First transcription in some time— I’m spending too much time on internet nonsense. Have I ever mentioned how wrong every single thing on the internet is in terms of music, this instrument, playing this instrument, and playing music on this instrument?
It’ll warp your brain, man.
One of the ways to not be that ___in’ wrong is to get close to music, which you can do by listening extremely closely and quantifying every single note of it, by transcribing it. Doing that you realize how fundamentally wrong every thing is that every one is doing. Like oh, this is what you do.
This is Airto playing a bright samba on the tune Moon Dreams, from his album Seeds On The Ground, from 1971. I heard this album a lot way before I ever thought about taking up the drums— my brother had it around, and used to play it a lot. To hear the drums well enough to transcribe it, I needed the help of the devil device Moises to isolate the drums. There is a fair amount of distortion at times, so there may be some things missing near the end of this transcription. The transcription begins after the free intro, starting at about 0:44, and covers the entire head of the tune, and ends at the beginning of the keyboard solo. Maybe I’ll do more of it, we’ll see.
Here are the drums isolated, thanks to the Moises app. You can adjust the playback speed if you want to hear it better while listening through:
Some points of interest:
- Tempo is typical “bright samba”— I would want to be comfortable with my samba materials through this range of 112-128 bpm.
- Airto phrases in 3 for large parts of this
- His samba is often fragmentary— he’s not doing an endless ostinato with the feet.
- He is definitely playing the arrangement— not just pure groove.
- As independence, it’s not real involved— everything is co-dependent.
- Often he leans into a half-time funk feel.
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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