Sunday, September 07, 2014

Reed interpretation: fast within slow

Our philosophy around here is to never stray too far from Reed without good reason— I have to relearn that every few years. So here's a thing for beginning to develop the Jack Dejohnette-style “fast within slow” thing using Syncopation, by Ted Reed. It's step one, anyway:




The examples cover several different sections of the book: quarter notes, 8th notes, 8th note rests, 8th note triplets, and syncopation.

You can go for ridiculous speed if you want— I'd say if you can survive around quarter note = 96 you've got the pure speed thing amply covered for actual music played on real drums. I'll be mainly focusing on fluency and solidity in a range of tempos and dynamics, and on figuring out how to use this to make something other than just a tidal wave of BS on the drumset.

Get the pdf

5 comments:

William said...

Hi Todd - this is awesome. Looks pretty tough, so go easy on us!

By the way - you're new (excellent) record is on the evil Spotify - did you know that?

William said...

Just one other query - What sort of tempo should this tried at? And do you know of any video examples I could look at so that I can get get a handle on the sound of it? Cheers... :)

William said...

I guess that's the answer then! Really interesting post on Mothers of the veil BTW.

Todd Bishop said...

Hi William--

Great, glad you liked the MOTV piece!

You could do these at around quarter note = 40-90, or faster with the alternative sticking which I'm about to post. If I have time, I'll put together a video clip.

And yes, my brother, the label president, convinced me that there was some slight value in having my stuff on Spotify. I'm not famous enough for there to be a big general demand for my records, so it's better to get the tiny bit of exposure I will get through them. If I were getting millions of plays, and pennies in royalties, I would begin questioning WTF I'm doing on there. I still think they're evil and trying to bankrupt us all.

William said...

Hi Todd - thanks for that. I'm going to find this pretty challenging, but well worth it. I hope.

And yes, Spotify will make paupers of us all! I will purchase a copy of Travelogue as soon as I can!

Cheers.