Practicing Chaffee phrases

Some things I do when practicing these recent Chaffee linear phrases, or any of the rest of them, beyond playing them as written. 

First, at faster tempos, the ones ending with two bass drum notes are a pain— we have to play three 16ths in a row to land on the 1. In addition to the ways I mentioned in the original post, you can also just end the measure with singles on the snare drum: 

These are thought of as fusion vocabulary, but for me, for some reason, at full speed (quarter note = 140-150+) these fall most naturally within a jazz feel. To that end I can start them on beat 4 and end them on 4. With the above phrase:

That also makes it more feasible to play the pattern with the ending double on the bass drum, followed by the snare drum, and a kick on the & of 4: 

I never fully work out complete licks to play verbatim— for me the patterns are conditioning for improvised soloing or filling. I can't tell you if that's the best way of producing reliably flashy results, but it's what I do. I'm noticing the ways these phrases begin: 

I'm also noticing the way they end. A lot of them end like this, which I'll practice as licks themselves, independent of the longer phrase:

I can't think of a close to this, so: enjoy! 

New Breed tweak - left hand cymbal accents

Getting through a single system from The New Breed takes some time, longer than I want to have one hand be basically idle, playing just the 2 and 4. Let's give it more to do.

This is a real small thing to do with the backbeat systems— any system with backbeats on the snare drum, and the bass drum playing the melody: catch accents on a cymbal with the left hand. In unison with one or more bass drum notes, or anyplace it doesn't conflict with the backbeat. 

Add a crash on the 1, or the closest bass drum note before or after the 1, and/or some other bass drum note, for example: 

You could also experiment with crashing independent of the bass drum— for that I'd want something quick, an effects cymbal or small crash:

I'm always on the lookout for little multipliers like that. So long as the fundamentals are solid— save it for later if any part of the plain system is raggedy. 

Chaffee-esque right hand lead stickings

Lots of quasi-Chaffee activity lately, getting into a sticking system derived from his— as covered in his books Odd Time Stickings and Patterns vol. 2 - Stickings. Similar to his linear system, his sticking system is based on 3-8 note patterns. Both systems are designed to be easy to play fast. 

Many of his stickings don't have a non-alternating form— which I want— so I've put together some 3-8 note stickings that maintain a right hand lead. This is the outline, we'll have some combinations and practice phrases coming up: 

There are two basic types: one has a double up front, after the leading accent; the other starts with alternating strokes, and ends with a double. 

Or not— the four, six, and eight note patterns all have a form that is just alternating singles. Which is kind of lame, but we do want to be fluent switching between singles and combination patterns, so that will be a function of this.

Obviously there are other possibilities, that don't follow the same patterns— like a paradiddle-diddle for the six note pattern. And there is one oddball pattern, the four note RLLR. It can't be helped. Some people might want to include some other things: 

RLR
RLLRLRL
RLLRRLLR

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Jazz waltz triplet burnout - 01

Updating this page as my purposes with it have evolved, into an endurance drill. I've made it harder, with larger changes from measure to measure, with an eye on how it progresses playing through it two beats at a time. 

This is a good long term project, you can work this up to about quarter note = 238. The Chasin' The Trane tempo. You'll get there quicker using the previous page. 

Play whatever hihat rhythm you want. This whole mess could be done substituting the hihat for the bass drum— for me that is a separate mission. It's too much to do all together, and the hihat will bog you down. 

In case I didn't give you enough practice options, I was also playing it in 4 by repeating the middle beat. So this written measure: 

Is played like this: 

Another thing to trick you into doing this longer, which is the whole point, do it for a long time. 

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Tailoring the game to your talents

An extended quote from the book Moneyball, about the baseball player Scott Hatteberg, and his approach to hitting, and his experiences with the lavishly funded Boston Red Sox and the meagerly funded Oakland As organizations: 

[Hatteberg's] cultivated approach to hitting— his thoughtfulness, his patience, his need for his decisions to be informed rather than reckless— was regarded by the Boston Red Sox as a deficiency. The Red Sox encouraged their players’ mystical streaks. They brought into the clubhouse a parade of shrinks and motivational speakers to teach the players to harness their aggression. Be men!

