More on samba feel

Following up on my earlier post on feel in samba, here I have gone a little further in analyzing what's going on with the repinicado/"tripteenth" (Michael Spiro's term, I believe) thing in samba, and have put together a little method for varying the accents without losing the feel. Once you get the concept, you may not need to see it written out like this, but it does help some people. It's important to bring it back around to conceiving the rhythm as an interpretation of 16th notes in 2/4 or 8th notes in 2/2.

File this under "things that are about as accurate as the idea that swing in jazz is based on triplets." You have to apply some musicianship, and do a lot of listening and playing to get to where this is supposed to go.

Visit my other samba posts for examples of this A drum set student who was really, really into samba and wanted to develop a lot of facility with this sort of thing might also apply the first thirteen Stick Control stickings to the 3/8 exercises, Accents and Rebounds-style.

Get the pdf.

Fun and useful samba/Brazilian music links

Here are a number of samba/Brazilian music-related links you might find helpful:

Carnival in Rio: play yourself a samba school drums section.  We'll start with a fun one. This is a flash application allowing you to conduct your own batucada. Just go.

Ginga: a Brazilian way to groove by Jovino Santos Neto. This is a very informative pdf on the interpretation of several Brazilian styles, by Jovino, a great pianist and composer from Rio, currently living in Seattle.

From the introduction:

Brazilian music in all its forms has enjoyed tremendous popularity in recent years, especially among jazz musicians who appreciate its rhythmic complexity coupled with its harmonic sophistication. Almost every contemporary jazz performance features tunes with a Brazilian flavor, either a composition by a Brazilian composer or a jazz standard set to a samba or bossa nova feel. However, with notable exceptions, the musical results fail to achieve the essential characteristics which define those Brazilian styles. This is most often caused not by a lack of musical ability, but by an improper understanding of the rhythmic essence of the styles. In Brazil, this most subtle aspect of groove is often known as ginga (with a soft g as in ginseng). It refers to the way in which a dancer moves, to the way a beautiful woman walks and to the way that music incites motion in the listeners. The purpose of this paper is to provide rhythmic information in a practical and concise way, leading to the development of ginga in the performance of Brazilian-based music. We will be looking at 4 distinct grooves: samba, baião, marcha and maracatu from that perspective, hoping to create a deeper intuitive feeling for their rhythmic nature. 

Lions of Batucada caixa rides. All of the caixa (that's a Brazilian snare drum) parts for a Portland group which I performed with in the mid-2000's, the Lions of Batucada. These were picked up by members who travelled to Brazil, or from samba heavyweights like Jorge Alabe, Boca Rum, Bruno Moraes, Michael Spiro, and Carlinhos Pandeiro de Ouro who came up to work with the group. I wish I had found this before I did my caixa blow-out- this can replace many of the patterns I included there. They're all written in easy to understand tablature. 

Caixa blow out: part 1

Here are a couple of pages of caixa (that's a Brazilian snare drum) patterns which are in common use in Portland, along with some of their variations from other sources. Includes a partial illustration of the "tripteenth" (Michael Spiro's term) concept, which may be helpful in getting the feel happening. These are primarily for use in a batucada group, though set players trying to cop that style are going to want to know them, for information if nothing else. Part two will feature patterns more commonly used on the drum set.

Download the pdf.
UPDATE: the Lions of Batucada, a group I performed with in the mid-00's, has their caixa rides written in tablature and posted online. Several of them replace or are alternatives to the ones I've presented here.

After the break are several fun and helpful videos: