Showing posts with label comping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comping. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

Conductor of form

The general topic here is jazz comping— some general concepts thereof, getting into what I think is missing from a lot of students' playing, even as they do the basic thing pretty well. The following are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories of playing— they're more ways to listen, ways to think about the functions of what we're playing.  

Our first job with that is just to learn some left hand activity, as running commentary on the snare drum, which we get from practicing out of Chapin or Reed, or by downloading a bunch of junk off my site. Guided by a general need to be doing something, hopefully not in a stupid way, hopefully sounding like they're listening to the soloist. 

There is also an element of groove support— backbeats, the rim click on 4, a bongo rhythm, and riffs— repeated rhythm figures, which people learn early. 

As players mature, they get better about being selective about how they make their bigger statments, thinking more in terms of punctuations, interjections, filling spaces left by the soloist. They'll differentiate their dynamics between that vs. running background texture. 

Through the development of all of this, the mindset is vaguely about “playing better”, playing cool things well, hopefully being a good ensemble player. Apart from the groove stuff, the real purpose of it isn't real clear— beyond just playing the style, or of conversation or self expression. Building intensity. We get closer to it as we get better at playing phrases, at playing off of the tune. But it all happens by vibe. 

The unstated thing is that there is a presentational or guiding function happening as well— introducing changes, conducting the form, guiding the group through dynamic changes— it's the big center of our musical job as drummers. Acting as an arranger, and stater of the arrangement. It usually only gets discussed indirectly under some other categories of things, and not in the sense of what are we actually doing here, what is this total performance about.   

Maybe you can hear Philly Joe Jones conducting us through the form here: 




This is all over the album Milestones— the arrangement is involved, and very show-like, presentational. Everybody's thinking that way. But he's pretty assertive with the snare drum as running commentary as well, that's not all purely functional re: the form.  




We could stereotype Elvin Jones as generally a texture drummer— I pulled this up with the idea of it being an example of primarily textural playing— but you can hear him doing the exact thing I'm talking about, conducting us through this blues form:  


 

Listen for it here, in Al Foster playing very busily with Joe Henderson. To me virtually everything he does here has a function within the form. There is a lot of pure texture happening, some elements of it just driving the groove. The big things you hear him doing are all about blues, the movement of that form: 




Early on, form is just a thing we're trying not to get lost in. Later it becomes the arena for you to do your thing— at which phase you're more attracted to blank forms, blowing-friendly forms, or to very friendly and distinctive ones— and hostile to the obligations of playing an arrangement. The thing we're talking about here is becoming a presenter, and the form is the thing you are pleased to present.  

When you start thinking this way, your job playing unfamiliar material becomes clearer— you'll know the problem you're trying to solve. The mundane details are not just pains in the a** interrupting your flow, they're the whole thing you're doing. 

I can see someone taking this idea and going way too far with it. People like turning suggestions into doctrine. It's one angle to consider in your playing, and to guide your listening, that I haven't seen widely stated elsewhere. 

Monday, November 25, 2024

Transcription: Mickey Roker - Essence

Here's Mickey Roker playing behind Donald Byrd on Essence, from Byrd's record Electric Byrd. It's vibey modal thing, in a slower 4/4 swing feel. It looks busy on the page, but this is mostly about groove, which is exceedingly deep. Tempo is about 88 bpm. 


I've gone a little nuts with the ghost note notation, but it's accurate— a lot of the comping activity is very soft. We can assume he's feathering the bass drum most of the time; I've only notated it where it's audible. Often with Roker that bass drum and snare drum are layered— he plays more unisons between the two drums than some of us do. 

In the comments someone mentioned an interview with Roker by Ethan Iverson, where he mentions the bass drum: 

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 [Three Little Words from Sonny Rollins On Impulse!]) 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. (Listening to Sonny solo) Bad dude. Sonny Rollins!


His sound has a lot of bottom, with a large, muffled bass drum with a soft beater. The snare drum is tuned high and crispy. He's using a smaller, medium weight ride cymbal. Toms are medium size, with the top head tighter than the bottom... if you were wondering what that sounds like. 

Friday, August 02, 2024

Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 03

Part three of Branford Marsalis's Housed From Edward, from the album Trio Jeepy, with Jeff Watts on drums. Let's do the whole thing. This begins in the middle of Marsalis's solo at 3:21, and ends at the beginning of part 1 of this series, at 5:15.

