On playalongs, pt.1: use real music

That's the idea.

I was working on a single post about practicing along with recorded music— something I've been doing a lot of lately— but it was running long on me, and taking forever to finish. I need to start acting like a blogger and getting stuff out there in shorter bits, so here are some thoughts on choosing music to play along with:


Real vs. simulated
Generic playalong collections, like the popular Groove Essentials series, are fine for getting together the very basics of a style, or for getting a general sense of your readiness for the professional world. You get clean recordings which closely resemble music in a variety of (mostly) common styles, as they might be played by the best American musicians. But don't mistake them for the real act of making music, despite their similarity to it: to me they are a gutted, abstracted form of playing. They're missing the actual things you're supposed to be playing in support of, the real impetus for most of what you play: a melody, and a lead voice.

Compare the experience of playing along with some of our previous pop transcriptions: God, Anticipation, or Beauty And The Beast, with that of any of the rock/pop entries from GE— here's one:



What is missing from the naked rhythm tracks should be obvious. On the actual records, the rhythm section parts are only one element of what the drummers are playing off of; they are equally focused on what is happening in the melody; their parts are intimately connected with it, and closely track its dynamics, and overall arc. You only get the barest shadow of that with the playalongs. Being able to play convincingly to a generic rhythm track— to play blind, essentially— is a real skill, but it is not the main thing.

Much more of this after the break:

Daily best music in the world: Barbara Song

Here are several versions of Barbara Song, from Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. I could try to write something about it, but what for? The content is self-evident and I see no need to flail around it with words. OK, it's very German and very beautiful— there. A YouTube commenter helpfully informs us:

"Barbaren" means "barbarians" in German[...] There is no [character named] "Barbara" in the libretto. 

First in its original form, from G.W. Pabst's 1931 film Die Dreigroschenoper:



And by Gil Evans, one of the greatest things ever in jazz:



By Tethered Moon, a trio with pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian:



Those are the big three in my book, but there are couple more after the break:

Lou Reed 1942-2013

It's a good day to give White Light, White Heat a listen in its entirety— news that Lou Reed has died is breaking all over the Internet right now. I first heard this record on a boombox in a thrift store on Clinton Street in Portland in about 1996, which seems fitting. It's the example I usually give for how something can have nothing going on technically and still be the best music in the world.

Transcription: Raymond "Monchito" Muñoz — Caminando

Here we have a Latin percussionist funking out a little bit on Caminando, a hip cha cha* recorded by Eddie Palmieri on his great album Vamonos Pa'l Monte. The drummer, Raymond “Monchito” Muñoz, brings very much a percussionist's sensibility to the drumset; almost the entire track is played on the hihat alone, with little variation, and with very sparing use of the bass drum and snare drum. The funky parts happen at the end of the first interlude, and on the outro.

There is little information about Muñoz online, and I had never heard of him before. From what I gather, he is a Puerto Rican percussionist active in New York and PR since the 60's, or earlier. Apparently he studied with Henry Adler. From his Facebook page, it appears that he was seriously ill recently.

It seens that Muñoz's primary instrument is timbales, and he plays the drumset with what I imagine to be a timbalero's touch— for whatever that observation is worth. He draws a variety of sounds out of the snare drum (and hihats, to a lesser degree), playing loosely and not very loud, blending volume of the drumset with the congas. You never get the feeling that he's playing into the drums, the way many funk drummers do. I would be tempted to approach this by just learning and playing each measure— or group of two measures— as a groove in its own right.

* — If you're better than me at IDing salsa styles, please let us know in the comments.

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Audio after the break:

2013 tour posters

All right, the posters for my upcoming Europe (well, Belgium, plus the outer tip of Germany and Luxembourg) tour are done!

