Been laying into the kit pretty heavily lately, trying to investigate further any patterns I can think of that for whatever reason throw a wrench into things, and this foot pattern for whatever reason is one of them.
#13.08 || Track Rec: "Everything in its Right Place"
As is marked on the image, "Everything in its Right Place" is made up of 10-count phrases, which you could think of as two 5/4 bars (5+5) or (as the example is written) two 4/4 bars followed by a 2/4 bar (4+4+2). In the example above, #13.08, make sure to repeat the first bar twice (as marked) followed by the second bar. A little left foot control never hurt anyone!
Back to the basics! There are certain exercises that I've found I should really play every day ("DAILIES") if I want to improve my skills on any instrument. Since my drumset playing is rather... unpolished... right now, it's time to go back to the basics of moving notes around on top of a stock swing pattern (not as easy as it sounds!).
1-Note Independence
I think the chart speaks for itself- you maintain a basic swing pattern check between your RH (ride cymbal) and your LF (hi-hat) THE ENTIRE TIME YOU'RE PLAYING -- breaking all over the place isn't a good habit to develop timing skills, so play with a met, and if you notice the check deviating AT ALL, remove the fancier elements (SD(LH)/BD(RF)) and make sure your check is solid.
Once you have a solid check, start playing through the patterns as indicated on the page (and come up with your own exercises, as well- don't be a bore.). The patterns I wrote down are all 4-bar phrases with a bar at the end to check in on your check (or insert a fill if you're feeling saucy), but somebody just starting out with an independence study like this would benefit more from 8-bar phrases of only one pattern at a time.
Work all the patterns every day if you want to see results.
Then prioritize the ones that don't "feel right" until they do feel right.
Just imagine how much control you would have if you spent the first 30 minutes of your practice time every day on basic independence studies like this! I'll let you know how it goes.
So I recently retrieved my drum set from the depths of my mom's spare room and brought it back to school to see how upset I can make the neighbors as I pursue the lofty endeavor of beat creation. The result- now that I've added feet back into the equation, I'm VERY AWARE of how poor my independence is!
I'll likely be experimenting with funky foot patterns until I can actually be comfortable enough to commit brain power to doing anything interesting with my hands- until then, enjoy some patterns like the following...
#12.59 || Independence A
Welcome to the world of 4-limb drumset independence - the final frontier! Notation note: All notes for hands will have up stems (in this case, ride cymbal and snare drum), all notes for feet will have down stems (in all cases, bass drum and hi-hat). Feel free to experiment with adding tom notes and those sorts of things once you really get the hang of the patterns (that's what I'll be doing!)
Some more Four Tet for you this evening with the lovely tune "Circling" off of the There is Love in You (2010) album.
This is a fairly advanced two-bar lick that I arrived at after experimenting with fubars and inverted cheeses for a few minutes. And finally, we have a post in "treble" (as opposed to all the "duple" licks I've posted so far)- not to be confused with the famous clef! [Why "treble" instead of "triple"? Why not?]
Notation note: if I have something like this that's quite obviously in 12/8, I won't bother to mark it (again, these posts are coming directly from my personal notes, where I wouldn't bother wasting the time writing any obvious time signatures). Along those lines, you could also read this as 4/4 with all triplets missing the "3"s above them. If you can't figure it out, just check out how many notes are beamed together, in this case groupings of 3.
#22.35 || Track Rec: "Circling"
If you ever have difficulty with a lick like this, try breaking it down into its components and working on each of those individually (single flams, multiple flams, single and multiple flams with diddles ("cheeses" "fubars"), etc.).
Have a try at isolating beats 2 and 3 of the second bar- then isolate just the left hand rhythm (drop the constant right hand notes to focus on the left). Naturally, if it's worth doing with one hand, invert the stickings of the whole isolated selection and get it down with the other hand as well.
"Circling" is excellent to use to practice any sort of treble rhythms that you can come up with as well as a lick like #22.35 - try it out for a half hour or so on 1-track repeat.
This is the first post here that I would officially consider funky, mainly because of the way it's written (in an "odd meter", 5/16). Guess what though? It's a 4-bar pattern that repeats in 5/16, so really you can consider all 4 bars together as "20/16", which is really just "5/4" a fairly common meter. I could have written the thing out as a 5/4 bar, but that would have taken up too much time, and that wasn't the direction I was thinking at the time.
Don't be confused by the "nested" (one inside the other) repeat brackets- I'm aware that these aren't a common music notation convention, but it should be pretty self-explanatory that the small repeat applies to the first bar only ("repeat this one bar 3 times") and the large repeat applies to everything ("continuously loop the whole 4-bar phrase").
