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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I've needed this page several times recently— the first basic orienting exercises for the Gary Chaffee linear patterns: RLB / RLBB / RLRLB / RLRLBB / RLRLRLB / RLRLRLBB
Mainly, playing the repeating patterns as 16th notes and triplets over a quarter note pulse. It also helps to run the some of them in their inversions— 4 and 8 note patterns as 16ths, 3 and 6 note patterns as triplets.
Getting back into Gary Chaffee's linear materials a little bit— originally outlined in the Time Functioning volume of his Patterns series of books. Since first working on this system as a student, it has been a little problem fitting the patterns into a regular musical phrase. That's what we do here, write up solutions to things that kind of bugged me 35 years ago.
So here are some fill phrases in 4/4, beginning with a cymbal accent on 1, a double left on the e&, with the linear phrase beginning on the a of the beat. That's a natural entry.
We have a choice with these: on the phrases ending with two bass drum notes— which makes three in a row including the 1 of the repeat— you can play that as a single 8th notes. That will be more playable for more people.
Once you've learned a pattern repetitively, play it as a fill during a regular funk phrase, move your hands around the drums, and have a good time.
More on that Steve Gadd lick from the Full Compass transcription. It's essentially a familiar kind of four note tom ruff ending on the beat with the bass drum, with an extra snare drum note in unison with the bass. Sticking is LRLR. I'll try to add some video to this post in the next couple of days.
Here's how it appears in the transcription, measure 18:
The rhythm is unusual, and the best way to get it might be to play it in some more easily quantifiable rhythms, and then finesse timing to match Gadd's rhythm— or whatever sounds good to you. The other rhythms are also perfectly valid themselves.
Line 7 is the rhythm as I transcribed it. When you're playing it correctly, you'll notice the snare drum is sounding the rhythm on line 6. The snare in line 5 will have the same timing, but with the ruff timed more tightly than in the finished rhythm.
Line 4 is the nearest neighbor of the finished lick; once you can play it, you can adjust the timing of the two snare drum hits to match line 6. Line 3 starts with a double left to help get the timing of the quintuplet.
The tempo on the recording is 131, so work these up to that speed at least— 131 = dotted quarter note in 12/8, quarter note in 4/4. You may find it easiest to finesse the final rhythm playing faster— the timing adjustment will be smaller.
It may help to prepare to play just the ruff, as on the bottom line, without the snare in unison with the bass.
Incidentally: you'll notice the rhythm, with a triplet played over the last two partials of another triplet— or the last two partials of a beat of compound 8th notes— is similar to a samba “tripteenth” rhythm, which has a triplet played over the first two partials of another triplet. It's a worthwhile area of “organic” rhythm to explore.
Here is a page of fill possibilities within this “beats to fills” framework, outlined at that link. Here the fill portions are two and four 8th notes long. I'll do a few more pages as necessary, to show what to do with one 8th/three 8th/other lengths of fills.
Briefly, it involves marking a written out rock beat so:
BD/cym notes = as written, played as crashes other notes = fill, played a number of ways we'll outline here
See the above link for illustrations and details.
I've long felt that one measure beat patterns— the conventional thing— is a very limiting way to learn. The approach here helps people read interpretively and creatively, and to not see a written out groove as an unchangeable, set thing. It's more like professional reading. And it's a really good framework for learning to play fills along with common ensemble accent figures.
Fill number 1 should be practiced several ways, just as an exercise:
• RH on cym / LH on snare • RH only • LH only • both hands in unison • alternating
Fill 2-8 are all connected, based on fairly small changes to fill 2. Fill 9 uses six stroke rolls, which combines the stickings from 7-8.
Fills 10-14 are various forms of alternating singles.
Fills 15-19 are miscellaneous unique fills, with tom ruffs, paradiddle inversions, and a linear pattern.
People should spend a good amount of time with each of these, trying out different moves around the drums, in addition to working on timing and sound.
