60s jazz drummers were primarily using the smaller size drums: 18" bass, 12" mounted tom and 14" floor tom. I've heard that one of the main reasons drummers used that size drum was because they were easier to transport than larger drums.  

MR: Exactly. It made it easier to get from town to town. Pack up your gear, put it in your car, and off you go. That was one of the main reasons I think. Plus, the bass drum had begun to become less and less an integral part of the whole musical set-up. It's different now. The bass drum, at that time, would stamp out what was happening with the acoustic bass. Even the pianists would leave that part. They would voice their chords so the bottom of the piano would be in thirds and sevenths instead of tonics and fifths. They left that part for the acoustic bass. So, your bass drum would only be used for accents and supports. So the small drum was great, plus, you didn't have all the electronics around you, so you didn't need that power there. There were many reasons for it. But, today you do need that power with the electronic scene. 

We're not playing 18s just to honor Elvin's logistical requirements, just like we haven't universally dumped that dumb old 13/16/22 configuration just to poop on Joe Morello and Philly Joe. Likewise, 16" bass drums have been commercially available for a long time, but they are still a niche item, because smallness-wise, they're a bridge too far. Who wouldn't prefer shlepping a 16" if it sounded great?*

I don't believe drumming would have developed the same way if everyone was just playing 22" bass drums. Or even 20". I dusted off my 20" Gretsch recently and— yeah— it's just not as nimble for modern playing. It's a different instrument. Tony certainly didn't play his 24 the same way he played the 18. He sounded way better on the 18. The big drums are good for big band, or trad jazz where you're feathering and dropping occasional bombs; the small drum is better for modern playing in acoustic small group settings.

Almost as important: it's what everyone expects you to have. You have to have some credibility with the other musicians to show up to a quartet gig with anything larger than a 20. They may not know much about the drums, but they know when someone has a weird instrument. And lest anyone protest Who cares what they think?— you should care, if you want them to keep calling you for gigs.

It's a credibility sap. You want people to think you know what you're doing. If you don't play super great, or you play something weird they don't get, or you can't control that 22 as well as you think you do, and you annoy them with it, they'll file you as that clueless weirdo with the wrong size drums and not call you back.

Finally, I don't want anyone to think I'm dumping on Mattingly**— him litigating this in print 35 years ago is amusing in a good-natured collegial way, but it's only an issue now because other people continue talking about it.

* - Note to self: try making a 16" Sonor Phonic tom tom into a bass drum, I'll bet it would sound great.
** - Buy his book Creative Timekeeping! 

Bass drum rhythms for pad practice

This is a page of bass drum rhythms I use for pad practice— I have one of those Gibraltar bass drum practice pads I sometimes use. These are good for anything with a running 8th note rhythm (or 16th note rhythm, if you double time the ostinatos): accents, mixed stickings, flams, drags, short rolls.

The names I've given for each rhythm are just convenient shorthand, for their broad similarity to rhythms/parts associated with those styles. Part of what I don't like about practicing with bass drum ostinatos is the tendency to get locked into the ostinato rhythm— so memorize these, learn to change rhythms on the fly, and eventually improvise your own variations. Think of them all as variations on each other, and practice using them interchangeably. It's good practice to emphasize the & of 2 on most of the rhythms, or the 3 on the two “samba” rhythms.

Get the pdf

This / not this: what's a bass drum for?

First, an eerily-passionless video demonstrating the manipulation of a piece of machinery: a pedal mechanism, which is attached to a product called “a bass drum.” We are left to speculate about what purpose these space aliens have for this activity.




Next, an example of this so-called bass drum being used in its former role, as a musical instrument:

Mickey Roker on the bass drum

Mickey Roker is kind of an under-appreciated player— by me, too. We often focus on the ultra-modern star-type players, but he was a very hardworking musician in his day, and there's a lot to learn from him about what works in a jazz setting. You can hear on yesterday's recording (you bought the record, right?) that he plays the bass drum rather strongly through the swing sections of the tune. He talks about that a little bit with Bad Plus pianist Ethan Iverson, in an interview Iverson has posted online. I like that Roker doesn't say feathering the best drum— a term which just annoys me, and I use only begrudgingly:

EI: When you are playing this fast, are you feathering the bass drum? 

