For my jazz students, here is a list of much loved, mainstream, historically important recordings to listen to in your first few years of learning.
I'm also in the process of updating the practice loop labels, to group them by genre or interest. So here is a link for all my loops, and a link for just the jazz loops.
Miles Davis Round About Midnight - Philly Joe Jones The New Miles Davis Quintet - Philly Joe Jones Workin' / Steamin' /Cookin' / Relaxin' - Philly Joe Jones Milestones - Philly Joe Jones Kind of Blue - Jimmy Cobb Bags' Groove - Kenny Clarke Walkin' - Kenny Clarke
Thelonious Monk Trio - Max Roach, Art Blakey Monk's Dream - Frankie Dunlop It's Monk's Time - Ben Riley Criss Cross - Frankie Dunlop Misterioso - Roy Haynes
Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus - Max Roach Freedom Suite - Max Roach Newk's Time - Philly Joe Jones
This is the main loop I've been using with late Three Camps for drumset materials. Most of them— to my taste yesterday's thing is better to practice without a loop. This is sampled from a portion of Milt Jackson's solo from SKJ, a bonus track on the CD release of his album Sunflower. The tune is a 12 bar blues, and the tempo is about 125 bpm.
A new practice loop sampled from Blues at Twilight, from Milt Jackson's album Plenty, Plenty Soul. Horace Silver is on piano here. Tempo is 75 bpm, so this is a good one for getting your triplet coordination together— with my recent pages of triplet patterns, for example, or Gary Chaffee's pain-in-the-neck jazz materials.
Be sure to download my practice loop archive (it doesn't include this) while it's still available.
UPDATE: If you want the loop archive, you should get it fast— my ISP is complaining about the large files stored on my account, and I'll probably have to delete it soon.
I assume everyone is busy rifling through my practice loop archive, which I recently posted online. Most of the samples are quite short, from vamp sections of tunes, and there isn't much regular jazz in 4/4. So lately I've been making more loops from whole solos. I'm starting with Bird— probably every jazz musician in the world between 1945-1960 beat their Charlie Parker 78s to death playing along with them.
This is sampled from Dexterity, written and recorded by Charlie Parker. Nobody ever plays this tune, despite it being massively available to jazz students forever, through the original Real Book. Sample is of Parker's 32 bar solo. Tempo is quarter note = 217.
A couple of practice loops sampled from McCoy Tyner. The first is from Reaching Fourth; it's the vamp from Old Devil Moon, and at 142 bpm it's a nice medium tempo, good for working on any of your normal jazz materials:
Then a short excerpt from McCoy's solo on Song of the New World. Too short; do go listen to the whole album with Alphonse Mouzon on drums. Nobody really talks about the type of vibe that's happening here— high intensity blowing in a straight 8th feel— but it's as much of a thing as an “Elvin-type” feel, or an “ECM” feel. It's not Latin, not a samba, not funk, not anything else. You could call it a McCoy thing.
Tempo here is 220, which is kind of a crux tempo for this style— your right hand wants to imitate McCoy and play a lot of running 8ths, but it's a little too fast to do that the whole time; settling into a half time vibe also doesn't quite make it. You have to straddle the two.
Sorry I mis-titled it “Song FOR the New World” on the video.
Here's a practice loop made from a long sample from Tunji, by John Coltrane. It's from the album Coltrane, which is one of my favorite records in the world— everyone should own it. Also see my transcription of Elvin Jones's playing on this tune. Print version is available in my 2011 Book of the Blog.
Another example of rub-a-dub applied, using a passage from the Charles Mingus tune Fables of Faubus. In previous lessons we've just used this idea on the head of some tunes as an exercise. Here we're using rub-a-dub for its actual purpose: setting up, playing, and filling in between arranged ensemble figures. When you play Fables of Faubus, you could actually play this part of the tune this way... if you choose, after having duly listened to the way Dannie Richmond plays it on Mingus's recorded versions.
Which... by the way: if you do play Fables, and are reading it out of the Real Book, that chart has this figure notated incorrectly. It puts the hit on 3 in the third measure on the & of 2— it's written as 1&-&. That's wrong. Make the band get their pencils out and change it to what is written here.
Practice each line individually, repeating several times at least— the figure doesn't repeat on the actual tune though, remember. The accents just indicate the rhythm of the figure; you don't necessarily have to accent all of those notes on the drums. I've given the running rub-a-dub lick in all its inversions, and a couple of lines with the lick modified to better fit the figure. As always, this is written in the initial orchestration, with the right and on the cymbal, and left hand on the snare drum. As you learn it you can move the left hand around the drums, and move the right hand note with no bass drum to the toms or snare.
Another rub-a-dub lesson— getting as much of this in as I can before the end of the year, so there's a robust section on it in the upcoming 2018 Book of the Blog. This page is based on Doxy, a tune that should be familiar to everyone studying jazz.
I've done two different versions; the first sticks as close as possible to the basic rub-a-dub pattern all the way through. There are a couple of small deviations, but it's remarkable how well simply playing the pattern fits the tune. The second version starts on a different inversion of the basic pattern, and the pattern is changed more to fit the tune musically. The straight pattern may work surprisingly well, but it can sound a little formulaic if it's not broken up.
