Tuesday, February 28, 2023

Very occasional quote of the day: listening

“Listening is the whole thing. I'll tell you exactly how I play. My whole approach to playing is reaction. I don't listen to myself play. I'm not aware of myself because I'm too busy listening to everything going on around me. All my body is doing is reacting to that. Sometimes I'm forcing things, making things happen another way, but I'm reacting to everything I hear. The composition I'm creating as I play is because of what I'm hearing. How can you work out how you're going to accompany somebody? You can't! You're supposed to be complementing and accompanying.

Everything depends on your ears. If I'm busy listening to me, then I'm not hearing the rest of the band.”

- Mel Lewis, 1978 Modern Drummer interview by Scott K. Fish

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Paradiddle-diddle game

Everybody Good Knows The Same Stuff, Part 1000:

Another handout from a clinic Russ Tincher at UC Berkeley in 1989— I confirmed that's where it was from. Here he shows how to interpret triplets with Reed or Bellson, and details a practice system for it, based on paradiddle-diddles. Or six stroke rolls, more accurately— that terminology wasn't universal then.  



In John Ramsay's Alan Dawson book there's a similar system he calls “Ruff bossa.” The only difference is in how you interpret a (written) beat of 8th notes. Dawson plays them as alternating swing 8th notes, without filling in the triplet: 


Tincher fills in the triplet, and plays it with an alternating sticking, which you see in the first example below. With certain rhythms that may take the system in a different direction, so it leads with the left hand a good part of the time. With Dawson's system the lead is very consistent, with a simple alternating motion no matter what you're reading. 



This system is probably best for using with the first couple of pages of Bellson, which has just quarter notes and offbeat 8th notes only, but we'll see, I'll play around with it when I have some time to practice. 

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Very occasional quote of the day: space to contribute

“The way guys like Bud Powell shaped their solos, they automatically left spaces for the drummers to contribute. A lot of times today, in student performers, I don’t hear that space being offered, because they’re not really aware of what’s going on. 

When you learn technique out of a book, you’re not really taught how to make your part fit with something else. That’s something you can only experience when you’re playing with somebody. You have to learn how to react to each other.

You can tell in about eight bars if a soloist is going to work with you or if he’s just going to ride over the rhythm section and pay no attention to what’s going on back there. A lot of times my students get frustrated because they don’t feel like they’re fitting into the group. I’ll listen to a little bit of who they’re playing with and realize that they’re not getting an opportunity to contribute. They’re being blocked out, and when that happens, I tell them to just pull back because there’s no space being left. 

If the soloist is filling every beat, the poor piano player or guitar player has to find space to get that harmonic information in there, and that doesn’t leave any room at all for the drummer to contribute. So just play the ride cymbal and wait for the next soloist. This is the kind of thing you learn when you study the whole band as opposed to just your instrument.”

- Joe La Barbara, 2002 Modern Drummer interview by Rick Mattingly

Monday, February 20, 2023

Uptempo drill a la Riley

Major rehash alert: an uptempo jazz drill I was playing yesterday, using what John Riley once called “my C major scale”: an SSBB pattern in 8th notes, with notes omitted. The page below is very similar to what I wrote about that, but in a better sequence for fast tempos.    

I practice it reading out of Syncopation, using my subtractive method*— voicing the book rhythm according to that SSBB pattern. Anything sounding on a 1&/3& is played on the snare, anything sounding on a 2&/4& is played on the bass drum. 

* -  Rated by the same Mr. Riley as “convoluted, but sometimes that's necessary.”

Here are some key starter patterns:


Do this with Syncopation pp. 9-10, 30-31, and 34-45.

Tempo goals are half note = 120, 130, 143, 150, and beyond. Play straight 8ths at all tempos, even tempos you would normally swing when performing. I usually practice these playing double time along with a straight 8th jazz/fusion/modern music loop.   

I've written a number of these drills over the years, and there's another good one in Riley's book Beyond Bop Drumming. The best drill is the one you do— whatever works for you. 

