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Thursday, October 25, 2018

Chaffee linear patterns in context - 02

Yes, I'm determined to finally resolve some minor issues I have in practicing Gary Chaffee's linear thing. Today let's work through a short phrase that will be useful in jazz settings, starting after the 1, and ending with a cymbal accent on the last note of the pattern, on the swing &-of-4:




As you can see from the practice examples at the bottom of the page, you can easily play these exercises in 3, 4, or 5. Vary the accents and move your hands around the drums. The hihat can be substituted for the bass drum on all notes except the ending cymbal accent— if you're doing that, ignore the stems-down hihat ostinato part during the fill, of course. That ending cymbal hit is tied though the following beat 1; let the accent ring through beat 1 after the repeat, and come back in on 2, paying special attention to the timing— people tend to rush it.

As I was practicing this I realized I could do the same thing with the patterns in the book (Patterns, vol. III by Gary Chaffee), all forty of them. But sometimes it's nice to pare things down to something you can cover in a tight 15-20 minutes. And these exercises cover all the major moves— working through the complete set of patterns involves a lot of duplication.

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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:34 PM

    Thank you for this!

    I've always had similar issues with practicing Chaffee's method. I've still put in a decent amount of time working on them, but felt that the 'mathy'/quantitative presentation of the linear and sticking possibilities was pretty abstract

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