Very occasional quote of the day: listening

“Listening is the whole thing. I'll tell you exactly how I play. My whole approach to playing is reaction. I don't listen to myself play. I'm not aware of myself because I'm too busy listening to everything going on around me. All my body is doing is reacting to that. Sometimes I'm forcing things, making things happen another way, but I'm reacting to everything I hear. The composition I'm creating as I play is because of what I'm hearing. How can you work out how you're going to accompany somebody? You can't! You're supposed to be complementing and accompanying.

Everything depends on your ears. If I'm busy listening to me, then I'm not hearing the rest of the band.”

- Mel Lewis, 1978 Modern Drummer interview by Scott K. Fish

Paradiddle-diddle game

Everybody Good Knows The Same Stuff, Part 1000:

Another handout from a clinic Russ Tincher at UC Berkeley in 1989— I confirmed that's where it was from. Here he shows how to interpret triplets with Reed or Bellson, and details a practice system for it, based on paradiddle-diddles. Or six stroke rolls, more accurately— that terminology wasn't universal then.  

In John Ramsay's Alan Dawson book there's a similar system he calls “Ruff bossa.” The only difference is in how you interpret a (written) beat of 8th notes. Dawson plays them as alternating swing 8th notes, without filling in the triplet: 

Tincher fills in the triplet, and plays it with an alternating sticking, which you see in the first example below. With certain rhythms that may take the system in a different direction, so it leads with the left hand a good part of the time. With Dawson's system the lead is very consistent, with a simple alternating motion no matter what you're reading. 

This system is probably best for using with the first couple of pages of Bellson, which has just quarter notes and offbeat 8th notes only, but we'll see, I'll play around with it when I have some time to practice. 

Very occasional quote of the day: space to contribute

“The way guys like Bud Powell shaped their solos, they automatically left spaces for the drummers to contribute. A lot of times today, in student performers, I don’t hear that space being offered, because they’re not really aware of what’s going on. 

When you learn technique out of a book, you’re not really taught how to make your part fit with something else. That’s something you can only experience when you’re playing with somebody. You have to learn how to react to each other.

You can tell in about eight bars if a soloist is going to work with you or if he’s just going to ride over the rhythm section and pay no attention to what’s going on back there. A lot of times my students get frustrated because they don’t feel like they’re fitting into the group. I’ll listen to a little bit of who they’re playing with and realize that they’re not getting an opportunity to contribute. They’re being blocked out, and when that happens, I tell them to just pull back because there’s no space being left. 

If the soloist is filling every beat, the poor piano player or guitar player has to find space to get that harmonic information in there, and that doesn’t leave any room at all for the drummer to contribute. So just play the ride cymbal and wait for the next soloist. This is the kind of thing you learn when you study the whole band as opposed to just your instrument.”

- Joe La Barbara, 2002 Modern Drummer interview by Rick Mattingly

Uptempo drill a la Riley

Major rehash alert: an uptempo jazz drill I was playing yesterday, using what John Riley once called “my C major scale”: an SSBB pattern in 8th notes, with notes omitted. The page below is very similar to what I wrote about that, but in a better sequence for fast tempos.    

I practice it reading out of Syncopation, using my subtractive method*— voicing the book rhythm according to that SSBB pattern. Anything sounding on a 1&/3& is played on the snare, anything sounding on a 2&/4& is played on the bass drum. 

* -  Rated by the same Mr. Riley as “convoluted, but sometimes that's necessary.”

Here are some key starter patterns:

Do this with Syncopation pp. 9-10, 30-31, and 34-45.

Tempo goals are half note = 120, 130, 143, 150, and beyond. Play straight 8ths at all tempos, even tempos you would normally swing when performing. I usually practice these playing double time along with a straight 8th jazz/fusion/modern music loop.   

I've written a number of these drills over the years, and there's another good one in Riley's book Beyond Bop Drumming. The best drill is the one you do— whatever works for you. 

