Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and […]
Category: Ted Reed
Reed tweak: filling in 16ths – 02
Boy, if you’re not doing all my Reed stuff, you’re really missing out. These things square away a ton of stuff that people generally have to put together piecemeal— I had to do that. Figure […]
Reed tweak: alternating cymbals on rock drill
Incrementalism is the word du jour around here— lately we’ve been all about supplementing/altering some basic Reed systems in small ways, to make a living, evolving thing out of it, and not just pure formula. […]
Subtractive method: an alternative approach
I just saw this from brother writer Jon McCaslin, over at the excellent and much hipper-named Four On The Floor blog: a Syncopated Stick Control method, which he’s using to bring some rhythm interest to practicing Stone. […]
Reed method: bass drum with quarter note triplet filler – key
See, this is what I’m talking about— writing/organizing materials a certain way, you get practice ideas you wouldn’t have gotten just practicing the books. I could have used this 30 years ago, but it came […]
Syncopation exercise: two notes per measure – 01
Another syncopation exercise written with a special set of parameters— this one just has two notes per measure, with quarter note or greater spacing. Last year I did a page of one-line exercises that way. This […]
Progressive Steps to Syncopation – an itemized critique
I spend so much time talking about how great Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation (commonly known as “Syncopation”) is, and how you can do everything with it— and should— and how it’s the only book you […]
Three-note syncopation rhythms
Here are a couple of pages of syncopation rhythms in 4/4. Most of them can already be found in Progressive Steps to Syncopation, in one form or another, but sometimes I want to have certain […]
EZ Reed interpretation: another triplet lick
I like these Reed interpretations using the early part of the book. You can just play through fifteen lines of exercises, plus a 16-20 bar exercise, and be done with it. FINITE ASSIGNMENTS, people. Not […]
A good book you should all chase down
Look for the book withthe really goofy cover. I just want to take a moment again to recommend you all try to find a copy of the book Syncopated Rhythms for the Contemporary Drummer by […]
EZ Tony Williams-like method
EZ-ish. The concept is extremely simple, anyway. Scarcely worth writing up, but here it is. And when I say Tony Williams-like, I mean “it reminds me of one thing he kind of did on a […]
Why Syncopation is so great
Here’s a question that comes up often, and which I always I feel I have to address every time I have a new student buy Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps To Syncopation: “Whuh— this is just […]