Todd's tom tom thing — part 1

This is something that has come up organically in my own playing, which I've been trying to get a handle on more systematically— we saw a little bit of this before with my “quasi-African” tom lick. Mainly, we're combining moving around the drums with sound/articulation changes with the left hand. This is mainly a soloing thing, but the kind of fluency we'll be developing should generally apply when playing Latin styles that are mainly on the drums, like a rhumba, or calypso; or when you want a texture change on a Latin tune, like during a bass solo.

This sort of thing looks like hell on the page, so we'll break it down as much as possible:

Play the snare drum with the snares off. The left hand will be playing the snare drum normally, rim clicks, rim shots, and ghost notes. The right hand moves between the snare drum (played normally) and floor tom. Once you can do the basic moves, you can begin to play with your sound— adding some accents, changing the quality of your rim shots, and experimenting with the way your left hand muffles the drum during the rim clicks. If you want to use your feet, you can play quarter notes (or dotted quarters in 12/8) on the hihat, or with both feet, to start.

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