Todd's Methods: Samba builder

Here's a little method I improvised for developing some flexibility with the samba- I put this together pretty quickly away from the drums, so I'm sure I'll add to it as I work with it in my own practice. The idea here is to get comfortable with bringing the feet in and out, making changes in dynamics, and using the bass drum independently, like a surdo player, instead of being locked into the usual dotted-8th/16th pattern. Check out the notes at the end for some fairly important things about interpretation. A good first approach is to work from a base of the most comfortable hand part, and practice making adds and changes to that.

 

Update: my man Boomka over at the Drummerworld.com forum offered a couple of excellent links- an interview with Duduka da Fonseca where he discusses the importance of a sensitive approach to the bass drum, plus a video demonstrating the feel of the repinicado part (video embedded after the break).

Download the pdf.

Why we transcribe

Yes, I look the same
when I'm transcribing as Duke
did when he was copying
parts- immaculately-coifed, reclining
in my suit surrounded by reams
of parchment.

I'm a pretty big transcriber, and I thought I would offer some thoughts about it- some whys, why nots, and things I have to think about when doing it. This is not a how-to- that will be coming soon as a separate post. Please excuse the laundry list format- I don't have a lot of time to go real in depth right now. I guess that's why God gave us blogs...

Why I transcribe:
- To facilitate listening. All the other whys follow from this.
- To see exactly how a drummer does his job. How he handles the craft end of things- time feel, ensemble figures, set ups, fills, comping. This is a short entry, but a really big thing.
- To get a sense of the size of tool box a drummer brings to a performance. How many types of things does he play? How many ideas?
- To clarify mysterious things. Some drummers play things that are easy to understand, some play things that defy real instant analysis- Elvin Jones and Jack Dejohnette are examples of that. In the case of Vinnie Colaiuta, I might want to see how in the hell he gets through an extended guitar solo in 19/16.
- To get statistical information- how often he make strong crashes, how often he uses the toms, how often does he vary or leave the ride cymbal. How much space he leaves, how long he stays at certain dynamic levels. I just want a better impression of those things than I might get just from listening- I'm not actually counting up cymbal crashes.


What I don't do:
- I don't transcribe to learn cool things to play on the drums. Musical context is the entire point. So I don't transcribe burning "set piece" drum solos that have nothing to do with anything musically.
- I don't play my transcriptions. My feeling is that on the drums especially, it's a little bit like trying to forge someone's signature- you can mimic the outward appearance, but not the true process.



Issues:
- Limits of audibility, accuracy. Due to recording technology, the mix, and the extreme dynamic subtlety of the musicians, you simply aren't going to be able to get every single note much of the time.
- Invisible (I should probably say silent) things like stickings. There is a lot of invisible-to-the-recording content to Buddy Rich's playing, for example. A number of other drummers are this way. It's a particular challenge of brush transcriptions, in which case I just get what is audible and ignore stickings and brush patterns altogether.
- Playability. Often what is audible will be so sketchy that it presents an incomplete, misleading picture of what was played, making for an unplayable transcription.
- Readability. When transcribing for general consumption, I follow the KISS rule. Don't overdo it with the gradations of dynamics and rhythm, and try to resolve sketchy passages to at least make drumistic sense. If it's clear that there is a lot of only occasionally audible snare drum ghosting or bass drum feathering going on, I leave it all out, and make a written note that I have done so. Leave something for people to discover as they work through it.
- Getting the result but missing the method. Very easy to do. The transcription is often only a clue to the process the player used to make a  performance. And that's actually the way I like it- misunderstanding things is one of the ways creativity happens.
- "Organic" content. Things played out of time, or loosely to the point of looking very weird when notated precisely. Surprisingly, there is less of this than you would think in Elvin Jones' and Jack Dejohnette's playing, and relatively more in Billy Higgins'. I may handle this by resolving it to what was "meant", or sometimes with a written instruction.

