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. 

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Reed tweak: RH lead triplets - fast within slow

This has been an item of interest for a long time— playing fast in a slow tempo. In a master class Peter Erskine mentioned that Jack Dejohnette was the only drummer he knew who could play fast on a slow tempo. He was referring to Jack's playing on John Scofield's Time On My Hands, which Erskine had produced the year before. I've mentioned it a bunch of times here.   

Here are a couple of ways of doing this as a Reed system, reading out of Syncopation, with both 16th notes and 16th triplets, within 8th note triplets. 

I've chosen to lead the filler with the left hand, favoring an inverted diddle sticking, with the diddle up front, beginning with a LRR where possible. See this page from last year for some other options. Obviously there are a lot of possibilities for stickings, and linear patterns. And it's real similar to some things on the recent 3/8 and 4/8 fills pages. And see this page as well. 

Where there are two cymbal hits in a row, you can also play them with the R then L hand. 

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Two measure Reed phrases - 02

Another cut-and-paste, hack-and-slash job, extracting some two measures phrases from the full page exercises in Syncopation. For when I want a particular kind of phrase, and don't want to hunt around the eight pages for it, and don't feel like writing it my damn self. These ones all end the same, with a dotted quarter note's worth of space. And they all start with a note on 1, not a rest. 

I had the right hand lead triplet system in mind for these, or any number of the straight 8th RH lead tweaks, that have something special happening in the longer spaces. 

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More 3/8 fills - 01

Here are some things I was playing around with while playing my page of 3/8 fills— embellishments on things on that page. Some odd stickings, or normal stickings I would play in an odd way. Stuff to fool with.  

This entire recent framework for fills has been working really well, in teaching, and in my own practicing. We practice a lot of endlessly running patterns on the snare drum, but the thing about a fill is that it has a start and it has an end— you have to get to it from the cymbal, and end it on a cymbal, usually. Kind of obvious, but including that, and doing it in a specific duration of space is working a lot better for me, and my students.  

The mission is pretty clear, drill the living bejeezus out of these things, move them around the drums. There are some other obvious sticking possibilities that I didn't include because they're obvious. Vary stickings/accents as you like. I can't control what you do. 

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Fills in a 4/8 framework - 01

Continuing the concept of that last thing, Fills in a 3/8 framework. Here we've got four 8ths of space to deal with, a cymbal accent, and three 8ths of fill. I'm very pleased with how this broad system is developing— I finally have a way of practicing fills, and teaching them— to all levels of students— that is systematic and realistic to how you actually play. It was always something you just had to figure out by playing a lot. None of the books on the subject made it for me. 

This page may see some revision— my office is still blown to hell and I haven't been able to play through them. Some of the stickings are unusual, replace them with whatever more obvious thing you want. I'll probably add/change some stuff. 

You know the routine, drill the individual things relentlessly for timing, movement around the drums, dynamics, and lastly speed, then play them in the practice phrases on p. 2. All of the phrases are limited to having three 8ths of fill, and that's pretty limiting— next we'll get into some phrases that are more realistic, and varied.  

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Fills in a 3/8 framework - 01

UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took them out, and added one more rock phrase. 

Big item, closely connected with the other recent things we've been doing with fills— see especially this beats to fills post, and this one, and this collection of right hand lead tweaks. The general idea is to hang the fills off of 8ths notes, and including the surrounding cymbal/bass drum hits in the equation— it's all about frameworks for doing that, and what to do on the fill itself. 

Here I've written a lot of fill possibilities to play over the space of three 8th notes— a cymbal hit, plus two 8ths of drums— covering the full gamut of fills from simple and functional, to very dense and soloistic. 

Play each of the fills, in each sticking, many times, working out moves around the drums, and accent possibilities— and any further embellishments that occur to you. On the mixed sticking patterns, you can accent the singles. There are a lot of fill ideas, but any single one of them that you learn to use really well is a big deal.  

