Comping with Melodies

There is plenty of great resource material out there for learn how to comp in straight ahead jazz styles, with more coming out all the time.  But turning that material from an exercise on a page into real music can sometimes be a difficult leap.  One of my favorite ways of dealing with it is to transcribe the comping of great jazz musicians.  The obvious choice would be drummers like Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones (here's another), and Charlie Smith.  But you can also transcribe the comping of other rhythm section players, like this example of Bill Charlap.

 

But another way is to use actual melodies to your advantage.  Bebop and instrumental tunes work best for this, as vocal tunes and Great American Songbook repertoire tends to be too open to interpretation for this particular application.  Transcribe (or use a lead sheet) the heads of popular jazz standards.  Just the rhythm of the melody is fine - there's no need to worry about the pitches at this point - then play those figures on the drums.

 

Start by reading the resulting rhythms on the snare.  Then add the bass drum.  If you want to take it farther you could add the hi-hat, tom orchestrations, etc.  But if you listen to the examples linked above, the majority of straight ahead comping relies primarily on the snare and bass.  I like to isolate excerpts that I feel are most applicable and come up with various different orchestrations.

 

Here's an example using Charles Mingus' tune, "Moanin'".  At the top of the sheet is the full melody rhythm.  Below that I've taken individual phrases and written out four potential orchestrations for each.  These are, of course, just a few potential options, and you should come up with some of your own.  Mine lean a bit heavier on the snare than the bass drum, and don't use too many bass drum doubles, but again, you can do anything you like with it.

 

 

 

Gadd shuffles

I stumbled across a video the other day of Steve Gadd playing a shuffle in which he used his left foot to play the skip notes.  This frees up the the left hand to just play backbeats, and the right hand to just play quarter notes - be it on the ride or hi-hat.  As no one limb has to play those two shuffled eighth notes really close together it creates a very relaxed feel.

Now, Gadd obviously isn't this first person to do this.  Mel Lewis immediately comes to mind.

But, as you'll have heard, Mel is playing a jazz ride cymbal pattern along with that left foot.  Gadd, on the other hand, is only playing quarter notes.  Again, to my ear this just makes the pocket deeper, and gives the groove an ease that's particularly applicable to rock and blues shuffles.

In the same video Gadd also went on in the video to do a few variations.  One was simply putting the odd push on the bass drum, like so:

He also put ghost notes on the triplet partial immediately after the back beat:

This opens it up to the possibility of turning the groove into some sort of half-time shuffle.

And while I was looking for a better video of Gadd playing these examples I came across another video labelled "Gadd Shuffle".  But it ended up being something different.  In this video Gadd was using his ride hand on the snare drum to create the shuffle.

Here you are playing those two shuffled eighths with the same hand, but with the right hand as you would on a ride cymbal anyway.  Again, it just seems to relax everything a bit.  Or maybe it's just Gadd being Gadd.

Anyway, the curmudgeon in me kind of wants to say "just work more on your left hand", which we all should do, but actually these are nice to have the your back pocket.  Stick them in your bag alongside the shuffles according to Keith Carlock.

Solo Transcription - Max Roach, "Sandu"

I've been revisiting Max Roach lately with some of my students, four of whom are working on this particular solo.  None of them have written it down yet.  Rather, we've been learning it by ear in the lesson, going phrase by phrase and playing it on the kit.  Admittedly, it's been awhile since I've transcribed this way myself, but I think it's the superior approach, and one that we should all try to do more often; as opposed to jotting down a bar at a time as we listen to it at 50% speed on a laptop and then trying to learn it like a percussion ensemble piece.

With this approach the students got a better overall feel of the big picture of phrasing and language, and what makes it tick.  Even if they're not playing every note exactly as Max did, the essence of the solo gets into their own vocabulary more quickly and naturally.

I also found that from listening to it so much with them and working through orchestrations and stickings, that when it came time to write it down I could put about 75% of it to paper without even listening to the track.

So, while I may be handing you the notes for this particular solo, I would still consider trying to transcribe by ear behind the kit on this, or another solo.  An old friend of mine who taught me a lot about this music always said:

1. Listen
2. Sing
3. Play
4. Write

Do steps 1-3 multiple times each before going on to step 4.