Also play them in context as a two measure phrase, one measure written groove / one measure fill.
Billy Higgins playing on a funky vamp with some kicks in it, on Blackjack, from Donald Byrd's album of the same name. It sticks with the rhythm figure all the way through, and Higgins plays a lot of different stuff over it, rather than a repeating groove, so we get to see how he handles that.
The transcription starts at 1:50, with the trumpet solo, ends at the piano solo. Tempo is 174, but the vamp suggests a half time feel.
Here's the rhythm figure he's playing off of, usually filling to set up the syncopated accents starting at the beginning of the second measure, or on beats 4, 3, or 2 of the first measure:
It can make you kind of tense vamping relentlessly like this, if you don't vibe your way into some kind of groove with it. Which is not easy to find all the time.
The first EZ fast rock page was a hit with my students, so here's another like it, more in a fill/variation direction. Combining patterns to make two-measure phrases, most of these will be the second measure.
They're “EZ” in the sense that they're mostly single notes— rarely more than one 8th note-spaced note at a time on any limb— and very little complex coordination. It's a lot of vocabulary they can learn fast, with very little in the way of technical barriers. Towards the bottom of the page we ease into some slightly more demanding stuff.
Get the first page— and the pages in 3/4 and in 5/4, for that matter— learn this page, then combine patterns in two measure phrases. Or four measure phrases— three bars of one thing, one bar of another.
Get the pdf [Sorry, uploading is acting funny right now-- you'll have to print it from the jpeg above]
A similar item to another recent thing, with a Reed system I use pretty often, but don't talk about much— with the hands plaing the book rhythm, and the bass drum filling in the spaces. Hands lead / bass drum fills. I play this system with a (mostly) alternating sticking, you can also play the melody part with both hands in unison, or as flams, if both are on the same drum.
The tweak is to do a linear 16th note fill on the longer spaces in the melody rhythm— on the runs of two or more 8ths on the bass drum. Where there would normally be two 8ths on the bass drum, play BRLB (B = bass drum); where there would be three 8ths on the bass, play BRLRLB.
For each lettered example below, I give the basic way of playing it in this system, and how to play it with the linear fill:
Move your hands around the drums, of course. I never worked out a perfectly satisfactory sticking system for this method. I do it mostly alternating, with a bias for leading the multiples with the right hand. Always stick the 16th note fill the same way.
Work it up with the one line exercises in Syncopation pp. 30-31 and 34-37, then try the full page exercises starting on p. 38. Go for speed with this, you can do it fast.
Where there are two or more 8ths of left hand filler, we'll play 16ths, starting with a BRL pattern (B = bass drum). On two 8ths of filler, play BRLB; on three 8ths of filler play BRLBRL.
I've put all the fills on floor tom and snare drum to help make the sticking clear, but use any drums you want of course. Practice the warm ups, then do it within the right hand lead system while reading from Syncopation pp. 30-32 and 34-45.
Here's a connecter idea, using some rock beats written normally, a la Funky Primer, but playing them as cymbal accents with fills, as in this rock fill drill— hitting accents on the cymbal/bass drum, and filling in 8th notes on the snare and toms.
That latter thing has been a regular part of my teaching for several years, usually starting with the 8th note accent pages in Syncopation. Those pages are a little dull though. This way will be better because a) the rhythms are more interesting, and b) it will give students some ideas about where to take an ordinary written-out rock beat.
It's quite simple. For example, with beat number 4 from p. 13 of Funky Primer:
You hit the bass drum/cymbal notes as crashes, supported with the bass drum, and hit the rest of the 8th notes on... some drums. Snare or toms, TBD later:
With beat number 8:
You would play:
As exercises, you'd play those fill measures some different ways:
Right hand only
Left hand only
Both hands in unison- two cymbals, two drums (or flams on one drum)
Right hand on cymbal / left hand on drums
Right hand on cymbal / both hands on drums
And the drum part could be played:
On the snare drum.
