Thursday, June 21, 2018

Page o' coordination: Midnight Special shuffle

Page o' coordination based on the Midnight Special shuffle groove as played by Grady Tate and Donald Bailey with Jimmy Smith. We're using two different cymbal rhythms, and the snare drum part varies, but the main focus should be keeping the strong shuffle feel the whole time between the hihat, cymbal, and bass drum. When doing ostinatos people like to try to set them on auto pilot and concentrate on the independent part, but don't— think about all the parts all the time.




Normally we do a lot of left hand moves with these pages, but in this case you can just keep it on the snare drum. It's not exactly the same groove, but you could use my Lopsy Lu practice loop with this— I have a new version of the complete form of that tune which I'll be posting soon. Or just play along with either of the Jimmy Smith recordings of Midnight Special.

Get the pdf

No comments: