Monday, April 13, 2015

Half-time feel funk: basic method

Here's a basic method for working with the half time feel funk grooves from the other day. We'll be reading out of Syncopation, by Ted Reed, pp. 10-11 (from the old edition) or Lesson 4 (in the new edition).




Start by getting used to the feel of the foundation pattern, with the right hand move to the snare drum. Then play through all fifteen lines of exercises, plus the 20 bar exercise, from Syncopation, with hands only. Just keep playing the quarter note foundation pattern with the RH, and add any LHs needed on the &s to make the rhythms in the book. Then play through all the patterns again, adding a bass drum hit on beat 1— pattern 1 from the basic cut time funk grooves page. You should be able to repeat this with the other first four bass drum patterns without too much difficulty; grooves 5-18, with the BD on the &s, may be more of a challenge.

Finally, when you're able to play straight through all of the exercises with all of the bass drum patterns, play them again omitting the circled bass drum notes from the grooves page. It sounds like a lot of stuff, but once you learn a few key patterns, the rest of them become very easy.

Get cracking, the hip things we'll do with this are yet to come...

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