Hatty sensed he might be in for trouble when he saw how the Red Sox management treated Wade Boggs. He’d spent a lot of time with Boggs in the batting cage during spring training, trying to learn whatever he could from the master. Boggs, a perennial All-Star, famously never swung at the first pitch—or any pitch after that he didn’t love. Boggs was as efficient a machine as there ever was for acquiring information about opposing pitchers. By the time Wade Boggs was done with his first at bat, his team had seen everything the opposing pitcher had.

Boggs’s refusal to exhibit the necessary aggression led to his ostracism by the Red Sox. “They would get on him for taking a walk when there was a guy on second,” recalled Hatteberg. “They called him selfish for that.”

If Wade Boggs wasn’t allowed his patience, Hatteberg figured, he certainly wouldn’t be, either. When Hatteberg let a pitch go by for a strike— because it was a strike he couldn’t do much with— Red Sox managers would holler at him from the dugout. Coaches would try to tell him that he was hurting the team if he wasn’t more inclined to swing with men on base, or in 2-0 counts. The hitting coach, former Rex Sox slugger Jim Rice, rode Hatty long and hard. Rice called him out in the clubhouse, in front of his teammates, and ridiculed him for having a batting average in the .270s when he hit .500 when he swung at the first pitch.

When you're lavishly endowed with either money or talent— as both an organization and an individual, in this case— your money and talent can cover for bad doctrine. Or doctrine that doesn't work for people not similarly endowed:

“Jim Rice hit like a genetic freak and he wanted everyone else to hit the way he did,” Hatteberg said. “He didn’t understand that the reason I hit .500 when I swung at the first pitch was that I only swung at first pitches that were too good not to swing at.” Hatty had a gift for tailoring the game to talents. It was completely ignored. The effect of Jim Rice on Scott Hatteberg was to convince him that “this is why poor hitters make the best hitting coaches. They don’t try to make you like them, because they sucked.”

The following is about integrity— not in the usual sense of sticking to principles, but of doing something a certain way, even when you are not supported in it, because it's the only way you can do it, it's the only way you know to do it well: 

Each time Scott Hatteberg came to bat for the Boston Red Sox he had, in effect, to take an intellectual stand against his own organization in order to do what was right for the team. Hitting, for him, was a considered act. He didn’t know how to hit without thinking about it, and so he kept right on thinking about it. In retrospect, this was a striking act of self-determination; at the time it just seemed like an unpleasant experience. Not once in his ten years with the Red Sox did anyone in Boston suggest there was anything of value in his approach to hitting— in working the count, narrowing the strike zone, drawing walks, getting on base, in not making outs.

“Never,” he said. “No coach ever said anything. It was more, get up there and slug. Their philosophy was just to buy the best hitters money can buy, and set them loose.” The Red Sox couldn’t have cared less if he had waged some fierce battle at the plate. If he had, say, fought off the pitcher for eight straight pitches and lined out hard to center field. All that mattered was that he had made an out. At the same time, they praised him when he didn’t deserve it. “I’d have games when I’d have two hits and I didn’t take a good swing the whole game,” he said, “and it was like ‘Great game, Hatty.’”

Pro ball never made the slightest attempt to encourage what he did best: take precise measurements of the strike zone and fit his talents to it. The Boston Red Sox were obsessed with outcomes; he with process. That’s what kept him sane. 

The Oakland As took an ensemble approach that emphasized getting on base by any means necessary, including getting walked. By necessity; they didn't have the money to hire star talents, so they sought out undervalued players who were nevertheless very good at getting on base— the “Greek god of walks.”

The moment he arrived in Oakland, the friction in his hitting life vanished. In Oakland, he experienced something like the reverse of his Boston experience. “Here I go 0 for 3 with two lineouts and a walk and the general manager comes by my locker and says, ‘Hey, great at bats.’ For the first time in my career I’ve had people tell me, ‘I love your approach.’ I knew how I approached hitting but I never thought that it was anything anyone cared to think about.” All these things he did just because that’s how he had to do them if he was to succeed were, in Oakland, encouraged. The Oakland A’s had put into words something he had only felt.

“When you go to the plate,” Hatty said, “it’s about the only thing you do that is an individual thing or seems like an individual thing. When you go to the plate, it’s about the only thing you do alone in baseball. Here they have turned it into a team thing.”

