Latest practice loop archive

Here we are, the latest archive of all my sampled practice loops, mostly categorized by style, mostly with tempos. I also have folders with all the loops I use the most, and with the ones that will be most useful to the most people, in all styles. 

Put them on your device and run them through headphones, and practice whatever you're practicing. I think it's the best way to practice, because: 

A. It's real music from real records. All the playalongs recorded for that purpose that I've used seem phony. Playing with them is not the same experience. 
B. I believe your memory for recorded sounds is very good. Memorized recorded sounds are a natural form of this mythical “internal clock” people are so fond of theorizing about. 
C. Because of that, I think this way of practicing is very good for your musical time— so long as you're actively concentrating on your time and accuracy while you're doing it. The only thing better is to play with a slow click— metronome sounding the 1 only, or every other 1. In fact you should do both of those things. 
D. Playing with loops gives all the dumb things you have to practice a chance to sound like music— you play them musically, with a musical touch, in a way that matches the vibe of the recording. In essence you're testing out musical ideas vs. the music of the loop. 
E. It's fun and tricks you into practicing longer.

Download the archive (5.7 GB)

In light of this splendid gift I've given you, this is a great time to contribute a little something to the site— a recurring cash contribution (see the sidebar), buy a book (sidebar), or buy one of these wonderful Cymbal & Gong cymbals you have inexplicably not bought yet. Or get some lessons— in person if you're in Portland, or on line. I don't make significant money through this site, so a few people doing any of those things are a big encouragement for me in doing it. Thanks! tb

Jazz loop, rock loop

Two practice loops I've been enjoying, one jazz, one rock. 

The first is sampled from Everydays, a Stephen Stills song, played by Kenny Burrell on the album Blues - The Common Ground. Tempo is 124:

The other is by Luna, sampled from the song The Alibi. Tempo is 90 BPM: 

Updated rock loops

Here is a link for my updated collection of rock loops, which I put together for one of my students. These should be easy for most people to play along with— no weird rhythms or figures. I left some of the weirder ones out from my original collection. And there are several new ones. Enjoy!  

Practice loop: slow shuffle

Here's a loop that be real useful to a lot of people, sampled from Soulful Brothers, from Kenny Burrell's record Blues - The Common Ground. The drummer is Grady Tate, and he's playing a shuffle in the manner we previously saw with the tune Midnight Special, as played by Tate, and by Donald Bailey, with Jimmy Smith, with the hihat on all the swing &s. 

The form is 12 bar blues, the tempo is about 72 beats a minute. Practice all your swing stuff with this, not just the shuffles. It's supposed to groove that hard no matter what you play. 

Limitations of loops

There's a good post about playing along with recordings, that everyone should read, over at Ted Warren's Trap'd blog.

Since he commented about playing with loops vs. whole tunes— and I do a lot with loops— I should clarify some things.  

2. Try to play with whole tunes rather than loops.

I've mentioned this before, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes around this, but I feel playing with loops never gives us the whole story. By loops I mean just taking a small section of an already existing tune and have it playing endlessly. When we do this we miss out on a lot of form. Not only the structure of the tune (AABA, 12 Bar Blues etc.) but the form of the whole performance. How do we differentiate between sections of the song like in head to solos, different solos, and last solo to out head? Does the tempo of the tune change from beginning to end? What about the relative volume of the drums at differing sections of the tune? These are important issues!

He's absolutely right. In jazz form is not dispensable, it is the whole thing. A jazz environment is not complete without considering form. All of my jazz loops will include at least one complete time through the form— except when there's a special purpose involved, like learning a figure, or learning to hear the connection from the last A section to the first A section on Stablemates. 

Once or twice through the form looping is still not the complete picture of performing a jazz tune, but I think we're talking about different practice goals here. Most of what I use the loops for is to take regular focused drumming practice— like, stuff from books— in a more musical direction. So we can hear these book ideas in a context, and try to match them to a musical vibe, and play them in a way that makes sense within a musical phrase, with some continuity. To an extent it's about concentrated exposure to a single figure or vamp, or a single solo. 

Ted's concerns above are bigger picture items re: playing a complete performance of a tune. For me it's hard to do the kind of practice above with complete tracks— the temptation is to just play.  

But it's true, no one should have any illusions that playing with a recording is a replacement for playing with people. They're really entirely different things. The track doesn't listen to you and fall apart when you play something so dumb you caused a train wreck. Or get mad at you and never call you again because you played selfishly. You don't learn anything about support playing with a track. So you have to be very cautious about the lessons you take from playalong practice to playing with people. 

