Very occasional quote of the day: Fast City

Omar Hakim speaks to Modern Drummer when he was with Weather Report in the mid 80s:

RT : How did you learn to play bop so fast? 

OH : I don't know. With much difficulty. No, with me, playing fast is a relaxation thing. You start to come up with tricks to get that right hand moving. And then it's not always the cymbals; you've got the hi-hat you're working with. To play that kind of bebop is a hands thing. The bass drum is giving the accents and dropping the bombs during the solos. The bass drum is weaving. “Fast City” is one of the fastest songs I've ever played. There were a couple of songs I did like that with Mike Mainieri, but you learn your tricks for doing it. 

RT : But it's funny you would say you had to relax to play at that speed. 

OH : You've got to relax. Before you tense up, you've immediately got to say it's not fast. Victor and I had a long discussion about that when we were learning it. Don't think of it as fast. It's not fast. Never mind the fact that you're going to pass out when it's over; it's not fast.

Here's the tune he's talking about— Fast City by Weather Report, here with Peter Erskine on drums:

Reed samba method - basic exercise

This is the first in a multi-post series outlining some ways of using Progressive Steps to Syncopation to do a samba. I usually use actual Brazilian rhythms for that, but many of the rhythms in Reed work too.

The first thing is a preparatory exercise for doing a surdo-type part on the tom toms— a basic structure for that feel, and a couple of rhythmic moves that will occur when working out of Reed. Typically this involves a high drum on 1 and a low drum on 2 (counting in 2/2), and sometimes a low drum on the whole last half of the measure— at the end of a two, four, or eight measure phrase. The sticking is simple, but it does have to be worked out to catch the right drum at the right time.

Accent the toms, especially the low tom on 2. Play the snare drum hits generally quietly, adding some accents as you see fit. You can also play rim clicks on the snare drum. I was doing this with the Hot Sand loop, which is a pretty bright tempo.

You should get my book, Playing Samba and Bossa Nova for some practical guidelines and materials for playing these styles. Also see my series of posts on samba cruzado for another way of doing the type of groove in this post.

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Transcription: Kenny Clarke fours - 02

Put this in your binder with Kenny Clarke's fours from Love Me Or Leave Me that I posted a few years ago. Here he's trading fours on Two Not One from the album Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh. For some reason he has me thinking about Philly Joe Jones— I never thought about Joe being especially a Kenny guy, but I'm feeling a strong semblance here. The tempo is bright, fours begin at 3:55.

As usual, Clarke doesn't play the tom toms at all. The triplet lick in the first two lines, that happens several more times, I suspect is played with a paradiddle sticking starting with the left hand— either LRLLR or LRRLR (I prefer the latter). At the beginning of line 3 play five-stroke rolls ending with stick shots. On the last two measures of line 5, you can start with our previous paradiddle lick, then two double paradiddles, then singles. Or do the whole things as singles. Pencil in whatever sticking you want to use. Use a RRL sticking on the triplets in line 6. The four-stroke ruffs in line 7 are some little personal flash lick of Clarke's; what I wrote appears to be what is played— you can really play them however you want.

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Amazingness in cymbals

Making videos of some new cymbals for sale today, so it's a good time post this thing that has been sitting in my drafts folder for some months:


In selling these fantastic Cymbal & Gong cymbals, I've been trying to work out how to advertise their strength: how well they do their actual job as musical instruments. All of the other professional players who play them say the same thing: they sound like cymbals— they sound like 95% of records we ever listen to.

It sounds obvious. Don't all cymbals sound like cymbals? Not always. It's a big deal. They sound like cymbals the way Charlie Haden sounds like the bass. Sounding the way the instrument is supposed to sound can be pretty rare.

In the cymbal-enthusiast world the sought after sounds tend to be sweeping, lush, dark... bottomlessly dark. Big amazing sounds that stand out from all the other big amazing sounds in the drum shop. This is a community of people buying 22 and 24 inch crash cymbals— useless items at any other time in history— dreaming about 26 inch cymbals, edge wobble, bendability. People love brutally bending the crap out of cymbals to demonstrate... something...

The sought-after sounds are dwaaash and whooosh. Sort of a bwaaaah or a durshaaaah sound. If you can get a good bwaaaaorrrsssh with a single stroke of a 7A, you know you've got something. The presence of a bizarre slinky-like tonality is regarded as very interesting.

The problem: I can't use any of that in actually playing music. I'm a player. I can't use a cymbal that goes dwaaaah when I play it at a mp, and GWAAAARRR??? when I play a mf. I can barely use the first sound, the second one is right out. I see a lot of cymbals like that in drum shops. On the rare occasion that I hear a cymbal like that on a record, it's usually a distraction. It sounds out of place.

Musical needs
What music normally requires from the cymbals are a ride sound, a crash sound, and a bell sound. With ride cymbals we also need an accent sound— with the shoulder of the stick, not a full-on crash. A crash cymbal needs to give an explosive crash sound, and be usable for light riding. With hihats, a solid foot sound and open sound, and a closed sound played with a stick. Some people also play a bell sound on the hihat. It's a nice bonus if we can get a good crash out of the hihats. From a Chinese-type cymbal we need a short trashy crash sound, and perhaps some kind of ride sound, while not being too wild or obnoxious.

Playability
The best cymbals— or the best cymbals for you— produces those sounds at an appropriate volume for the situation, the way you normally play, with your usual sticks. Playing your normal situations shouldn't demand any special care in how you hit the cymbal.