I encourage you to read the book— it's relevant on a lot of levels. The movie is fun, and a good hook for that, but the real stuff is in the book. Maybe the most important point is that there's more than one way to do all of this. Not everything has to be done through the obvious front door.  

Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 02

Part two of Branford Marsalis's Housed From Edward, from the album Trio Jeepy, with Jeff Watts on drums. Let's do the whole thing. This begins at the top of Marsalis's solo, at 1:27. 
 

Most of the action is on the second page, enjoy. 

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Embellishing Chaffee

This is why I can't get anything done, when I sit down to practice somethingpractice something I'll get two patterns in, and get involved in developing them as playing ideas, working out how to use them as part of a continuity. It's a different thing from playing a page of stuff like a drill. 

I'm not just fooling around, it's a legitimate way to practice. But it's not great if the goal is to have a total, 100% worked out and polished body of stuff, as packaged by Gary Chaffee, or me, or whoever.  

Anyway: some embellishments to try when practicing the Chaffee linear patterns and phrases me-style, playing a single pattern/phrase and developing it:

These all suggest other possibilities, which may work better for you. Try some things. 

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Transcription: Jeff Watts - Housed From Edward - 01

Trio Jeepy by Branford Marsalis is a long time favorite album of mine, that was very influential on my concept of jazz. It's got Jeff Watts on drums and Milt Hinton on bass. This tune Housed From Edward was a big lesson on playing a form musically— 12 bar blues, in this case. 

This is the middle part, beginning at 5:15, where Branford takes a hike and Watts and Hinton play time— very lyrically— for several choruses. Tempo is about 122. 

Not much to say, the lesson is self-evident. There appear to be a lot of other transcriptions of this floating around— with videos of people playing them. 

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Playing Bellson

Here's a video I made yesterday— there was a slight online mishegoss over me not liking the Reading Text In 4/4, by Louis Bellson, and it was requested that prove myself by playing one of the harder pages in it: 

I played a lot of things of this level of difficulty, and harder, as a student, via the usual snare drum books, but don't normally practice this kind of thing now. For reading difficulty, this isn't the most egregious page in the book, but there are several measures of it that are offensively written, with quarter notes (including dotted) placed on the & of 2 in several spots— that is only acceptable/correct in a couple of special contexts. 

I practiced it for about 20 minutes, put in beat marks on the more wrongly notated measures, then made the video— this was the second take. Tempo is about 90 bpm. 

Let's analyze/critique it like I would somebody else's video:

Accuracy there is 100%, and my time is solid— there's no metronome or anything. I am guessing at the timing of the quarter note triplet— if I was reading ahead better, and practiced the page a little more, I would anticipate it better and have better awareness of where beat 2 falls during that rhythm. Still, the timing is tolerably accurate, I don't believe I would be dinged for that. I'm a little bit seat of the pants in lines 7 and 8— the time flexes just enough to not be purely metronomic, but I don't legitimately drag. For all musical purposes it ends at exactly the same tempo as it started. 

With my touch, I don't think I'll be mistaken for a concert snare drummer. It's a good touch— I don't play hard— but it's a percussive touch, it doesn't scream concert snare drum musicality at you. That's a pretty strong concert f all the way through. If I were preparing this piece further, I would be looking to add some dynamic motion, if not actual dynamic markings. The phrases should feel like they're going somewhere, even when played at the same dynamic level. The writing here is not conducive to doing that automatically. I don't find it easy to make music out of this piece.   

My whole issue with the Bellson book, of course, is that it doesn't work well for what I want to practice on the drum set, which is my main purpose for that kind of book. I have a half dozen similar books I also do not use. Even with Syncopation, which I use all the time, I'll rewrite things, mark it up, and write new stuff to fill in the gaps in it. For the type thing in this video, I'll use any of 6-8 regular snare drum books.  

Chaffee linear phrases - beginning with LH double

Getting back into Gary Chaffee's linear materials a little bit— originally outlined in the Time Functioning volume of his Patterns series of books. Since first working on this system as a student, it has been a little problem fitting the patterns into a regular musical phrase. That's what we do here, write up solutions to things that kind of bugged me 35 years ago. 

So here are some fill phrases in 4/4, beginning with a cymbal accent on 1, a double left on the e&, with the linear phrase beginning on the a of the beat. That's a natural entry. 

