EZ Tony-like method: two variations

We're calling this “Tony Williams-like” on the thinnest possible pretext, of course— playing it, it reminded me of some things he did on Frelon Brun, is all. These are two even easier things you can do with an already very simple idea. Our purpose is to drill modern, fast-tempo, broken-time, non-genius stuff you'll play all the time, and become really fluent with it.

Review the first thing: using Ted Reed's Progressive Steps to Syncopation, reading the snare drum part from the long syncopation exercises 1-8: play the short notes (untied 8th notes) on the snare drum, and the long notes (everything else: tied 8ths, all forms of quarter notes) on the bass drum. Play the cymbal in unison with everything.

What we'll do today is even easier. We'll illustrate these using the first two lines of the Syncopation Exercise 1, the famous page 37 (now on page 38, in the new edition):

First, play the cymbal in unison with the snare drum only— bass drum notes are solo bass drum. No reason not to do some of those unisons with the hands on a tom tom and snare drum, too. Mix it up, and try to make music out of it.

Generally you can accent bass drum notes on an off beat. Where there are multiple quarter notes on the bass drum, accent the last note, and play the others a little lighter.

Second, play the cymbal in unison with the bass drum only. Snare drum is played with the left hand, but you can try other stickings with the multi-note runs. In doing that I try to still play all the cymbal notes with my right hand, but do whatever you like. Vary the accents, and try adding flams at the beginning of those multiple snare drum notes, too.

Easy? Sure. So easy you should be able to smoke exercises 1-8 without complaint. Do these in normal uptempo range: half note = 130-165. At those tempos you will not swing the 8th notes. Do whatever you like with the hihat.

Transcription: Jon Christensen - Long As You Know You're Living Yours

Here's Jon Christensen playing some of those ECM backbeats on Long As You Know You're Living Yours, from Keith Jarrett's Belonging. I mean to tackle the big one- The Windup- soon, but in the mean time:

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Joey Baron master class, part 4: I Didn't Go To Music School, I Went To Berklee

Joey Baron master class at the New School, 1994: part 4

PRACTICING:
[W]hen I started to practice, I would like put my ear- since I didn't have people to sit and watch close up, I would do it to a record, or the radio, or the television. I would listen- does anyone know a show called "The Wild, Wild West"? The background music to it was a guy playing brushes on a snare drum, and I always loved that, so every week when it would come on, I'd this close to the TV just listening, every week, and week after week I would just start to get the melody in my head, you kind of already know what the melody was, and just kinda whistle along with it or something and play along with it. Basically, that's it. That's really how I learned to play.

Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Since You Asked

UPDATE 2019: Since I just linked to this in my Jack Dejohnette / Tennessee waltz transcription. New preview image coming soon. Now kind of amazed at how little I used to write about these things.

Here's an example of Jack Dejohnette “playing fast at a slow tempo”, to use Peter Erskine's phrase. This is another original transcription by me, from John Scofield's great Time On My Hands album.

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Kenny Clarke on the invention of the ride cymbal

...and modern drumming in general, excerpted from Ed Thigpen's Kenny Clarke interview in the Feb. 1984 Modern Drummer. I originally posted this last year on the Drummerworld.com forum.

From Thigpen's introduction:

It's understandably difficult for a young drummer to imagine that the various components of the drumset were ever utilized in a manner unlike the way they are today. In actuality, the approach was, at one time, considerably different, and Kenny Clarke had a whole lot to do with changing it all. His drumming led the way towards usage of the bass drum for accentuation as well as timekeeping; the establishment of a jazz-time rhythm for the ride cymbal, and freedom from a strictly metronomic role, forcing the bassist to share in the responsibility of timekeeping. Kenny Clarke can also be credited with freeing the left hand so it could interact with the soloist—the obvious reason why thousands of young student drummers still sweat over Jim Chapin's Advanced Techniques For The Modern Drummer...

To say that Kenny Clarke was "important,"or "influential, "or even "a key musical figure, "does not do his contribution justice. To state, unequivocally, that he was drumming's all-time Great Emancipator, a man to whom every jazz drummer who's ever lived owes a debt of gratitude, is perhaps a much more honest appraisal.