At the top of the page we have the basic framework, with the 3/8 idea played once in 3/8 time, and twice in 3/4 time, and as a running pattern over three measures of 4/4 time. Accents are the important cymbal crashes, slashes are to be replaced by any of the fill options. On the second page there are some practice phrases for practicing them in rock, jazz, jazz waltz, and 12/8 feels: 

Everything other than the slashes and accent is ad lib time— play what I've written, or whatever you want in that style.  

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Two measure Reed phrases - 01

Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and this puts most of them together on one page.  These are all pretty tight rhythms, with no greater than quarter note spacing between notes. 

These will make good jazz solo phrases, in a right hand lead triplet interpretation, here based on pattern 8 on the page (written here with the RH part on cym/bad; the other usual way to do this has RH playing accents on the snare/toms, no bass drum, and LH ghosted on the snare): 

They'll also make slightly less-good funk phrases, with a half time feel funk rhythm in the first measure, and straight 8th right hand lead in the second (again, RH in second measure can also be played on SD/toms, no BD):

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First inversion paradiddles around the drums

Updating a very crummy looking page I wrote in 2012— some calisthenic patterns moving the highly hip and useful RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion around the drums. 

Drill them blazing fast, and also for control and accuracy at moderate tempos. Don't have a big hole where you sound bad with these because the tempo isn't fast enough. As it says, practice ending the patterns with a bass drum on the last 16th note in the measure, plus a cymbal/bass drum. 

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Simple four limb unison warmups

Here's a set of simple four limb warm ups, that are heavy on the unisons... an underrated practice item. Take your pick, run p. 38 of Syncopation with 4-5 of these, at a reasonably bright speed, before a rehearsal or gig. 

If you can't do any of them— take half an hour and work them out, you may be missing the boat on something basic coordination-wise, there's a hidden weak spot in there that may be interfering with you in other areas.  

 

Summaries of all of those systems: 

1. Play the melody rhythm with all limbs in unison. 

2-4. Play melody rhythm on cymbal and bass drum, fill in spaces with snare drum/hihat (played w/foot). 

Play with R on cym / L on snare 

L on cym / R on snare

alternating sticking

5. Play melody rhythm with both hands in unison, fill in spaces with both feet in unison. 

6-9. Play melody rhythm with three limbs in unison, running 8th note on remaining limb: 

hands + BD over HH (foot)
hands + HH (foot) over bass drum
feet + LH over RH
feet + RH over LH 

10-12. Same as 2-4, with swing interpretation, filling in triplets. 

13. Same as 5, swing interpretation filling in triplets. 

14-17. Same as 6-9, swing interpretation with triplets. 

And of course, you may want to do the 8th note things in a swing interpretation. 

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[h/t to my student Matt S. for mentioning #5 as something Dejohnette was doing, setting this whole thing off.]

Meter-within-meter phrases

A page of meter-within-meter phrases— three beat rhythms played over four measures of 4/4:  

You'll want to be very familiar and comfortable with this kind of rhythm— it happens a lot in jazz, and if you get lost you're dead. Count through the sounding rhythm of each phrase: 

Also play just the first two measures of each line, played twice to make a four measure phrase. 

You can do this with my book Syncopation in 3/4— four measures of any materials in 3/4 = three measures of 4/4. 

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Stick Control with a backbeat

Another little oddball Stick Control related item, for drum set: some Stone-type sticking patterns with accented unisons added, on beats 2-4, and on beat 3. Introducing the idea— if you like it, you could obviously go a lot further working out of Stick Control itself. 

Play the right hand on the cymbal, left hand on the snare drum. Ghost the non-accented LH hand notes, play all the RH notes at an even volume. Add bass drum however you like— a particular kind of nut case could use the reading in New Breed for that.  

See also this other oddball item, and the right hand lead with a backbeat Syncopation system. Similar minor items. These things exist in the cracks between the actual major drumming vocabulary items, to create openings for other things to happen. 

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Transcription: Max Roach - Commutation

Here's Max Roach soloing with his left hand on Commutation, by J.J. Johnson, on Johnson's record First Place. A nice little self contained lesson item— there's some trading after this solo I didn't bother with.

Tempo is about 256, solo begins at 2:36. 

All the notes are played strongly, except the ones in parentheses. You'll notice not all the left hand stuff lines up perfectly with the cymbal. 

