Source tunes for Chapin

Thanks to my man Ed Pierce and the Sep. 1994 issue of Modern Drummer, here (well, after the break) are the source tunes for the long exercises in Jim Chapin's Advanced Techniques. As you'll see, a lot of them are pretty obscure, and probably haven't been played much since about Roy Eldridge's heyday in the late 30's-early 40's.

But no matter- playing the tune directly on the drums is fine (and necessary) but for me what's more useful as a player is the next step of seeing how anything at all interacts with any given tune. Playing through, say, the long exercises in Syncopation along with whatever tune I happen to be working on, it's a little weird how together they sound just by accident.  

Tune/exercise list after the break:

Todd Bishop's Pop Art 4 on KMHD (PDX) in 2009

Oh, I guess I should post my own stuff occasionally. Pop Art 4, my group from 2008-2010, is playing a Bastille Day event in Portland tomorrow, and the band sounded so good in rehearsal today I got excited and dug through my archives and made a few YouTube things out of our old radio broadcasts.

Here's Ballade de Melody Nelson, by Serge Gainsbourg, which we played on KMHD (89.1, not 97.1!) in 2009:



Visit popart4.com to read more about the group and our exploits. Oh, and you can always hit the "Purchase my 2009 CD etc" link on the sidebar if you enjoy the music and want to support the blog.

Sixtuplet plus release

This is something that came up in my practicing yesterday, and I went ahead and scribbled out a page of it for you. These sound good fast, but it's also a good idea to ask "what would Andy Newmark do?" and play them at slower tempos, or in half time, focusing on getting them to sit nicely. You should also take it a few steps further and figure out your own rhythmic variations and bass drum parts.

Get the pdf

Transcription: Ringo Starr - God

Here's a nice little catalog of compound meter fills by Ringo Starr, playing on the acoustic, Anthology version of God. Reading Andy Newmark's interview got me in the mood for some Jim Keltner, which I thought this was until I looked at the credit (the little "A Day In The Life" quote after the "I don't believe in Beatles" line would've been cute coming from him). It's really worth it to give this at least one close read-through along with the recording- Ringo is very sensitive in his dynamics throughout the piece, and swings the 16ths in a variety of ways- anywhere between a dotted-16th/32nd rhythm to even 16ths.

Download the pdf 

YouTube video of the track after the break:

1984 Modern Drummer interview: Andy Newmark

Here are some excerpts from another great Modern Drummer interview from my youth, this time with session drummer Andy Newmark, drummer on Sly Stone's Fresh, John Lennon's Double Fantasy, David Bowie's Young Americans, and much more. Here he discusses studio greats Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon- who he has worked with closely, his time with George Harrison and John Lennon, and the craft of drumming on records:

THE GOODNESS of KELTNER and GORDON: 
It's a feeling that makes other musicians, and producers, feel musically comfortable. They're able to play that real simple stuff with a conviction that makes it work. If you don't see the beauty in playing simple and get off on it, then when you do it, it won't come off like the person who loves to do it. When Russ Kunkel, Gordon or Keltner would just play those real simple beats, they got off on it. They liked that; they were into it, so it gave the notes validity.

Also, I noticed on the playback that all of the takes- not just the final one- sounded like real records. Whereas often, when I'd hear a playback of something I was doing, a lot of little things would make it feel, to me, like a demo. When I heard them play on something, it always seemed to be so smooth. They had a way of making everything settle and be relaxed. The hardest thing to get a studio drummer to do is make the record feel it's in the right place. Tempo has a lot to do with good records. Being slightly too fast or too slow might cause the whole song to miss the point. And I think producers rely on drummers to find that magical place, within a very small range of tempo. It's something that most people might not hear. There isn't a large difference in those tempos, but it's that one magical place that makes it feel like everything's breathing properly. I started picking up on an inner instinct from these guys that they knew where to put the tempo, and believed in it themselves. They weren't looking for direction- they were the direction; they were the core.



 Extended excerpts plus a couple more of Newmark's tracks after the break:

Getting started soloing over a form

This is more a roughly-progressive series of guidelines than a step-by-step how-to; this is a much larger subject than can be fully addressed in one little blog post. Players spend years or decades developing a mature soloing style, hopefully continuing to grow over an entire career. I'll certainly be addressing each topic below in stand-alone posts in the near future.

Soloing does require you to make the leap into creative playing on your own- study materials and a pure intellectual approach will not get you there. We're assuming here that you're reasonably comfortable playing general solo stuff (even if very simple) in time and without losing your place in the measure. If you're not, see the tip at the end of the piece, and/or start getting comfortable improvising with very simple materials: quarter notes, quarter rests, 8th notes, and 8th rests.

Get comfortable with generic four and eight measure phrases. At first you should be able to just play for that many measures without getting lost, maybe with a crash at the beginning; soon you should be able to put a more musical ending on each section, and set up the next section. The goal is to make a coherent melodic phrase, with a conversational arc, just as if you were telling someone something interesting vocally for an equal length of time. If you experience problems keeping track, start with two-measure phrases. It will also help (and is good practice musically) to restrict yourself to one or maybe two ideas per phrase.

Much more after the break:

Happy 4th

I haven't listened to this in years- it's a pretty remarkable piece of music. I'm now off to try my hand at making a lemon meringue pie...

Transcription: Roy Haynes - In Walked Bud

To make up for the exceptionally light posting this week, and to follow up the Roy Haynes transcription round-up, here's an extra special solo from In Walked Bud, on Thelonious Monk's Misterioso, which I first transcribed off of the LP in 1988 when I was in the jazz program at USC. It's a classic example, maybe the classic example of melodic drumming, with Haynes closely playing off the melody of the tune.

March '17 update: Complete transcription now available in e-book format for tablet and Kindle, along with four other Roy Haynes solo transcriptions! Get 5 Roy Haynes Solos now.

The stars are aligned

Or something. Looks like I'll be playing this tune with two different groups two weeks in a row, after never playing it in the 20+ years I've known it. A ton more Metheny/Haynes/Holland goodness after the break.