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Saturday, December 18, 2021

Page o' coordination: Freddie Waits Latin

Last week I picked up kind of a random live Freddie Hubbard CD from Music Millennium— I forget the title, it's in the car— with Freddie Waits on drums. I've been wanting to hear more of him. On a Latin tune Waits plays a bell rhythm from way back in my memory— I think I learned it in high school or early in college, and I don't know where I got it. I might have made it up, because it's not a real Latin rhythm, as far as I know. It's similar to the well known “Bossa clave” rhythm, so-called*, so maybe it's more quasi-Brazilian than quasi-Cuban. The bell part also is sort of a shuffle, in a cross rhythm.  

* - It's not clave. 

I phased it out of my playing after I borrowed/stole a Mozambique rhythm used by Portland drummer Ron Steen— that has been my go-to quasi Cuban rhythm ever since. But it's interesting enough to play around with a bit. It leans into an Elvin-style running dotted-quarter note feel, which the authentic clave based rhythms do not. 



Some patterns have a suggested voicing on the snare and toms, some do not. Play around with it, improvise your own moves, leave some LH notes out. Try the different bass drum rhythms along with the left hand rhythms.

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