Groove Transcription - Celso de Almeida, samba cruzado

Samba cruzado is one of, if not the, earliest forms of playing samba on the drumset, predating the use of cymbals as pioneered by Edison Machado.  You can hear this style in the playing of drummers like Walfrido Silva and Luciano Perrone.  

Cruzado, which means "crossed" in Portuguese, refers to the way one must cross their arms to play this style.  But, rather than crossing our dominant hand over our weaker hand as most of us do with our hi-hat, we cross our weaker hand over our dominant hand.  This is because the dominant hand plays telecoteco on the snare drum, while the weaker hand mimics the surdos on the toms.

I've had a more in-depth post on samba cruzado in the draft folder for ages, and I really am hoping to get to it soon, but in the meantime, I've been doing a lot of playing along to this loop I created of Celso de Almeida playing a more modern style of samba cruzado from his self-titled 2014 album.

Here Celso plays a steady stream of 16th notes on the snare drum in his right hand, and uses accents to present a typical bossa nova pattern:

 

In his left hand, Celso plays the toms to mimic surdos, including a third surdo-like turn of phrase:

And with his feet, he plays what is probably the most common bass drum/hi-hat combination:

 

 

Here it is all together, with a loop of Celso playing it to help capture the feel:

 

Frevo practice loop

Here's another practice loop, this time for frevo.  It's a snippet of the SpokFrevo Orquestra, who are the premier modern frevo group out of Recife, and likely the world.  If you want you frevo to swing properly, these are the guys to check out.

You can, and should, play what you hear on the recording, but also be sure to re-visit the post on frevo for some different orchestration ideas to try.  E-mail me for a PDF.

Rafael Barata samba practice loop

It's been a little awhile since I've done one of these practice loops, but this one has really been coming in handy lately for both teaching and my own practice.

This comes from the opening track of Rosa Passos' 2011 album É Luxo Só named after the Ary Baroso tune of the same name that is very much a Brazilian standard.  The whole album is an absolute clinic of samba and bossa nova drumming.

The loop below is simply Barata playing surdo and a telecoteco pattern on tamborim, leaving lots of room for you to try things out with it.

And, as there is no harmony or melody on this loop, you are free to practice on both sides of the rhythm, feeling it like this:

...or like this:

Steve Jordan practice loops

I've been having a lot of fun with these practice loops lately.

At first I was using them to search for a greater level of detail and depth in my playing, sitting on each one for long stretches, and spending time focusing on each limb individually and what makes someone like Steve Jordan groove so hard.

But after awhile I just let go of the intense focus and started straight-up playing them.  I've never really been one for meditation, but there was definitely a level of catharsis in it.  You don't have to think about form, or fills, just relax and play.

However you choose to use, I hope you enjoy.

 

 

 

 

Freedom Through Discipline

Last night I had the pleasure of catching up with an old friend of mine from WVU, Mike Dawson.  You may know Mike from his Instagram page and/or YouTube channel that is chock full of excellent content, or from the podcast he hosts with Mike Johnston called the “Mike and Mike Podcast”.

Mike was in London for the first time, giving a masterclass on creative practice skills.  In it he touched on an idea that some of our teachers at WVU showed us, and something I have mentioned here on the blog before: forcibly limiting yourself in various ways in order to foster creativity.  I always explain to my students that these exercises help develop the control to play exactly what we want to play, when we want to play it, rather than letting parts of ourselves go on autopilot, or work by muscle memory.  Mike described this in three simple words: Freedom Through Discipline.  By disciplining ourselves to only play certain things, or not play certain things, we are developing the control to be completely free with our creativity and improvisation.  Mike employs this idea in his own way, so I’ll leave you to check out his work yourselves, and rather than attempting to give you a recap of last night I’d like to share with you one of my own ways of putting this concept into practice.

Mike does a lot of playing with ambient loops that often don’t imply any specific time or feel.  Rather, it’s up him to see where his creativity takes him with each sound.  So today I gave this idea a try.  I pulled up a random template in Ableton and composed a beat over it.  At the time I just played, and I didn’t write anything down, but for the sake of this post I jotted it out when I was finished.