Best Books: Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman

In case you haven't figured it out already, I'm a big fan of Joel Rothman's books. His many, many books- I think he has written about a hundred of varying lengths since the early 60's. Basic Drumming is probably the most widely-owned, and contains more than a little of just about everything, without being in any way dumbed-down. A drummer who mastered everything in this book, with an equal amount of performance experience, would be cooking indeed. So the word "basic" is a little misleading.

Rothman has a unique logic to his presentation, which he follows selectively, with a bias in favor of practicality. Often he will use a common performance pattern as a starting place, and then compose a number of variations based on it, which gives the student a starting place, then a number of musical directions to go from it.


Compare that to many books in the wake of Stone's Stick Control, which follow a strictly mathematical logic through every possible combination, without regard for musicality, burying the user in redundancy. Worse are the books that seem to catalog licks, with little on how to get from one to another (cough *Advanced Funk Studies*).

There is very little that is difficult for it's own sake- virtually all of the materials are oriented towards a practical application, developing ideas to the point of covering 98% of what will ever be needed in a performance situation, or for developing general facility. You could say that the book aims to make you expert rather than virtuoso. The only exception to this I can see are several pages of hihat coordination exercises, which go well beyond what most players ever develop.

The book takes the modern-circa-the-70's approach to rudiments; paradiddles, rolls, drags and flams are covered pretty thoroughly, while the more traditional "rudimenty" rudiments (if that isn't totally nonsensical) flamacues, ratamacues, are dealt with only on the two "40 International Rudiments" pages.

Applying the materials in this book mindlessly, without any musical sense, could possibly come off as a little square- it will not aid in hiding non-creativity by spoon-feeding a lot of bleeding-edge-of-hip stuff. A phrase I use a lot, from the Tao Te Ching via the Church of the SubGenius, "stop sucking on the finger and go where it points", definitely applies here. It's an excellent starting point, but the artistry has to come from the musician.

Contains, among other things:
- Very robust 50-page rhythm reading section.
- 15-page roll section. Terminology is interesting- he calls a 6-stroke roll a 5-stroke roll starting on 'e', and a 7-stroke roll a dotted-8th note roll.
- Several pages of stickings over an even rhythm, similar to the beginning of Stick Control. Mostly they are longer than in SC, and follow different logic; there are several pages of two-measure exercises that are through-composed (the longer exercises in SC just repeat the pattern leading with the opposite hand). They are also applied to a triplet rhythm, and there are several pages focusing on strengthening the left hand.
- Several pages of accent studies. The triplet accent pages are especially valuable.
- Flams are dealt with on two pretty decent pages.
- Robust sections on developing drags, short rolls as singles, four stroke ruffs, "open" three stroke ruffs.
- Pages developing doubles, triples, paradiddles.
- Several stand alone pages of variations on different basic groove styles- 16ths in the bass drum, sextuplets with the snare and bass drum, 6/8 feels, 6/8 with 16th notes, shuffles, 16th note rock ballad, alternating 16ths on the hihat, and on and on. I love these pages- they are concise, masterable(?), and 100% immediately applicable to real life playing.
- Marching cadences in 2/4 and 6/8. I can't say I find these very necessary, but younger students will enjoy them.
- Several big band style drum charts.
- Fifteen pages of "dance" band beats, which will get you through most Elks' Lodge, musical theater, dance band gigs and Bar Mitzvahs.

UPDATE: Mr. Rothman informs me "the newest edition of the book, which will be out shortly, contains an extra 8 pages on linear drumming, which I haven't covered in any other book".


Purchase Basic Drumming by Joel Rothman.

Two simple rock applications

You've probably noticed by now that I do a lot with Ted Reed's Syncopation? Here are two more methods which I have developed (along with my Rock beats with Syncopation piece) to introduce my intermediate students to interpretive reading, and to begin teaching them to think like improvisers rather than beat-regurgitators. The resulting patterns have a sort of 60's bubble gum feel, with a strong quarter note pulse throughout. Some of them will make good, simple grooves on their own, some can be used as fills, some are only good for reading practice.

Once you're able to play the exercises (including the 16/20 bar exercises) all the way through without stopping, practice improvising with concept, changing patterns every measure. To play the exercises as fills, play one or three measures of a rock beat of your choice, then one measure of the pattern, and repeat.

