Sunday, April 10, 2022

Reed interpretations: Matt's double bass method

Here's a Reed system for double bass drums, made up by a student of mine, with a few tweaks by me. Apply it to the rhythms in Syncopation, pp. 34-37.  

The first examples will be based on this measure from Syncopation— p. 34, line 1: 


Starting with a simple linear interpretation with snare drum and bass drum:  


Simply double the rate of all the parts— alternate the snare drum parts, starting with the right hand: 


You could add cymbals to the bass drum parts— it's a logical thing to do with the pattern, but it makes it a little confusing to read, because you're in effect putting big accents on the spaces in the written rhythm. 


It might make more reading sense if you inverted the above interpretation— here I've added cymbal just at the beginning of each run on the bass drums: 


Or you could add cymbals to match the book rhythm exactly: 


In which case, you might want to catch some of those cymbal hits with the left hand: 



Try these out and see what works for you. There are 48 lines of rhythms in Syncopation pp. 34-37, all of them may not work equally well for everything. Often it's best to just drill a few lines really thoroughly.  

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