MR: I almost always pat the bass drum because that’s the bottom of the drums. I’m from the old school. We used to play with no bass player and you had to pat the bass drum. I am so used to that. Sometimes I get too rambunctious with it but I don’t want to sound like Papa Joe Jones. That’s why I like cats like Vernel Fournier. Nobody played that bass drum like that guy, you can hear it all the time. Some drummers tune their bass drum at too high a pitch and you can hear it but it gets on your nerves. But if it is down and damp, it don’t get in the way of the bass player. 

EI: Do you think you are feathering here? 

MR: (listens to track) No, I am not playing it here. Well, it’s hard to do that on something fast. You can’t do that on something that is extremely fast, unless you are playing without a bass player.

The track they're talking about is Three Little Words, from the album Sonny Rollins on Impulse; the tempo is around 300 bpm.

DBMITW: my fat bass drum

Just sharing a little piece of my own development here. From the early 90's, until I finally submitted to the too-soft, you-don't-really-want-drums-on-this-gig-do-you craze of the mid-oughts, I played a 20" Gretsch bass drum with Remo Ambassadors on both sides, tuned wide open. In the 80's I had seen Art Blakey play with an obviously unmuffled drum, and Steve Smith came to the University of Oregon, with his shockingly wide-open 24" Sonor drums— he was still with Journey at the time, and had them tuned that way with them. But it was these two recordings that really got me using that as my thing all the time.

First, Roy Haynes playing with McCoy Tyner on an almost-lost tribute to Coltrane album from the late 80's— I used to listen to this track on cassette over and over walking from the practice annex on Figueroa to my apartment on Adams, when I was at USC:




And then the opening track on Where In The World?, a masterpiece Bill Frisell album from 1991. Coming at the end of the fusion era, Joey Baron's sound here, produced by Wayne Horvitz, was pretty extreme. Frisell had just moved to Seattle, and the Pacific Northwest was forming up in my mind as actually being a place, and as having some kind of regional aesthetic, and I gave up on LA, and moved to Portland:

Making bass drum punctuations while feathering

A couple of the problems I have with the idea of playing time with the bass drum (“feathering”) in jazz are: 1) it's easy to play the feathered notes too loud— a very hokey thing in 2013— and 2) it can be restricting; if you don't have a lot of facility, your foot will be so busy playing the near-inaudible feathered notes that you don't play anything else. The latter wasn't a huge problem in 1945, when the drummer's job was quite a bit narrower than it is now, and players could get by just knowing a few stock punctuations; in modern playing we have to do more, and we like more freedom. So here is a collection of exercises to begin developing some dynamic control over the bass drum while feathering: 

Play the hihat and cymbal at an even mf, while exaggerating the dynamics on the bass drum— play the accented notes strongly, and the unaccented notes extremely softly— don't let their volume creep up. At very slow tempos, you might actually practice playing an upstroke on the feathered note right before an accent, and maybe a downstroke on the accented note— or the last accented note.

Get the pdf

1984 MD interview: Ronald Shannon Jackson

Here are some excerpts from an interview I reread many times on the long bus rides on drum corps tour, about the great avant-garde (that's where he's typically filed, anyway) drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. From the March, 1984 issue of Modern Drummer, written by Chip Stern. What he had to say about the bass drum and about cymbals was particularly compelling to me- at one point I wouldn't rest until I got hold of a 14" Paiste Rude. Some other people noticed it, too, because years later that line ended up in publicity for the Rude reissues.


THE BASS DRUM
"It's a funny thing," Jackson explains, "because the way I got to jazz was through records; you couldn't see any of those people live where I grew up. Recording technology wasn't nearly as advanced as what we've got today, so when you listened to those records you never heard the bass drum. Consequently, me and a lot of cats grew up thinking that the bass drum wasn't being played. But when I finally got to New York and heard cats like Art Blakey, Max Roach, Philly Joe and Elvin Jones, I realized that the bass drum was definitely played.

"Luckily, I had the good fortune to grow up in a dance band environment, so I was always in control of the bass drum, and I simply had to transfer that to the bebop and jazz bands I encountered in New York. I grew up playing traps in an environment where the bass drum was most important, as opposed to bebop or swing where you're playing a lot of snare, and doing a lot of accenting between the cymbals and snare, and keeping time with the cymbal. Whereas in dance music the bass drum is keeping the time. In blues music, the bass drum pulse is the soul of the music.