We have a choice with these: on the phrases ending with two bass drum notes— which makes three in a row including the 1 of the repeat— you can play that as a single 8th notes. That will be more playable for more people.  

Once you've learned a pattern repetitively, play it as a fill during a regular funk phrase, move your hands around the drums, and have a good time. 

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Reed tweak: RH lead with single cym / flam

Yet another right hand lead Reed tweak— YART, or YARHLRT, for short. It's a little convoluted, but works out a slightly different thing from the other systems/tweaks we've done, and I think it's worthwhile. 

The plain straight 8th right hand lead system involves playing the melody rhythm from Syncopation on a cymbal* with the right hand, with the bass drum in unison, while filling in the spaces with the left hand on the snare drum, to make a full measure of 8th notes. 

* - You can also play the right hand on the toms, with no bass drum— most of my systems are written for the cym/BD way. 

Here, where there are two or more melody notes in a row, we'll hit the cymbal on the first note only, with the bass drum playing the full melody rhythm. We'll also add some flams. Play these warmups to get a feel for the kind of movement that creates:

Taking it in steps, here is how the first three lines of p. 38 in Syncopation would be played, with cymbal on the first note of any run of bass drum notes: 

Then add a flam right after each last unaccompanied bass drum note: 

Before, we added a flam at the end of the runs of multiple lefts, and there are several spots where we can do that in this system: 

Sight reading that gets a little silly, so you might just want to work out some one line exercises, and the p. 38 exercise. [UPDATE: Having played it a little more, it's not that bad, just do it.] 

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You should get drum lessons from me

Making my periodic public observance that I don't get enough drum students through this site. 

I know everybody doesn't instantly get everything I post on here. And I know people are overloaded with information about how they should be focusing their practice lives— you could spend the rest of your life working things alleged to be “crucial” by some youtuber, and still never get to a satisfactory place with your drumming and music making. 

It's not about getting more information, it's about talking to somebody like me, who can figure out where you, an individual person, need work, and who can tell you what to do now to take where you want to go. 

Hopefully by now it's clear that I cater to all levels of players. I'm actually most interested in people who are having difficulties. This instrument is playable in a creative, controlled, musical way, by anyone— proportionate with their ambitions, and the time they have to dedicate to it. 

I'm not offering a special or anything— the special is, I show you how to do this, in a way you will find very rewarding, I believe. Shoot me a note— over there in the sidebar, it says “Email Todd.” Lay it on me, let's do something. -tb

Triplet burnout with the jazz waltz telephone page

Here are some things I do over the course of 15-20 minutes playing that jazz waltz telephone page, in addition to just playing repeating measures as written, in 3/4 time: 

1. Play each measure in 4/4 by adding the first beat of the following measure. 
2. Play each measure in 4/4 by adding the last beat of the previous measure.
3. Play in 2/4 by playing just the first two beats of each measure.
4. Play in 5/4 by adding the first two beats of the next measure. 
5. Play each two beats of each line, moving ahead one beat at a time. 
6. Play each 3/4 measure within 4/4 time. 

 

The page is just for illustration, you do these looking at the original page. I won't necessarily rigorously play through the entire page each of those ways, but I'll do them for awhile, moving quickly from thing to thing— it's a lot to play through. Obviously you have to have this stuff together already pretty thoroughly, so it's about conditioning, rather than learning new stuff. It's a triplet burnout drill. 

I play the cymbal as written through all of those changes, and add hihat as appropriate for the time signature. 

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That Steve Gadd lick

More on that Steve Gadd lick from the Full Compass transcription. It's essentially a familiar kind of four note tom ruff ending on the beat with the bass drum, with an extra snare drum note in unison with the bass. Sticking is LRLR. I'll try to add some video to this post in the next couple of days. 

Here's how it appears in the transcription, measure 18: 

The rhythm is unusual, and the best way to get it might be to play it in some more easily quantifiable rhythms, and then finesse timing to match Gadd's rhythm— or whatever sounds good to you. The other rhythms are also perfectly valid themselves. 

Line 7 is the rhythm as I transcribed it. When you're playing it correctly, you'll notice the snare drum is sounding the rhythm on line 6. The snare in line 5 will have the same timing, but with the ruff timed more tightly than in the finished rhythm.

