Monday, March 30, 2015

Page o' coordination: Ahmad's vamp

Something to go with yesterday's practice loop, with some hihat splashes with the left foot. It's nice and slow, but the track pushes and pulls a little bit, so the timing might be a little challenging for some.




Don't overplay the bass drum— you will sound very square if you do that. I suggest doing the hihat splashes with your foot flat on the pedal. You can also just play the hihat notes with a closed sound, if you want. If you're playing with the practice loop, listen carefully to how your cymbal pattern fits with the track— like I said before, you won't be able to play the cymbal mechanically.

For those of you living on the this-blog equivalent of Mars, exiled to Siberia, or whatever: there are some left hand moves I recommend doing when practicing these patterns. Usually we move to a different drum when there is a big space between notes— any LH doubles stay on the same drum— but at the slow tempo of that practice loop, you can move on every single note.

The workout is the entire page plus some or all of the moves; once you can play the entire page, then your actual practice begins— refining your touch, making it sound like music, and covering some different tempos. There are quite a few of these pages o'..., and you probably won't have time to give them all a full treatment. Any one of them you practice fully is a big deal; and subsequent pages are much easier after you've done one of them.

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