Thursday, May 26, 2022

Chaffee linear phrases: 8ths and triplets in 4/4

Some Gary Chaffee-style linear phrases in 4/4, in  8th notes and triplets. If I did things in a logical order, I would have written this five years ago, when I was writing those pages in 3, 5 and 7.

The left hand column has the patterns starting normally with the right hand; the right hand column has them displaced, starting on the second note in the measure, which puts the last bass drum note of the phrase on 1.


Chaffee's linear system is based on six patterns three to eight notes long: RLB, RLBB, RLRLB, RLRLBB, RLRLRLB, RLRLRLBB— use that sticking throughout. These are solo or fill ideas— move them around the drums. 

Get the pdf

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, my name is German, I'm a drum student from Argentina. In this exercise, can be modified the beat pattern, always using the linear phrasing? For example, instead of two quarter notes and two triplets, use a quarter note + one triplet and repeat this to complete the 4/4 time. Or mixing combinations in 5/4 - 7/4 etc times. Thank you for your attention, and congratulations for the material and the inspiring ideas ♥

Todd Bishop said...

Hi German-- Yes, you can use these exact patterns in any rhythm with 10 notes per measure:

- two 8th notes + eight 16th notes in 3/4 time
- 8th notes in 5/4 time
- four 16ths + two 8ths x2 in 6/8 time
- quintuplets in 2/4 time

There's more, but maybe I should write a post about that!

Thanks for reading, I'm glad it's helpful!