Continuing on with another unaccompanied solo, this time by Edu Ribeiro. This piece comes from Edu's 2017 album Na Calada do Dia.
A few weeks ago I started to transcribe it and by strange coincidence the next day I received an e-mail from Edu's mailing list which contained a download link to a PDF of the solo. But I decided to carry on with my transcription, anyway, as the recording has a few small differences to the score, which is also lacking some of the articulations heard in the recording. Also, the stickings are written using D's and E's, the common way in Brazilian Portuguese.
So, here's my version of it. If you'd like the original from Edu himself head over to his website, and sign up for his mailing list.
To the best of my knowledge there's not a whole lot of literature out there for unaccompanied solo drum set. Admittedly I've never looked that hard as I've not often had the need for it, but prior to lockdown I had a student whose school music teacher was often asking to hear unaccompanied solos. So we did Max Roach's "The Drum Also Waltzes", some variations on Nate Smith's "Pocket Change", and she wrote some material of her own. And then I quickly started to run out of suggestions, or at least suggestions that I thought were cool enough to be worth spending our lesson time on.
Enter Kenny Washington. I know the term "musical drummer" gets thrown around far too much these days, but I'm going to use it anyway here to refer to Kenny. Even when he is demoing a drum set as he is in the video below, Kenny is always making music, as opposed to simply ramming notes. There's always a clear shape, structure, and purpose to his playing, which I really appreciate and enjoy. The end result is that those drum demos end up sounding very much like an unaccompanied drum solo that might actually be worth performing, so I've taken the liberty of transcribing it.
Now, for over six years, That Drum Blog has been full of free content for everyone to enjoy and learn from, and that's not going to change. But, in addition to all of the free content that I will continue to provide, I will also be posting some larger, more detailed projects for you to purchase, this Kenny Washington solo being one of them.
In the coming days there will be payment links set up for automated instant downloads, but until I get all that infrastructure in place we'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. If you'd like a PDF of the solo below please send $3 via PayPal to adamosmianski@hotmail.com and I'll get you a copy within 24 hours.
One of the great Brazilian drummers whose work we have yet to explore on this blog is Wilson das Neves. Besides being a great drumset player, das Neves was also a percussionist, singer, and composer, and worked in the realms of samba, bossa nova, and samba-jazz
Though he died in 2017, das Neves remained active for the duration of his life, appearing on the Roberta Sá album Braseiro which we've looked at before, and in the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics in 2016.
In 1968, das Neves released an album together with Elza Soares entitled simply Baterista: Wilson das Neves. On it is the piece "Deixa Isso Para Lá" which is transcribed below. While it does include the rest of the band, the bulk of the tune is a drumset and vocal duet between the two leaders.
As we've recently been talking about rhythmic direction in telecoteco and how some of the samba-jazz drummers of the 60s and 70s were liberal in their treatment of it it's interesting to note that das Neves actually adheres quite strictly to the rhythmic direction in this recording, (and nearly every other one I've heard). His rim clicks play very much like a tamborim part from a samba. I'm presuming this is because das Neves had a background in traditional batucada-style drumming and spent time in one or more escolas. With that in mind, check out the extra beat in the middle of page 3.
In old jazz recordings it's not completely uncommon to hear what may sound like a bar of odd time, or an extra beat. Usually, this is from an old-school tape edit where two takes are being spliced together. However, that doesn't appear to be the case here. Rather, I think it's more likely the Wilson is playing those quarter notes in the subsequent bars to see where Elza is going to phrase her melodic line in an attempt to stay on the correct side of the rhythm.
Also, note that at the beginning of many of the phrases you can clearly here das Neves playing an entrada before carrying on.
Finally, if you speak Portuguese, or know someone who does, it's worth checking out this short documentary on the making of Baterista: Wilson das Neves.
