You Be the Drummer - Stan Getz and The Oscar Peterson Trio

It's been awhile since I've posted one of these drummer-less recordings, so what better way to come back than playing with Ray Brown?!  There's not even really anything to say about this one.  Break out Syncopation, or The Art of Bop Drumming, or, hell, just play some time!

Jeff "Tain" Watts Songo Grooves and Fills

For some reason this one has been in the drafts folder for ages, so I'm excited to finally get it out.  I came across this video a few years ago of Tain playing with an unnamed band at the San Jose Jazz Fest in 2014.  I was initially taken by the way he used the cowbell, and by the way he put the last note of the tumbao on the tom or floor tom instead of the bass drum, so I decided to dig into it.

 

It's funny when we first see/hear certain things, especially at brighter tempos, it seems like there is so much going on, but when you look a little deeper at this video you'll notice that Tain isn't actually playing that many different things rhythmically.  It's often the same, or very similar, stickings orchestrated differently around the drums (sort of like in the Eric Harland transcription we looked at way back when).

And, speaking of what he's playing, it's basically a 3-2 Songo.  This may not immediately jump out at you as a Songo, because Songo is so often played in 2-3.  So much so that 2-3 Songo is often simply taught as the single way to play Songo.  A quick Google search turns up a plethora of images that look like this:

Now, I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with this.  This is a perfectly acceptable way to play a Songo.  It's just that I get the feeling that a lot of drummers don't appreciate the fact that Songo isn't a pattern or sticking, but a style, to which there is much more than this one way of playing that is often shown to be the "correct" way.

Check out where the clave fits in the pattern above:

This can just as easily be played in 3-2:

And of course this is, by far, not the only sticking and/or orchestration that we can employ, as we can see in the Tain video.

There are plenty of hits in this tunes, so rather than transcribe the whole video and end up with a lot of superfluous material, I decided to grab the sections of groove that could easily be applied elsewhere, as well as some fills to go along with them.  You'll have to use your ears and some common sense, but you could likely take a lot of these grooves and mix and match them with the fills at various points to come up with some nice ideas of your own.

Paradiddlediddles / Double paradiddles

I currently have a young student who, at just 13 years old, is already pretty far ahead of his peers in terms of his jazz drumming game.  He listens to all the right things, and has more language than many students five years his senior.  When I first met him at 11 he told me his favorite drummer was Art Blakey.  One thing he lacks, however (at least right now), is control.  We are currently working on a Philly Joe solo and he is struggling to move seamlessly between the various stickings that Philly Joe employs, and to control the height difference between accents and taps; a contrast that Philly Joe always does to great effect.  So I created this simple exercise that combines paradiddlediddles and double paradiddles, which can be heard all over records featuring Philly Joe.  This more of a general exercise in control, but if you'd like to dig deeper into Philly Joe language with these stickings, Todd Bishop has a great post about it over on Cruiseshipdrummer.

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Neil Peart

There's not going to be much, if anything, that I can say about Neil Peart that hasn't already been said, or isn't already known, but I would be remiss if I didn't make mention of his sad and untimely passing.  Especially as Peart, for me, like legions of other drummers, was a huge early influence.  All told, the amount of time I spent playing along to Rush records would surely not be measured in hours, or even days, but likely weeks.  As I grew older, other styles of music took my interest, and I eventually got to where I rarely listened to Rush, and never played the tunes.  But anytime The Spirit of Radio, Limelight, Free Will, Tom Sawyer, etc., etc. came on the radio I was immediately transported back to the early days of my drumming development, and could play each tune note for note.  Regardless of your taste in music, there is no denying Neil Peart's contribution to the drumming world.  Generations of drummer would not be the same without him.

Brasilian Rhythms - Entradas

Looking at telecoteco again, let’s talk about entradas.