Saturday, February 18, 2023

Transcription: Buddy Rich - Big Mac

Buddy Rich drum solo on Big Mac, a prodigious funk/rock arrangement by Ernie Wilkins, from Rich's album Ease On Down The Road— it's actually better known from Roar of '74, but I have it on EODTR. I'm not particularly a lover of Buddy Rich's playing, but my God. 

Ever feel like basically all instrumentalists— and arrangers— have forgotten that this kind of energy is a thing? Everybody's moving sideways, fussing around in the fine subdivisions. I'm complaining about the young, people in their 60s definitely haven't forgotten.  

Tempo is 93, the solo begins at 3:49. 




It's Buddy, so lots of rim shots, he's extremely aggressive with his accents. We hear more unisons between the snare drum and bass drum than perhaps with other drummers. It's a powerful sound but kind of crude. His rock thing doesn't sound fully formed, but he's certainly bringing the energy. Who needs fully formed. 

I would expect him to be doing a lot of paradiddles, but here I believe the stickings on the denser stuff are mostly singles. He seems to be playing some very thin little hihats, and mostly hanging out on a very bright 70s 20" A. Zildjian. Tom toms sound good, classic rockin' late 60s/early 70s sound. Very little left foot activity that I can hear. 

Style note for you transcribers: when there's a lot of double time— 32nd notes and sixtuplets— it's best to create a little imaginary beat separation between the downbeat cluster of notes and the &-of-the-beat cluster of notes, connecting them with a single beam, as I've done here. 


Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Very occasional quote of the day: sound and touch

“I’m not happy with my sound at all. I wish I sounded like Art Blakey or Elvin Jones. You have to be born with a certain feel or touch. Blakey had that African sound. It was so physical. Art played on my old Slingerland drums once at Minton’s Playhouse, and they were tuned tight like Max’s. But Art managed to capture his own deep sound on my drums. That’s when I realized it’s really physical.” 

“I try to practice lightly. I played so loud and hard with Miles, and even on some of the gigs I did with Sonny. That’s what they wanted. But now I’m going back to the ’60s, approaching things in a much lighter way. I just don’t think you have to bash. You can get the same intensity without bashing. Billy Higgins proved that. You could feel the tune building with each chorus when he played. You could feel the fire getting hotter without the volume getting louder. That’s what I’m trying to get back to.”

- Al Foster, 2003 Modern Drummer interview by Ken Micallef 

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Everything at once

Another archive item— these things are a very welcome brain cleansing for me.

This is a clinic handout by Russ Tincher, from when I was a student at the U. of Southern California. Tincher was a Bay Area drummer and teacher. I don't know much about him, and information online is sparse. I believe he passed away in the teens. He did some big band work, and played in a fusion band called Solar Plexus, and was Jeff Ballard's teacher. I'm sure somebody reading knows more about him, please share in the comments. 

The first paragraph is the most important. I don't know if I first heard it as an idea from him, or if I already knew it and he reinforced it, but everything at once in drumming practice was a philosophy I really ran with in the 90s— not just with what I played, but the way I played it, with an emphasis on exciting dynamics and sound. 



Typing out the text, so it gets insidiously woven into the fabric of the internet: 

COORDINATION & READING
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR PRACTICE TIME
by Russ Tincher

A common problem among beginning drummers is that they tend to split their practice time up. A typical practice session begins with the drummer just “whaling” for awhile and then working on some coordination, then maybe some technique exercises, and, if he or she is not completely bored, some reading. What we tend to forget is that in the real world of playing we do all of these things at the same time! It is necessary, then, to learn to practice several areas of importance at once. 

How does a drummer do this? One of the most useful exercises I have found lies in Louis Bellson's Reading Text in 4/4. Here is a basic program for the book. 

1. Learn and play the first 25 pages “hand-to-hand.” Be able to play it slowly and evenly without stopping. 

2. Starting at the beginning, play Jazz Ride Cymbal and Hi-hat while playing the written material on the snare drum. Swing the 8th notes. 

3. Starting at the beginning, play Bossa Nova Ride Cymbal, Hi-hat, and Bass Drum while playing the written material on the cross-stick snare. Play straight 8ths.

4. Starting at the beginning, play Samba Ride Cymbal, Hi-hat, and Bass Drum while playing the written material on the Snare Drum. 