Line 4 is the nearest neighbor of the finished lick; once you can play it, you can adjust the timing of the two snare drum hits to match line 6. Line 3 starts with a double left to help get the timing of the quintuplet. 

The tempo on the recording is 131, so work these up to that speed at least— 131 = dotted quarter note in 12/8, quarter note in 4/4. You may find it easiest to finesse the final rhythm playing faster— the timing adjustment will be smaller.  

It may help to prepare to play just the ruff, as on the bottom line, without the snare in unison with the bass.

Incidentally: you'll notice the rhythm, with a triplet played over the last two partials of another triplet— or the last two partials of a beat of compound 8th notes— is similar to a samba “tripteenth” rhythm, which has a triplet played over the first two partials of another triplet. It's a worthwhile area of “organic” rhythm to explore. 

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Transcription: Steve Gadd Afro 12/8

Here's Steve Gadd playing the whole first part of Full Compass, from George Benson's record Bad Benson— it's a fully arranged thing, with some drum breaks. It's an Afro-feel 12/8, modulating to 4/4 at the end. I could do a lot more with this track, but this is all I have time for today. 

As always we're struck by his incredibly deep time concept and execution— people should be thinking how do I sound that solid. 

The meter change happens in the middle of the last drum break, with the 8th notes in 12/8 becoming 16th notes in 4/4. The arranged four-8th note rhythm in bars 21-22 sets it up— the accent in that pattern, which is a cross rhythm in 12/8, is the new tempo in 4/4. The real tempo change is 12/8 = ~131 to 4/4 = ~103.   

In measure 18 there is a very Steve Gadd lick, I think I've written the rhythm correctly. Use a LRLR sticking, or go into the videos of him playing and see if he does this anywhere. There's something similar in the video at that link, but the bass drum is placed differently. Also visit the following link, where I've described how to work it up.  

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On weird gigs

Having just played a weird gig, let's talk about weird gigs. The kind gig where everything seems basically in place, but for whatever reason, nothing is happening. There's nothing grossly wrong, but nothing feels right musically, and you don't feel like you're playing your best, to the point that you're doubting your abilities. You don't feel you have any ideas of what to play, or the time doesn't feel great, or you're not communicating well with the other players, or your hands aren't working well. You're not comfortable. 

Whatever the problem, contributing factors could be the sound, the material, another rhythm section player having a weird night. We blame ourselves, but we're not always completely to blame— maybe we're not handling these normal problems very well... both emotionally, and in our actual playing. We should be working on that, but everybody has limits to when they're going to feel good and play well (or feel that they're playing well).   

First, if you're basically covering the gig, what you're doing is probably fine. If you didn't know what you were trying to do, you'd think you sounded fine. Nobody hears the notes you wanted to play but didn't, as the pianist Jasnam Daya Singh told me. I've felt badly about a gig only to have listeners come up to me afterwards, excited about the music. This happened last night. I don't play to get compliments, but you have to respect it when the audience enjoys what you did.  

The answer is always to play more— more sessions, more gigs. It helps you to play better, and also to understand and accept that you won't be a genius every minute of your professional life. And that things are probably working better than you think they are. And it helps you recognize when some aspect of the gig is not working well for you. And you get better at dealing with those things, and correcting them, when possible.  

Recording more helps. You'll play plenty of sessions where you hate the way you play, but listening to yourself later, after you've forgotten what you were trying to do, you sounded fine. Or good, or great. So you proceed more on faith, when necessary. 

Listening more is good. You have to have something in your ears— melodies, forms, musical energy, percussion sounds and ideas that are inspiring to you. Probably it should be in some way connected to the gig stylistically.

Practicing is good, but practicing hard right before a gig can be a detriment. If you're doing something that puts you in a certain muscular zone, that may not be a useful physical state to be in on that gig. Often if you just walk in without having played, things move easily. Watch out for things that seem to help you play better, on a particular kind of gig, and practice that. What gets you ready for a rock or funk gig may put you in a funny place for a jazz gig. 

Remember what you tried to play that wasn't working on the weird gig, and practice that specifically. Something you thought of to play, but couldn't, is the most important thing to work on— if something comes to you as a musical impulse while playing, you want to be able to fulfill it.  

