Transcription: Ahmad's Blues - fours

Hitting the ground running with this 2024 business, here's Philly Joe Jones trading fours with Red Garland on Ahmad's Blues, from the Miles Davis album Workin'. Joe sounds quite beautiful, hand made, and direct after a couple of days of listening to all that Dave Weckl polish. 

Tempo is about 118, and the first break is at 4:09.

Note that several of the breaks start with a partial measure— he gets into them before the 1. A lot of them are in double time; swing the 8ths on the first solo, on the rest of them any 8th notes will likely be straight. 

Some other unusual things: in the second break the triplets are played with the left hand, with the grace notes of the flams played with the right. On the 8th break he muffles the drum with his hand— you'll have to figure out a logical way to do that, that gets the sound. I offered a possible sticking on one of the sixtuplets, you could probably use that, or part of it, on many of them.   

Hey, how come I haven't put out a Philly Joe transcriptions e-book to go with all the others? 

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Transcription: Philly Joe trading

Here is Philly Joe Jones trading eights and fours with Bill Evans on Minority, from one of my favorite records, Everybody Digs Bill Evans. It's a good tune to learn. 

I've written just the drum breaks. Transcription begins at 2:51. The tempo is quarter note = 247. 

No tom toms at all here, just snare drum, bass drum, a cymbal, and hihats. A lot of stick shots. There are a few passages of straight 8th notes— at this tempo the 8ths don't swing a whole lot anyway. Note the rhythm in bars 3 and 5. Bar 5 is the “intended” rhythm, in bar 3 he spreads it out a little bit, so the notes are evenly spaced— I've notated it pretty accurately. 

It's basically non-technical— you could do a rudimental sticking on the triplets— and much of it is linear, between the snare drum and bass drum. The rhythms could have been pulled from the book Syncopation, and give a clue for how to look at the phrases in that book— a subject for another time. 

The melodic idea for each break is pretty clear— listen for that, and how he repeats it and changes it, and listen for what sounds like the ending— the last bar, or two bars. The structure is logical, but the structure didn't come first, it's the natural result of thinking musically when you're improvising, and of doing your job, where you set people up to come back in out of your solo. 

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Transcription: Peter Erskine - Duo - 04

Here are the next 30 seconds / 32 bars of Duo, played by Peter Erksine and Bob Mintzer, from Mintzer's record Hymn. The whole track is about three and a half minutes long, so there will be three more of these before we're done. 

Here they're trading fours— every second line is Erskine's solo. It's interesting, normally you might think of Erskine as being a very deliberate player, and therefore working with a lot of set patterns? It would be an easy stereotype to make. Here I feel like we're seeing how patterns evolve in the hands of players like this. 

Let's look at those Erskine's fours line by line: 

Line 2: Hahahaha, he's doing “my” pattern! He plays a three-beat pattern three times— starting on beat 4 at the end of line 1. The second time the notes got shoved around a little bit, if you're going to learn it, just play the straight pattern: RLL-RLR-LBB. In the third measure he does another pattern, RRL-LBB. 

Line 4: Again he starts his solo before the 1. There's some overlapping snare drum and bass drum here— at the time I would have associated that with a “New Orleans” kind of thing. The tempo is fast so you don't really hear it, but it was a thing of the time that people were cultivating.

Line 6: Just linear rhythm here, showing you how a couple of small changes in rhythm and dynamics can have a big effect.   

Line 8: Some not real particular stuff. You could practice that move going into the second measure, connecting alternating singles with a SBSB pattern, via a double on the bass drum:  

||:  RLRL  :||  RLBB  ||:  RBRB  :|| 

It's a good idea to practice soloing with alternating singles, and developing some options for varying them and getting out of them, and connecting them to something else.  

On each one of those breaks you can hear how the end of his solo is very clear, always setting up the horn in the last two or four beats. 

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Blogger won't let me embed the video directly, click through to hear the tune on YouTube. 

Transcription: Max fours

I am not screwing around people, this is now an ALL Max Roach site. Here he is trading fours on Minor Meeting, from the record Sonny Clark Trio, from 1960— there's another record by that title from 1957 with Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. This would be a good jury or recital project for somebody— it's very clean look at some classic solo stuff. 

The chorus of trading begins at 2:07, the tempo is a bright quarter note = 262— compare that with some other well known up tempo tracks.

Apparently there's no tom tom present, as Max plays the whole thing on snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals. I've offered some likely stickings. There seem to be a lot of six stroke rolls happening.

The beginning of most of these breaks is phrased in 3/4 time within 4/4— lines 1-2, 4-5, and 7. On line 3 he plays a 4/4 idea twice, then displaces it. On line 6 he also plays a 4/4 idea twice, then does the meter within meter thing in the third-fourth measures, with a simple running 3/8 pattern. 