Includes the very audacious/goofy displaced time feel, starting at bar 10. To me it takes exceptional self confidence, and faith in the other musicians, to try that on a recording session, but he had been doing some heavy rhythm stuff with Wynton Marsalis's band for several years before that, and clearly had it worked out. 


See also the quintuplet lick in bar 24— you can hear how the quintuplet cuts across the groove. It sounds off, but that's the nature of it. You could play that with a Chaffee-type sticking, RLBRL BRLBB. 

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Saturday, July 27, 2024

Jazz waltz triplet burnout - 01

Updating this page as my purposes with it have evolved, into an endurance drill. I've made it harder, with larger changes from measure to measure, with an eye on how it progresses playing through it two beats at a time. 

This is a good long term project, you can work this up to about quarter note = 238. The Chasin' The Trane tempo. You'll get there quicker using the previous page. 



Play whatever hihat rhythm you want. This whole mess could be done substituting the hihat for the bass drum— for me that is a separate mission. It's too much to do all together, and the hihat will bog you down. 

In case I didn't give you enough practice options, I was also playing it in 4 by repeating the middle beat. So this written measure: 


Is played like this: 


Another thing to trick you into doing this longer, which is the whole point, do it for a long time. 

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Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 02

Part two of Branford Marsalis's Housed From Edward, from the album Trio Jeepy, with Jeff Watts on drums. Let's do the whole thing. This begins at the top of Marsalis's solo, at 1:27. 
 


Most of the action is on the second page, enjoy. 


Monday, July 22, 2024

Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 01

Trio Jeepy by Branford Marsalis is a long time favorite album of mine, that was very influential on my concept of jazz. It's got Jeff Watts on drums and Milt Hinton on bass. This tune Housed From Edward was a big lesson on playing a form musically— 12 bar blues, in this case. 

This is the middle part, beginning at 5:15, where Branford takes a hike and Watts and Hinton play time— very lyrically— for several choruses. Tempo is about 122. 



Not much to say, the lesson is self-evident. There appear to be a lot of other transcriptions of this floating around— with videos of people playing them. 


Tuesday, July 16, 2024

Triplet burnout with the jazz waltz telephone page

Here are some things I do over the course of 15-20 minutes playing that jazz waltz telephone page, in addition to just playing repeating measures as written, in 3/4 time: 

1. Play each measure in 4/4 by adding the first beat of the following measure. 
2. Play each measure in 4/4 by adding the last beat of the previous measure.
3. Play in 2/4 by playing just the first two beats of each measure.
4. Play in 5/4 by adding the first two beats of the next measure. 
5. Play each two beats of each line, moving ahead one beat at a time. 
6. Play each 3/4 measure within 4/4 time. 

 


The page is just for illustration, you do these looking at the original page. I won't necessarily rigorously play through the entire page each of those ways, but I'll do them for awhile, moving quickly from thing to thing— it's a lot to play through. Obviously you have to have this stuff together already pretty thoroughly, so it's about conditioning, rather than learning new stuff. It's a triplet burnout drill. 

I play the cymbal as written through all of those changes, and add hihat as appropriate for the time signature. 

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Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Jazz waltz telephone - 01

This is a writing experiment, starting with a jazz waltz cymbal rhythm with triplets filled in, changing one note per measure— or two notes. The cymbal rhythm stays the same, and bass drum is added, but no hihat. Everything here is handled in different materials already, I just like coming at things from different angles. This will be useful for at least one student of mine.


Play one measure at a time, then complete lines, then the full page. You could also alternate measures, say, the first measure of line 1 combined with every other measure on the page. Pencil in hihat rhythms if you want. 

UPDATE: This is actually good. This is what anybody should be playing when they sit down to do this kind of thing, and for about the amount of time it plays through the page, playing around with each measure a little bit. The hidden thing with all the one measure drum patterns out there is that you're supposed to play it for a long time, and make some variations on it. So materials that trick you into doing those things = good.    

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Sunday, June 09, 2024

Transcription: Charli Persip blues

Charli Persip playing a medium blues with Oliver Nelson: J&B, from Nelson's 1961 record Main Stem. Persip is really enjoyable to listen to, and has a little bit of Roy Haynes's edgy, modern thing happening. Good example of someone playing pretty modern in groove environment— he heard Idris Muhammad doing that before. If you swing and play good time you can get away with some stuff, you don't always have to slam pure context groove. 