I write this in the form of advice, as if I have it completely worked it out, but this is really for myself. It's one thing to know it, it's another to be completely accepting and understanding of it. I've talked to people— like 70 years old, ultimate professionals— dealing with it in some capacity, in one circumstance or another. You'd be surprised. Some people are better at detachment than others, or are more naturally confident. Some are just simple people who don't worry about anything. A lot of people will be feeling that way, but will put up a front. It's better to do that, for the sake of their confidence in you— remembering that you probably sounded fine.     

The best thing you can do, possibly, when this is happening, is scale back your ambitions. Maybe you don't have a lot of percussion to offer to the music tonight, but you can do the job. There are lots of great records out there like that, that are not loaded with big percussion statements. Play what you can, relax, probably some openings will present themselves and you can surprise people by being a genius then.   

Very occasional quote of the day: movies

“[T]here is so much to love in movies be­sides great moviemaking.” 

- Pauline Kael, Movie Love

Kael was a movie reviewer for the New Yorker magazine through the 70s and 80s. I think most of her books are out of print, but you can read them online here. I still keep a falling-apart copy of 5001 Nights At The Movies from ~1985 by my bed. 

Jazz waltz telephone - 01

This is a writing experiment, starting with a jazz waltz cymbal rhythm with triplets filled in, changing one note per measure— or two notes. The cymbal rhythm stays the same, and bass drum is added, but no hihat. Everything here is handled in different materials already, I just like coming at things from different angles. This will be useful for at least one student of mine.

Play one measure at a time, then complete lines, then the full page. You could also alternate measures, say, the first measure of line 1 combined with every other measure on the page. Pencil in hihat rhythms if you want. 

UPDATE: This is actually good. This is what anybody should be playing when they sit down to do this kind of thing, and for about the amount of time it plays through the page, playing around with each measure a little bit. The hidden thing with all the one measure drum patterns out there is that you're supposed to play it for a long time, and make some variations on it. So materials that trick you into doing those things = good.    

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Drum lesson with Murray Spivack

Here's a rare thing, a famous drum teacher, Murray Spivack, giving a drum lesson to Louis Bellson: 

The portion with Spivack is dedicated to basic stuff: holding the sticks, making basic strokes, and playing rudiments. 

I think Louis Bellson was a lot more influential on drumming— via the clinics he used to do in the 60s/70s— than he gets credit for, and a lot of this technique style filtered down to me as a student in the 80s, via a number of people. 

It's interesting that in my playing, I've need to work out some things that are contrary to this technique; at least I needed some other things in addition to it. Doing every stroke as an up-down, for example, has you stopping the rebound at the end of every stroke, or double stroke, and puts the top of the stroke— which determines how loud you're going to play— in an undefined kinetic area, where you are only for an instant. 

When working on pure technique, I am more down-up oriented now, which makes for better dynamic control. And instead of practicing stopping the stick down low after each stroke, we're practicing getting ready for the next note quickly, which can't but help your speed. Also, generally, this whole approach frontloads each stroke with a lot of extra stuff between the beginning of the movement, and the bead actually striking the drum, all of which affects timing— having to lift the stick before playing a note, and leading the stroke with the arch of your articulated wrist, with the bead of the stick trailing that. It's not inconsequential— in drum corps, we had to train to get a precisely timed attack when starting the stroke with a lift. 

Clearly a lot of great players have used this technique, and it has worked well for them. As an excellent professional drummer using a similar technique, I found myself needing some things not directly addressed by it.    

There are some other small, interesting things: Spivack singing a Flam Accent #1 starting with a pick up. And when Bellson demonstrates double strokes slow to fast, or “open to closed”, in old terminology, at the fast end his roll becomes multiple bounce. Which was always my understanding of the term closed, but I've never seen that actual change in stroke type done in practice. My teachers all taught open (meaning double strokes) and closed (meaning multiple bounce) rolls as different things, not as a continuum depending on how fast you're playing. In fact Spivack does correct him on that, asking him to play his doubles more open, and not switch to a multiple bounce roll. 

It's very cool to hear from somebody who was an active drumming professional as early as Spivack was. I'll be looking through Stone's Technique of Percussion to see if there's an early mention of him. 

