Friday, November 09, 2018

Linear tweak

Here's a minor tweak for the Gary Chaffee linear system, which we've been using a lot lately. I have never had a truly satisfactory way of teaching fills— there are lots of different materials for it, but none that I felt were effective and satisfying to practice for people who need this subject taught to them.

I think we're closing in on something with these recent Chaffee things. Something the average student can work on, and feel excited that they're doing something that sounds hip, that is also musically effective. They don't have to be played fast to sound good.

This tweak is to double the rate of the first one or two notes of the pattern— if the rhythm is 16th notes, make them 32nd notes, like so:



The 3/5 combination would be played like this:


It's pretty obvious. A lot of people are probably doing this already. I haven't put in the stickings, but you can do the 32nd notes as singles or doubles. Try them as singles. Do this with my recent page of practice phrases in 4/4.

1 comment:

Bernd Klug said...

Hi Todd,
well, the 'how-to-play-fills' question seems to be one of the most asked beginner questions.

I take some snaredrum etude which used some lessons before to teach the subdivisions - and have the student apply it to the drumset...
1) just change the drum/sound on every pulse
2) Show, how to apply 'groups' of notes of that etude on various sounds/drums
3) I take a self-written easy etude with three bars of rhythm and one bar of the snare etude applied to the drumset as fill.
4)After that we listen to some songs and figure out WHEN and WHY a fill is played
Steps 3 and 4 are interchangeable.

Much! later I will introduce the student to the concepts players like Vinnie use. Therefore I either use own material or etudes from books.

Another way to create a fill is to apply the the rhythm of the groove to different sounds/toms