Straight 8ths in funk Afro 12/8

Something I'm working out, that needed to be written out to do it: straight 8ths on the bass drum within a funk-style Afro 12/8 groove. I work a lot with this whole area of groove. This is worth working through even if you don't have an application for it, it makes you put a fine point on your accuracy with your bass drum. 

Play the accent like a backbeat and ghost the rest of the snare drum notes. At first omit the circled notes on the cymbal with patterns 3-4 and bass drum with patterns 5-16, if it helps you get them. 

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Hemiola inverted and combined

An easy page of rhythm exploration here, inverting a polyrhythm, combining inversions, and then inverting that. I've been encouraged to write these things after noticing that, starting with a simple 3:2 polyrhythm (or hemiola), running some simple mathematical permutations, and/or putting them into 2/4 or 4/4 time, we get some very common rhythms in north American and Latin music. 

There's no grand goal here, except to know rhythm a little better. Most people can play it in one or two practice sessions, then leave it. 

I encourage you to count the combined rhythm of each exercise, and think of them as sticking— variations on B RLR (B for both hands in unison). As we get into the inversions there are some RLRLR and RLB. Play first with hands only, then add the bass drum at the beginning of the pattern.

You can move your left hand between drums, and add some more bass drum. Try some things, it won't be difficult to make some interesting Afro-type grooves with this.   

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Metric modulation a la Silverman - 01

A student brought in a copy of Chuck Silverman's Practical Applications: Afro-Caribbean Rhythms for Drum Set, and we worked through a part of it together, dealing with metric modulations— or more accurately superimposed metric modulations (Vinnie Colaiuta's term).

It means an illusory tempo/time change while remaining in the original meter. It's a drumming hot topic; as a musical device it's mainly a trap, a bad decision. But it's worth pursuing a little bit to learn something about rhythm. 

Patterns 1 and 2 are warm ups; line 3 is the pattern as it appears in Silverman's book. Lines 4-10 are my own variations, making some basic funk rhythms, superimposed. 

As an exercise, you could play four measures of a simple half time feel groove with the same cymbal rhythm, alternating with four measures of the above patterns: 

Try it along with a Afro 6 type loop— here's a reasonable-tempo one, and a faster one. 

Here's a similar page I wrote in 2019. 

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Page of polyrhythms - updated

Updating my old badly formatted page of polyrhythms from 2013, adding some things, and hopefully making it easier for more people to read and use. I've written them in the easiest possible form, expressed as 8th notes, 16th notes, or triplets (or compound 8ths) in common meters. I had to do one of them in quintuplets. And I included a check rhythm, with all the notes of the polyrhythm highlighted, and I wrote in how to count the combined rhythm of both parts together, and any rests that would be helpful to count. 

The names of the polyrhythms are expressed as a ratio, e.g. 4:3, which would be spoken as “4 against 3.” The second number is the rhythm native to the time signature, and the first number is the cross rhythm. For example, with the 2:3 example in 3/4 time, there are three beats per measure, and the 2 is the cross rhythm. 

Top line is the right hand, bottom line is the left hand, on two different instruments. Or use any two limbs you want. Count the combined rhythm of both parts, then play it. You could run a metronome at the grid speed below the staff if any of them give you problems. 

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Hemiola funk patterns in 5/8

Here's a nice easy page of hemiola funk patterns in 5/8— based on our friend the 3:2 polyrhythm. World's fastest way of getting your students playing hip stuff in 5, if you already (wisely) ran them through my previous hemiola funk pages. 

These will also work in a bright 5/4— 8th notes = quarter notes, in that case. You can also swing the 16ths, add hihat (on 2 and 5) and alter the cymbal rhythm (add skip notes on 2 and 5) to make a 5/4 jazz feel, which is an excellent idea.

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Page o' coordination: grocery store hemiola - 01

So-called because I found myself unconsciously tapping this out in the grocery store parking lot while waiting for them to bring out my groceries. 

...incidentally, for the sake of limiting your exposure to COVID-19, I highly recommend the curb side service when getting your groceries, if your store offers it. Right now the Fred Meyer where I get my groceries— a Kroger market— offers the service free of charge. 