#14.27 || Track Rec: "Wing Body Wing" (see #14.31)
Whew! Now, to explain the sticking- this is definitely the vaguest I'll ever be with stickings on the actual image that I've written down, so sorry about that, but again, you're smart- likely these words will get you there (if not, contact me/comment/etc.)
#14.27 Sticking
m1- repeat 3 times starting off the right and alternate hands each repeat (RH... LH.... RH...)
m2- the first time through, use the marked [L.ll R] sticking on this "turnaround" bar
when looping the 4 bars back on themselves, you'll have to play the exact opposite stickings ("invert" them)- (m1) LH... RH... LH... (m2) RH turnaround [R.rr L]
Sorry for the break between updates! I'll try to stay regular and not neglect this page, but it's bound to happen, so... deal.
So I saw Four Tet a couple weekends back at Moogfest in Asheville, NC (best experience I've ever had seeing live music), and I've been listening to him a bit more frequently / in depth since then. Today I came up with what I thought were some "good ones" while drumming to some of his stuff which I'll split up into a few posts.
#14.31 || Track Rec: "Wing Body Wing"
This exercise is made up of constant sixteenth notes, which should make it a (relative) breeze to line up to a metronome, or a song like "Wing Body Wing" which features a prominent "four on the floor" feel ("house" bass drum on every quarter note). #14.31 is all about controlling the note after the accent (the "e"s), and developing that control is necessary to successfully play a diddle or buzz after an accent with any quality.
Note: the buzzes/presses are marked staccato, so keep them short. I'll also probably continue to write the staccato marks (as well as accents and tenuto marks) above the stem rather than below the notehead for the sake of simplicity.
Here's a bit of a longer lick, a whopping 8 counts! I've been experimenting with a lot of paradiddly-type patterns lately with a lot of left handed accents and the second bar in this figure is a result of some of that.
#13.00
I really enjoy the accents on the "e"s in the first measure, the alternating Check 4's (1e&- 2e&- pattern). To play these evenly, you'll probably want to isolate the figure and build up the rhythm by paying extra attention to the skeleton pattern of low eighth notes underneath- play just the eighths first (r r l l r r l l), then insert the accented "e"s (try to insert one at a time). Listening for the low eighth notes while playing the whole bar on a loop is fun.
I've got another Nujabes track for you to go along with this one, #16.11. This is another 3-beat pattern looped over a 4-beat track, which makes it easy to loop the excerpt without breaks while alternating which hand the pattern starts on each time.
#16.11 || Track Rec: "Spiritual State"
This is a great exercise to work on controlling multiple low notes in a row as well as feeling the dotted eighth note space between the accented notes on beats 2.
This afternoon I found myself drumming along to a little bit of Nujabes and thought a couple licks that I came to were worth writing down in the yellow book. I looped the #16.17 lick for a bit on top of the recommended track "Sky is Tumbling".
#16.17 || Track Rec: "Sky is Tumbling"
Note: this is a 3/4 pattern, and the song is obviously not- but if you're reading this blog, I'll assume that you know how to loop a 3-beat pattern over a 4-beat track. If not, well, figure it out!
Also, this is a lick that should be played at "double time" along with the Nujabes track- again, I'm assuming that you can experiment with lining up the eighth notes in #16.17 to either the eighth notes ("normal time") or the sixteenth notes ("double time") on "Sky is Tumbling". As always, it should be pretty intuitive how you should feel these little excerpts relative to whatever the beat is on the Track Rec. [For the record, I, like most people, would probably interpret the bass drum in the Nujabes track to be playing "1--a 2--a 3--a 4--a" etc., making #16.17 most appropriate to play in / feel as "double time"]
The two accented flams back-to-back are helpful with listening to consistency of your grace note placement (in time) as well as consistency of grace note height/sound quality/feel.
And with this post, I'll start going backwards in time a bit through the Yellow Books. I'll probably end up alternating posts with new content and backlog posts like this one.
#11.30 || the short buzz is fun, eh!
Not sure what tune it was that inspired this rhythm, but I felt the need to write this down after playing it. My intention was probably to explore this idea further later.