In completing these four steps you'll find that your coordination will be challenged and your reading will improve dramatically. Using this technique as a launching place, try superimposing your own favorite grooves over the written material— it works for Funk, Latin, Swing, just about anything. Also be sure to play the written material with the bass drum, Ride Cymbal, and Hi-hat. Try the same method with other books; don't be afraid to develop your own practice routines! And finally, always use a metronome.

Monday, February 13, 2023

EZ simultaneous clave exercises

Awhile back we noted that if you play a simple rhythm in an alternating sticking: 


And move one hand to a different sound:


...you are playing the Son Clave rhythm in the 3-2 and 2-3 orientations at the same time

I don't know what that means— as far as I know that never happens in actual music, unless something's going wrong. But it may suggest something about where the rhythm originally came from. On a student's first exposure to it, it seems rather arbitrary, so it's interesting to find a very simple rhythm and hand movement underlying it. Maybe grounding it in easy hand movements will help us non-Latin folk play it in a more natural way, helping make up for not acquiring it through culture— a little bit. 

So, it's worth playing around with it a little bit. Someone could spend maybe .5 to 2 hours total with the following: 



I've made a small effort to take those exercises into a Latin music direction, but none of this is meant to be performance vocabulary. Play it, then back to legit Latin studies... 

Get the pdf

Saturday, February 11, 2023

Stanley Spector news

I received an email yesterday, from a violinist named Xinou Wei, regarding the “Spector School of Drumming”— which sells itself as an official Stanley Spector enterprise, and apparently it is a complete fraud. 

Wei says:  

“I just wanted to let you a bit about the situation, as a close friend of Stanley's widow Astrid. All the materials were taken from Astrid, around 2012 by John O'Reilly. It was verbally agreed between the two of them that John would make copies of the material, for studying purposes with no details envisioned. The opening of the school, the selling of the materials, [asking “thousands” of dollars, see comments. -TB] the lie that "from the Spector estate" was nothing but without Astrid's consent/awareness. 

Without an exaggeration, John's indecency remains one of the heaviest regrets the 86-year-old Astrid has to carry in her heart.” 


To clarify, that is not the respected drummer and author John Riley. The John O'Reilly who is doing this is a prog drummer living in Pennsylvania.  

So, he took a lot of Spector's materials on the pretense that it was for his personal use, and immediately ran out and set up a whole business entity around it, marketing it as an “official” Spector enterprise, using Spector's name, and hyping it from a very hard-sell paranoid angle.

And I see there's an interesting legal notice on his YouTube page: 

THE STANLEY SPECTOR SCHOOL OF DRUMMING is a trademark. MAVERICK MUSICIAN LLC
  

Maverick Musician is O'Reilly's business. Unclear whether he's claiming to own the SSSOD trademark, or that it simply is trademarked by someone. It's quite sleazy to ambiguously suggest he owns the trademark, knowing that the Spector estate owns it, and even more sleazy to have trademarked it himself, stealing Spector's name after stealing his materials. 

Looking further, on the site itself, under terms of use:  

Publications, products, content or services referenced herein or on the Site are the exclusive trademarks or servicemarks of Maverick Musician LLC. 


I'm pretty sure you can't just trademark somebody else's name, business name, and copyrighted work just because you got your little rat claws on some photocopies of it. I'm no lawyer! 

It's pretty slimy stuff, and pathetic. He thought he got his hands on a hot property, but he can't be making much money off it. Drumming materials, especially niche materials, are not that lucrative. I don't believe the hypey / secretive marketing pitch he's using will attract many students. I assumed he would've folded the con after it initially flopped— there are a few YouTube videos posted about ten years ago, and nothing since; but then the site was updated in 2022, and the Facebook page gets updated about once a year, so I guess he's still doing it.   

Wei said Mrs. Spector is seeking legal representation— I doubt there's any financial damages to recover, but she would like him to stop what he's doing. If anyone has any recommendations for music/copyright attorneys, please contact me via the EMAIL TODD link in the sidebar, and I'll pass it along to them.  