So I was tapping pattern 1 with my RH/LF while waiting for the guy to bring out my stuff, and for fun I wrote up a PAGE O' COORDINATION for it. 

There are independent parts for snare drum and bass drum, but you can/should play them all on either drum. Use the stock tom moves when playing these with your left hand. 

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Hemiola funk series: all basic patterns in 3/8

UPDATE: Download link works now!

There's an ongoing political crisis happening in the United States right now, and it's really hard to write, or do anything else productive. It's very serious and basically every human on the planet should be very concerned about it, because it does affect everyone. 

So here is what I can manage— kicking around the hemiola funk concept some more. For me this is background work for a book; for you it could be a Stick Control-like thing, and play the patterns by themselves, and in all of their combinations. They're easy, so even though there are a lot of combinations, it should go quickly. There will be many duplicates of things on the other page of this from last week. I can't help you there. 

I've only included proper hemiola patterns that have running 8th notes in the right hand— none of the linear RLB patterns I wrote about before, which are closely related, but really a different thing. Play the patterns in the 3/4 rhythms at the bottom of the page, or just play them in 6/8 or 12/8. After playing them individually, combine them like: 

1-2, 1-3, 1-4... 1-26
2-3, 2-4, 2-5... 2-26
3-4, 3-5, 3-6... 3-26

By the time you get to 25, you'll just play 25-26 and be done. 

Playing them in 6/8, you could also try playing patterns starting with a bass drum on 1, with patterns starting with the snare drum on 2. So you might play:

2-1, 2-3, 2-5, 2-7...
4-1, 4-3, 4-5, 4-7...
6-1, 6-3, 6-5, 6-7...

All the combinations with BD on 1, SD on 2, going up and down the page. Enjoy. 

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Hemiola funk series: all patterns combined

Continuing to work through the possibilities of the hemiola funk series, in hopes of eventually making a concise, coherent method out of it. It has been great for my students— adult beginners, and kids under 10, even. It's fun, and easy, and sounds and feels cool, and it teaches real fundamental drum set coordination.  

This is three pages long, with a lot of patterns... and just now I see I've left out one. Oh well. It's really a Stick Control-type library of combinations— a student would have to have a really good grasp of the larger picture for me to teach this in a lesson.  
 

Lines 1-10 are the basic patterns, one time, and repeating in 3/4. Pages 2-3 show all the patterns combined in a single measure of 3/4. I've only written them in one order. 

Really each of the combinations deserves the full page treatment I did with each of the basic patterns— inverting them so the 1 is on each beat of the measure, playing each two beats of the pattern in 2/4, and in 2/4 with the beats reversed, and extending the the 3/4 pattern into one measure of 4/4. 

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3:2: varying the 3-side

Here we're essentially doing straight 8th notes against a broken triplet-feel cymbal rhythm, in a triplet-feel context. For me this is mainly for playing straight 8ths in an Afro 6/8— which I already covered back when I was just writing what I was using, and letting people get it, or not. Now I like to break things down more, giving you my own strategies for figuring things out.

It's pretty straightforward. Learn the patterns with your hands, then learn that page I linked to above, which includes variations on the straight 8th rhythm within an Afro 6 groove. You could play a dotted quarter note— or 8th note, or dotted 8th note— pulse with one or both feet while you play the exercises with your hands. You can also do the patterns on this page between all combinations of limbs. In order of priority, I would say— 3 side limb is first: RH/LF, RH/RF, LH/RH, LF/LH, RF/LH, RF/LF, LF/RF, etc. 

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Chaffee jazz patterns in a 4:3 feel

Playing the jazz patterns from Gary Chaffee's time functioning volume as 16th notes in a 4:3 feel. I feel like kind of a horse's ass writing this— it's all already in  the book. But there are a lot of patterns, spread out over a dozen pages, and I only need part of them, and it's more of an annoyance figuring it out while I'm practicing than it is just writing the page up while having my morning coffee, and listening to that Buster Williams record.

I want the patterns that have no more than two snare or bass drum notes, and no more than one hihat note. And only one version of them— in the book the patterns are written in all inversions, which is redundant for this purpose. In the book the patterns are written in 3/8, which I've retained, but we'll play them as 16th notes. If you can't make the translation, you probably shouldn't be messing with this. On p. 2 of the pdf I've indicated the rhythm for each pattern when played on a 16th note grid.  