Here are the shows, once again, with times:

9:00, Tuesday, Nov. 12 Hot Club de Gand GHENT, Belgium

8:30, Wednesday, Nov. 13 Jazz Station BRUSSELS, Belgium

7:00, Friday, Nov. 15 Blues-Sphere LIEGE, Belgium

8:00, Saturday, Nov. 16 Appeltuin Jazz LEUVEN, Belgium

Event starts 5:00, Sunday, Nov. 17 Hannut Jazz Festival HANNUT, Belgium

8:30, Monday, Nov. 18 Dumont's AACHEN, Germany

9:30, Tuesday, Nov. 19 LiquID LUXEMBOURG

9:00, Wednesday, Nov. 20 Le Rideau Rouge LASNE, Belgium

9:00, Saturday, Nov. 23 Lokerse Jazzklub LOKEREN, Belgium

5:30, Sunday, Nov. 24 Flamingo BRUSSELS, Belgium

Groove o' the day: Ronald Shannon Jackson — Yugo Boy

Today we'll do Ronald Shannon Jackson's groove from the other day, Yugo Boy, from his 1984 album Barbeque Dog. Jackson was always coming up with distinctive grooves, and I don't know why I haven't shared his things before, except that I only have his records on vinyl, not digital, and they rarely come up on YouTube. I'm hearing a lot of Stewart Copeland in his playing here— definitely in his snare sound— which I never thought of before; he was paying attention to Copeland then, so it's not too surprising. Playing the snare on beat 4 only strikes me as a very 80's thing, too.

You can hear that there's a lot of variety in how he handles the end of the measure, though he doesn't do anything too fancy. The hihat is partly open on the 16th notes, obviously.

I've spent a lot of time listening to him, reading his words, and thinking about his playing, and I'm still sorry he's gone. There aren't many drummers who manage to create such a unique voice on the instrument as he did, and it's a tragedy one one of them dies.

Page o' coordination: 6/8 Rumba clave in the left hand

Like I said: a lotta 6/8. That feel has always been one of the stronger elements of my playing, but I thought I'd see what happens if I do a whole lot of more work on it. Just out of curiosity. Here's a nice companion to our clave-in-the-RH page-o'— we'll play clave with the left hand, and do some variations with the right.

I don't like to put up too many of these things without restating our purpose. When I originally learned this feel, and the other major feel we've been developing with these pages, I just learned a basic form of the groove, and then had a lot of fun playing it a lot, fleshing it out as I went, based on the vibe of what I was hearing on records. I did it almost completely by feel, and never worked anything out precisely, the way we're doing here. My goal for my own playing with these pages is to fill in some coordination gaps, and to introduce a different way of thinking than I am used to, to allow some new things to come out spontaneously. My basic approach to the actual playing has never changed— I still vibe it, rather than attempt the worked-out thing these pages might suggest. I think most players— those who are likely to do the amount of work necessary to master this type of thing— would also benefit from a large amount of playing by vibe.

Where there are accents given, they are played with the right hand only. Since the variations are happening with the right hand, I'm not doing our usual tom moves. You can feel free to do them, though. If you want. You might also try doubling the right hand part with the bass drum, eliminating the written BD part.

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Ronald Shannon Jackson 1940-2013

Very sorry to hear that the drummer and avant-garde master Ronald Shannon Jackson died today. This would be a great time to revisit his Modern Drummer interview from 1984, by friend of the blog Chip Stern, which I excerpted here some time ago. Immediately after reading that— probably a couple of times— when it was originally published, I ran out and bought Jackson's album Barbeque Dog:




Here he is on a Cecil Taylor album— he was my favorite drummer to play with Cecil:



Here's a notice from Jazz Times.

(h/t to Larry Appelbaum)

Survival chops: cymbal and bass drum licks

Here is a collection of moderately easy, very functional, right-hand lead licks for the drum set. Normally I would arrive at these by other means— like, by playing Stick Control, Syncopation, or any paradiddle rudiment, with the right hand on the cymbal, with the bass drum playing in unison. You can make major workouts out of any of those. But I wanted to write them in “Chop Buster” format, as a single column of composed patterns, representing about fifteen minutes worth of practice, after you've had a basic introduction to them.

Play the unaccented snare notes softly, and don't overplay the accents. You should have little problem learning these quickly. They're designed to be easy to be played fast, too, as long as your doubles with your hands and right foot are together. The metronome marking of 140 beats per minute is a reasonable goal— you may be able to play them faster than that, or it may take you some time to reach that tempo.

There are no repeat signs, but assume each pattern is to be played many times. In the pdf there are some examples of ways of practice them along with any time feel of your choice, in any style, like:

Or, using a partial measure of the pattern:

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