Get the pdf

Transcription: Buddy Rich - Big Mac

Buddy Rich drum solo on Big Mac, a prodigious funk/rock arrangement by Ernie Wilkins, from Rich's album Ease On Down The Road— it's actually better known from Roar of '74, but I have it on EODTR. I'm not particularly a lover of Buddy Rich's playing, but my God. 

Ever feel like basically all instrumentalists— and arrangers— have forgotten that this kind of energy is a thing? Everybody's moving sideways, fussing around in the fine subdivisions. I'm complaining about the young, people in their 60s definitely haven't forgotten.  

Tempo is 93, the solo begins at 3:49. 

It's Buddy, so lots of rim shots, he's extremely aggressive with his accents. We hear more unisons between the snare drum and bass drum than perhaps with other drummers. It's a powerful sound but kind of crude. His rock thing doesn't sound fully formed, but he's certainly bringing the energy. Who needs fully formed. 

I would expect him to be doing a lot of paradiddles, but here I believe the stickings on the denser stuff are mostly singles. He seems to be playing some very thin little hihats, and mostly hanging out on a very bright 70s 20" A. Zildjian. Tom toms sound good, classic rockin' late 60s/early 70s sound. Very little left foot activity that I can hear. 

Style note for you transcribers: when there's a lot of double time— 32nd notes and sixtuplets— it's best to create a little imaginary beat separation between the downbeat cluster of notes and the &-of-the-beat cluster of notes, connecting them with a single beam, as I've done here. 

Get the pdf

Very occasional quote of the day: sound and touch

“I’m not happy with my sound at all. I wish I sounded like Art Blakey or Elvin Jones. You have to be born with a certain feel or touch. Blakey had that African sound. It was so physical. Art played on my old Slingerland drums once at Minton’s Playhouse, and they were tuned tight like Max’s. But Art managed to capture his own deep sound on my drums. That’s when I realized it’s really physical.” 

“I try to practice lightly. I played so loud and hard with Miles, and even on some of the gigs I did with Sonny. That’s what they wanted. But now I’m going back to the ’60s, approaching things in a much lighter way. I just don’t think you have to bash. You can get the same intensity without bashing. Billy Higgins proved that. You could feel the tune building with each chorus when he played. You could feel the fire getting hotter without the volume getting louder. That’s what I’m trying to get back to.”

- Al Foster, 2003 Modern Drummer interview by Ken Micallef 

Everything at once

Another archive item— these things are a very welcome brain cleansing for me.

This is a clinic handout by Russ Tincher, from when I was a student at the U. of Southern California. Tincher was a Bay Area drummer and teacher. I don't know much about him, and information online is sparse. I believe he passed away in the teens. He did some big band work, and played in a fusion band called Solar Plexus, and was Jeff Ballard's teacher. I'm sure somebody reading knows more about him, please share in the comments. 

The first paragraph is the most important. I don't know if I first heard it as an idea from him, or if I already knew it and he reinforced it, but everything at once in drumming practice was a philosophy I really ran with in the 90s— not just with what I played, but the way I played it, with an emphasis on exciting dynamics and sound. 

Typing out the text, so it gets insidiously woven into the fabric of the internet: 

COORDINATION & READING
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR PRACTICE TIME
by Russ Tincher

A common problem among beginning drummers is that they tend to split their practice time up. A typical practice session begins with the drummer just “whaling” for awhile and then working on some coordination, then maybe some technique exercises, and, if he or she is not completely bored, some reading. What we tend to forget is that in the real world of playing we do all of these things at the same time! It is necessary, then, to learn to practice several areas of importance at once. 

How does a drummer do this? One of the most useful exercises I have found lies in Louis Bellson's Reading Text in 4/4. Here is a basic program for the book. 

1. Learn and play the first 25 pages “hand-to-hand.” Be able to play it slowly and evenly without stopping. 

2. Starting at the beginning, play Jazz Ride Cymbal and Hi-hat while playing the written material on the snare drum. Swing the 8th notes. 

3. Starting at the beginning, play Bossa Nova Ride Cymbal, Hi-hat, and Bass Drum while playing the written material on the cross-stick snare. Play straight 8ths.