Play the patterns along with the cymbal rhythms on p. 2. It may be difficult to play the last two lines of cymbal rhythms without seeing them written— it may be better to think in terms of playing the cymbal in unison with the snare, bass, or hihat, or on the rests— or in unison with snare, bass or hihat, plus one rest. This is pretty tedious stuff by itself, so use one of my practice loops.

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Hemiola funk series: SS-BB / BB-SS

Another permutation on this basic hemiola funk format I've devised, doubling up on the BS, forwards and backwards... wait. I'm deliberately not really giving you a finished concept here— I just wrote this up to see how it played out. It seems like an obvious idea, but it actually doesn't convert into normal funk vocabulary as well as some of the other pages. I'm not hearing it.

If you've been working with my previous pages, there's no reason not to play through this at least one time. The whole point is that none of this is technically difficult, and just because something doesn't really work for me, doesn't you won't get anything out of it. This will be my next publishing project after I finish with the 2019 Book of the Blog, which should be available for purchase next week.   

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Hemiola funk - doubles - beginner sheet

Getting into doubles with my hemiola funk series— two notes in a row at 16th note speed on the same drum/cymbal. Using the same format as the last beginner sheet, which I've found to be effective with my younger students.

Patterns 13 and 14 are the essential idea we're developing; patterns 1-12 isolate the elements, and begin playing them in sequence. Patterns 15-28 put the idea in 2/4 (with inversions) and 4/4, and re-orchestrate it slightly. 

Play patterns 1-12 several times, with an unmetered rest in between repetitions— play it once, take a breath, and play it again. Play patterns 13-28 one time as with 1-12, then play them repeating.

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Hemiola funk series: 2/4 inversions

I wrote this out for some of my younger students, and also as a continued exploration of this hemiola rhythm in funk. It's very similar to some other things I've posted— most of these left hand rhythms already occur in this page of tresillo inversions— so you'll have to forgive the redundancy. It's an idea in development. And different levels of students need to see things written out certain ways.

I've written out a 3:2 polyrhythm in 8ths and 16ths, played twice in a single measure of 3/4, written three ways. Then I extracted the first two beats of each 3/4 rhythm, and wrote out inversions of it, starting on each 8th note of the rhythm. You can see that the results are mostly very common funk snare drum or bass drum rhythms.

I've given a sticking for each pattern: R = right hand, L = left hand, B = both hands. I find it's helpful for students to count the rhythm, and to think of the patterns as a sticking. Also play the patterns substituting the bass drum for the left hand. A couple of obvious moves for turning these into performance vocabulary are to add a snare drum back beat on 2 (if it's not already present), or add a bass drum on 1— or on any cymbal note without a unison.

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Page o' coordination: 3/2 over 12

Adding to our already-voluminous background for playing an Afro feel, or any 6/8 or 12/8 feel. Here we're phrasing in 3/2 and 12/8 at the same time, using a common cymbal pattern.

It's easier to see what's happening when we isolate the cymbal and hihat:

It's a natural rhythm for any jazz or funk drummer to lapse into when improvising. I've put the normal bass drum leading into the 1, plus the basic left hand coordination parts based on the 4, and on the 3:

Learn the patterns, then work out with them doing all my basic left hand moves. Use my practice loop in 6/8 sampled from Eddie Palmieri.

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Jazz rhythm book

There's a good book on rhythm that is kicking around on the internet for you to download and read: How to Read Jazz and Other Syncopated Type Rhythms.  It's by Micheal Longo, who had a long relationship with Dizzy Gillespie as his pianist and musical director. I learned about the book from a Hal Galper video. I had never read it, but in it he discusses some things I've been talking about on the site for a long time, and there's a lot that is relevant to drummers.

It is described as a course in sight reading jazz rhythm:

The purpose of this course is to provide you with a technique for training your instincts to respond to the type of rhythms which appear in jazz, rock, Latin, or any other of the syncopated styles of music that originated in the United States.

Students of jazz generally have trouble with reading due to the fact that they were taught rhythm in terms of European music, and jazz rhythm has an African basis.