Since the loop had a decidedly acid house sort of feel I decided to imagine my playing as a drum machine.  The 4-bar groove repeats exactly the same, ad nauseam.  I could “mute” one or more channels, or fade channels in and out; the channels being the voices of the kit.  Therefore, the only rules I imposed on myself were this:

1. When playing the groove, I MUST play the groove, and only the groove, note for note; no extra notes or different voices, and no leaving out notes unintentionally.

2. To improvise I can only change the volume of each voice, or take one or more voices out completely

This sounds a lot easier than it turned out to be.  For one, I thought of the bass drum line as a short AABA form, so it was important to stick only to those two rhythms.  To not add extra notes just because I felt like it, or because I lost my focus was surprisingly difficult for the first couple minutes.  Taking out the snare had its share of difficulties as well.  While it seemed easy enough at first I noticed that my left hand and right foot weren’t alway perfectly aligned.  This was another thing that Mike touched on in the masterclass; use this disciplined practice time to highlight problems in your playing and iron them out.

Lastly I tried full mutes of the entire groove, attempting to stop on a dime in a specific spot in the phrase, and coming back in in a particular spot.  To come back in, say, on the & of beat 2, with full confidence, in perfect time, and without adding or leaving out any notes is much harder than it sounds.

I encourage you to find your own loops, and write your own parts, but if you’d like to start by trying mine, the notation and loop are below.

Shuffles according to Keith Carlock

Not much to say about this one.  Pretty much does what it says on the box.  In a video for OnlineLessons.tv Keith breaks down a few different types of shuffles.  His drums sound great, his playing sounds great, the tempos are awesome; all the makings of some great practice loops.  So, here they are, along with a sheet that has each one notated along with a few extra variations.

THE TEXAS SHUFFLE




THE CHICAGO SHUFFLE




THE PURDIE SHUFFLE




THE ROCK SHUFFLE




And here is the accompanying sheet.  Drop me an e-mail for a PDF.

How to Use "Accents and Rebounds"

Accents and Rebounds is the lesser-known, but equally as important and useful little brother of George L. Stone’s Stick Control.  It’s a great book, but if you’re just playing through the exercises within it like an “Accent Tap” exercise of a high school drumline, then you’re not quite realizing it’s full potential.

To get the most out of the book we must remember that there are four distinct strokes that make up the majority of drumming: The full stroke, the upstroke, the downstroke, and the low stroke or tap stroke.

The full stroke, as the name suggests, covers our full range of motion.  It begins from a raised position, is thrown down into the drum and allowed to rebound back up to the same position at which it started.  This gives us a nice full sound, and if we’re playing multiple high notes in a row, it saves us the trouble of having to lift the stick back up into playing position.

When using the downstroke, we stop the stick before it is allowed to rebound so that the stroke ends low to the head of the drum.  An important thing to remember is that until after the stick strikes the head there is absolutely no difference between a downstroke and a full stroke.  We throw the stick downward from a raised position and then apply a little pressure to the stick AFTER it strikes the head.  If you squeeze the stick before it hits the head you will choke off your sound, and in the long term probably hurt your wrists or forearms.  We use this stroke when we need a low stroke immediately following a larger stroke.  Without it, the stick would be in a raised position and we would first have to lower it before we could execute our low stroke.

The upstroke is the opposite of a downstroke.  This motion starts from a low position and ends up high.  Use as much rebound as you can to get the stick back up to the raised position, but you’ll most certainly need to give it a little help.  It’s not going to make it all the way to the top on it’s own.  Again, the use of the upstroke is the same as the downstroke, but in reverse.  If we need to play a larger, more powerful, stroke following a low stroke, putting that upward pop on it puts us in better position to execute the next stroke.

And last but not least the low stroke.  The low stroke, or tap, is essentially just a full stroke, but played at a much lower height.

As you’ve probably gathered, the whole purpose of these different strokes is to economize our motions as much as we can to maximize fluidity around the drums.

Let’s look at a practical application using paradiddles.  If we were to play each note of the paradiddle at the same volume, we would use full strokes, whether they be high or low.  But if we add an accent to the first note of each paradiddle, everything changes.

