I’ve found it helpful to practice Gary Chaffee’s linear materials in inversions— not always starting the patterns on beat 1. We’ve already done that in 3/4 with 16th notes and with triplets; today we’ll do the […]
Category: fills
Basic funk ideas: four iterations – 01
A companion to our Basic funk with mixed stickings page from the other day. Here we take that same set of patterns, run them through some standard funk/fusion orchestrations, and learn to transition smoothly between […]
Orchestrations of a figure: Groove Elation
Today we’ll do a little survey of ways of orchestrating on the drums a rhythmic figure— the bass line from the tune Groove Elation, by John Scofield. It’s a bright New Orleans-influenced thing, with a […]
Two-beat rock fills
Here’s a page of basic two-beat rhythms for use as rock/funk fills, which I wrote for my intermediate students. You can and should play these on any one drum, or move them around the drums. […]
Linear phrases in 7/4, mixed rhythm — 01
Something to combine with all of the other recent stuff in 7/4: linear patterns, in a mixed rhythm, written in 7. Our source for the basic idea is Gary Chaffee’s book Patterns, vol. III, which […]
Figure and fills — Cantaloupe Island
Here’s another practice loop, with a page of things to play with it. What I’ve done here is sample two measures from Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island, and write out a page of fills to fit […]
Transcription: John Guerin — Dirty Harry, Main Title
Here’s a whole lot of kickass 70s stuff. The drumming here is by John Guerin, one of the great L.A. studio drummers of the era. He plays a large set here, with five concert toms, and, […]
Groove o’ the day: Mel Lewis — Jive Samba
Mel Lewis plays a funk groove. The tune is Nat Adderly’s Jive Samba, and the album is Thad Jones / Mel Lewis, Central Park North, from 1969. The intro has some fun tom fills, so […]
Todd’s 11-note pattern: some examples in 4/4
One of the earlier things we did was a pretty exhaustive, four-page write up of an 11-note pattern which has for some time been coming up spontaneously in my playing. I’ve been working on it […]
The Abanico
The Abanico (meaning “fan” in Spanish) is the name of a stock set-up that occurs in Salsa, Afro-Cuban music, whatever you choose to call it. It is played by the timbale player— the timbalero—to bring […]
Transcription: Dougie Wright — La Décadanse
This makes a nice companion piece to the recent Azymuth thing— they’re both pretty cheezy, with a lot of big tom tom fills. The song is La Décadanse, by Serge Gainsbourg. I can’t find a […]
Todd’s methods: Tiki’s 32nds
This is a little loosy-goosy method I improvised yesterday afternoon while practicing along with Maggot Brain, by Funkadelic. There are several medium-tempo, 16th note-based grooves on the record, and the drummer, Tiki Fulwood, tends to […]