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Three Camps in first inversion paradiddles - UPDATED

Updating a really horrible looking page I wrote ten years ago. Musescore actually kind of rocks, this took me no time at all, and looks way better. Musescore would make me work to make it look as bad as the old version. 

It's Three Camps, adapted for your paradiddle inversion burnout needs. Play it a lot, and fast: 

This is in Frank Arsenault form— the third camp different than I've seen it elsewhere. We get to play the third camp twice, without the extra repetition of the second camp afterwards. 

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Afro 6 - new basics

For one of my students, a new page of warmups introducing an Afro 6 groove— or various forms of it. It's as deep a thing as there is in drumming, and to begin understanding it we want to approach it from a few different angles. This is mostly for the hands, see also this page which works out the coordination with the feet. 

Play those, be able to count in 3 or in 4, depending on the time signature, as in ex. 1 and 2. It may help to count the combined rhythm of all the parts before playing a pattern, and/or to work it out as a sticking— including R hand, L hand, and Both hands. 

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Squarepusher beat

This came out of a mistake by a student, when we were working on some basic ghost note materials. Some things considered to be “advanced” come up naturally in the form of mistakes and general indiscipline. My student's timing was wrong for what was written on the page, but it was perfectly in time for this kind of techno beat— he mentioned Squarepusher, so that's what we'll call it.  

Here are some things to play with, starting with the seed idea: 

You can see sort of what's happening there— ordinary 16th note ghost note stuff, with some notes offset by a 32nd note, maybe doubled, and extended a little bit, with the goal of sounding hyper and disjointed. 

Tempo and sound should be frenetic. Eventually. Crank your snare drum, or play them on one of those useless little 10" snares. Add bass drum as you see fit. 

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Funk warmups - cymbal on offbeats

A page of groove fragments, really, for one of my students— to help get oriented working out of New Breed. We were having some difficulties with this particular cymbal rhythm.   

You could play this page by itself, or use it to work out how the coordination will work when playing a similar system in New Breed. 

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Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Boo Ann's Grand

Jack Dejohnette open drum solo from Boo Ann's Grand, on the Jackie McLean 1967 album Demon's Dance. Tempo is about 241— about as fast you can do this kind of stuff. This is burning for jazz stuff using triplets. 

The solo begins at 5:23, and is 48 bars long, less two beats— the band comes in two beats off the 1 of the transcription. 

 

Naturally at this speed you can put a big slur marking over much of the dense activity. A lot of things written as unisons are not lined up precisely. Much of it is Elvin-like activity; he doesn't come off the cymbal much, except on the paradiddle-diddle thing in the fourth line, and at the beginning of the sixth line. He does some interactive snare and hihat stuff at the beginning and end. 

Playing this note for note would be insane. Analyze it for general principles, ways of playing, things played within one phrase. Some things are certainly happening from physical momentum that would be hard to duplicate if you played it literally. Something can be structured to the person playing it, but if they ghost some notes, it can look really fragmented on the page. 

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Transcription: Billy Cobham - For Someone I Love

Here's that Billy Cobham transcription— just of a busy portion of Freddie Hubbard's solo on For Someone I Love, on Milt Jackson's record Sunflower. I'm learning a lot about Musescore doing something this damn complicated. 

Ignoring form altogether here, the transcription begins at 4:25, a few measures into Hubbard's solo— the first few bars are very light, you can hear where he plays the ruffs/triplets at the beginning of the page— and cutting out after the last big insane lick, out of sheer exhaustion. Tempo is about 74 bpm. 

If it looks like a fragmented nightmare, take it up with Mr. Cobham. He packs a lot of stuff into some small spaces. I have some questions about bar 10— the end of yesterday's sixtuplet lick— but I can only let this guy beat me up for so long. It is what it is.  

UPDATE: There's a slight fault in the notation in measure 21— each of those drags should be played as a nested triplet. There are supposed to be three dots (...) printed about each of them. Correction coming when I can get to it...

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Transcription: Flight For Freedom - 01

OK, first complete transcription using Musescore, doing basically everything I need it to do for this site. Same recording I've been working with, Flight For Freedom by Oliver Nelson, from his record Skull Session, with Shelly Manne on drums. There was some dispute over whether it might have been Jim Gordon instead— we'll listen to one of his tracks from this record and check out the difference. 

This is the first minute of the track: 

I think he's using a four piece set plus a couple of concert toms. Mostly rides on the hihat, and he hits that ugly sounding swish cymbal quite often. And a crash cymbal, and he gets onto the ride cymbal at the end. Towards the end there's an unusual percussion sound I can't identify— I think he's playing it, but it could be someone else. He did quirky stuff like that at times. 

I really want my thing of notating half-open hihats with a tenuto mark to catch on. 

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Check out this track with Jim Gordon for comparison: 

Gordon hits harder, and is more aggressive, has a little sharper edge as a pure groove player— he seems more polished for this kind of music. Manne perhaps makes some more unusual choices, and is looser. They're both playing with a lot of forward momentum, I can't define the difference in quality of groove between them— Manne feels more “behind the beat”, but I'm not sure that's accurate at all. These are pretty nuanced impressions— they're both right on it, and have done a thousand sessions at this point, and are great. I enjoy Manne's playing more, he's warmer; Gordon is like a machine for this kind of playing. Not to say he sounds machine-like— do you dig the distinction? 

Feelings and impressions are hilarious— the words that come into your head may not be the actual thing happening on the recording. 

Listen to the rest of the record. Gordon plays on Skull Session, Dumpy Mama, and Japanese Garden.
 

Musescore notes: 

I've actually got it pretty close to where I want it, with the appearance of my template, and with using it. Two or three days of fussing around is actually not bad. 

Stem length
A lingering visual annoyance was the general stubby appearance of the notes. Under format > style > notes I saw that the shorten stems box was checked by default. I set the shortened stem length to 2.95sp— a little shorter than the default non-shortened stem length.  

Work modes

Navigating the various work modes are still a little obscure. I'll be hitting the Esc key often to switch from note entry mode— which doesn't always act the way I expect it to— to doing general stuff mode, where I can select measures and individual notes/articulations/text to do something with them.  

Note entry
Entering notes I use the keys a lot— hotkeys for the major drum sounds, arrows for navigating, number pad for rhythm value, + shift key to enter two notes in unison. For drum sounds that don't have a hotkey, I highlight the note/rest then mouse click on the thing I want in the key at the bottom of the window. For anything else I use the mouse to select it. 

Using the arrow keys, sometimes moving L-R selects the next note or articulation in a stack, sometimes not. 

Exporting
Really easy. For some reason my version of Finale sucked for exporting pdfs and jpegs— I had to use a pdf printer app (cutepdf, it's quite useful) to export to pdf, and then actually upload it to a web site (online2pdf.com, also quite useful) to convert it to a jpeg. Really dumb, and time consuming. 

Musescore has a nice friendly PUBLISH tab at the top of the screen that lets you output it any number of ways quickly and easily. 

Note entry is the main thing I need to get sorted out. I'll do a dedicated post for that in the next few days. Or not— I'm not sure how helpful my personal notes will be for people. Just read this page on entering notes and this page on navigating the document. 

Groove o' the day: Max In Tunisia

A selection of grooves played by Max Roach on the Miles Davis album At Last!— a live recording made at The Lighthouse in LA in 1953, and released thirty years later. Max here has been playing the tune every night for years, and the way he handles the whole thing is loose and interesting. Comparing how he handles the tune on the different recordings of it would be a good term paper project for somebody. 

First is a mambo-type cowbell groove he plays during the intro. Then on the head he plays a rhumba beat, with a lot of variety to it— I transcribed five measures of it to show that. On the A section the second time through he plays an interesting five note pattern, for which I gave a likely sticking. The last thing is four measures of the rhumba as he plays it on the head out. Snares are off the first time he plays it, and on on the head out. 

That rhumba beat is kind of an underrated item. I think most people how to figure out how to play it on the gig— there's no reason to practice it, there's nothing to practice. People get locked into it as a rather stiff/corny repeating beat, but you can handle it very loosely and have some fun with it, make your own personal thing out of it.

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