[h/t to Buddhadrummer @ DW]

Transcription: Dannie Richmond - Straight, No Chaser

For my man Michael Griener in Berlin, some more Dannie Richmond, this time with Bennie Wallace, playing Straight No Chaser, by Thelonious Monk of course. From the 1981 album Bennie Wallace Plays Monk, on the Enja label. I transcribed the section where he plays duo with Wallace.

His playing here is very similar to some things we talk about on the site— you can see here what I meant calling him a modern player, in a way that clearly evolved on the gig, a la Roy Haynes or Mel Lewis, rather than in the practice room. 

It's a good natural example of the right hand lead thing, or “non-independent” playing— driven by the cymbal and bass drum, in broken, syncopated rhythms, with the snare drum filling in. Contrast that with a real grounded bebop kind of playing, with a steady cymbal and hihat rhythm, independent left hand, with bass drum feathering and making punctuations.   

Generally he'll lean into beats 2 and 4, often ending measures and phrases on the & of 4, rarely landing strongly on the 1. A lot of it is phrased in syncopated three beat ideas, usually contained within two measure phrases. 

The transcription begins at 2:35 in the track, and they play five 12-bar choruses before the band comes back in. The tempo is quarter note = 238—  a number deserving of some kind of special status, because I see it a lot. Seems to be about the bottom fast tempo. A good first number to have in mind when learning to play faster tempos.  

I notated three cymbals here, but it hardly matters. There is probably more snare drum activity than I was able to hear— he plays it very softly at times. It's also hard to hear the hihat for much of it, and I gave up on including it part way in. Where I did write it, it seems significant to the way he's phrasing that passage. 

I may do some further analysis of this— there are clearly some emergent rubadub type patterns in there, and some kind of Reed system to be gleaned from it.   

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Very occasional quote of the day: play what you hear

“Play what you hear, and if you can't play it, then practice it.”

- Barry Altschul, Modern Drummer interview by Rick Mattingly, November, 1982


Periodic reminder that, creatively, the fundamental equation is real simple. Of course, if you don't hear anything, you have to get some stuff in your ear by listening to records and seeing people play. 

16th note reading boot camp

Plotting out an intensive couple of lessons with a younger student, who has been doing extremely well with his playing the past year, but who is deficient reading 16th note rhythms. It's not unexpected that there be some gaps. When you're young you learn a lot really fast, largely from the actual playing you do, and may not keep up so well with things requiring deliberate study. And the way I teach, I don't force things on people that they're not ready to get into. 

For a normal 14 year old he's about on schedule for getting this together. I'll be spending a pretty rigorous couple of hours with him on the subject to get him up to speed:

Counting 
First, just speaking the syllables counting the major single beat combinations of 8th notes and 16th notes, apart from reading them on the page. Including ghosting counts for rests— e.g., with a 16th rest at the beginning, 1e& becomes (w)e&. He is already good at this. 

Recognizing
Part of becoming functional in reading is simply recognizing a symbol or a one-beat group of symbols as representing a particular counted rhythm. That's mostly how reading is done, at first: people don't fractionally add their way through music, they look at one-beat symbols. 

Looking at the rhythms below, people can recognize that that's a 1e&, that's a 1-a, without actually knowing the values and accounting for each note of it. Which is why people will often mistake the 1e& rhythm for the similar looking 1-&a rhythm.   

When speaking the counts for these rhythms, say them with their proper spacing. Some students will say 1e&, 1-&a, or 1e-a, and space all the syllables evenly— they need to be spaced like the rhythm is played, even in conversation. 

The linear mathematics
Understanding the actual math of how a measure of music progresses, in linear order, from symbol to symbol: based on the value and placement of the current note, what is the count of the next note?

For example, in 4/4 time, a quarter note on beat 1 will be followed with something on beat 2— whatever kind of note or rest it is, it's happening on 2. An 8th rest on any downbeat will be followed by something on the &. A 16th note on the & will be followed by something on the a.  

For this we will be penciling in the counts for every single note or rest on the page. Using a throwaway printed page— not in the book or on the actual practice page. In his normal practicing, I don't want the counts written in. 