Friday, February 10, 2023

Time is money

Another funny item I dug out of my archives. I believe it's from the jazz festival at UC Berkeley in 1989— I was there playing with USC's guitar ensemble. A bassist and drummer gave a clinic that was mainly about time, and I think this was a handout. I forget their names, but they were Bay Area jazz professionals, not an 80s pop band from Indiana also called The Phonz

They've padded it out with some jokes, but there are some good points: 



The main thing I took from the clinic and never forgot was: 

Laying back or playing on top are confusing terms, they are a smokescreen. Time should be played in the middle of the beat by the rhythm section. 


It simplifies your thinking if you just decide to be the reference point stating the tempo, and let everyone else play ahead or behind. Which may put you seemingly ahead of / behind the beat, depending on the other players' ears / time concepts. The main thing is that you're being the reference point— you're not getting the time from them.  

Thursday, February 09, 2023

From the zone: feel the groove

Cleaning out my mom's house I found a box of all the siblings' music materials that she saved, including a bunch of my archive items, that are pretty interesting. 

The thing below was written and sent to me by my friend Kirk Ross, mainly a bassist then, now mainly a songwriter. Kind of an extreme personality. We played in a couple of bands at the University of Oregon, then we went off to different schools— me to U. of Southern California, him to Berklee. Later he got me on my first cruise ship gig, and he brought me to Los Angeles ~7 years ago to make a record with Geoff Keezer on piano, playing Kirk's songs and a Neil Sedaka cover. 

His first year at Berklee he was getting into some things from Gary Chaffee that I showed him, and he really ran with them. Following is a one-measure sight reading exercise— the left side got cut off, but top to bottom, I think each line was meant for snare drum, hihat, and bass drum:  


A joke, clearly. I'm sure it works out mathematically. After this Kirk moved to LA and sought out and befriended Vinnie Colaiuta, and jammed with him a few times. He had a big moment was when he was able to lose Vinnie playing the above kind of nonsense— I guess even he needed a foundation to play off of. We each had our course corrections shortly after this— Kirk going back to Berklee and getting really into James Brown, me at SC getting into Elvin Jones.  

Tuesday, February 07, 2023

Tyranny of the barline or something else

Headline: TED Video Irritating

Alt headline: Media Company Declares Own Take On 15th Century Graphic Concept Groundbreaking 

Alt alt headline: tEd Dopes Find Music Unintuitive

 

Getting back to my usual form: complaining about a dumb, currently circulating tED video from 2014. It could be seen as nitpicky, but hell, rhythm is our trade, the fine points of it are supposed to matter. And it's fun. 



Per normal, the video producers have compressed the timing of the speech into a rapid fire alien chatter, spewing a lot of colorful facts all over us, so we don't have time to notice that what they're saying is possibly scientifically a lot of crap. 

This is the major thrust of it, and I don't like any part of it: 

“The continuity of a wheel can be a more intuitive way to visualize rhythm than a linear score which requires moving back and forth along the page.”


Massive irritation:

1. What is it with these guys and “intuitive”? Is the English language, for example, intuitive? Or any language? Languages take years to acquire— reading them, speaking them, understanding them. Even if you believe music should be a people's art, doable by everyone, people's art, like language, still requires immersion. People don't pick it up like playing Tetris or driving a Honda.


2.
I've never heard reading music described as “back and forth.” Usually we read from left to right, one line at a time, down the page. Like reading most languages— which billions of humans, starting around age 5, do every single day, processing fantastic quantities of information quickly and efficiently. 


3.
They say visualizing rhythm like it's a thing. They try to slide these things past you.  

Musicians deal with rhythm primarily as an aural phenomenon, and also as a physical phenomenon, and as an information phenomenon. We learn rhythm by hearing it, playing it, counting or singing it. We may conceive it as a mathematical form. And we read it— which is visual, but not visualizing. Is the word reading a visualization of the act of reading? No. 

Yes, an animated wheel graphic is way to visually represent simple repeating rhythms, and to an extent, illustrate how subdivisions work. Clock faces and sun dials are very old technology, it's fine. We can have visual aids. But normally we don't promote our visual metaphors as being possibly superior to the information system they are in aid of understanding. 