Our first note would need to be a downstroke, because we’d want to start high to achieve the accent, but we’d want to stop the stick low to the head in preparation for the next right hand which is low.  The second note would then be an upstroke.  It’s not accented, so we want it low, but the next note that hand will play, after the double strokes, will be an accent, so we need it up high.  And those two doubles will simply be low strokes.

So our paradiddles strokes would look like this:

F = full stroke
D = downstroke
U = upstroke
T = tap, or low stroke

To practice all four strokes in a row all we need is a bar of 8th notes with the first four accented and the second four unaccented.  The first two would be full strokes to prepare for the next two accents, the second two would be downstrokes to prepare for the first two low strokes, and the last two would be up strokes in preparation for the first two accents on the repeat.

If we apply this concept to Accents and Rebounds, the book becomes far more useful.

Let’s break down the first example:

1 - full stroke in preparation for the next right hand, which is accented

& of 1 - tap as it is unaccented, and so is the next left hand on the & of 2

2 - downstroke, as it is accented, but then needs to be low for the next right

& of 2 - upstroke in preparation for the accent it on the & of 3

3 - tap, as the right hand as no more accents in that bar

& of 3 - downstroke

4 - upstroke to prepare to start the pattern over again

& of 4 - tap

Of course, when the stickings change it also changes the type of stroke needed.  I went ahead and did the whole first page for you to get you started, because that’s the kind of guy I am.  E-mail me if you’d like a PDF.

In spending a little time breaking these examples down one stroke at a time and playing them really really slowly, focusing on the mechanics of each stroke, I found that my motions became smoother and more effortless, and as a result I got faster.  I recommend writing in the strokes and really focusing on them for awhile.  Eventually choosing the correct stroke to apply will become second nature and you’ll be able to move through the book more quickly.  Do be careful though, as much like Stick Control, you can easily go overboard with this and run it into complete tedium to the point where the amount of time you’re putting in is far disproportionate to the results you are getting.

Oh, and I've decided how I'm going to make my mark on the drumming world.  If R, L, and B are “stickings”, then F, D, U, and T shall henceforth be known as “strokings”.  July 18, 2017.  You heard it here first.

Groove Transcription - Ernie Isley, "Footsteps in the Dark"

I can't tell you how many drummers I've heard in wedding bands, on cruise ships, etc. play this tune wrong; pretty much all of them.  So, I would be remiss as your faithful drum blogger not to shine light on this egregious error.

It'll take you 2 minutes to get it under your hands, and probably a little longer to make it feel good.  Then you can show the world that you actually took the time to listen to the tunes you're playing ahead of time rather than coming out with the same jive-ass groove that you played on that Spinners tune in the first set.

It's generally the verse that is played wrong, but while we're here, check out the chorus as well:

For those of you that complain of boredom in the aforementioned wedding gigs, or other performances of the like - which, admittedly, I have been guilty of myself - learning to play these grooves the way they were written will not only beat the boredom, but will also make your band sound better, and drastically expand your own drumming vocabulary.  So get on it, and you will definitely have a "good day" *snigger*.

    

Developing the samba suingue

There is a common, and really annoying, misconception that all "Latin" music (whatever that means) is felt in the same way.  How many times have you been on a  gig and heard someone say, "Is this swing or Latin?"  This is a pretty ignorant approach.  When we say "Latin", we're really referring to Latin America, which can mean anything from Cuba to Mexico to Brazil to Argentina.  Certainly the music of these countries aren't all going to sound or feel the same.  I suppose in a jazz setting, where we're often playing Americanized versions of these styles it's somewhat acceptable to generalize the feel a little bit, but if you really want to play the music from the aforementioned - or any other - Latin American countries it's important that you do your homework and figure out the feel.

So today I have a practice loop for you to help you get a handle on the Brazilian samba feel.  This is a very unique feel that us gringoes often have a hard time executing.  I've seen a lot of people spend a lot of time trying to notate this feel, and give it fancy names.  For me, this sort of defeats the purpose.  Did you spend hours trying to notate Art Blakey's feel?  Of course not.  You put on your head phones and played along until you FELT it.  Learning the Brazilian feel is no different than learning to swing.  The Brazilians even use the same term, swing, or suingue.

