This swingy country, folky, gospel type of half time feel groove is all over the music of the late 60s/early 70s. You Can’t Always Get What You Want, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, for […]
Category: syncopation
Three practice rhythms inverted
This is a page I wanted when I was practicing yesterday— whatever I was doing was hard enough that I wanted to see these written out, all together. They’re simple, so they’re good starting independence […]
Marking up Reed
You know, I think we should all own multiple copies of Syncopation— first because they tend to get destroyed through use, second so we can pencil in our own changes without turning the book into […]
Reed interpretation: alternating triplets, no left on cymbals
Interesting, unusual little tweak streamlining a standard Reed triplet method, that should be good for fills, and for creating an easy, open triplet texture with a strong foundation in the bass drum. Probably helpful for […]
EZ set ups and partial filler
I’m working through this with a student. It’s an easy reading item for the drum set, with a narrow set of parameters, using my tresillo inversions page (lines 1-8 only), my tresillo inversion combinations page, and […]
Dejohnette-like method
The cosmos gave me a couple of instances of Jack Dejohnette yesterday— I got to work on that Jack Dejohnette transcription, and also happened to also catch him on the radio (KMHD.org, The Afternoon Bridge, […]
Syncopation exercise: p. 38 with ties added
One minor gap in the rhythms covered in Syncopation— that’s a drumming book, hahaha omg— is that there aren’t so many syncopated long notes on the “weak” beats, 2 and 4. There are relatively few ties […]
Syncopation exercise: page 38 inverted
A little writing experiment here: I’ve inverted the rhythm from the full page Exercise 1 from Progressive Steps to Syncopation, on p. 38 in current editions, famously on p. 37 from earlier editions. It’s one […]
Youtubed: practicing Syncopation
I’m feeling a little irked at the existence of YouTube drumming videos today, so let’s do a search of a subject near and dear to me, practicing the book Progressive Steps to Syncopation, and see […]
Reed tweak: filling the long gaps
Here’s a tweak to an ordinary straight 8th note Syncopation practice method: right hand plays the melody rhythm, left hand fills in the remaining 8th notes. Usually with the RH on a cymbal, with the […]
Reed interpretations: new uptempo method
All right, I found the way to use Reed at faster jazz tempos. My “the way”, anyhow. I’ve mostly been winging my uptempo jazz comping until now— I never had materials I really liked for […]
Syncopation exercise: Accents from Chasin’ the Train – 01
Companion to yesterday’s post: a syncopation exercise based on part 5 of the Chasin’ the Trane transcription— all of the accents played on the snare and bass drum. As usual I’ve followed the Reed convention […]