An entrada is exactly what the word translates to, an entrance.  This entrance takes a slightly different form depending on the style of samba.  In a batucada or enredo setting, this is more of a bold statement, announcing that the tamborims have arrived to the party.  It reminds me of the way a conga player plays his big fills after the downbeat of the next section, rather than leading into it.  Some batucada-style entradas are longer than two bars, and generally lead to the carreteiro style of tamborim, which is the constant swinging 16th notes achieved by turning the drum with the left hand.  Some of these entradas are traditional and commonly heard across various groups, whereas other are composed for a specific escola de samba or their enredo (show) for the year.  A few examples:

In a pagode setting, however (or on a drum kit in our case) an entrada is simply a way to set us off on the right foot, especially when our telecoteco is likely to begin on a syncopated note.  We discussed last time about how telecoteco has an “up” side and a “down” side.  To start on the down side you could probably get away without playing an entrada at all as the pattern starts clean on beat one.  However, to start on the up side we use the entrada to set our ears and sense of time before we get into the heavily syncopated pattern that just seems to effortlessly roll over barline after barline.  This could be as simple as adding one downbeat to the start of the syncopated side….

But, more often, an entrada is two bars long.  A few examples….

Generally, these entradas start on the downbeat of a new phrase, but I have occasionally heard them played in the two bars leading to the new phrases, almost like a fill, such that once the downbeat of the new section is reached the listener is already hearing telecoteco.  Here’s an example of this that we’ll talk more about next time.

Finally, I know I said that entradas start on a downbeat to set our ears, but there is one instance in which it starts on a syncopated note.  One syncopated note on the “e” of one, followed by some steady 8th notes until the start of the phrases is reached.  That lone 16th note is generally given a pretty sturdy accent, sort of like a kick in the pants to get the section going.

Below are some various entradas followed by telecoteco and partido alto patterns.  Bear in mind that the entradas are not married to the specific patterns that follow them.  Pretty much any of these entradas will work with any variant of telecoteco or partido alto, so long as you are on the correct side of the beat.  Experiment with some of the entradas here along with some of the telecoteco variations from last time.

New release by Joy Ellis - "Dwell"

Pianist/singer/songwriter, Joy Ellis, with whom I've been working for 10 years now has just released her new album, Dwell, to some lovely reviews.  Putting this record together was a lot of fun and a good challenge for me as Joy was after some unique rhythmic ideas.  Trouble was, she didn't know exactly what she wanted, but she did know exactly what she didn't want.  So, I was forced to come up with some new grooves with which I am pretty happy.  Two in particular that I felt came out nicely were "Castles" and "Family Tree"




I've also gotten a lot of compliments on the snare sound of the title track, "Dwell".  Funnily enough, this is an old Yamaha Maple Custom which was missing one lug entirely.  I tuned it all the way down until it was just barely finger tight, and put a wash cloth on about a quarter of the head.  We recorded at the phenomenal Eastcote Studios in London, and despite being surrounded by thousands of dollars of drum mics, engineer, George Murphy, opted to simply put a good ol' SM57 on it.

You can check out the entire album in the sidebar.

Flam Accent/Pataflafla Etude

Here's a little ditty I was fooling around with earlier today combining flam accents and pataflaflas.  I was almost immediately reminded of my drum corps days when any flam-based exercise would always be amped up a notch by adding drags and "cheeses".  At tempo this becomes a nice chop buster.

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Dig This - Jack Sperling playing brushes

I recently stumbled across this video of the great Jack Sperling playing some burnin' brushes with singer/guitarist Caterina Valente.  Jack spent the majority of his career as a sideman to some of the biggest singers in the biz; Tex Beneke, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Bobby Darin just to name a few.  He also did a fair amount of studio work, appearing on the soundtracks to big name films and TV like Peter Gunn, Rawhide, The Days of Wine and Roses, Bonanza, Charade, and Hogan's Heroes.

Caterina Valente was a lovely surprise for me.  I was not familiar with her before seeing this video.  She was born and raised in Paris, and at 88 years old it appears she still lives there.  Not only is she a killer guitarist and singer, but she does so in 11 different languages, and can actually speak six of them.  The interweb also tells me she's an actress and dancer, but I haven't checked that out as of yet.  What you should check out though is this video of her and Jack playing together on "That Old Black Magic".  Dig the big ol' Rogers kit, too.