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Transcription: Billy Higgins trading

Some uptempo trading 8s and 4s on Moose the Mooche, from an old favorite album, Wish by Joshua Redman, with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins on drums. I used to play along with this track a lot. 

Tempo is a little over 300 bpm, and trading begins at 2:17: 

Virtually all the activity here is with the hands— there is a little feathering the bass drum in half notes in the last 4. Maybe there's more than that, I didn't check. Distinction between accents/non-accents is not extreme, though notes marked as ghosted are definitely ghosted. Obviously there are paradiddle-type stickings happening on the tom tom activity. 

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Transcription: Jake Hanna fours

Here's Jake Hanna trading fours with Duke Jordan, on Jordan's album Live Live Live— a Japanese import release from the late 90s. This is a pretty ordinary club date; Hanna was almost 70 and Duke was almost 80, so they're not tearing the place down. His execution is impeccable. 

I've never listened to a lot of Hanna— he just didn't happen to be on the records I listened to. His style is kind of unusual to my ear— he sounds a little older than he is, like most of his development happened before modern playing was fully formed.  The trading choruses start at 6:15. He starts with brushes and switches to sticks. 

Mark in your own stickings on the triplet passages— there will certainly be a lot of doubles. He uses some different articulations on the rolls, drags, and ruffs— it's worth listening carefully to that. 

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Transcription: Roy Haynes 8s

Hot on the heels of that “too perfect” post, here's a great example of what I'm talking about in terms of playing with an edge: Roy Haynes trading 8s with Chick Corea on Rhythm-a-ning, from Chick's album Trio Music. I guess we could call this the high late phase of Roy's career— he's playing a big, live drum set, very aggressively and spontaneously. I don't know why everybody doesn't play this way— with this kind of energy. 

The tempo here is about quarter note = 290, give or take. Right in his wheel house for killing it— it's about the same tempo as some things on Pat Metheny's Question & Answer, and Matrix on Chick Corea's Now He Sings Now He Sobs. That's Roy's tempo. The transcription begins at 3:19, and then I've just written out the drum solo breaks. 

Like I said, big drum set: I think there are three tom toms, two crashes, a swish cymbal, plus two timpani. He's very economical in terms of orchestrating on the instrument— lots of diddles, some singles, lots of bass drum and cymbal in unison. Usually he only plays one thing at a time, no independent parts, ostinato parts, or vestiges of ostinatos, as we might see in other people's playing. None of this requires any particular chops. 

In the second 8, on measures 14-17, he may be playing those unaccented notes on the shaft of the hihat stand— there's a different sound there. 

It's a free download, but if you're not a regular contributor on Patreon or PayPal, think about sending a couple/few bucks: 

Venmo: @Todd-Bishop-16
PayPal: toddbishop [at] cruiseshipdrummer [dot] com

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Everyone should own this record, but here's a link for it on that exploiter site, Spotify. But go to a store and buy it new. 

Transcription: Roy Haynes feature

UPDATE: I have extreme quality readers. Jim in the comments pointed out a bunch of errors in this, and figured out the insane Mystery Lick on the second page. The corrected pdf is up now. 

New Arrival is a tune by Nat Adderley, from the record Introducing Nat Adderley, that heavily features Roy Haynes on the drums. He's got a long intro, a solo, some fours, and then a solo break on the head out. It's a nice tight little nightclub arrangement. Haynes is in full blown “snap crackle” mode, and everything is very hip, very slick, very tidy. Except one thing in the middle of the solo where I needed some help from the community (see above) to figure it out.  
 

Most of the running 8th notes are played straight, non-swinging; the syncopated rhythms swing. There are a few spots where both hands are played in unison on the snare and tom, which may not be happening in actuality— there's a lot of sympathetic vibration from the snares, and it can be difficult to tell. None of that is difficult to play, so no harm if the way I wrote it is wrong. He uses a splash cymbal, and there are a few special articulations— at the beginning he muffles the snare drum with his hand, later on there are some cymbal chokes, and pitch bends on the tom toms. He does feather the bass drum sometimes, but it's not really in time.  

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Blogger is being a pain about letting me embed video, so listen here if this record isn't already in your collection. 

Transcription: Jimmy Cobb fours

Jimmy Cobb trading fours with Wynton Kelly on Gone With The Wind, from Kelly's self-titled (plus an exclamation point) trio album from 1961. There's a lot of very standard vocabulary here, the type of which I've been working with several students lately. And there are some unusual things, like the five note patterns in 8th notes and triplets in the fifth and last lines. I don't see a lot of that in making these transcriptions.  

The trading begins at 2:37. Tempo is a bright quarter note = 247. I've been real interested in this tempo range lately— around 240 to 280. 