Interlude:
I believe if a person is going to re-invent music, he should know its basic terms. For example:
 

“In standard notation, rhythm is written on a musical bar line”


...illustrated with a line of music written on a staff, of course— the horizontal thingy with five lines where music is written.. The bar line is the actual vertical line demarking bars or measures. It's like a mechanic calling the catalytic converter the muffler. You want to find a new mechanic.   

Even the guy who can't spell treble knows
the difference between staff and bar line.

[... ... ...]


So I just fail to see how some colored dots on ungraded concentric circles is more intuitive or precise than standard notation. Anything off the 12, 3, 6, or 9 o'clock position, you have to guess what the subdivision is supposed to be. Maybe we're just supposed to space out on the spinning dial hand and just hit something when it hits a dot. 




Or maybe it's it's not supposed to be a notation system for humans playing instruments, and he's developing a beat programming interface, and is doing a little advance publicity with an “educational” video. 


The closing bit about “tyranny of the barline”... based on the above maybe he means tyranny of the staff? If we're talking about the actual bar line— not the staff— it's only tyrannical if we don't teach people how to use it, understanding that it does have limitations. To me a closed looping circle is tyrannical. 

I actually think we're dealing with someone for whom music = something done on a laptop. If somebody lives their whole musical life in a 16 chamber grid, yes, that will seem “tyrannical”: 




Looking at a blank page of manuscript, knowing that you can put the barlines anywhere you want, or nowhere, where's the tyranny? Does he know that measures are only used for organization, and that measures can be any size you like, and you can change that any time you like? 

No built in forced repeat signs, even.

 
It's like saying tyranny of the paragraph. Tyranny of the comma. It's completely stupid. 


Their big discovery:
 rhythms become other rhythms if you invert them (as a musician would say), or “rotate wheels” (as they say in the video).

It's not a big discovery, it did not require wheel magic to learn it. They made a graphical representation of an ordinary concept, without teaching the concept. Check that— they explain it in terms of their animated graphic— rotate the wheel. Of course, there is no way for you to “rotate the wheel” yourself, you have no tool for doing that. You would need whatever proprietary app this person is/was apparently developing. Normally it can be done by anyone in the world with a pencil and paper and a little bit of knowledge. No computer device or animation software required whatsoever.


Postscript:
 I was digging around in vain for any evidence of a musical career of the guy who made the video, and came across some comments by a musicology professor.   

Monday, February 06, 2023

Funk samba: moving the 1

I was doing this with some students, using a similar groove to Omar Hakim's Predator groove— vastly simplified. There are a couple of pages of “funk samba” grooves in Roy Burns / Joey Farris's underrated book Studio Funk Drumming that are good.  

I don't know how much of a real legal samba this is, but it's a familiar type of groove, with alternating 16th notes on the hihat, and a displaced backbeat:



We made some two measure phrases out of that by moving the bass drum note on 1 of the second measure. It's one good way of developing some flexibility with a composed groove. Here's what's happening below: 

1. Anticipation— move BD to & of 4 of first measure. 

2. Anticipation— move to a of 4 of first measure.

3. Delayed— move to e of 1 of second measure. 

4. Delayed— move to & of 1 of second measure. 

5. Split the 1— & of 4, & of 1

6. Split the 1— a of 4, e of 1

7. Split— & of 4, e of 1

8. Split— a of 4, e of 1




You could do some similar variations in the middle of the measure to get some variety with the one-bar groove. We've also been adding open sounds, accents, and open rolls/drags to the hihat part, a la the Predator groove. I encourage you to pencil those in. 

Get the pdf

Sunday, February 05, 2023

Transcription: Mel Lewis comping

On Chess Mates, from a 1985 Joe Lovano record, Tone Shapes & Colors— a live recording with Mel Lewis on drums, and Kenny Werner on piano. A lot of what I'd call “non-independent” drumming here, lots of examples of his rubadub thing. A good example of how to play bright tempos economically while still sounding like you're doing something.

The YouTube video won't embed, so hit this link to hear it.

