Some things aren’t easily dealt with in transcriptions— you just have to listen a lot and notice things, and use them when you play. Here we’ll look at ballads, and the information you want to get from them while listening.
Rhythm
The rhythm of the time feel— what do you hear? A normal swing rhythm, a shuffle rhythm, quarter notes? Something else? What’s the apparent subdivision of any skip notes— 8th note triplets, straight 8ths, dotted 8th/16ths, sixtuplet, 32nd notes? Are the other instruments playing the same subdivision? What rhythm is the bass playing?
Articulation
With the time feel, where are the accents, long notes and short notes, how connected are the notes of the apparent rhythm, how sharp or broad are the attacks?
Comping
How active are they? Do they stay in a consistent subdivision, or vary between the original swing feel and straight 8ths, or a double time feel?
Double time
Do they go into double time, or begin suggesting double time? When? Bridge, beginning of the solos, second chorus of solo, second soloist? Do they go back to the original time feel at some point?
Switch to sticks
Do they switch to sticks? When? Do they go back to brushes?
Form/arrangement
Apart from playing the drums, notice how the form is handled— does one instrument play the entire head? How long is/are the solos? Do they play the entire tune on the head out? Any solo/rubato sections, or composed intro or coda?
Tunes
Notice how different artists handle the same tune, notice recurring themes, tempo, feel.
Here’s Stars Fell On Alabama, from the album Cannonball & Coltrane, with Jimmy Cobb on drums. I would call this a walking ballad— usually it’s played around this tempo, with that swing lilt. There are a good dozen or so pieces of information you should be able to get from this based on the above:
For example, broadly:
1. There’s a composed intro.
2. Brush feel is a legato 4 at the beginning.
3. Comping based on triplets, including an inverted quarter note triplet rhythm.
4. Goes to sticks at beginning of solos, in the original slow 4, mostly suggesting double time, sometimes triplets.
5. Cannonball plays the head and solos for a full chorus, then piano.
6. Drums lean into double time feel into bridge of piano solo, double time 2 feel by the end of the bridge, with the hihat in double time.
7. Cannonball comes in at bridge for head out.
8. Drums back to brushes in slow 4 on head out.
9. Ritard at end of tune, brief solo saxophone, composed ending figure on cue.
10. The tune itself is 32 bars, AABA. Total form was:
four bar intro | head – alto | solo – alto – full chorus | solo – piano full chorus | head out from bridge – alto | ending
On repeated listenings you should have a much more detailed picture of the rhythm and comping, and how the drums and bass handle the rhythm in particular.
Here’s another one for you, from Cannonball’s record with Milt Jackson, Things Are Getting Better, with Art Blakey on the drums. This is the tune that triggered this post, listen closely to Blakey’s time feel here, he does something unusual:
https://youtu.be/VVu52FY8Evw?si=e5y3vPDEfgtpVegw
It’s hard with ballads, drummers don’t get excited about playing them, so they don’t think about them a lot, or listen to them enough, and are subsequently a little clueless on how to make music with them. I had a long running gig where I played a lot of ballads, if you don’t have that listen more, get ideas for how to handle them and where to take them.