A good book you should all chase down

Look for the book with
the really goofy cover.

I just want to take a moment again to recommend you all try to find a copy of the book Syncopated Rhythms for the Contemporary Drummer by Chuck Kerrigan. If you're doing a lot with Ted Reed's book, as I do, you'll want this one too. It includes more stuff similar to the most-used parts of Reed, with the addition of triplet and 16th note rhythms in the same vein. And more quarter note-based stuff, which I think people use more, and a few studies in 3/4 and 5/4. A better Reed supplement than Louis Bellson's book, if I may be so bold. It's out of print, but there are always a few copies floating around on eBay or Amazon for $6-10.

A Funky Primer: double-time feel lesson

Getting back into teaching out of a book I haven't used in some time: A Funky Primer, by my former college professor Charles Dowd. I felt it was getting a little dated, and I was putting all my energy into developing a Syncopation-based rock/funk method (which I'll be releasing in book form whenever I can finish it)... plus a student walked off with my copy. I bought it again recently, and, you know, it's actually quite decent for functional timekeeping vocabulary for any straight-8th note music with a backbeat. Much of the stuff you wouldn't necessarily play verbatim in real music, but it teaches you a lot of important moves. So we're using it again.

Here's a little unit I was doing with a student: a few selected patterns from pages 25 and 28, centered around making a double time feel. I extended the exercises a little bit by making some of the bass drum notes optional— play all the patterns with and without the circled bass drum notes. These are from page 25:

These patterns from page 28 are also helpful:

Altogether, with the optional versions, that's 18 patterns; an easy little unit. Students tend to gravitate towards their own personal “generic” medium tempo, and these double time feel patterns seem to be a good way to instantly get them to play much faster than they're accustomed to.

Uptempo Stone method — 02

Here's a little companion to our other uptempo method using Stick Contrtol by George L. Stone. This is more of an open system, and you may do it without even getting that deeply into the book exercises— you can do plenty with just the first four patterns: RLRL / LRLR / RRLL / LLRR. See what you can do with at least patterns 1-13 from page 5.

What we do is this: The practice patterns Stick Control are played as quarter notes, with the Rs played on the bass drum, and the Ls played on the snare drum with the left hand. To that we add quarter notes on the cymbal, and 2 and 4 on the hihat with the left foot. We then displace each note of the pattern by an 8th note— playing them an 8th note early or late. Take a look, it will make sense...

There are some additional guidelines that help develop a modern texture with this. Mainly:

• Don't stop. Between exercises, play time on the cymbal and hihat. I don't normally beat myself to death playing the straight bop cymbal pattern— I will mix it up.
  
• You don't have to play endless unbroken repetitions; once you learn the little lick for that pattern/displacement, play one or two measures of it, alternating with several measure of time. For the first three book patterns, RLRL/LRLR/RRLL, you can do each little two-note crux lick in isolation, as well.
  
• On the ride cymbal, play quarter notes when you're playing the book exercises, with a broken bop pattern in between. Also reverse that: play the exercises once or twice with a straight bop pattern, with quarter notes on the cymbal in between.
  
• Find a phrase-ending accent with each of the practice patterns; play a strong accent on the drum and cymbal, and tie the cymbal through the following beat. It's better if the accent is not always on 1.
  

Suggested tempo is around 280-350, or half note = 140-175. Faster than it gets a little silly, but do whatever you feel you must.

Get the pdf

Tootie Heath with Monk

On the Jazz At Lincoln Center blog, drummer Tootie Heath tells how a weeklong engagement he played with Thelonious Monk went down:

I played a week with Monk and, every night, Nica [Monk’s friend and noted jazz patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter] would bring him from New York in the Rolls Royce to the club. They would sit out in front of the club, 15-20 minutes before time to hit, and Thelonious would be smoking and Nica would have her cigarette holder and she would be smoking. They were sitting in the Rolls Royce and then he would come in the club with his hat and coat on, sit down at the piano, [wouldn't] say nothing to us… nothing!  

We didn’t know what we were playing… nothing! We had to know Monk’s music. Some of the songs, [bassist] Jimmy Bond didn’t know what key they were in, so he was trying to watch Monk’s left hand to try to find out which key. But Jimmy was such a wonderful musician that he was able to really figure it out after a little bit. 

Thelonious had his back to us; he’s playing piano facing this way and drums are back there and bass is back there. So every night he would end the set and walk off—never take his hat or coat off, go out, sit in the car on the break, come back in, still didn’t say nothing.  

He did this for the whole week. So we were trying to figure out, “Man, does he hate us? Does he like us? Are we playing his music right?” But that was it! He never said anything! I didn’t get it.

