More Steve Gadd on Chick Corea’s Friends— here on the flute solo on Waltse For Dave, a medium tempo jazz waltz. It has a 70 bar form: A -16 | A – 16 | B – 8 | C – 16 | Coda – 6+8.
This is the kind of groove we were looking for when I was in college in the 80s. Everything we were talking about about for cymbal technique was supporting this kind of very seated cymbal beat, anchored by constant quarter notes on the hihat— a Tony Williams thing certainly made more popular by Gadd doing it. The snare drum is pretty constant, especially on the & of the beat (playing for Peter Erskine in a master class later, he warned me off of doing that). The only time he accents the 1 here when he’s doing a pretty specific Elvin thing, starting around bar 32. Otherwise the phrase ending accents are often on an anticipation. He’s using 16th notes in an Elvin kind of way, which I also do a lot.
The transcription begins at 1:31. The tempo is 142.
You’ll also notice there’s kind of an episodic quality— as does the tune— with something slightly different happening roughly every eight bars, starting very light, to more dense, to light and spacious over the course of one chorus.
It also occurs to me we have some pretty classic cymbal sounds. I believe the hihats and ride cymbal are Turkish K. Zildjians, 14 and 20″. I’m pretty close to that now with my dry 20″ Holy Grail and medium HG hihats.
There’s a lot more happening on this tune— with brushes at the beginning, and more dramatic accompaniment on the piano solo. Maybe I’ll do more of it soon….