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Wednesday, January 06, 2021

Reed tweak: bass in the middle of the triplet

Let's take a break from watching the national degradation of the United States and its democratic form of government reach its apex live on Twitter/TV, wanna? 

Yesterday I was practicing one of my recent Reed tweaks, with the bass drum filling in the gaps in the melody rhythm, and I made a mistake, which immediately led to something new— at least I've never done it before. Between this, and all of the Three Camps for drum set stuff, and these recent Reed posts, you should be killing it at making a jazz texture in pretty short order— some months of serious practice, anyway. 

This is a jazz method., so play the normal cymbal rhythm plus hihat on 2/4, and read out of Syncopation by Ted Reed, pp. 34-45 of the current edition. Play the book rhythm on the snare drum, fill in with the bass drum thusly: 


Play the bass drum on the & on every beat where: 

    The snare drum sounds on the downbeat 

    No snare drum sounds 


Play the bass drum on the middle of the triplet on every beat where:
 

    The snare drum sounds on the both 8th notes 

    The snare drum sounds on the & only


So the first line of Ex. 1 on p. 38: 


Would be played like (I've omitted the hihat):


Or the fourth line of Ex. 4 on p. 41— that page may be a little confusing at first, with its many dotted quarter notes: 


Goes like: 


There's one typo: no snare drum on beat 1 of the second measure.

The long exercises with some space are the most interesting for doing this— the ones that give you a good balance of bass drum on the middle of the triplet, and on the &. Exercise 2, which is mostly 8th notes, is maybe not as cool. 

1 comment:

  1. Cool tip. This is more musical than filling each partial of the triplet against the snare. It also makes me read and think ahead in a unique way.

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