Moving around the drums in a set pattern you make up.
Moving around the drums freely..
Here's how you could play those in a two measure phrase— one measure of the written beat, one measure accents/fills:
Students get way too hung up on what cymbal or drum they should hit— in the second measure you can take the snare line to mean any drum, and the cymbal part to mean any cymbal. Keep it simple until you can play it, then get creative. You can follow sticking systems 1-5 above at first, then wing it.
I'm pretty sure I've written something like this before, but navigating my voluminous archives is no easier for me than it is for you. This is a sketch of some ideas in an upcoming[??? -tb] book release I'm working on. It's part of a larger system, but for now you can work on them as individual patterns:
RH on cymbal / LH on snare unless otherwise indicated. The repetitive format here is for practice purposes, in real music you would mostly do these one time only as part of a larger swing or 12/8 texture. Move them around the drums however you like.
Try them with this loop or this loop. For example of the type of playing I have in mind, see Jack Dejohnette playing on a couple of slow tunes on John Scofield's album Time On My Hands.
Here are some more practice phrase ideas for the tom ruffs. This is an underrated item, it should be a lot of fun. Rock out.
As the stickings on patterns 1 and 2 indicate, when there are two cymbal hits in a row, you can play them with alternating hands, on different cymbals. I've put in a Keith Moon-like thing with both hands in unison on the tom toms, with bass drum, on some of these— you can play those notes also just as solo bass drum.
Here we'll play a two measure phrase, selected from the full page exercises in Syncopation, playing the rhythm as a rock beat in the first measure, then filling in any large spaces— of two or three 8th notes—in the rhythm in the second measure. We can treat some of the surrounding written notes as ensemble accents, and catch them on a crash cymbal, with the bass drum in unison.
Many of the phrases are straightforward. Here's the book rhythm, and that rhythm interpreted as a rock beat, and then with the fill in the second measure, and then with some cymbal accents:
Others may require some creativity to make them work out naturally— especially when the phrase starts with a rest in the book rhythm.
Here are some two measure phrases from p. 38 of Syncopation that are good for this:
You could play through the full page exercise this way, I find that the two measure phrase is better, more similar to actual rock playing, and gives us some space to think about how to orchestrate the fill and cymbal accents. There are several more examples in the pdf. We'll look at some more complex examples, and other possibilities, in part two.
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:
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.
Minor little item, that can be done by itself as an elementary thing, or that can be used along with Syncopation. I wrote it to work through some fill alternatives within a right hand lead Reed system.
Each numbered line has the same basic idea filling the space between dotted quarter notes, and half notes.
Stickings are whatever you want— alternating, natural, RH does cym/LH does snare, mixed diddles, whatever. For people doing the page as a standalone thing, it would be a worthwhile exercise to make the cymbal hits alternate— using whatever sticking you must to make it come out that way.
Fun item inspired by watching some Bob Newhart Show reruns— I watched it a lot as a kid, and the drumming on the theme music made an impression well before I started playing.
In the fourth season they did a funkier arrangement of the theme song, that had a cool fill at the end, with a ruff on the tom toms, ending on the bass drum. They used the toms differently then, and very effectively:
I say “they” used the toms differently, maybe it's just John Guerin, the drummer here. Any time I hear a lot of concert toms on some 70s movie or TV music, he's my first guess. There's a real school of using the tom toms there. Somebody should write a paper. Thanks to David Crigger for sharing that credit.
It was a hip item at the time, and one of the first licks I tried to figure out on the drums. Now it seems a little dated, and ripe for revival.
Play the warm ups, then work it out with Reed, as a variation on the right hand lead system. You fit the ruffs into any quarter note (or longer) length space in the book rhythm— where there are two or more filler notes. On the three 8th note long spaces, play the first filler note normally, then the ruff on the last two— that's illustrated with warmups 4 and 5. Notice also the added flams there, which you can do after getting the system together. They sound cool.
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