Follow Jazz At Lincoln Center on Twitter.

Why I hate “drum lesson” videos.

The guy making the thing has to guess what parts of it you're not going to get, and guess how to explain it in a way you'll understand, meanwhile wasting everyone else's time who either didn't need quarter notes explained, or who wasn't helped by his explanation of them. 

Very occasional quote of the day: Muhammad Ali

"I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'"

EZ Reed interpretation: triplet lick

Here's an easy practice method for use with Ted Reed's Syncopation, developing a triplet lick. What I like about these things is they're finite. You do the fifteen lines, plus the long exercise, and you're done. You've given yourself a good workout with whatever one little lick you're learning.

Today we're using the rarely-used triplets-and-quarter notes portion of the book— pp. 14-15. We're going to revoice the melody rhythm (the top/stems-up part from the book, ignoring the stems-down part) between the snare and bass drum, and add a basic part on the cymbal and hihat. For starters, we'll play the first two notes of the triplet on the snare drum with the left hand, the last note of the triplet and the quarter notes on the bass drum. So for this exercise from the book:

The rhythm would be voiced:

Or play just the first quarter note after the triplet on the bass drum, and all of the other quarters on the snare:

Or you could just do all of the quarter notes on the snare, too. It becomes a slightly different lick in that case:

Or mix the quarter notes up freely. Do what you want— these are just options. This fun little workout quickly becomes quite tedious if you decide to be a pill about running every single possibility.

We'll want to add quarter notes on the cymbal:

Add hihat on 2 and 4 to make a jazz-like feel:

In which case you may want to go ahead and play a complete jazz cymbal rhythm— swing the 8th notes here:

If the incessant quarter notes get to be a drag, you can just play the triplet(s) plus the quarter note right after it/them, eliminating the other quarter notes:

In real playing, beware of too many licks ending strongly on the beat, especially on beat 1. Follow the usual dynamic guidelines for jazz— balance everything with the cymbal voice; play the snare drum softly (unless you choose to add some accents) and go easy on the bass drum, especially on the quarter notes.

Playing the hihat on the 1 and 3, is more funk-like, emphasizing a cut-time feel:

In that case, you'll really be thinking of these licks as 16th note triplets and 8th notes. Be aware of how they translate:

You also have the option of playing the triplets RLB— you'll have to come off of the cymbal to do that, of course. Feel free to move that onto the toms as well.

Terry Bozzio does that a few measures into the “yowza” interlude on Dancin' Fool, by the way— RLBB with no cymbal on the end. He's got two bass drums, but it doesn't matter...

When you're doing it that way, it's easy enough to fill out the triplets for the rest of the measure, with your left hand:

There you are. Pick 1-3 ways above that make sense to you, and get to smoking through lines 1-15 plus the 16 bar exercise from pp. 14-15 of Syncopation. This is a pretty easy lick you should be able to play blazing fast with a little practice.

Funk practice loop: Betty Davis - If I'm In Luck...

My apologies for the lack of posts lately— I've been very busy with gigs, and with work on my house. Mainly installing a patio in my back yard, which involves digging up and moving out God knows how many thousands of pounds of dirt and moving in an equal amount of gravel, sand, and pavers. It can kick your ass. But here's a new funk loop I've been enjoying working with. It's sampled from Betty Davis's If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up, from her first solo album. Tempo good for any of your more demanding or dense funk practice materials, quarter note = 64 bpm. I'm using it to run the harmonic coordination section of Dahlgren & Fine— it almost sounds grooving when you play it with this loop.

Now, if I were you, I'd get one of those YouTube mp3 ripping web browser extensions, download this sucker, and put it on your mp3 player. Set it to repeat and it loops seamlessly forever. 

Video of the complete track is after the break. Greg Errico is on drums. 

Page o' coordination: shuffle bass drum variations

It's a busy, busy, busy, busy time here— lots of gigs, lots of teaching, lots of work to be done on my house as we convert our little back house into an Air b'n'b. Nevertheless, here's a normal-difficulty POC for getting your bass drum together when playing a normal jazz shuffle:

Patterns 1-6, 14, maybe 15, you may end up using your actual time feel at some point. The remainder are for developing facility so you can make variations and build intensity without falling apart.

You have the option of just playing the hands in unison, both hands playing the shuffle rhythm; or you could play dotted quarters notes (or quarter notes in 4/4) on the cymbal, eliminating the skip note. But learn that page as written first.

If you want a track to play with, try Jimmy Smith's Back At The Chicken Shack. Or root around in Smith's catalog for a slower or faster shuffle.

Get the pdf