No big deal, a collection of basic exercises for understanding and playing quarter note triplets, on snare drum and drum set. Pretty straightforward. A metronome will be helpful, counting quarter notes will be helpful part […]
Category: reading
Syncopation in 5/8
For the more enterprising, a handy key to interpret Ted Reed’s Syncopation in 5/8 time. It’s a little obscure for the quasi-initiated, but then… what are you doing playing in 5/8? You’ve got bigger fish […]
Tresillo extended
Sketch page for working with a particular rhythm idea— a tresillo rhythm extended by two beats, repeating the syncopated middle note. Some interesting things are happening there, there is some similarity to a partido alto […]
Reed p. 38 – double time
This is sort of a writing experiment based on page 38 (née 37) in Ted Reed’s Syncopation, double timing each measure. I think it’ll be of limited usefulness, but it’s such a familiar page of […]
Syncopation exercise – space – 01
For my own practicing, this week— all of this is for my own practicing, this week. I plow through a lot of material, keeping my eye on the overall. This is a full page reading […]
Best books: Beginning Drum Chart Reading
Here’s an excellent book, that is quite obscure— or was, to me: Beginning Drum Chart Reading by Gil Graham. It was written in 1983, and is only available from Graham’s site, as far as I […]
I get in fights
Smart person, or contrarian? Or flat out giant pain in the ass? What is the difference between a contrarian and FOGPITA, anyway? I don’t know. I find myself disagreeing with a lot of things said […]
Cousin Mary
Working with the John Coltrane tune Cousin Mary. I feel about some of his tunes the way Jon Krakauer felt about Mt. Everest— too chunky, too broad of beam, too crudely hewn— and almost as […]
Syncopation p. 38 in quarter note triplets
Rewriting the very famous page 38 exercise from Syncopation, with all the syncopated rhythms replaced by approximately similar quarter note triplet rhythms. Someday I’ll forgo the bass drum line— which I include out of respect […]
4:3lets in 4/4 – 01
Page of basic 4:3 tuplet rhythms in 4/4 time— four quarter notes in the space of 3— with rests: I don’t know what we’re calling the rhythm when written this way, but what it is […]
Expanding a concept – 01
This is connected with all the fill related jive we’ve been dealing with lately. I share it with you to illustrate a thought process, not a particular set of licks. These are some things I […]
Two measure Reed phrases – 02
Another cut-and-paste, hack-and-slash job, extracting some two measures phrases from the full page exercises in Syncopation. For when I want a particular kind of phrase, and don’t want to hunt around the eight pages for […]