The transcription covers his playing behind all the solos, starting at 1:25. Tempo is 106.  


Comping with the snare drum is fairly sparse; it seems like there's a little more activity there than is audible on the recording. He feathers the bass drum throughout, fairly audibly. He does a Roy Haynes-like thing of unisons in the hand vs. bass drum, like you see in measure 12. Hihat is consistently on 2/4 all the way, except he hits some accents on it, and sometimes drops it out when he's doing something complicated.

In the third chorus there's a double time 2 feel happening. Swing the 16ths there. Otherwise the 16ths are played evenly. 

He's using a small (18"?) bright, rather tinny ride cymbal— light with short decay. Not anybody's dream cymbal, but it sounds fine. You could get the same sound out of one of those old Ludwig/Paiste or Ludwig Standard cymbals.  

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Monday, February 12, 2024

Practical comping lesson with Rothman

Joel Rothman's books don't get a ton of attention in the jazz drums-learning world, but they're good. I like the comping materials in his book Basic Drumming (duplicated in his book Drumming And All That Jazz). They cover the practical basics, bridging into more modern*, filled in, Elvin Jones-like textural playing.
 

* - Yes, Elvin Jones died 20 years ago[!!!] at age 76, but his playing is still modern; everybody who plays gets into him in a serious way, and he did drumming as art, not simply accompaniment (I think he would have disputed that). Modern doesn't just mean contemporary.


The other usual books tend to deal more in pure rhythm/independence/reading problems, and I've never found them to be totally satisfactory for getting to a realistic comping texture with new jazz students. Rothmans' stuff is friendlier to my teaching purposes that way. 

They're notated as just a snare drum and cymbal rhythm, written as triplets, with the swing interpretation baked in. It's assumed we'll add the hihat on beats 2 and 4, and maybe feathering the bass drum if you swing that way


You'll notice that the first two beats of each pattern are the same— hopefully that teaches you the first idea really well, and teaches you some places to go with it. 

One thing I do— not necessarily first, but first now— is add some bass drum. I'll circle some notes or rests in the student's book, and have them add bass drum there. For example: 



Most of the snare drum part should be played softly, with usually one or two accents per measure. I'll also pencil in some accents to give an idea of how to shape the measure: 



The problem here, as with almost all comping materials, is we're dealing with one-measure ideas repeating on the 1. We're too 1 oriented, too single-measure oriented.

There are some ways of making a musical phrase out of this, more like how drummers realistically play, with some space. For the examples below, we'll use pattern 4 above, with the added bass drum, and hihat on beats 2 and 4: 



First, obviously, play 1 measure of jazz time, one measure of the exercise: 


That's a good way to learn the patterns in the first place, as part of a continuity, not just as an isolated measure. If a student is able to read the patterns correctly the first time, that's how we'll do it. 

We can also get off the 1, and play the pattern across the barline, a couple of different ways. 

First, just play the pattern as written, except starting on beat 3 of the last measure of the phrase: 


Or play beats 3-4 of the pattern on beats 3-4 at the end of the phrase, and beats 1-2 at the beginning of the new phrase: 


If that seems weird, it's not, it's what you were playing on the repeat of the one measure pattern: 


Here's what a four measure practice phrase would look like, playing that way: 


Obviously there are other possibilities. It's not necessary to take it too far faking a drumming performance from book materials, we're just giving people a sketch of how you might actually play. The next step turning book patterns into music is to play music— with people or with recordings.  

Monday, October 30, 2023

Rhythm cycles

Here's a page to print out and staplegun to the wall by your drums: a summary of some major practice rhythms, and their inversions. Sometimes you don't need a readable page, you just need a quick reference to glance at. I should probably expand this and make a poster out of it. I'll certainly be updating it. 

Includes a couple of simple rhythms that don't have a name, and the Charleston rhythm, tresillo, cinquillo, three different rhythms in 3/4, played across the barline in 4/4. 




