Left handed rudimental study - 01

This relates to my old, old same handed flam accents post, and my more recent left hand lead developer post. This is very left hand-intensive, with a lot of those same-handed flam accents I like so much, and some flam drags and partial pataflaflas. I'm making videos today— maybe I'll post a video of me playing this a little later.

Repeat as many times as you like and end at the fine in the second complete measure. You can play the rolls open or closed— double stroke or multiple bounce. I'm playing them multiple bounce. 7-stroke rolls here have a 16th note triplet pulsation. The 11-stroke rolls have a quintuplet pulsation— this is a more common thing than you may think. At certain tempos it gives a better sounding roll than a 16th note or sixtuplet pulsation. The quintuplet pulsation should tell you this piece will be played fairly slowly.

Observe the dynamics on the long roll at the bottom of the page— there's a fp accent at the beginning, and the rest of it is soft, and it ends soft. Alternatively, you could start it strong and do a long decrescendo, ending pp; or if you're a crass SOB, you could start it softly and crescendo to the end.

Get the pdf

Selecting cymbals

Cymbal & Gong cymbals at Revival Drums

I want to give a little context for the late talk about cymbals; mainly, what I think is good and bad, and my thinking when hand-selecting Cymbal & Gong brand cymbals for people who want to buy them through this site.

First, I'm talking about cymbals for all genres of acoustic and moderately amplified music, and for recording— meaning the full dynamic range of the cymbal is used, from extremely soft to as strong as the cymbal can play with a musical sound. I don't factor for extreme power drumming situations, arena volume, or for relentless bashing with heavy sticks. My standard for a good cymbal tone for this purpose comes mainly from jazz recordings of the 1950s and 60s, and from drummers who continued using older cymbals into the 70s.

The main questions are: how does it sound, how well does it do all the normal things you expect a cymbal to do, how does it handle when playing with an ensemble, and does it project and blend appropriately for its purpose.

Cymbals I choose for my own use have to meet the Mel Lewis standard— everything is a ride, everything is a crash. Within that I have my own categories of primary (your main cymbal on which you will do most of your playing), secondary (“left side” cymbal, contrasting the primary— usually smaller, and either heavier or lighter, maybe more idiosyncratic), crash (good for stronger, faster, more cutting accents and light riding), and hihats (obvious).

Overall impression of the sound can be clean or complex, refined or pleasantly chunky. Should have a focused ride sound free of unpleasant overtones, an excellent stick sound, bell sound, shoulder of the stick accent sound, and an explosive but musical crash. Controllability is important; I don't want the wash to easily overwhelm the stick sound in normal playing. Hihats should have a solid foot sound, and a good sizzle when played half-closed, and preferably a good bell sound. Performance should be excellent in a dynamic range of very soft to very strong.

More broadly, do I like it? Do I want to play it, or do I want to move away from it? How comfortable is it to play? Do I have to adjust my touch for it?

Things I consider to be flaws include: an overall unpleasantly crude sound, overall poorly defined sound, unpleasant overtones, over-brightness, over-darkness, metallic, washing out easily, hard to control, won't crash, piercing bell sound, weak bell sound, unpleasant gong-like overtone, too much noise/trash in the tone, too refined/glassy a sound to the point of having no body; too loud or too soft when played normally with other cymbals— especially when the crash sound is unbalanced, either underwhelming or over-loud. Too one-dimensional in either sound or function. Sounds and handles poorly at very soft volumes. Any general feeling of obnoxiousness or over-delicacy.

The Cymbal & Gong cymbals I own and have played hit a lot of sweet spots very consistently. Other cymbals I've played, owned, and gigged with over the past 20 years— which is a lot of cymbals by all major manufacturers— often have an amazingly hard time hitting even a few. That's why I've been complaining about it, and it's why you saw me suddenly overjoyed when I found the C&G cymbals a couple of years ago.

Practice loop: Nexus

Practice loop in 4/4, sampled from Nexus by Gateway— a trio of John Abercrombie, Dave Holland, and Jack Dejohnette, that put out a couple of records in the 70s, and again in the 90s. This is from an album that should be in everyone's collection: Gateway II. Tempo is 166 bpm.

This is about bright 8th notes in what is now called an ECM feel. Do your Stick Control stuff with this loop, or your Dahlgren & Fine whatnot, or, hell, any of the Funk Control pages or the Reed interpretations from which they are derived.

Video background art is by Sol Lewitt.

Cymbals news: 22s in stock, Germany trip

UPDATE:
Video and playing notes about the 22s is here.

News re: Cymbal & Gong cymbals

As you may know by now, I'm getting into selling some cymbals through the site, made by Cymbal & Gong*, a small Portland company with smiths in Turkey, and hand selected by me. I haven't managed to translate my feelings about what great instruments these are into an actual sales pitch yet, so let's just say that for a true 50s-60s sound, they are the best cymbals I've played. Their flagship Holy Grail series is aptly named.

I have three really nice 22" ride cymbals in stock right now: two Holy Grails, one Leon Collection. The HGs are jazz weight, and are very live and higher pitched, with a nice focused sound. I'm starting to get a handle on what the LC cymbals are all about; they really seem like crash cymbals, but some of them also make really great light rides— this is one of those. A controllable light ride with a very available, extremely lush crash sound.

Videos of those cymbals coming later in the week. Check out my YouTube feed for video samples of some other C&G cymbals.

The Germany cymbal trip** is looking good! I'll be coming to Germany in December to deliver your cymbal pre-orders, with stops in Berlin and Munich, possibly Nuremberg and Dresden. If you live near any of those cities and need cymbals, hit the EMAIL TODD link in the sidebar and tell me what you need.

I'm also reaching out to people in Belgium for a trip next year, so if you live there, or Paris, Nordrhein-Westfalen, or Netherlands, and have interest, let me know.



* - If you get excited and buy something through their site, please tell them I sent you!

** -  Still looking for a catchy name for this. Cymbaldämmerung? Becken Berlin? Becken The Saddle?

On hearing other drummers sound bad

A few thoughts that occurred to me while playing a jam session last night. I was the house drummer, and a couple of different people sat in who were playing some problematic stuff. The first thing that came to mind by way of advice was go hear bad drummers play and then don't do what they do, but then people panic and think but what if I'm the bad drummer and I just don't know it, what do I do then? 

So here are some specific things anyone can do to play better right away, that don't even necessarily require a whole lot of practice time:


• Stop playing your stuff and listen.

• The cymbal rhythm is not a leaping off point for you to do all your other awesome stuff you practiced. It is the thing. The entire point. Your entire justification for being there. Be serious about it and play time on it.

• We all practice a lot of stuff, but the only thing in music you truly own is what comes through your ear. You can't just practice some junk and then go into a playing situation and shove it in, you have to hear it. Usually you do that by listening to a lot of records, and by doing a lot of playing— and trying to make music while doing it.

• Any time you learn a groove pattern, you have to have five levels of things you can do with it. Five is a number I made up just now, but it sounds good. You can't just learn the one pattern one way at a kinda-medium volume level. You have to be able to have different volume levels and different timbres and orchestrations so you can accompany solos by different instruments, and play different parts of the tune differently so it actually goes somewhere.

• Everything you do is in service of the groove, and of the arrangement, which you're creating on the spot by the way you play the tune and interact with the other players.


 Mainly it's all about a change in attitude. Your personal statement on the drums is not everything you can play, it's everything you can play that makes it through the above filters.

Groove o' the day: Rhumba

The Rhumba was a North American Latin style popularized in the 1930s by people like Xavier Cugat and Perez Prado, which has continued to hang around in the repertoire of jazz groups. There are also variants in New Orleans music and Country music. Don't confuse the Rhumba jazz combo rhythm with Rumba, the Cuban music— they're very different. Whatever it was in the 1930s, the Rhumba rhythm as it is performed today is not clave-based— the drummer, bass, or other rhythm instrument may emphasize a one-measure tresillo-type rhythm. New Orleans variants may use a Bo Diddley rhythm, which is the same as 3-2 Son Clave.

Through a lot of playing, here is what I settled on as a foundation groove. I don't believe I ever actually practiced it off the gig, and I think that's typical. Everyone seems to have his own way of doing it. Play this on the snare drum with snares off. Left hand plays rim clicks and muffles the head, right hand plays on the head near the edge. Lift your left hand on beat 4 to unmuffle the drum.

It's a corny groove, but you can have some fun with it. That can be played with sticks or brushes, or with a stick in the left hand and brush in the right, using the tom toms, and varying the rhythm, accents, articulations and timbre however you like. You don't have to play it extremely repetitively; listen and play what fits the music.

With the feet I do any of the following, depending on what else is going on musically:

Some tunes I've had to play in this feel include Besame Mucho, Green Eyes, Spanish Eyes, I Just Called To Say I Love You, Tangerine... I've been trying to forget, actually. I know there are others. I often play Charade the way Johnny Hartman did— in 4/4 with a Rhumba on the A sections. Here's the basic thing Elvin Jones is doing on this recording, with a lot of variations— I'll have to do an actual transcription of this soon:

Philly Joe Jones often played this feel. This is from the Bill Evans album Everybody Digs Bill Evans:

Wilcoxon weirdness

More on rolls, from a discussion on the Drummerworld forum. Look at this very strange piece of writing from Charley Wilcoxon:

From Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer

If you analyze what is written here and try to play it you will get very confused and/or angry:

What's up with the ruffs on rolls?
I see this fairly often in old rudimental literature, and I think this the way our knuckleheaded forebears would write a roll intended to begin on the second 16th note of that opening 8th note, like this:

This sticking is problematic, as is this
timing of the ruff, which I'll explain in a moment.

So the ruff is part of the body of the roll, and is played in time with it— in normal modern usage, ruffs are unmetered. I often see the familiar tap-7 stroke roll written the same way; those old rudimental guys seemed to be somewhat phobic about writing that 16th-dotted-8th rhythm:

Tap 7 written the modern way, and the old way.

What is a 12 stroke roll, and how do I fit one in that space?
It's not a common length of roll— at least it's not commonly referred to by this name. It's five double strokes and two accented taps, one at the beginning and one at the end; or two at the end. Literally:

Extremely non-textbook presentation.

Or in 2/4, in normal notation:

If you're confused by the presence of three accented taps in those examples, don't blame me— the logic of which taps are counted or not counted in the name of the roll can be kind of obscure. Take a look at Wilcoxon's book Rolling In Rhythm for many more examples of this.


So how do I play what's written in the solo? 
You can't, not with the given stickings— either Wilcoxon or the copyist has screwed this thing up. First, look at the sticking in the solo, and in my first example, compared to the sticking immediately above— the very last measure of the piece is the only one they got right. The ending accents on all of the others should be RL.

Also, the ruff is still a problem. This is what is literally indicated by the notation in the piece— with the sticking corrected:

The opening ruff is counted as part of the roll, but it has to be played at a different speed from the rest of the roll to fit it into the space it's given, which is not typically a done thing. Rolls aren't supposed to change speed.

What do I recommend? Pencil in the correct stickings, and just wing in the five double strokes (or multiple-bounce strokes), and get the timing of the surrounding accents right. Don't try to meter the internal roll speed.

Or you can try doing the ruff as in the previous example, playing it faster than the body of the roll. [NOTE: John Riley commented on the Drummerworld discussion, and he seems to favor that interpretation.] One or both of those things is/are probably what was done back then.

Or better yet, skip it and work on something interesting, and not riddled with errors. Just because Charley Wilcoxon puts something in front of you doesn't mean you have to do it. It's frankly a stupid little piece.


What's the lesson?
Don't trust everything you read. Drummers are not all infallible geniuses. Old drum notation is often shockingly unliteral. Not everything is worth the time and effort it takes to figure it out.

[h/t to Odd-Arne at Drummerworld]

Todd's funk drill - another tweak

Another small tweak to my Reed-based funk drill, improvised by a very talented 6th grade student of mine. It's very obvious, and I don't know why I didn't think of it before. Maybe I did, but didn't think to write it up until I heard him playing it and sounding great.

This is something you can do with one of the most common rhythms occurring throughout the syncopation section of the Ted Reed book (pp. 33-45): 8th note - quarter note - 8th note or 1&-&. It happens all the time in those pages, sometimes with rests or ties on some of the notes. It's almost the entire point of those pages.

For the normal funk drill we'll take a rhythm like this, as it appears in the book:

And make it into a half time feel funk groove like this— with most of the rhythm played on the bass drum, except the 3, which is played on the snare. The added cymbal rhythm here happens to be the same as the “bass drum” part from the book, but the cymbal rhythm can be anything. Reread the original explanation of the method if you need to.

With today's tweak, we'll play the quarter note on the & of 1 on the snare drum, giving us this:

When that 8th/quarter/8th rhythm happens in the second half of the measure, like this:

The normal funk groove would be:

With this tweak let's play the 8th note on the & of 4 on the snare drum:

So with rhythm:

With this normal funk groove:

You could do our new thing on both sides of the measure, like this:

You could play these extra snare drum hits a little softer than your backbeat on 3, but I don't think you should “ghost” them— they're part of the written rhythm and they should speak. Part of the game here is that we're pretending the rhythms in the book are an actual piece of music for which you are creating an interpretation on the drum set. So the written notes should all be heard. I actually favor developing a chunky, Ndugu Leon Chancler-like feel, and playing them at an even volume with the 3.

Soon I'll write up a summary of all the variations on this practice method, or maybe I'll just put it in an e-book. Why not.

Page o' coordination: cymbal on the &s

Please forgive my lack of posting— I've been spending this last week on video and cymbal related stuff. As I mentioned before, soon we're a) adding video, and b) selling Cymbal & Gong cymbals through the site. A C&G sales trip to Germany is also in the works, so if you live there and have any interest in some very nice traditional K-type cymbals, please let me know. If you live anywhere in Europe, for that matter.

Here's a fairly rare Page o' coordination in 4/4, that should develop some refinement in the timing of your jazz cymbal rhythm. The cymbal is on the swing & all the way through, with a normal hihat part, and left hand independence part. You should also play the left hand part on the bass drum.

I imagine most students aren't going to get to the point of doing the usual left hand moves with this page. It's going to be a major timing challenge for a lot of people, and just “feeling” the syncopation isn't going to work— you have to know where the downbeats fall. Listen to your metronome, and make this rhythm between the click you're hearing, and the cymbal rhythm you're playing:

Instead of using a metronome, you should also try counting the quarter notes, and make the same rhythm between the cymbal and your voice.

Get the pdf