Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed’s Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we play quarter notes on the hihat, and […]
Category: syncopation
Houghton’s triplets
From Steve Houghton’s book Studio and Big Band Drumming, here’s an alternate sticking method for making triplets out of Syncopation. For most people the most familiar method is to play the melody notes— the written […]
Rudimental Reed: five stroke rolls
I’ve been fooling around with applying some rudiments to the long exercises in Syncopation, by Ted Reed. We’ll start humbly with it, converting the written quarter notes (and tied 8ths) to untied rolls– an 8th […]
Todd’s methods: triplet funk with Reed, pt. 2
In case you were playing through part 1 and wondering what the big deal is, here’s the actual thing. It looks complicated because there’s a lot of ink on the page, but each step of […]
Todd’s methods: triplet funk with Reed
I guess it’s going to be nothing but Todd’s-this/Todd’s-that this week. Fine. This is preparation for an old thing of mine I was just working through with a returning student, and I realized I had […]
Stick Control implied rhythms
I hope you dig all of this Stick Control stuff; I just happen to be working with this book a lot right now. One of my reservations I’ve always had about it- about the way […]
A crash course in the ECM feel
Look for the photos with water and the Helvetica font. The “ECM feel”, as it’s now being called, is a style that evolved in the late 1960’s and 70’s, and has since become one of […]
Basic solo vocabulary with Syncopation
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything downloadable of my own, and you don’t want to hear me prattle on about cymbals and crap, so here’s a basic solo vocabulary builder I’ve been working […]
Paradiddle-diddle method for uptempo jazz
This is something I developed for both for getting some relief while playing fast tempos, and for doing a modern feel without getting your cymbal pattern lost in the weeds. The seed of the idea […]
Todd’s paradiddle-diddle interpretation
This is the first practice method for the pages of syncopation exercises I posted the other day. Today I’ll give it to you just for the hands only, then later I’ll show you how I […]
Syncopation exercises with dotted quarter notes
This is one of many pages of original Syncopation variants I’ve written up, in this case restricted to combinations of dotted quarter notes, quarter notes, and single 8th notes. I’ve devised a few interpretive methods […]
On “feathering” the bass drum
what is this The word refers to playing quarter notes lightly on the bass drum as part of your jazz time feel. They used to call this playing the bass drum— I never heard the […]