Play these as independent rhythms along with an ostinato, or in a Reed-style interpretation, or as ensemble rhythms/kicks— at the bottom are some practice phrases for that. Phrases 1 and 3 are good for a kick-type phrase, phrase 2 suggests a rhythm section figure, a la the tune Equinox. Plug in whichever practice rhythm you want in place of the example rhythm, of course. 


Monday, July 17, 2023

A basic waltz vocabulary - 01

I was working with a student on a jazz waltz, played at a brighter tempo than he was real comfortable with, so we needed to come up with some easy things to add to his basic feel. The first thing to do with any style is to get some simple options for things to play.  

We'll use this as our basic time feel— everything else will be added to that, or modify it: 


Use the 8th rest pages from my book, Syncopation in 3/4, which you should own. The first three lines of p. 18 have a single beat of 8th notes/rests per measure, and some quarter notes:  


Normally people just tell you to play the rhythm on the snare drum, and play it on the bass drum, and move on, but let's change it to make it more like something we might actually play when playing this style:

1. Play just the 8th note.
2. Play the 8th note plus the note after it. 
3. Play all the notes. 
4. Play all the notes, minus the note after the 8th note. 

Using line 1 above, along with our time feel, that would go: 


Seem convoluted? Not really. You want to be able to look at a rhythm and just play part of it. 

In jazz, you don't generally play a repeating rhythm every single measure— let's play them every two measures: 


Simple. We're looking for basic, mundane vocabulary. 

We're not going to do a lot with the bass drum here, but try playing it on the note after the 8th note: 



When you do that in the two measure phrase, don't hit both 1s with the bass drum, for example: 


Use your own judgment in how you do that, which measure of the phrase gets the 1 on the bass drum. 

After you can do all of the above in the two measure phrases, improvise similar things, while thinking your way through a tune, or playing along with a record. Something like All Blues or Someday My Prince Will Come, or Up Jumped Spring.

We'll do a little more with this later in the week. 

Friday, June 02, 2023

Transcription: Roy Haynes - Bad News Blues - 03

Part 3 of Roy Haynes playing Bad News Blues on his record Cracklin'. Booker Ervin's tenor solo includes a chorus of stop time, two choruses of blowing, then he trades choruses with Roy. This is the two choruses of blowing, starting at 3:59. I've included the two measures of fill leading into the blowing, and what he does at the beginning of the trading. 

Here are links to part 1 and part 2 of this transcription. 


Haynes gives the impression of being very linear with his snare drum and bass drum, but this is very layered at times— he'll play the snare and bass at the same time, accenting the bass and ghosting the snare. He accents the snare before or after the bass drum. See measures 10-12 and 18-20. 

So he has very fine control of his left hand dynamics independent of what else he's doing. Interestingly, his left hand rhythms are largely non-indepenent— often they're simply in unison with his right hand. 

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Monday, May 22, 2023

Transcription: Roy Haynes - Bad News Blues - 02

Part 2 of Roy Haynes playing Bad News Blues on his record Cracklin'. This is Ron Matthews's piano solo, starting at 1:51— four choruses, 48 bars. 

Things like this are a little bit of an archeology project. We're not just looking for comping ideas, we're looking at when he plays in the phrase, and what for— is he supporting the groove, is outlining a phrase, is he conversing with the soloist, what. And to some extent how— what's the logic for how he's executing it physically. As I said last time, Roy is often real economical with how he coordinates things— very linear, with lots of unisons. So I look carefully we he layers things in a more independent/complicated way, like how did that come about? 


The cymbal rhythm is pushing towards a dotted 8th/16th interpretation here. The swing 8ths generally are not perfectly squared off triplets. He plays light backbeats much of the time. If we're checking where he's accenting with his comping, he plays a lot of &s of 4, relatively fewer &s of 3, not much on the & of 2 or 1, except as a continuation of something he was doing in the previous measure. 

It's telling how he plays the 16th note comping in bars 6 and 16— he plays the full beat of 16ths, RLRL, ghosting that second R on the cymbal. Clearly something that evolved naturally, where most of us are sitting down with Chapin and working out our 16th note timing impeccably vs. the straight cymbal rhythm. 

There are a couple of spots where he apparently plays the open hihat with his left hand, which involve some quick moves from the snare drum. Possibly he's splashing it with his foot, and I'm just hearing the attack from the ride cymbal, which he plays through that. Or maybe he's really quick getting his left hand to the hihat, and it's something he doesn't. It fully doesn't really matter. 

