Just getting a closer look at something Billy Higgins plays on the tune Three Bags full, from Herbie Hancock’s 1962 album Takin’ Off. On the alternate take especially he does an interesting triplet thing. Almost […]
Category: 3/4
Groove o’ the day: Elvin waltz by Kenny Washington
Here’s Kenny Washington playing an Elvin Jones-type of waltz groove on Simple Waltz, on Clark Terry’s 1991 record Live at the Village Gate. It’s kind of an obscure item now, I bought the record then […]
Hemiola inverted and combined
An easy page of rhythm exploration here, inverting a polyrhythm, combining inversions, and then inverting that. I’ve been encouraged to write these things after noticing that, starting with a simple 3:2 polyrhythm (or hemiola), running […]
Solo ideas in 3/4
We’ll be seeing more with this format— solo and fill ideas for a certain amount of space between cymbal/bass drum accents. It’s the normal frame for fills, but I don’t see fill studies written that […]
A basic waltz vocabulary – 01
I was working with a student on a jazz waltz, played at a brighter tempo than he was real comfortable with, so we needed to come up with some easy things to add to his […]
That last Reed tweak: one further
Going one further with that last Reed tweak in 3/4, in which we played alternating triplets, beginning every measure with the right hand. Normally with alternating triplets, every second measure would start with the left hand, […]
Reed tweak: alternating triplets in 3
This came up while I was practicing out of my book, Syncopation in 3. An extremely ordinary practice system used with Syncopation is to a) swing the top line rhythm, b) fill in the remaining […]
EZ Rock in 3/4
Working on my EZ Fast Rock page, a younger student asked a question like what’s the difference between playing in 3, 4, or 5? Well, here we go, some similar stuff written in 3/4. I like […]
Page o’ coordination: Juju
I’m transcribing a little bit of Elvin Jones’s playing on the Wayne Shorter tune Juju, which I originally did off the LP around 1988. It’ll take some time to finish it, so here’s a page […]
Three Camps in 3 – jazz waltz -02
Another set of Three Camps-form exercises in 3/4, for the drum set. The first two have alternating triplets between the snare and bass, the last two are based on a dotted quarter rhythm, with an […]
Three Camps in 3 – jazz waltz – 01
Continuing the thing from the other day, here are some drum set variations on Three Camps, in 3/4 time, in a jazz waltz feel. I practice this same type of thing using my book Syncopation […]
Three Camps in 3
A few practice items coming up. Here’s the traditional rudimental item Three Camps converted into 3/4 time, two different ways— accenting the quarter notes, or accenting the swing dotted half notes. That latter is harder […]