May 7th, 2012

Idea #13: More Hand Co-ordination

In many ways this is an extension of Idea#11, and both ideas were inspired by Antiono Sanchez's playing on "Travelling Fast" from Pat Metheny's "Tokyo Day Trip" album. The idea here is to develop cymbal melodies and variations against a snare ostinato. This is more common in latin styles and tends to be the opposite of straight ahead jazz partly because when playing latin music the drummer is often playing the parts of multiple percussionists. The initial exercises with eighth notes (or quarter notes) seem easy at first, but once you start varying the bass drum pattern (samba, baiao, tumbao) and the snare ostinatos it starts to get much tougher. Ultimately you want to be improvising the cymbal pattern completely freely. A lot of work...!!! Mind the unisons too!

Click here to download the idea as a pdf.

Filed Under : Ideas

April 20th, 2012

Nocturne Bolero Groove - Ignacio Berroa

Charlie Haden's 2002 album "Nocturne" is quite captivating. A subdued and sublime meditation on the Cuban ballad song form known as the "Bolero". Ignacio Berroa provides the percussion thoroughout and underpins most of the songs with this wonderfully simple, steady groove. Played with brsuhes, it is really just hand-to-hand quavers with a five stroke roll on to beat 2, but when played well it sounds phenomenal. A nice groove to add to your repotoire. And of course, listen and play along!

Click here to download the transcription as a pdf.

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Filed Under : Grooves

March 27th, 2012

Idea #12: Interpreting Figures

It's been a long time since I've posted an idea to work with. Again this one is really simple and something I have often worked through with students when they are start out with jazz drumming. Basically I have just written out all the possible voicings of a simple common comping figure on the 4 and the "and" of four. Some will sound better to you than others but it's worth trying them out. It is intended to be practiced against jazz time so I suggest playing this along with "So What", a slow blues and at uptempo, 8 - 12 bars of each voicing, but it could equally be done with a Latin feel. When the bass/kick drum plays the "and" of four, practice with and without a tied note in the cymbal. A powerful idea is then to play the same figures starting on the other 3 beats of the bar and then mix them up!

Click here to download the idea as a pdf.

Filed Under : Ideas

March 5th, 2012

Blue Matter

A classic jazz fusion groove from Dennis Chambers on the title track of John Scofield's 1986 album "Blue Matter". It's basically a slow double time shuffle, but Chambers is really only playing the crotchets in the hi-hat, which means there's a lot of space for the kick part to sync with the bass on all those triplets. It's so heavy and, for some, perhaps hard to believe it's all done on a single pedal. This is a great groove for getting you kick drum chops together. Have fun.