Much more after the break:

On “feathering” the bass drum

what is this

The word refers to playing quarter notes lightly on the bass drum as part of your jazz time feel. They used to call this playing the bass drum— I never heard the term “feather” until the 90's, when it was seemingly reintroduced after being out of fashion for a couple of decades. I don't like the word. To me it suggests a stylized thing, a mannerism, with a distinct reek of “jazz ed.” When you read what people like Kenny Clarke say about it, they will say that they “played it— but very softly” or something similar. So I just say “play.” That's what I mean by play all through this post— quarter notes on the bass drum as part of the time feel.

Apart from the word itself, what bothers me the most about that way of playing itself is that it's vestigial. It's left over from the days when the bass drum was played for the same reason anything is played: to be heard. Now we're doing something to not be heard, that you still have to learn to do as well as everything else you do, that's going to make you sound bad if you don't get it to the right level of inaudible perfection. We spend a lot of time eliminating non-functional elements from our playing, and our movements when playing, and this just seems completely contrary to that.

As I said, through the swing era, drummers played the bass drum to be heard. In the 1940s bop drummers de-emphasized it dramatically, but they kept doing it because that's how they knew how to play. More modern players, without the same swing background as many of the bop drummers, began dropping it out altogether. Maybe this debate over whether to play the bass drum, and how loud, was happening as this was all developing— I suspect the justifications for feathering it came later. All of these developments happened before I was born.

When I first began playing jazz in the 1980's, drumming as I knew it was in a very post-Tony Williams state. The sense I got from the best players I was around was that playing the bass drum that way was antiquated, and that in modern playing the time feel was centered in the cymbal and hihats; the bass drum and snare drum were for comping, punctuations, for funky/Latin feels, or as part of a texture (a la Elvin Jones). Playing quarters on the bass was regarded as an unsophisticated use of the instrument, and a big turn-off when it was abused... particularly by rock drummers, for whom it was a crutch. So, I've never played the bass drum as part of my time feel, except when playing shuffles, or in  specifically very traditional swing settings.

Nevertheless: In recent years I've re-evaluated all of this somewhat, and I play more unaccented quarter notes than I used to. Understanding the traditional role of the bass drum is important, and you can only get that with a physical connection, by playing it. I rarely play a whole tune or even a whole chorus that way, but I'll put it lightly on 1 and 3 at slower tempos, or at certain points emphasizing a heavier groove. And I have some other ways of approaching it in a more modern and open way.

For example:

Alan Dawson's Syncopation long note exerciseThis is a Reed interpretation in which you play the short notes (untied 8th notes) on the snare, and the long notes (tied 8ths, quarters, and dotted quarters) on the bass drum, while keeping time with the cymbal and hihat. The way the exercises are written, you'll end up playing a lot of quarter notes on the bass drum, giving your time a nice grounded feeling, while never getting into full-on 1938 groove. For someone like me who was always trying to “hiply” emphasize the &s- this was a big change in direction.

If you're not familiar with it, here's a line of exercise from the book:

Here's how that would be played, with jazz time on the cymbal and hihat added:

Suggesting a funk feelOften a half time feel with the snare drum on three. This can be done explicitly, but I try to be subtle and non-repetitive about it, so it doesn't actually sound like a feel change, or like a funk drummer trying to play jazz:

Quasi-second line feel
In which the bass and snare split a running syncopated line:

The emphasis is on the quasi with that example— that's much more partido alto than second line. The result of writing it too quickly. But you get the picture.

Billy Higgins' instrument

Here's a nice follow up on my recent Billy Higgins solo analysis. I was just surfing around and getting discouraged at how little of value I was coming across, when I stumbled across this 2000 Jazz Times interview with Higgins, by Chip Stern. The focus is on his instrument, but it's hardly a standard gear discussion:

“I switch up between a K. Constantinople and an old Paiste 602 Medium Ride,” says Higgins. “That old Paiste was given to me by Ed Blackwell, so it has a special thing going for it besides its sound. There’s a vibe to it, and I’ve made a lot of very good recordings using that particular cymbal.”

JazzTimes: Do you always favor rivets in a ride cymbal?

Well, yeah, because it gives everybody a cushion. I remember working with Milt Jackson, and sometime if a cat didn’t have a sizzle cymbal, he wouldn’t hire him [laughter]. Because you’re always playing it, it gives a lot to the player and the ensemble, too—it’s like the maître d’ of the drums set. You might never touch a tom-tom, but that cymbal is a big part of your sound.

Higgins' 602 in action:


After the break, discussion of miking, and tuning and playing the bass drum: