Rudimental Reed: ruffs

Today's Rudimental Reed entry is pretty straightforward— just make a ruff out of any note that doesn't have an (untied) 8th note before it.  That's an awkward way of phrasing it, but I think you'll find it's very intuitive once you play the examples. The rudiments covered, or generated, include ruffs, single drags, and double drags, similar to a lot of the things in the Wilcoxon etude Roughing the Single Drag, from Modern Rudimental Swing Solos— I would recommed playing through that as a companion piece to this item.

As always, we'll first see how it applies to the first line of Exercise 1, p. 37 in Syncopation:

I've given both alternating and natural stickings— play it both ways, leading with either hand. I haven't included the multiple-bounce strokes in the stickings, but they happen with the opposite hand. Swing the 8th notes.

Here's a denser example, which is the first line of Exercise 2:

If you have questions about how to play a ruff, there's a pretty good video after the break:

Groove o' the day: Art Blakey with Hank Mobley

This is from the 1955 album Hank Mobley Quartet (it doesn't appear to have been reissued recently, so you'll have to just buy the mp3). The tune is Avila and Tequila, and Art Blakey plays what I'll call a Blue Note cascara on the intro:

The right hand part in the last two measures is similar to a bell pattern I've seen associated with a Mozambique feel. In the 50's fashion, they play the Latin feel on the intro and A sections only, and swing the rest of the tune, including the solos. Notice that Blakey seems to have a hard time not swinging the rhythm.

Audio after the break:

DBMITW: Owl of Cranston

Here's a fun tune I'll be playing on tour next month:



Paul Motian is the Owl of Cranston— I have no idea what that means, but it seems to fit. I guess I'm not the only one who thought so.

Get Paul Motian Trio — Live at the Village Vanguard

Groove o' the day: Ed Blackwell — 6/8 variations

Here are some more variations on the Afro 6/8 feel, played by Ed Blackwell on the tune Mopti (an old favorite from Flatland days, which I'll be reintroducing to the set on the Europe trip next month), from the Old & New Dreams album Playing. Most of these occur close together during the long intro, but I thought I'd present them as individual grooves, instead of as a transcription:

Also apply the left hand parts— the snare and toms— to the generic Afro bell pattern, and BD/HH parts.

Audio after the break:

Tour poster

One of the things I've been working on instead of blogging:

Rudimental Reed: paradiddles

Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed's Syncopation, this time using paradiddles. Here's that well-known opening line from the first long syncopation exercise in Reed, p. 37 in the old editions, as written:

First, play the quarter notes (or the equivalent) as 16th note paradiddles. On the longer values/rests, play a paradiddle with an unaccented ending note, as on beat three of the second and last measures:

Next, apply an appropriate paradiddle-type sticking to the longer values/spaces— double paradiddles / paradiddle-diddles, or triple paradiddles / paradiddle-diddle, diddles as I'll call them (there aren't enough commas in rudiment names for my taste) since that rudiment doesn't exist to my knowledge. I chose the latter rudiments:

With that last, we arrive at something pretty similar to an interpretation in Ramsay's Alan Dawson book; the one additional step there is to play the 8th notes as two alternating 16th notes, with an accent on the first.

Another example after the break:

Transcription: Ian Paice — Lay Down, Stay Down

[UPDATE: pdf download link works now!]

I don't get how herds work: suddenly everyone, everywhere is talking about four stroke ruffs. They happen to be all over this piece, played in 16th note triplet form on the snare drum, and especially played down the drums, ending on the bass drum— a very popular lick around 1970. Ian Paice, the drummer here, didn't invent it, but he plays them so much I've started calling them Ian Paice Specials. What the hell, maybe it will stick. Why not?

This performance is an early favorite of mine, from about when I was in the 8th grade, ten-ish years after the record, Burn, by Deep Purple came out:

I've transcribed up to the opening vamp of the guitar solo; most of the heavy playing happens before that. The hihats are played half-open or open all the way through. There are a few spots where he moves to the ride cymbal, which you can pick out; it's not that important.

Get the pdf

Half-time feel rock using Syncopation

Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed's Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we play quarter notes on the hihat, and catch beat 3 on the snare drum, instead of 2 and 4. The tempo of the quarter note pulse should be bright:

Many of the resulting beats will be useful as conditioners and for gaining familiarity with the feel as anything else; some of them have very dense bass drum parts, and this has a much lower percentage of ordinarily usable beats than the regular rock piece did. You'll have to play a lot of exercises and find the ones that work for you musically.

Get the pdf

Listening example and explanation after the break:

Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon

Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer:

A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, plus a release note, and there are two forms of them here, one of which is rather obscure-looking to modern readers. The sevens at the beginning of the piece, written as unembellished 8th note rhythm are pretty self-evident; you play the roll part as a 16th note triplet starting on the &, and release on 1.

At the end of the third line there is a seven stroke roll written as an 8th note with a ruff at the beginning; which is an old-fashioned way of writing a tap seven, with a 16th note pulsation. In modern notation, that would be written as a 16th note and dotted-8th, with the roll on the dotted-8th— you roll on the “e-&-a.” The 15 stroke roll in the third line would be played the same way, with the roll continued through beat 2.

The presence of ruffs on the same line is a little confusing; usually those are interpreted as an short, unmetered multiple-bounce stroke before the primary note, and seeing them attached to a roll you want to try to play them the same way. In traditional rudimental drumming, though, they're often given a rhythm, and played as a drag on a 16th note— we'll have to go into that another time.

So, line 1 would be played:

And here's line 3, into line 4:

Get Charley Wilcoxon's All-American Drummer