That lick in the last two bars of the transcription is one that's worth learning on its own.  

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Tuesday, May 02, 2023

Transcription: Max comping

That's the theme of the week now: jazz comping. Here's Max Roach playing on the horn solos on A Little Sweet, from his record The Many Sides of Max. Each solo is 24 bars long, and the soloists are George Coleman, Booker Little, and Julian Priester. The transcription begins at 0:36, tempo is about 230. 

There's an element of sounding composed with Max— everything sounds like a deliberate statement. I noticed when transcribing Freedom Suite by Sonny Rollins that he often repeats whole phrases. It's very unusual— all drummers repeat stuff, with Max there's something non-organic about it. Like measures 19-20 and 31-32— there's no reason to for that specific sequence of things to repeat. I don't know how he arrived at that. It could be unconscious, or totally deliberate. 


The cymbal rhythm is mostly consistent, and he plays the bass drum all the way through, pretty loudly. There are some accents on it, probably more than I've indicated— I feel like I'm hearing him leaning on beat 4 often. I really didn't pay attention to the hihat— it's not loud on the recording. Maybe he dropped it out occasionally and I missed it, it's not consequential. 

There are a number of phrases that are worth practicing on their own— probably any two or four measures. A few that stood out are bars 11-12, 43-44, 49-52, 65-66, and 71-72. 

Also bars 1-4, or 2-3, or 3-4. He's doing a New Orleans kind of thing between the snare drum and bass drum, that I associate with Billy Higgins later on.

And bars 21-28, or 21-23, or 25-28, eliminating the SD on 1 of bar 25. 

Also noting that some of his longer ideas, where he's phrasing in 3/4 within the 4/4 of the tune, he begins them at the end of one soloist, through the beginning of the next soloist. That happens in measures 21-28— the double bar in the middle of that passage is where the soloists change. Also in bars 44-52. To me that's very unusual. 

Finally, analyzing it from the perspective of that comping formula we learned about the other day: you're not going to see anything like that— &s of 1/3 on the body of the phrase / & of 4 at the end of a phrase. What we see is that they will alternate: & of 3 will be followed by an & of 2, and vice versa. See measures 17-18, 33-34, 53-54. More often his ideas will be phrased in 3/4 time outright— see several of the suggested phrase above. 

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Sunday, April 30, 2023

Beware of formulas

Making that Shadow Wilson transcription, I was reminded of this video fellow blogger Jon McCaslin shared with me (and Ted Warren of Trap'd), in which drummer Bernie Dresel shares his formula for comping with the snare drum in jazz: 


Basically he says:

    •  Play lots of & of 1 / & of 3
    •  & of 2 / & of 4 “doesn't swing”, save it for the end of the phrase

Now: on that Monk record, Shadow Wilson, you'll recall, plays mostly &s of 2s and 4s, all throughout the phrase. The idea that he doesn't swing or doesn't know how to comp would be absolutely ludicrous, if anyone dared to state it. 

Dresel mentions developing this formula from listening to Billy Higgins. But we just have to go to the records to discover that he plays plenty of &s of 2/4, all the time. Part of what's nice about the way he does it is that he mixes it up.

As an aside Dresel notes that accenting the cymbal on the & of 2 / & of 4 also “doesn't swing”, which... Elvin Jones famously plays his cymbal that way, as do many others following him, so case closed on that. I also recall Paul Motian somewhere saying that Monk suggested accenting his cymbal that way. I don't have more examples because I never thought it would need defending. It's an established thing. 

 


Certainly a lot of people are active with the snare drum around the & of 1/3— Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, for example. I've written some stuff based on the idea. For a stone beginner with no idea what to do, Dresel's formula is not a terrible place to start. 

But it's very, very reductive. Approaching jazz as a formula is a terrible idea. Jazz is not Rockabilly. It's better to do what everyone great did: practice some stuff, play a lot, listen to a lot of records, listen to the people you're playing with, play the tune, and play what you hear. In the video Dresel asks is it random?— the answer is, no, it's based on all those things. 

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Transcription: Shadow Wilson comping

A little bit of Shadow Wilson's playing on Nutty, from Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane, at Carnegie Hall. This is Monk's second solo chorus, starting at 2:33. The tune is 32 bars long, form is AABA. 