Also see my previous post on this topic, that I wrote in hectoring screed form. 

Practice loop: medium bossa

Probably my only post this week— we're having a wild end of 2022 around here, with my family experiencing an ongoing medical emergency, and I'm having to travel to Eugene a lot.  

So here's a nice easy loop for practicing bossa nova, samba and baiao rhythms at a slower tempo, about 110 bpm. Sampled from All Around, from Bebel Gilberto's great self titled album from 2004. 

My labels for Brazilian music related stuff are kind of a mess— most of the transcriptions and practice materials can be found under Bossa Nova and Brazil. 

Anyway happy 2023, in a couple of days— I'll be back with some new stuff next week. 

Practice loop: slow blues

Bringing this back to planet Earth, here's a nice 65 bpm blues to practice along with. Sampled from the tune After Hours on Roy Haynes's album We Three. 

Thelonious

Thinking about the tune Thelonious, by Thelonious Monk. It's fun and unusual, based on a single note riff. I don't believe the form comes from another tune, it's just a little self-contained bebop invention.

It's a famous tune, but not played a whole lot. I guess because there's no chart for it in any of the major fake books. You can get it from Charley Gerard's book Thelonious Monk - Originals & Standards, or the Music Notes site appears to have a good chart for it. Maybe you'll meet somebody who's putting together a recital, or who is serious about learning their Monk repertoire. 

Form is AABA, 8-10-8-10. The 10 bar A sections aren't the same. Going into the bridge is a little gray area— the beginning of the B sounds like a tag on the A section, which is already tagged, so there are about 4 bars in there that feel kind of mysterious. Learning unusual tunes you have to figure out the mystery zones— how do you make sense of them for yourself, what do you play there to make it orderly, definitely how do you not lose your place in the form.  

The A sections have a little clave rhythm to them, that the rhythm section plays off of— with varying degrees of subtlety, if you listen to the different recordings:

There's a rhythm figure at the end of the form that often gets stated pretty strongly, including during the solos. Here's how it's written in Charley Gerard's book: 

It starts differently on the various recordings. On Genius of Modern Music there's an intro with the main riff played twice, with a drum break. On Underground Monk plays the first A solo, and the rhythm section comes in on the second A. On other records everyone starts together, or there's a full chorus of stride piano before the whole group plays the head normally; one version has piano and bass playing the last A up front, with drums and horns coming in on the punches at the end of that, and then the whole band plays the complete head. A lot of versions have unique composed intros.  

On the Genius of Modern Music compilation, Monk solos all the way through the form; on the record Underground, he solos over the AAB, and plays the melody on the last A, for several choruses. 

On the Bud Powell record A Portrait of Thelonious they're apparently playing it from memory, as a straight 32 bar AABA, with a different bridge. The A sections are just the normal first A. Pretty flaky, Bud.  

Tempos on Monk's recordings are 210 on Genius of Modern Music, and 185 on Underground. On the various other recordings tempos range from very slow rubato (Ran Blake), to 170 with a half time funk feel (Gary Versace), to 243 (Gary Bartz), to 295 (Erid Reed).  

Here's a practice loop I made from the first chorus of Monk's solo on Underground. It speeds up a little bit over the course of his solo, so it doesn't loop cleanly if I use more choruses: 

Practice loop: Stolen Moments

Finished my taxes and I am exhausted, so here's something for you to practice with: Freddie Hubbard's solo on Stolen Moments, from Oliver Nelson's Blues And The Abstract Truth. At 111 bpm, it's a good introductory tempo for that jazz drill I posted a few weeks ago. 

Practice loop in 7/4: Freddie Hubbard / Heidi-B

While I finish up my taxes, here's the practice loop I was playing with when I was doing that Reed in 7 thing: Heidi-B, from Freddie Hubbard's album Sweet Return. Tempo is quarter note = 189. Scroll through this if you're hurting for things in 7 to practice.

Have a blast: 

Practice loop: McCoy swing

Here's a crushing new practice loop I've been playing with a lot lately, sampled from the tune Little Brother, from McCoy Tyner's album Song of the New World. People get so precious about their approach to jazz, you need to also get this kind of power groove in your ears. Tempo is 167 bpm.  

Also try these two other great McCoy loops from 2019.  

Organizing practice loops

UPDATE: Download links are working now! 