The stems-up part is the drum exercise, and the stems-down part is the rhythm of the tune:
Swing the 8th notes, of course. After you can play the exercises as written, you can begin moving your left hand to the tom toms, as well as any right hand notes that don't have a bass drum in unison. You could also omit any bass drum notes that are not in unison with a melody note, and move all of those right hand notes around the drums.
Here's a familiar lead sheet for Doxy:
Reminder: While it may come in handy for soloing over this form, and for playing some parts of the tune, this is not a lesson for how to play Doxy. You have to listen to recordings for that. What we're doing is learning to use this drumming pattern to set up and accompany normal jazz rhythms, of which this tune is a good example.
Here is a practice loop for working on this, sampled from the Miles Davis album Bags' Groove. It includes the head of the tune plus one chorus of Miles's solo:
Something a little more challenging to try rub-a-dub style. Since it's not just a lick, but a way of playing figures and setups, musical context is important— we're trying to make some written kicks, so just doing our usual Syncopation thing won't be the best way to work it out.
Here we'll apply the concept to the Charlie Parker tune Au Privave— not a big band kicks-and-setups situation, but still educational. I've written out the exercise, plus the melody rhythm of the tune under the staff.
If you don't know the tune, play it through a few times just playing the melody rhythm on the drums— either snare drum alone, and/or with both hands in unison on the snare plus a tom tom or cymbal, and/or with the left hand along with the jazz cymbal rhythm. Listen to the recording and copy the horn's accents. Good advice for learning any bop tune, actually...
Then play the exercise as written, on the snare drum and one cymbal, then begin moving both hands around the drums/cymbals as outlined in Chris Smith's video that kicked off this whole series. Try it with the practice loop once you've got it up to speed.
As I said with the Equinox exercise, this will be helpful in learning to play Au Privave, but it's not necessarily how you want to play the tune.
Here's an easy little lesson for doing this rub-a-dub business in a musical context, using the tune Equinox by John Coltrane. Equinox is based on some very common jazz rhythmic figures, so this should be useful for doing this in context generally.
An addition: as explained by Chris Smith, rub-a-dub is normally an 8th note thing, but there is also an easy triplet equivalent, which is illustrated in the pdf. I've written out the exercise in both 8th note and triplet form. Keep in mind, this is not about how to play Equinox— it's an exercise for practicing this idea.
Swing the 8th notes. Learn to play each version as written, then begin to improvise moving both hands around the drums and cymbals, maintaining the written sticking. The accented notes are the important accents in the tune, so try to keep those on the cymbals.
Another practice loop in 3, to go with all of the recent jazz waltz stuff, sampled from the very famous tune All Blues, from the very famous album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The tempo is 139 bpm.
Practice loop in 6/4, sampled from Greensleeves, recorded by John Coltrane on the album Africa/Brass. Here we just have the bass line played by Jimmy Garrison. Tempo is 142 bpm.
Garrison is phrasing the 6/4 as 2+2+2/4, but you can do all of my Elvin Jones-type stuff in 3 with this. This “figure control” page based on Stereolab's Free Design actually uses a very similar rhythm to what Garrison is playing here, just add a swing interpretation. Also see my other stuff in 6/4.
Here's a jazz practice loop in 4/4, a sort of gospel 2 feel, sampled from The Sermonette, by Cannonball Adderly. It has a nice deep pocket and is good for all your jazz practicing needs. The tempo is 124 BPM.
In honor of what would be Max Roach's 92nd birthday, here's a practice loop sampled from As Long As You're Living, from his album Quiet As It's Kept. The tune is a blues in 5/4, and I've looped an entire time through the form— twelve bars, for you jazz novices. To get a clean loop I had to start with the turnaround— the last four bars of the form— so the fifth measure after the start of the loop is the top of the form. You'll hear it. The tempo is quarter note = 186.
People, I am all about the quarter notes these days. This is an easy method using the rhythm of the vamp from the Herbie Hancock tune Maiden Voyage— we'll combine that rhythm, played on the cymbal, with the linear quarter note drum parts from Syncopation, by Ted Reed. That's pp. 8-9, or Lesson 3, if you own the new edition of the book. Normally I would explain every step of the process, but you can figure it out. Open up your copy of Reed, print the pdf, and go.
Usually the cymbal notes will be played with the right hand, but you can catch some of them with the left, if you'd like. And improvise whatever sticking you like on the snare drum notes, move them around the drums, adding flams or whatever embellishments you like. Take advantage of the simplicity of the method to fit that stuff in. Practice lines 1-15 with and without the pickups, then test yourself with the 16 bar exercise.
This is another sampled practice loop I've been using for a long time, good for your triplety jazz materials. It's four measures long, from the intro of Crazy He Calls Me, played by Ahmad Jamal, which I have on the album The Legendary Okeh & Epic Recordings. It's a slow tempo, and the timing is expressive— the first measure rushes slightly, and the last measure relaxes slightly— so you won't be able to play mechanically over it— you'll have to listen, put a little air in your playing, and play the phrase:
Here's the rhythm of the phrase, if you have trouble hearing it at first— the & of 1 swings, of course.