Here are two variations I was inspired to deviate towards as I played along with the previous post, let's call them "A" and "B":
#18.20b || Track Rec: "Monkey Riches" (see #18.20a)
"A" || this 2/4 pattern is simply the last beat of the previous pattern (#18.20a) repeated twice, inverting the sticking every beat. It's funky - be diligent about stroke types
"B" || isolated/"hands apart" rhythm from "A", as double-stops
How to Use Yellow Book posts || Mindfully play the excerpt for as many continuous, productive reps as possible, with or without using the Track Recommendation instead of a metronome, alternating stickings in a logical way (if not notated otherwise)
This is a more accurate representation of a typical post. In honor of seeing Animal Collective in Atlanta last night (INCREDBILE.), I spent a few minutes drumming today and ended up playing along with a few of the tracks on their latest album, "Centipede Hz" (which has really grown on me, especially after seeing it live).
So, basically the story with this type of Yellow Book post is I'll tell you what I was drumming along to, and provide a quick snapshot of the rhythm / lick / whatever that I happened to feel was "important enough" to write down (in this case, #18.20a). If you're ever having trouble figuring out how to translate the notation, how to fit the excerpt/rhythm to the Track Rec (track recommendation), have any feedback whatsoever, or would like to explore the excerpts further with me, then please leave comments and let me know how I can help.
#18.20a || Track Rec: "Monkey Riches" *note the invert motion required to complete the 2-beat loop
I'll try to include a Track Rec as often as possible for you to use to drum along with, as well as providing a link to the track (usually a YouTube link) in the post, so that you can keep the lick on the same page that the track plays from.
About the "Yellow Book" Posts || While I'll certainly filter what content from my Yellow Book I end up posting here, in general, I write whatever I feel like writing in there as it comes to me in whatever format makes the most sense at that point in time. Most of the time, I'll leave it up to the viewer to interpret whether to play something at "half time", "normal time", or "double time", and this is generally be heavily implied by the Track Rec (if I think what I wrote is confusing I may try to preemptively explain how to line up excerpt/track, otherwise I'll leave it up to you to comment and ask questions if you have any)
I made this video for a group that I taught in the Winter '12 season and wanted to stress the fact that a fun and productive way to practice is to drum to music that you love. One of the students decided to name the exercise "It's a trap!"
There's a lot of text in the YouTube video Description for this one, so I'll keep my addition here brief*, then copy/paste all of it below the break (click "explore further" at the bottom of post).
Basically, this is a singles exercise that incorporates Moeller stroke motion, and also works a few other skills at the same time. If you aren't acquainted with Moeller, you may find yourself very tense when trying to play this exercise- if that's the case here (or ever), dial the tempo back big time, and create a simple exercise for yourself to analyze your stroke motion (preferably in a mirror). [don't fret: I'll probably end up making a post about Moeller/singles eventually]
The gist of the exercise is basically that you have to start with relaxed wrists before you can think about using your arm to lift for the slightly accented notes (which creates a somewhat "circular" motion that is natural to repeat/loop).
Welcome to my beat laboratory ("laboratory" pronounced quite evilly w/ 5 syllables). I've been a musician for many years in many functions, including performer, instructor, arranger, composer, tinkerer, and buffoon. Since I've "aged out" as a percussionist from most of the top-quality American marching circuits (DCI, WGI), I've found that my desire to drum hasn't diminished at all (old habits die hard?), and I still spend a good bit of time each week hitting up the old practice pad that has served me well for 14 years now. Most of the time I spend on the pad nowadays is spent exploring/developing/tweaking various rudimental rhythms/patterns/stickings to music that I love, and I'm convinced that repetitive drumming to the music of your choice, with an extreme attention to the most minute details of your strokes developed over years of playing, is the most effective way of becoming a better musician and thinker. Over the past year or so, I've tried to always keep a pad of paper or something nearby wherever it is that I find myself drumming in order to have the opportunity to write down some of the patterns that I've found helpful/entertaining/enlightening. I have a long backlog of these little jotted down ideas, and throughout the early stages of this blog, I'm going to be selecting some of those for web publication here [disclaimer: please excuse my sometimes sloppy notation, especially on the older notes -- I only ever jotted these things down with the intention of using them as sparks of inspiration for personal writing projects, so please leave comments and ask questions if some of the things that make perfect sense to me are at first baffling to anybody else!]. In that respect, this blog may be initially geared more towards gear-head battery percussionists who feel that they have a good understanding of technique (don't fool yourselves), but if there's a reasonable demand for it, this blog could certainly evolve in any direction, including education regarding technique/stroke mechanics -- again, feedback is key!
I also reserve the right to post anything that I feel is appropriate internet fodder to come out of the "Beat Lab", including, but not limited to, samples of whatever music projects I find myself currently engaged and interested in.
tl;dr || WELCOME FELLOW BEAT PIONEERS. This blog is where I will post music-type things that you may be interested in. Please leave comments to possibly affect the direction of the blog, and please subscribe/follow/whatever in order to keep up!