My archive of sampled practice loops has gotten so big that it's become kind of unmanageable, so I've organized them into categories. Here are the first three new zips to download:  

Slow to medium tempo jazz in 4/4

Rock and funk

Latin - Caribbean and Brazilian

I'll be posting more in the coming few weeks. There are quite a few new things that are not included in the archive I joyfully posted back in January. A few of the jazz loops might be weird to play with— I made a lot of new ones, and haven't gotten around to playing with all of them yet.  

If you haven't used these yet, quit screwing around and set it up. It'll change your life and relationship with all the dull stuff I and others tell you to practice. Make a folder in your music directory labeled DRUM-PRACTICE or something, and unzip these there. I suggest adding the date to the folder name, because I'll likely be updating them. 

I really recommend using a player other than iTunes. I use MusicBee on my main desktop computer, and VLC Media Player on my pad. Even if you normally use iTunes, you can set up one of those freeware players to recognize only your practice folder, and use that app only for practicing. Or just buy one of those stone-age mp3 players and use that.   

I recommend using over-the-ear headphones, with earplugs underneath, so you don't blow out your ears competing with the drums. I usually have one can off my ear so I can hear the live drums, too. I don't recommend noise cancelling or isolating headphones— you want to hear the drums.  

Practice loop: Port of Entry

Here's a fun practice loop sampled from Port of Entry, by Weather Report. A great track from Night Passage, one of my favorite records. Tempo is 77 or 154 bpm, depending on how you want to count it. 

If you're having any problem getting oriented, here's the basic rhythm of the bass vamp:

By the way, I'll be posting new additions to my practice loop archive soon. Stay tuned...

Happy end of that

1/7 UPDATE: Bumping this post from the distant past at the end of last month, when, in my sad, ridiculous naiveté, I thought the worst was behind us, and the depths of the current president's depravity, and that of his supporters, had been plumbed, and that we would be allowed to quietly ease into a new year of national recovery and reunification... 

...so... I was wrong about that. Yeaah. So while I get it together, please download my updated archive of loops, it's great, and do all of the other things below. 
     

Original post from 12/31/20: Well, that sucked. What the hell was that. Anybody know.  

Let's clean the slate for 2021 with a year-end bonus download: my updated complete 2.75 gb archive of practice loops— WITH TEMPOS. 

I've added a lot of things since I posted the archive in April— most notably a number of complete solos. Like we've got McCoy Tyner's solo on Passion Dance, Joe Henderson on Contemplation, Bill Evans on Minority, and more.   

I can't guarantee there aren't any weird ones. There may be a couple that I sampled badly, or that just don't work that well as something to practice with. And there may be a few time discrepancies— like on Seven Steps to Heaven. A little bit of that is good— just like in real life, you have to make adjustments. But sometimes it just wrecks the loop.     

I've put the rock loops in their own directory. Everything else is in the main folder— I like having the jazz, Latin, funk, and fusion stuff mixed together. There's also a directory of “Todd's faves”, that I practice with the most, that are duplicates of things in the other folders.    

And I'd like to thank everyone for following the site, I hope you continue to find it helpful in your drumming pursuits, in this 9th year I've been doing the thing as a dedicated drumming blog. I invite you to make a $$$ contribution, or better yet, buy my goods and services— drum lessons, books, and the fantastic Cymbal & Gong cymbals, which you should all own. They are legit the cymbals for anyone into the stuff I write about, and they're all personally selected by me. See the sidebar for all of that stuff. 

2020 Book of the Blog is coming soon. Thanks everyone! tb

Practice loop: Night & Day - Bill Evans

Here's a brighter-medium tempo jazz practice loop, sampled from Night & Day, played by Bill Evans on his album Everybody Digs Bill Evans— one of my favorite records, period. The loop is one chorus of Evans's solo— 48 bars, or ABABCB, with each section 8 bars long. Tempo is 169 bpm. 

Listening and loops for jazz students

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

More after the break!

Practice loop: Milt Jackson medium blues

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.

Practice loop: Oregon - Fall

New practice loop, sampled from the tune Fall, by the band Oregon. The bassist here, Glen Moore, is one of my favorite musicians in the world— look into his records with the vocalist Nancy King if you haven't. It's in 4/4, and the tempo is 160 bpm. If you're having any problem getting oriented, the loop starts on beat 1, and the accents after that are on the & of 4.

Practice loop: slow blues

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.

Practice loop: Dexterity / Bird's chorus

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.