It goes into the additive rhythmic concept, in which syncopated rhythms are conceived as all downbeats. So this simple “Charleston” rhythm, which breaks down like this:

Would be conceived more like this:

He explains:

This is precisely the way composer Bela Bartok achieves the accentuation of Hungarian gypsy music in his compositions. Much of the world's folk music, or music of the people, seems to accentuate the off-beat consistently. Bela Bartok uses an asymmetrical metric scheme similar to the concept expressed in example 47. 

This is the underlying concept for his reading method, and whether you learn the method or not, it's an enlightening alternative way of thinking about rhythm.

Longo gives some interesting notes on the cymbal rhythm, which relates to some of the “skiplet” talk on this site. He told about Oscar Peterson singing the jazz cymbal rhythm like this:

And Dizzy Gillespie singing it like this:

Longo notes:

It is of extreme importance to notice that in both the Peterson and Gillespie examples the phrasing of the cymbal beat begin in the bar before the downbeat bar. 

This produces an entirely different “feel” than the common interpretation beginning on the first beat of bar one and should be considered as an important conceptual distinction.

We saw this before with Art Taylor, who started on beat 4 when demonstrating his cymbal rhythm. I based a whole system for learning jazz independence on it, with my “skiplet” method, based on a single repetition of the cymbal rhythm, starting on 2 (or 4).

He goes on to illustrate a thing with jazz rhythm where notes on the &s are conceptually linked to the following beat, not the beat before. So instead of feeling 8th notes as:

1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&

You would feel them:

&-1 &-2 &-3 &-4

Which has been a very useful idea for me— attaching &s (or as, with 16th note rhythms) to the beat after.

Longo's actual reading method is rather strange to me— he puts the actual beat numbers (from the beat after the note) on the &s... I haven't had enough time to digest it. I don't feel it's strictly necessary, since we are all practicing out of Ted Reed's book every day, so we're more naturally fluent with these types of rhythms than other instrumentalists.

Anyway, it's a concise little volume that is nevertheless full of things to think about— there's also a section on polyrhythms I haven't fully processed. Get it here.

Hemiola funk series - basic logic

I want to walk through the logic of this hemiola funk series of posts— at least the logic of one part of it, which may be difficult to see on playing through the materials. I feel I have to explain myself if I'm going to post a lot of pages developing an idea live on the blog like this. Here are the basic steps I am doing on those pages, with a little explanation:

Start with a basic 3:2 polyrhythm, written with 8th notes representing the 3 side. Notated here for cymbal and snare drum:

The native */4 meter for this is 3/4— that's the shortest */4 meter that can hold the uninterrupted pattern in a single measure. We get that by playing that pattern twice:

To be clear, this is not necessarily about a literal 3:2 polyrhythm, with three pulses played against two pulses. It's about fitting a running dotted-8th note rhythm into */4 meters— mainly 2/4 or 4/4. The 3 side of the polyrhythm, the 8th notes, just represent the context— the implied subdivision of the time signature. Our main interest is the dotted 8th notes:

As these rhythms occur in nature, they don't always start the same way. Here's the above pattern starting on its second beat:

Extend the pattern one more beat to put it into 4/4. The dashed “imaginary” barline divides the measure in half, which will be significant in a moment.

Now the weird/interesting part— reverse the pattern to start with the second half first:

...we see that same type of move in clave-based music, with 3-2 and 2-3 clave orientations, and we see it in Brazilian music. It's not so weird if we think of the rhythm as two measures of 2/4 rather than 4/4; I use a single measure of 4/4 only because it's common in modern North American music. The idea of reversing the parts may seem strange in the first place, but it certainly must have evolved organically. I think it's only seems strange because we're imposing a “1” on music that isn't as 1-centric as we are accustomed to— at least in the musics where these rhythms first came into common usage.


PROOF THIS IS NOT SOME JIVE I'M JUST MAKING UP:

The rhythms resulting from the above system turn up everywhere in nature. Two quick examples, using that last rhythm: it is the same as this common bossa nova rhythm, frequently mislabeled “bossa clave.” Here it is in a complete groove:

And it occurs in DC Go-go music— it's the bass drum rhythm that is the foundation of the entire style:

Now, the end game here is not to theorize about rhythm. I'm more interested in developing a fairly complete funk drumming vocabulary with a few simple drumming ideas, based on these concepts. The vocabulary already exists— I just want to turn it into a method. It's also good to understand the extent to which this 3:2 polyrhythm is truly the life blood of African-American music, and Afro-Latin music, and all of their derivatives. Without this, we would all be playing marches.