He's more active on the snare drum than you would think from a cursory listen— the ghosted notes are extremely soft. The snare drum hangs around beats 2 and 4, with many of the audible notes happening on the & of those beats. Note the triplets in bar 24, with the left foot in unison with the left hand— a clue as to how those older guys approached left foot independence...




Sunday, February 05, 2023

Transcription: Mel Lewis comping

On Chess Mates, from a 1985 Joe Lovano record, Tone Shapes & Colors— a live recording with Mel Lewis on drums, and Kenny Werner on piano. A lot of what I'd call “non-independent” drumming here, lots of examples of his rubadub thing. A good example of how to play bright tempos economically while still sounding like you're doing something.

The YouTube video won't embed, so hit this link to hear it.

The form is short and unusual, I guess we'll call it ABC: 

A - 12 bars  |  B - 4 bars 3/4 + 1 bar 4/4  |  C - 8 bars  


That B section is not a trap— it has 16 beats total, same as four bars of 4/4, so on the blowing you could miss it and not get lost. He probably actually wrote the whole thing in 4/4— on the solos Mel plays it like it's a figure in 4/4. Playing the head it would be easier to count it in 3/4; I'm writing it 3/4 to outline the figure, which is played pretty strongly even on the solos.   


Here are a couple of choruses of Mel's playing during Kenny Werner's piano solo, starting at 4:32. Tempo is 258. 



He plays the hihat pretty softly— not necessarily quiet, but with a soft foot, not a lot of force, with some splash sounds, and the volume is irregular. He's mashing the stick into the snare drum a bit, so a lot of the notes have a wide attack, not quite a buzz stroke. All of the tom tom notes are played with the right hand. Any time the bass drum is played on an offbeat, it's not played strongly.

There's a little more happening with the bass drum than I notated, but I'm not hearing any evidence of regular “feathering”, that he talks about so much. Maybe he's doing it, it's up to you how much you want to struggle with that. 

Bars 3 and 4 have the fundamental rubadub lick he plays throughout this. Maybe the best individual phrase of that is bars 30-33. Also note the fills in bars 25 and 46— sticking is RRLL RRLL both measures.

Also look at the way he phrases the last four bars, 47-50— he does that kind of phrase often: 

First bar: big accents on 1 and 4. 
Second-third  bars: nails down time, brings the hihat in. 
Fourth bar: fill / end of phrase


He does that most of the time here, actually.

What he's doing is modern, but this is definitely night club drumming, an evolved texture from playing in clubs, doing that job. There's nothing contrived about it, none of our usual jazz student worry about ideas or creativity or being interesting or using our technique.      

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You'll have to hit this link to hear the track in a new tab. 

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Transcription: Elvin Jones - Foolin' Myself - 03

We'll keep going with this. Part 3 of Elvin Jones playing on Foolin' Myself, from Lee Konitz's record Motion. This is the second chorus of Konitz's solo, starting at 1:57 in the track. 

The previous entries were pretty clean and straightforward, here there are a few unusual/organic things that don't resolve perfectly as something to practice. 


Like there are some 16th notes on the last beat of the fourth line— the 4e&a1 there. It didn't come out as intended, and there's no reason to practice it like it's deliberate vocabulary. And at the end of the 8th line there are four bass drum notes in a row, in a triplet rhythm— the first two are ghosted, the last two are played. It's an artifact of Elvin's technique, and of a certain physical momentum.  

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Monday, December 12, 2022

Page o' coordination: hihat in the space

Here's a page based on this ongoing Elvin Jones transcription— I observed when he was playing time on the hihat, he would tend to close it before the beat. I also saw him doing that at a faster tempo, on Chasin' the Trane. And he often puts the hihat on the & of 1 in that Afro-waltz type feel. So let's work it out a little bit.    

Let's be clear that these are coordination patterns. Check out the transcriptions and recordings to see/hear how he actually does this— you don't want to go in and do this as an ongoing time feel. Though there's at least one kind of stock shuffle groove that does something like this


Swing the 8th notes, play the cymbal part on the hihat, observing the open sounds; also play it on the ride cymbal. Take care with articulating this distinctly from the normal hihat close on 2 and 4— doing it unthinkingly could mess with your time feel. 

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