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Being the what
Music is always about what is played. Sound is important, but it's secondary to what is played, in what context. The sound has to communicate the what, not be the what.

Sounds that “are the what” are known as effects. The point of them is to make one special sound that jumps out at the listener. Nobody wants to have the one crazy sound leaping in their face all night, so they have to be used with some care. As Peter Erskine said in another context: sounds that are too “interesting”, used too much, can be like bad wallpaper. Or like reading a novel rendered in a “cute” font.

Strictly business
I know we're all serious artists here, but playing the drums is also a job. We are buying tools for doing a job, and big purchases for things like cymbals need to make some kind of business sense. Our tools need to be versatile enough to handle a significant part of our performance obligations. I can't be spending $700 on something that is only usable, with great care, in a narrow range of situations... and even then, if you poll the band, it may not even be doing that very well.

Drummers don't usually have a lot of money. When we buy something, we need to be able to use it happily forever— or for many years, at least.

Hemiola funk - doubles - beginner sheet

Getting into doubles with my hemiola funk series— two notes in a row at 16th note speed on the same drum/cymbal. Using the same format as the last beginner sheet, which I've found to be effective with my younger students.

Patterns 13 and 14 are the essential idea we're developing; patterns 1-12 isolate the elements, and begin playing them in sequence. Patterns 15-28 put the idea in 2/4 (with inversions) and 4/4, and re-orchestrate it slightly. 

Play patterns 1-12 several times, with an unmetered rest in between repetitions— play it once, take a breath, and play it again. Play patterns 13-28 one time as with 1-12, then play them repeating.

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Practice loops: two McCoy loops

A couple of practice loops sampled from McCoy Tyner. The first is from Reaching Fourth; it's the vamp from Old Devil Moon, and at 142 bpm it's a nice medium tempo, good for working on any of your normal jazz materials:




Then a short excerpt from McCoy's solo on Song of the New World. Too short; do go listen to the whole album with Alphonse Mouzon on drums. Nobody really talks about the type of vibe that's happening here— high intensity blowing in a straight 8th feel— but it's as much of a thing as an “Elvin-type” feel, or an “ECM” feel. It's not Latin, not a samba, not funk, not anything else. You could call it a McCoy thing.

Tempo here is 220, which is kind of a crux tempo for this style— your right hand wants to imitate McCoy and play a lot of running 8ths, but it's a little too fast to do that the whole time; settling into a half time vibe also doesn't quite make it. You have to straddle the two.

Sorry I mis-titled it “Song FOR the New World” on the video.

Transcription: Jack Dejohnette - Peasant Dance

Hey, the longest transcription we've done in awhile, here, a three pager. It's Jack Dejohnette playing on a very interesting record I had not really heard before: Peacemeal, by Lee Konitz, recorded in 1969. It's a quintet, with Konitz on alto and tenor, and some electronic device, and Marshall Brown on valve trombone and baritone horn. This is a jazz arrangement of Peasant Dance, from Bela Bartók's Mikrokosmos. This is the blowing over a vamp starting at 1:20. 

It was difficult at times for me to isolate the bass drum from Eddie Gomez's bass playing, so I probably left some out, or put some things in that were actually the acoustic bass. Dejohnette swings his 16th notes for much of this; relating that back to this recent post, that's equivalent a normal jazz tune played at quarter note = 230— getting towards the upper limit for swinging the rhythm.

After the recent Max Roach series, I like the idea of making study guides based on transcriptions— maybe I'll get to that later in the week.

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What it is: beats and BPM

Following up the tempo equivalency post from the other day:

There's a lot of confusion among drummers on the internet over what “BPM” means. I don't want to have to re-explain it every time I mention it, so I'll link back to this as necessary.

It means beats per minute. It does not mean notes per minute. Drummers on the internet like to talk about speed, and talking about numbers of notes gives you higher numbers, which makes it more fun, so they talk about numbers of notes. It's become a thing largely thanks to Metal drumming and the World's Fastest Drummer competition, and it's a symptom of people not understanding how rhythm, meter, and music work generally.

A beat is the primary felt pulse of a piece of music. If people were dancing or marching or tapping their feet, it's the pulse they would be dancing/etc to. If there were a conductor, it's the thing his or her conducting pattern would be marking.



A legit tempo or BPM indication consists of a number + what kind of note the number refers to, e.g. quarter note = 100 beats per minute. If the note value is not indicated, it is assumed that the number refers to the normal beat for the time signature of the piece, e.g, quarter notes in */4 meters, dotted quarter notes in regular */8 meters, half notes in */2 meters.

For talking about speed without a specific musical context, I give the rhythm value, the beat value, and the tempo, e.g 16th notes at quarter note = 120. Sixtuplets at quarter note = 140. The default beat value is typically quarter notes. Absolute speed of notes as a statistic, without a rhythm or beat reference, is for me not musically meaningful— there's no reason to assign numbers to that, unless people are just into training for its own sake.

Syncopation exercise: singles, doubles - 2-3 8th intervals

Another original syncopation exercise. The last one had single notes, spaced one or two 8th notes apart. This one has one or two notes in a row, one or two 8ths apart. Both are really designed for speed when playing the right hand on a cymbal (often with bass drum in unison) or tom toms, with the left hand filling in— with that interpretation you never play more than two notes in a row with either hand. 

See our voluminous archives of Reed interpretations for ways of orchestrating this for the drumset. 

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