The form is short and unusual, I guess we'll call it ABC: 

A - 12 bars  |  B - 4 bars 3/4 + 1 bar 4/4  |  C - 8 bars  


That B section is not a trap— it has 16 beats total, same as four bars of 4/4, so on the blowing you could miss it and not get lost. He probably actually wrote the whole thing in 4/4— on the solos Mel plays it like it's a figure in 4/4. Playing the head it would be easier to count it in 3/4; I'm writing it 3/4 to outline the figure, which is played pretty strongly even on the solos.   


Here are a couple of choruses of Mel's playing during Kenny Werner's piano solo, starting at 4:32. Tempo is 258. 



He plays the hihat pretty softly— not necessarily quiet, but with a soft foot, not a lot of force, with some splash sounds, and the volume is irregular. He's mashing the stick into the snare drum a bit, so a lot of the notes have a wide attack, not quite a buzz stroke. All of the tom tom notes are played with the right hand. Any time the bass drum is played on an offbeat, it's not played strongly.

There's a little more happening with the bass drum than I notated, but I'm not hearing any evidence of regular “feathering”, that he talks about so much. Maybe he's doing it, it's up to you how much you want to struggle with that. 

Bars 3 and 4 have the fundamental rubadub lick he plays throughout this. Maybe the best individual phrase of that is bars 30-33. Also note the fills in bars 25 and 46— sticking is RRLL RRLL both measures.

Also look at the way he phrases the last four bars, 47-50— he does that kind of phrase often: 

First bar: big accents on 1 and 4. 
Second-third  bars: nails down time, brings the hihat in. 
Fourth bar: fill / end of phrase


He does that most of the time here, actually.

What he's doing is modern, but this is definitely night club drumming, an evolved texture from playing in clubs, doing that job. There's nothing contrived about it, none of our usual jazz student worry about ideas or creativity or being interesting or using our technique.      

Get the pdf

You'll have to hit this link to hear the track in a new tab. 

Saturday, February 04, 2023

Some short tempered performance notes

Following are some comments I wrote after hearing some younger drummers— in a jazz setting, players far enough along with their playing to let their ambitions get the better of them, musically. I got a little impatient with what I heard. I think these are good things even for non-offenders to think about: 

The first job is to keep great time. All the extra stuff is meaningless and annoying if the time feel is mediocre. 

Groove is not an exotic idea to bust out for show on the one funky tune of the night, time has got to be Funkadelic solid on everything, all night. Even when floating stuff with a loose execution, there's a way to do it that respects groove, and a way that kills it. 

Youtube is really messing up people's cymbal technique. I saw a lot of screwing around with finger technique. Better: take the stick, hit the cymbal: DING DING GA DING. 

Stop thinking about things to play on the drums.  

LISTEN, and stop thinking about the drums. Don't think about anything, listen.

Jumping from cymbal to cymbal is like a lighting guy changing the scenery every three seconds. BLUE PURPLE RED PSYCHEDELIC. It's not good. 

A lot of players seem to be interjection oriented, rather than texture oriented. I say that because I'm getting annoyed by all the interjections.

No canned anything ever. Worked out beats sound worked out and usually don't fit, and the other players may not be willing/able to help you make them fit. Usually you have to adjust your personal stuff to work with what they're doing.    

Support the other musicians, don't force them to support you. Not all the time. 

The audience will make some noise when people play loud and bad. They are wrong, they don't know what they're hearing.  

Why can't I tell who anyone is listening to?

A good musician on another instrument, taking up the drums, needs to learn what the drums are about. What's their function— think foundation. They're not just another arena to wail in, except easier; they're not my-regular-instrument-for-idiots. A player like that should have better time than the other bad drummers. 


HI-HAT LIGHTNING ROUND:

The twitchy leg really doesn't add anything. It doesn't make up for not stating good time with the rest of the drum set. People who do this get burned when they have to hold a tempo their leg doesn't like twitching in. 

It's a loud instrument. That worked-out rudimental groove is blowing away the bass and piano.  

NEVER play it on 1 and 3. This is not an invitation to play it on 1 and 3. It's purely wrong and bad, there isn't a drummer good enough to make it be not-bad. Never for more than a few measures. 


