Tuesday, August 22, 2023

Reed tweak: alternating cymbals on rock drill

Incrementalism is the word du jour around here— lately we've been all about supplementing/altering some basic Reed systems in small ways, to make a living, evolving thing out of it, and not just pure formula. 

Today's thing introduces some alternating stickings to a rock drill I wrote about in 2019:

•  Book rhythm = cymbal (with RH) + bass drum in unison
•  Fill spaces with left handed flams, or double stops, on drums

Here's the second line of Exercise 1 on p. 38 in Syncopation, played that way— for clarity, I put the filler notes as double stops, and given the sticking for the cymbal part only: 


For today's thing, we'll alternate the cymbal part when there are two or more notes in a row— always starting with the right hand. Single cymbal notes are always played with the right:  


We want to maintain it as primarily a right hand lead system— with left handed flams (rL), when flamming— because that gives you some options on the filler: 


Whatever you can do with one-three 8th notes worth of space, starting and ending with the right hand:  


If you're one of those “weaker hand” guys, you could always learn the baseline system so the left hand is doing all the cymbal hits, and then do all these same variations. 

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