 

Note that on some lines I've included the pickups to his solo breaks— he sets up his solos pretty emphatically, starting with the third one.  The tempo is bright, and the denser spots get a little crushed— any place you see any 16th notes. If I were learning to play this page, I would figure out something to do with those; they're just little fast things that sound kind of funny and aren't really critical content.  

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Transcription: Art Blakey fours - Well, You Needn't

Just a couple of solo 4s from Art Blakey, from the 1953 Miles Davis 10-inch release, Vol. 3. You'll most likely find it on a later Blue Note compilation. The tune is Well, You Needn't. Miles and Blakey trade on the first two A sections of the head out, Miles plays the melody on the bridge. The first drum break happens at 4:18. 

He's mostly playing stick shots on the snare drum, as you can see. The normal snare hits are played with the left hand, the shots with the right. He feathers the bass drum throughout. 

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A quick and easy jazz solo lesson

UPDATE: Download link works now!

This is an easy, non-technical method for learning jazz solos/breaks/trading, which I devised in lessons with an older Skype student. It involves a few basic patterns, and several easy practice methods to use with the book Progressive Steps to Syncopation. This should work well for students who are new to jazz, and don't know how to begin soloing, and will create a good foundation for development of more sophisticated forms of soloing.

I named two of the stock patterns at the top of the page “Philly Joe” and “Billy Higgins” to have a convenient reference for them in teaching this— I notice that each of them plays those things quite a bit. As do a lot of other people.

We're going to approach this like the United States Marines [stands up, salutes flag], quickly grabbing as much musical terrain as we can, bypassing whatever parts are hard for you, and mopping them up later. Dumb analogy, but now that I think of it, it does sum up my whole approach to everything. We want to be fluent with the major structures without getting hung up on technical concerns. Do the following, swinging the 8th notes:

1. Play the warmups, repeating.

2. Learn each of the seven interpreted methods while reading from Syncopation— play lines 1-15 plus the long exercise on the indicated pages.

3. Then play the practice phrases:

• One measure of a stock pattern / one measure of a reading pattern
• Two measures time / one measure stock pattern / one measure reading pattern
• Trade all combinations of time / stock patterns / reading patterns in 1s / 2s / 4s

The goal is to improvise your solos, so I don't believe there's a need to learn this rigidly by the numbers. Once you can recognize and handle all the basic ideas, play them in time, and move them around the drums, while keeping the basic form together— trading 1s/2s/4s, you're fine.

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Transcription: Mel Lewis fours

Here is Mel Lewis trading fours on Stoppin' at the Savoy, from Bob Brookmeyer's album The Blues Hot and Cold. These are pretty interesting. Lewis isn't anybody's idea of a chops guy, but he's not dumb. The fours begin at 3:49 in the track.

There are a couple of funny items— at one point he's throwing a stick down on the floor tom, hitting the rims. The part on the sixth line with the ruff right before the stick shot will take a little practice. Play this by itself, a lot, and work it up to speed:

It's a natural motion; you have to get the left stick onto the head to make the stick shot, so you just press it into the head on that note. We're not going for a quality buzz stroke there. I have a feeling Mel didn't practice it, but just played it on the job a few tens of thousands times.

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Transcription: Connie Kay 8s and 4s

I think of Connie Kay as the quintessential background player, so I'm always interested to hear him actually do something— like play a solo, or some more assertive comping. Here he trades some 8s and 4s on Three Little Words, an uptempo tune from the John Coltrane/Milt Jackson album Bags & Trane.

Tempo is quarter note = 250— roughly what is called “medium up”, and about as fast as most people ever play. It's notable that he never hits the tom toms— he barely comes off of the ride cymbal for most of it— and uses the hihat only part of the time. He does feather the bass drum much of the time, but I haven't attempted to notate it. 

The transcription is of the drum solo breaks only, and begins at 5:50 in the recording:

Swing the 8th notes. I have written a lot of accents, but they are mostly pretty subtle; his actual dynamics are fairly even. Use a mixed sticking on the triplets— a double on the first two notes of each triplet.

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Billy Higgins trading 4s

This is from the same tune as the recent post Comping The Billy Way— Things Ain't What They Used To Be, with Hank Jones and Ray Drummond, from the album The Essence. Here Higgins is trading 4s with Jones, starting after 3:48 in the recording. I've transcribed just Higgins's solos.

There's also a stealth groove o' the day in here— on the fourth line he plays a hip, easy Afro 6 type of groove that you can lift directly.

Billy's dynamics are extremely subdued here— accents and crescendos are subtle, overall volume is low, and the vibe is relaxed. The quarter notes on the bass drum are played very softly. Single drags (on lines 2 and 3) are played open; long rolls (lines 1 and 3) are played closed. On line 3 there are some ruffs with the main note played as a stick shot— hitting the other stick while the bead is pressed into the head.

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