I found a video on YouTube of Mestre (meaning director) Odilon playing a basic samba swing feel on a caixa, which is a Brazilian snare drum.  Mestre Odilon is one of the best known and respected bateria directors in Brazil.  If anyone is going to swing hard, it's him.  Take your favorite samba patterns and play along with this loop.



If you aren't very familiar with the rhythms of the samba, it's OK.  Here's a little chart to get you started.  These are some of the most common patterns that you're going to see in a jazz, or drumset, samba.

Now, granted, there are quite a few differences between the jazz samba and the batucada style of Mestre Odilon and the samba schools in Rio, but this will still most certainly help to develop your feel.  Besides, the early greats who first developed the jazz samba, like Edison Machado, Milton Banana, Toninho Pinheiro, Paulinho Braga, and José Roberto Sarsano, were simply trying to capture the batucada feel on the drumset.  Be sure to check out those players, as well as today's greats like Tutty Moreno, Marcio Bahia, Edu Ribeiro, and Kiko Freitas.

It's definitely also worth digging into the batucada style of samba, but that's a whole other beast in and of itself.  I've written a series of articles on applying batucada patterns to the drumset, which I think/hope Modern Drummer is going to be printing periodically in the coming months, so keep your eyes peeled for that.  In the mean time check out some of my other posts on samba, or Brasil.  I've also got a few transcriptions in the works which will be posted here soon.

Groove Transcription - "Jabo" Starks, "Escape-ism (Part 1)"

I've been practicing with loops a lot lately.  Soon I'll be doing a post about some great tools and tips for using loops to practice, but I figured I'd keep providing some for you in the meantime.

While listening to SiriusXM in the car the other day, this killer James Brown tune from the 1971 album Hot Pants came on.  It features the drumming of the great John "Jabo" Starks.  With the exception of one fill there is zero variation in the groove.  Jabo holds it down for the full 3:20.  Actually it's much longer, as this is just a cut from a much longer take.

If you would like to download a copy of this file, please send me an e-mail

    

Groove Transcription - Billy Higgins, "The Sidewinder"

I hate this song.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m into Lee Morgan.  I love Billy Higgins.  But there’s just something about this tune.  Maybe I’ve just heard it being played really horribly one too many times at college jam sessions.  Calling "Sidewinder" just seems like calling "Take Five".  Who does that?

But you gotta’ know how to play it.  Because, unfortunately, you’re going to have to.  And the only thing worse that having to play "The Sidewinder" is having it called and not knowing HOW to play it.  I like to think of it as one of those martial arts death punches.  You should know it, and hopefully you’ll never have to use it.

Admittedly, though, it’s a pretty cool groove.  It sits in that funny little spot where it’s not swung as hard as your typical hard bop tune, but it certainly isn’t straight 8th notes either.  And if you play either of these you’re going to sound lame.  I’ve heard people swing it hard, and I’ve heard people play it like a damn bossa.  NO.

The bad news is that there really isn’t any way for me to explain the feel to you.  You’ve just got to listen to it....A LOT, and play along to it.  So that’s why I’ve created this little goodie for you.  It’s kind of my own personal hell.  It’s the groove, looped 50 times (seriously) so you can just play it over and over until you find where exactly those notes fall.

If you would like to download a copy of this file, please send me an e-mail

Below is a transcription of the groove Higgins plays on the head.  Note that the snare drum part does NOT change.  I think of it as part of the melody, not to be messed with, at least until you get into the solo.  Also note the bass drum.  Listen closely and you’ll notice that it’s not feathered to just be “felt” as is often the case.  If you listen hard you’ll realize that Higgins is actually giving that thing a pretty good thump.  As far as the hi-hat goes, it's really hard to say whether he's playing it on 2 & 4 or not.  I'm going to say that he is.

Oh, and do me a favor.  Show people that you really know the tune by not playing on the first downbeat after the bass intro.!