There you go. The good news about all of that is, this job is easier than people make it. Most of these complaints can be fixed instantly by people using their freedom to do less.  

Friday, February 03, 2023

Harmonic coordination summary

I never did a really good summary for my harmonic coordination system (which I've variously called Harmonic Coordination Whatsis or Harmonic Coordination Improved, etc), let's do that now. I use it a lot in teaching, with all levels of students. There's some very useful, practical, and fundamental stuff hiding in this seemingly very advanced system. 
   

1. WHAT IS THIS? WHAT ARE WE DOING?
The harmonic coordination section from Dahlgren & Fine's Four-Way Coordination is one of the hardest, most pain-in-the-neck things things to practice in drumming literature. That method basically involves playing two different Stick Control type patterns with the hands and feet, at the same time, e.g.:
 


What were seeing there is the hands playing a sticking of LLRR RRLL, while the feet are playing LLLR RRRL. I've complained about that at length elsewhere.  


NOTE: They called it “harmonic” because it's an independence system 
based on unisons. I've continued calling it that just out of respect 
for the source materials, it really doesn't mean anything. 


2. MY WAY
After months of hacking away at that, I figured out how to approach it rationally, graded from very easy to very difficult, while also being more reflective of real life drumming. Essentially, playing accent patterns in different stickings, orchestrated for four limbs on the drum set.    

The quickest way to understand it is to look at Accents & Rebounds by George L. Stone. 

See: accent patterns with different stickings:


The orchestration we'll use is: 

Play the accents on a cymbal, with bass drum in unison.
Play non-accents on the snare drum, with hihat/foot in unison. 


So the first two measures of the Stone exercises above would be played like this: 


...using whichever sticking is indicated on that line.  

To me, using the left foot that way is an advanced option. Playing it in unison with the snare drum doesn't serve any normal drumming purpose; it's just a convenient way of disciplining the left foot. A more productive thing for normal playing would be to play a regular rhythm with the left foot— quarter notes, 8th notes, etc. With younger students I leave it off altogether. 

You could just do my system using Accents & Rebounds and be done with it, but I start people with some simpler accent patterns from the book Syncopation, and some basic sticking patterns, which we'll memorize. 

3. PRACTICE PATTERNS - STICKINGS
We start with some very basic 8th note accent patterns in Syncopation, with the above orchestration (leaving the left foot out, at first), with some very ordinary stickings, for players of all levels:

1. All right hand: RRRR
2. All left hand: LLLL
3. All with both hands in unison: HHHH
4. RH plays all cymbal notes, LH plays all snare notes
5. Alternating starting with the right hand: RLRL
6. Alternating starting with the left hand: LRLR


We ease into more advanced stickings by changing stickings in increments, without stopping: 

1. One measure all R / one measure all L - RRRR RRRR LLLL LLLL
2. Two beats all R / two beats all L - RRRR LLLL 
3. Doubles - RRLL RRLL 

Or:

1. One measure RLRL / one measure LRLR  -  RLRL RLRL LRLR LRLR
2. Two beats RLRL / two beats LRLR  -  RLRL LRLR
3. Doubles, starting with one single  -  RLLR RLLR 


Beyond that you can learn the following stickings, and all of the paradiddle inversions:

RRRL RRRL
LLLR LLLR
RLLL RLLL
LRRR LRRR

RLRR LRLL
RLLR LRRL
RRLR LLRL
RLRL LRLR

If all that isn't enough for you, you can use the remaining stickings from pp. 5-7 of Stick Control. 

4. PRACTICE PATTERNS - ACCENTS
Accent patterns to practice can be found in Syncopation by Ted Reed, pp. 47-63. Or any other book including accented singles in an even rhythm. 

You can also derive more complex accent patterns from the syncopated practice rhythms in Reed— accent the 8th notes to correspond with the practice rhythms:  


Clearly, it's endless. There's no way to do it completely, and no need to. You'll know when you've had enough. At some point it will become more productive to focus on more conventional advanced materials. I strongly recommend doing this system with a playalong track

Scroll through the posts under the harmonic coordination label for a lot of other writing about this, including some ways of doing it for specific purposes— funk drill, rock drill, triplets, etc.