Hemiola funk series - SB-BS

I like this series. It's a little half-baked, and I'll probably have to rewrite it eventually, but I feel we're closing in on something. A theory of rhythm and playing the drumset not based on marches? That will take another couple of generations of development. For now we'll just settle for a thorough understanding of this 3:2 compound pulse fit into common meters, along with a basic, powerful piece of drumming coordination.

This is the inverse of the last thing, where we started with the bass. Now we're starting with the snare.

See the last entry for comments on practicing this. Play the patterns, preferably in a context, and count the quarter note in the meter of the exercise, out loud. 

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Hemiola funk series - BS-SB

Further exploring hemiola rhythms in various meters and drum set orchestrations... there will be several more posts like this coming soon. It's a simple idea that nevertheless needs to be written out, and it takes a lot of ink to run it through all of the permutations... I'm not sure to what end. We'll see when we're done. There's something very fundamental happening here, both rhythmically, and as a piece of drumset vocabulary.

It's a three-beat idea which I've written in 3/4, 2/4, 4/4 (single measure, and repeating over three measures), and 5/4, starting on each beat of the pattern. Since the pattern doesn't fit into a single measure of most of those meters, it has to be shortened. I've also written some of the patterns in an inversion, with the pattern starting on 2 (in 2/4) and on 3 (in 4/4). I've seen that kind of hemiola inversion in Brazilian music and DC Gogo drumming.

No page in this series should require a lot of practice. After you learn the first pattern in 3/4, the other practice patterns are the exact same thing, with slightly different orientations. To get full value out of this, you need to hear them in context; play them along with any practice loop of your choice.

You can experiment with a few easy creative moves to make the patterns sound more like real funk vocabulary:

• Add bass drum on 1 if it's not already present. Also add bass drum on 1 every two measures.

• There's no snare drum backbeat in these patterns. Where possible, accent the a of 1 or 3 on the snare. Where there is a bass drum on 2 or 4, play the snare drum instead.

• Play an ad lib funk groove in 4/4 in two-measure phrases; play the one-measure practice patterns at the end of the phrase. Patterns 1-3 will start on 2 of the second measure. Patterns 4-9 will start on 3 of the second measure. Patterns 11-16 will start on 1 of the second measure. Patterns 17-19 will start on 4 of the first measure.

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Two hemiola coordination patterns

This is partly about rhythmic education, partly about drilling a couple of basic drumset coordination ideas, and partly about education on the polyrhythmic foundation of common funk rhythms. It is based on this page of hemiola variations, starting with the snare drum, and with the bass drum. I've put the patterns in some common meters, repeating unbroken, and in single measures of 2 and 4, which disrupts the pattern. I've also inverted those single-measure patterns, putting the beginning of the pattern on beat 2 (in 2/4) or 3 (in 4/4). The logic should be obvious when you play through the exercises.

You'll note a certain similarity to our recent rub-a-dub series of posts— file them in the same family of materials.

Put these patterns in context by playing them along with any of my practice loops. Playing through both pages of patterns a few times should be enough to learn everything you need from this.

Patterns with a bass drum on 1 and/or a snare drum on 2 and/or 4 suggest a funk time feel; patterns with the snare drum on 1 suggest a funk fill. For patterns starting with cymbal only, you can try adding a bass drum on 1.

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Page o' coordination: jazz waltz with syncopated 4:3

Here's a jazz waltz page o' coordination with a syncopated polyrhythm in the feet— if you must know, a 4:3 polyrhythm in half notes and dotted quarter notes, starting on the & of 3 of the second measure. The math doesn't matter. Think of it as an Elvin Jones-style waltz rhythm with the bass drum phrased in half notes:

Swing the 8th notes. Page o' coordination methodology says you learn the ostinato at the top of the page, then learn the sixteen exercises, playing each exercise many times. Start by playing the left hand on the snare drum, then move it around the drums.

You could also play an open sound with the hihat on the note with both feet in the second measure of the ostinato:

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