Download the pdf.
Buy Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer, by Ted Reed

Drum chart: Mamblues by Cal Tjader

Here is a chart of Mamblues, from Cal Tjader's album Soul Sauce, transcribed by me. It's a pretty straightforward (but burning!) salsa tune on a blues form, with a cascara groove, mambo on the vibes solo. If you haven't played a lot of this type of chart, note that the written grooves are for illustration only- you should play whatever version of the grooves you have together, making sure to follow clave. The roadmap is straightforward- take the repeats for the solos, then the DS and coda.

Download the pdf | get the mp3 | get the CD

YouTube clip after the break:

Here's Cal Tjader playing Mamblues with Mongo Santamaria; it's a little different from the version I used, which was on Tjader's Soul Sauce:

More metric modulation: 4:3 warm-ups and more

My last hastily-slapped together piece on 4:3 metric modulation was such a hit with my Drummerworld.com poeple, that I thought I should backfill some preparatory exercises for it. Here the emphasis is on keeping the hi-hat on 2 and 4 in the original tempo- you should also try them putting it on the 2 and 4 in the implied time, as in the previous pdf. In addition to some very basic and explanatory examples, I've given some practice phrases in 3/4 and 4/4, and some ways of filling out the time Elvin Jones-style, with a couple of bonus "hot licks".

I haven't been exactly systematic with either of these pieces- when and if I hammer this into a complete and coherent presentation it will be going into a book or magazine submission- but I'm a big advocate of incomplete information anyway. You learn better this way.

Download the pdf.

Basic big band set-ups

Another in the recent series of easy stuff, here is a page of basic set-ups for ensemble kicks on the & of 4. You can apply these to my earlier piece, Kicks and Set-ups Using Syncopation.

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Todd's Methods, pt. 3: Rock beats with Syncopation

Most drum books present their stuff fully written out verbatim for the drum set, which is fine for learning patterns, but not for thinking like a musician. This is something I made up to introduce the idea of taking a melody line (which could be the melody of the tune, the bass line, or a rhythm part) and making a drum part of it. It's simple enough that it probably exists elsewhere, though I've never seen it.

It's a good idea to already be able to play at least a few basic rock beats; that will isolate this as a thinking problem rather than a technical one. As always, we'll be using Ted Reed's Syncopation:

Download the pdf.

Basic triplet solo ideas for jazz

I've been posting a lot of hard stuff lately, so I thought I should throw a bone to the earlier-stage people. So here is an introduction to soloing with triplets in jazz. Learned thoroughly in a range of tempos, this can cover your filling and soloing needs pretty completely:

Download the pdf.

Todd's Methods, Pt. 2: triplet partials in Syncopation

The second in a series of quick, sketchily-outlined demonstrations of my practice methods. Here I give a couple of my variations on common ways of using Ted Reed's Syncopation. If you've worked with that book much, you're aware that it can yield some very dense results. What I've done is simplify them a little to make them more musically appealing (and more Elvin-like), and to allow them to be used at faster tempos.

Download the pdf.

4:3 metric modulation in jazz

Here's a little thing I put together to develop the 4:3 cross rhythm/metric modulation in jazz. Normally you actually want to explain an advanced concept like this, but really, if you don't recognize it right away, you're not at a stage where you should be working on it. Improperly applied, it's a recipe for all kinds of bad playing. Plus I screwed up my back a little bit today, and oddly enough explaining things makes it worse.

So here we are- basically I've translated the first batch of exercises in Jim Chapin's Advanced Techniques into dotted-8th pulse:

I recommend running each line very slowly, counting out loud in 3/4- the hardest thing about this modulation is remembering the original pulse. You could also do a few measures of jazz waltz time in between exercises.

As it gets more comfortable, put it into 4/4: count two lines of exercise as three measures of 4/4 (still counting quarter notes- at no point do you count in the "implied" meter). Then play one (or three, or five) measures of jazz time in 4/4 and then two or four repetitions of each exercise.

Download the pdf.