Once it's clear he's solid accounting for every single symbol in the measure, we'll do a little bit just putting in beat marks:

The person
Communication is a bitch. Everyone brings their own set of issues to the lesson, and is reprocessing the stuff you tell them their own way. You have to pay attention to your words, and to the person. There are a lot of ways to do it wrong. You don't want to lose the person— by bombarding them with detail, or by not making it easy enough... or by not making the easiness of it obvious to them. People overthink, and will look for a hard answer even when you give them a very clear, simple request or problem. 

You can also craft a lesson that progresses well, with easy steps, but they may also be impatient with that— with the easiness of it. They may have a strong urge to lunge right to the thing they can't do at all, and then give up because it's too hard. That's part of the problem for this student, I believe. He's already good with direct application of rhythm, and likely feels the reading is a hindrance.

Materials
I'll be using:

Syncopation - As briefly as possible, the 16th notes materials in it are boring and formulaic, but good for a specific state of learning them.  

New Breed -  Although it's not a real friendly environment for this student, the pages are well written, and in an engraving style I approve of. 

Funky Primer -  There's a good short 16th note rhythm summary at the beginning. 

Elementary Snare Drum Studies by Mitchell Peters - This has the best overall rhythm summary I've seen, with all ordinary 8th note/16th note rhythms, each written a variety of common ways. See the copied examples above.  

Reading Text in 4/4 by Louis Bellson - For the pencil and paper practice. I'll have him write in the counted syllables for each note or rest on the page. I've already given the reasons I don't like this book for regular practicing. Even for this it's barely useful to me.

Daily best music in the world: Dannie Richmond with Don Pullen / George Adams

Title track from Earth Beams, a great record by George Adams & Don Pullen, with Dannie Richmond on the drums— all three are Charles Mingus band alumni. Richmond was a key partner in that relationship for a long time, and is one of my favorite drummers. 

This is really fundamental to what a jazz musician is— the groundedness in blues, the way they handle the jazz musical environment. Not about chops, or even pure groove— in the details the time and rhythm can be a little squishy, though the overall feeling of drive is there, and overwhelming. You can tell players who just live in that playing environment. Polish is not the point.    

Here's another one, a gospel 5/4, which you didn't even know was a thing. It's so deep it took me a minute to realize they were playing in 5. 
 

This is what anyone would call modern playing, but it's defiant to analysis— by me, anyway. I can't approach it looking for vocabulary. The point is the total playing entity.   

One measure 5/4 triplet fills with Reed!

Another one of my hack and slash jobs. This is something I improvised in a lesson— a student is working on some of the Pages o' Coordination in 5/4, based on an Elvin Jones groove, and we made some fills using the accented triplet pages from Syncopation, alternating between one measure of groove, one measure of fill. There's a good way of handling triplet stickings so you always come out on the right hand here, in whatever time signature. 

First, we'll be using the accented triplet pages from Syncopation, putting them into 5/4 time, playing the first five beats of each line, repeating, as I've brutally scribbled in here: 

Here are all the one line exercises copied and pasted in into 5/4, jammed onto one page: 

Get the pdf - Reed accented triplets in 5/4. There is another pdf to download below. 

On the drum set, the accented notes are played on a cymbal, with the right hand, supported by the bass drum, and the unaccented notes are played on the snare drum— and later moved around the drums. 

To get the cymbal notes onto the right hand, and to get in and out of the fill easily, we had to use some different stickings. Following some simple-ish rules:

All cymbal notes played with RH 

All snare notes start with LH: 

1-2 notes on SD: LH only
3 notes on SD: alternate - LRL
4 notes on SD: LH paradiddle or inversion: LRLL, LRRL
5 notes: alternate - LRLRL
6 notes: LH double paradiddle or inverion: LRLRLL, LRRLRL 
7 notes: alternate - LRLRLRL
8 notes: LH triple paradiddle or inversion: LRLRLRLL, LRRLRLRL

You get the picture:

•  odd number of SD notes = alternate
•  even number = alternate with LL double at end, or RR double after first note 

I prefer the second type of paradiddle sticking, but there are good reasons to do either. The timing of the next cymbal accent may influence what feels best to somebody. 

This page illustrates all the above possibilities, in the two-measure phrase I described:

When the fill begins with snare drum, you can add bass drum to the last note of the groove measure— to begin the fill more strongly. 

Get the pdf - Reed triplet patterns as fill with Elvin Jones groove