RH lead triplets – useful excerpts from . 38

This is a little bit of a half baked item, illustrating something we did in a lesson. Should be useful for teachers, may not make a ton of sense if you’re not familiar with this system. I’ll probably think of a better way to communicate this idea.

When doing the highly useful right hand lead triplet method using Syncopation, there are a few measures from p. 38 that are good to play in isolation. Some of them can be used as templates for improvisation, if we freely repeat parts of them, a couple are just good to play as repeating practice rhythms:

Those are:

Third line, third measure— repeating those running &s.
Fourth line, first two measures— repeating the quarter notes, or that three-note figure &3&.
Sixth line, first two measures— repeating the quarter notes, or the running &s.
Fifth line, first six beats of the last two measures, hihat added every two beats.
Seventh line, first six beats of the last two measures, hihat added every two beats.

Let’s start with the bottom two: they can simply be played as a repeating meter-within-meter pattern in 4/4. Each of those six-beat excerpts played twice = three measures of 4/4. Good rhythms for any practice system, actually.

With the first three, you can play the repeated portions as many times as you want— really just repeating the triplet sticking pattern.

It’s simpler if you think in terms of the triplets with the RH lead sticking, we can pare those three excerpts down further:

Play each of the repeated portion as many times as you want— one or more times. That sets us up with an open, freely developing triplet solo texture with no hiccups— all the parts connect easily. Once you’re fluent with that, you can worry about staying in 4/4 time with it, and playing four or eight measure phrases.

I could have just gotten into Finale and written that in the first place, but I’m a traditionalist— I’d rather take a good old graphite pencil and mark it into the book itself. There should be some other unique opportunities for this type of thing— look at the one-line patterns on pp. 34-37, and see how they flow repeating any 1-3 beats of the pattern.

I am happy to help you with any of the materials on the site, and with anything else drumming related— contact me for private lessons, online world wide, or in person in Portland, Oregon. All levels of players, and all people, are welcome.

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