4. Starting at the beginning, play Samba Ride Cymbal, Hi-hat, and Bass Drum while playing the written material on the Snare Drum. 

In completing these four steps you'll find that your coordination will be challenged and your reading will improve dramatically. Using this technique as a launching place, try superimposing your own favorite grooves over the written material— it works for Funk, Latin, Swing, just about anything. Also be sure to play the written material with the bass drum, Ride Cymbal, and Hi-hat. Try the same method with other books; don't be afraid to develop your own practice routines! And finally, always use a metronome.

EZ simultaneous clave exercises

Awhile back we noted that if you play a simple rhythm in an alternating sticking: 

And move one hand to a different sound:

...you are playing the Son Clave rhythm in the 3-2 and 2-3 orientations at the same time. 

I don't know what that means— as far as I know that never happens in actual music, unless something's going wrong. But it may suggest something about where the rhythm originally came from. On a student's first exposure to it, it seems rather arbitrary, so it's interesting to find a very simple rhythm and hand movement underlying it. Maybe grounding it in easy hand movements will help us non-Latin folk play it in a more natural way, helping make up for not acquiring it through culture— a little bit. 

So, it's worth playing around with it a little bit. Someone could spend maybe .5 to 2 hours total with the following: 

I've made a small effort to take those exercises into a Latin music direction, but none of this is meant to be performance vocabulary. Play it, then back to legit Latin studies... 

Get the pdf

Stanley Spector news

I received an email yesterday, from a violinist named Xinou Wei, regarding the “Spector School of Drumming”— which sells itself as an official Stanley Spector enterprise, and apparently it is a complete fraud. 

Wei says:  

“I just wanted to let you a bit about the situation, as a close friend of Stanley's widow Astrid. All the materials were taken from Astrid, around 2012 by John O'Reilly. It was verbally agreed between the two of them that John would make copies of the material, for studying purposes with no details envisioned. The opening of the school, the selling of the materials, [asking “thousands” of dollars, see comments. -TB] the lie that "from the Spector estate" was nothing but without Astrid's consent/awareness. 

Without an exaggeration, John's indecency remains one of the heaviest regrets the 86-year-old Astrid has to carry in her heart.” 

To clarify, that is not the respected drummer and author John Riley. The John O'Reilly who is doing this is a prog drummer living in Pennsylvania.  

So, he took a lot of Spector's materials on the pretense that it was for his personal use, and immediately ran out and set up a whole business entity around it, marketing it as an “official” Spector enterprise, using Spector's name, and hyping it from a very hard-sell paranoid angle.

And I see there's an interesting legal notice on his YouTube page: 

THE STANLEY SPECTOR SCHOOL OF DRUMMING is a trademark. MAVERICK MUSICIAN LLC

  

Maverick Musician is O'Reilly's business. Unclear whether he's claiming to own the SSSOD trademark, or that it simply is trademarked by someone. It's quite sleazy to ambiguously suggest he owns the trademark, knowing that the Spector estate owns it, and even more sleazy to have trademarked it himself, stealing Spector's name after stealing his materials. 

Looking further, on the site itself, under terms of use:  

Publications, products, content or services referenced herein or on the Site are the exclusive trademarks or servicemarks of Maverick Musician LLC. 

I'm pretty sure you can't just trademark somebody else's name, business name, and copyrighted work just because you got your little rat claws on some photocopies of it. I'm no lawyer! 

It's pretty slimy stuff, and pathetic. He thought he got his hands on a hot property, but he can't be making much money off it. Drumming materials, especially niche materials, are not that lucrative. I don't believe the hypey / secretive marketing pitch he's using will attract many students. I assumed he would've folded the con after it initially flopped— there are a few YouTube videos posted about ten years ago, and nothing since; but then the site was updated in 2022, and the Facebook page gets updated about once a year, so I guess he's still doing it.   

Wei said Mrs. Spector is seeking legal representation— I doubt there's any financial damages to recover, but she would like him to stop what he's doing. If anyone has any recommendations for music/copyright attorneys, please contact me via the EMAIL TODD link in the sidebar, and I'll pass it along to them.