You Be the Drummer - Milton Banana, "Cidade Vazia"

If you listen to a lot of music from the 1960s, when stereo was the new hip thing, you may notice that there is some seriously hard panning, presumably because the technology was still relatively new.  Sometimes things are panned to the point where certain instruments are only heard out of one speaker.

This can be really beneficial when transcribing, as it's possible to cut out half of the instruments and isolate more of what you want to hear.  A little bit of fiddling with the EQ can make this even more effective.  I've done this quite a lot in my own transcribing, but for some stupid reason it never occurred to me to do this in reverse.

The idea struck me the other day as I was transcribing "Cidade Vazia", and in playing around with it I figured out how to take this concept a step further in order to make play along tracks.

In this recording, the piano and bass are panned hard left, with almost no drums on that side.  So I dropped the track into GarageBand and panned the channel hard left.  I then copied the file to a new track and, using a built-in GarageBand plugin, flipped the signal so that piano and bass were in the right channel, and then panned that track hard right.  What I was left with was a version of the song with the drums almost completely gone.  I then dug into the EQ, bringing the bass up a bit amongst a few other things, which further pronounced the effect.

So, I now have the original Milton Banana recording of "Cidade Vazia" with almost no drums in it, essentially creating the best play along track you could ask for, and I share it with you today.  Check out the transcription in the previous post and enjoy!

Transcription - Milton Banana, "Cidade Vazia"

Following on from the telecoteco stuff we've been talking about lately, here's a different take on it, by Milton Banana.  Banana was one of the earliest and most prominent drummers of "Samba no Prato" (Samba on the cymbals).  Prior to that, samba on the drumset was much more focused on the drums themselves, and sounded more like a batucada ensemble.  They often played in a style called "Samba Cruzado".  I've got a post coming up on that very soon.

Edison Machado is credited with being the first drummer to play "Samba no Prato", but Banana was right there with him, playing on many of the great Bossa Nova records and a lot of samba jazz, particularly with his own trio, which released quite a few albums over the years.

Drummers of the samba-jazz, or hard bossa, genre like Machado and Banana, as well as Rubinho Barsotti, Paulo Braga, José Roberto Sarsano, and many others, seem to be more relaxed about staying true to the direction of the telecoteco. I've heard differing theories on this, the two most prominent and plausible being:

1. These drummers were inspired by American jazz and American jazz drummers, and actively chose to take a more laissez-faire approach to the direction of the rhythmic cycle in order to have fewer constraints on their playing/improvising.  In this case, the telecoteco parts are more of a "vibe" than a true rhythmic cycle and serve a similar role as that of the left hand of an American-style jazz drummers; comping, essentially

2.  The concept of rhythmic direction that we see in telecoteco is a characteristic of the music that comes from African traditions.  The majority of the drummers from this period and genre were white.  It has been argued that they were simply ignorant to correct interpretation of the rhythm and were merely emulating it to the best of their abilities.

I'm not sure which one is true, or which one I would prefer to be true.  Players today, like Marcio Bahia, Edu Ribeiro, Kiko Freitas, Celso Almeida, etc. tend to stay true to the rhythmic direction, but this does not clarify why the older guys didn't.  It could be that these contemporary players have a renewed interest in traditional approaches, or it could be that they learned the traditions that the previous generation were unaware of.

You'll hear in this recording that Banana isn't necessarily flipping the rhythmic direction, but he's also not adhering strictly to the traditional "rules" of it.

Let me be clear that I'm not saying what Banana is doing is right or wrong.  I'm simply observing as I find this stuff terribly fascinating.  Banana is one of my absolute favorite drummers and one of the most beloved and respected ever to come out of Brazil.  But hardcore samba purists take the direction of the rhythmic cycle very seriously, and flipping it or not playing by the rules is sacrilege.

Aaaanyway, here's the transcription.  E-mail if you'd like a PDF, and enjoy.

Frevo

It’s been a little while since I posted anything about rhythms from the northeast of Brazil.  The most common rhythm from this part of the country that often gets a cursory mention in method books is baião, from Pernambuco.  I’ve done a few posts on this already and have a few more in the pipeline, but today I want to chat about a very different style called frevo.

The first time I traveled to Brazil I went to the cities of Recife and Olinda, in the state of Pernambuco, which sits in the eastern most part of South America.  Not really knowing anything about Brazilian music or culture at the time I was fully expecting to hear samba and bossa nova everywhere.  Granted, we did hear some samba, as it’s pretty popular all over the country despite coming from Rio de Janeiro in the south.  But I quickly learned that there are numerous pockets of music and culture across Brazil, and Pernambuco and the northeast is a particular hotspot.  A northeastern style that is commonly applied to the drumset you may have come across before is baião.  Throughout the trip we were lucky enough to have wonderful guides from the local university who took us to hear a lot of incredible music, including baião.  One sound that really grabbed my attention, however, was frevo.  Like baião, frevo comes from Pernambuco, specifically the city of Recife, but that’s about where the similarities end.  

Whereas a typical forró ensemble that would play baião would be comprised of accordion, triangle, and zabumba, a frevo group utilizes pandeiro, surdo, and caixa in the percussion as well as a full brass and saxophone section.  This music is often played in parades, though it’s common to see frevo groups performing on a stage, or even at soccer games, similar to how you might see marching bands in the stands at a football game in the States.

Here’s what a typical frevo na rua (street frevo) would look like.  I’ll have to dig out my pictures, but I’m pretty sure I was on this very street.  You get a fairly nice shot of the percussion section just after the seven minute mark.

So, let’s take a look at the elements of a typical frevo….

Frevo’s most identifiable feature is the snare drum, or caixa.  It plays a powerful syncopated rhythm, embellished with a roll at the end of the phrase.  Supporting that is a pandeiro, which plays a persistent galloping rhythm.  And the foundation is a surdo that generally plays on beat two, though it is sometimes heard on every beat.

Although each part of the percussion section is typically played by separate musicians, it is also common to play frevo rhythms on a drumset.  A simple and effective orchestration to start with is to play the caixa part on the snare, and put the surdo part on the bass drum.

A great group to check out for this style is the Spokfrevo Orquestra.  They are the premier frevo group in Recife, and likely the world.  They play classic frevos, in addition to their own compositions, but with a lineup resembling that of a big band.  That's not terribly far from the lineup of your average frevo group anyway, but they also include the use of a drum set, wear suits, and perform in concert halls.  They also add individual solos like we would see in a traditional big band.  So, essentially they are a really tight big band, playing burnin’ frevo rhythms, with solos of hip bebop language.  It’s very cool stuff.

As you can see, the percussion section and drummer in Spok are essentially playing the traditional orchestration and making hits.  But, frevo has been incorporated into Brazilian jazz for quite a few years now, so not only is one drummer often left to play everything on his own, but in a smaller ensemble it’s generally necessary for we, the drummers, to cool it a bit. The simplest way to achieve this would be to just reach for the brushes instead of sticks.

However, whether played with sticks or brushes, the orchestration above leaves out the galloping rhythm of the pandeiro.  Try playing that on the ride cymbal or hi-hat, while playing the accent pattern of the caixa on the snare drum.  The roll is generally a pretty tight buzz roll anyway, so you can just play a long buzz with your left hand.

A quiter version along the same lines would be to play a rim click instead of the snare.  You can mimic the long sound of the buzz roll by splashing your hihats with your left foot.

And finally, we can get a little more creative with our voicings, and test our left foot independence by playing the pandeiro rhythm on the snare drum (probably best with brushes), and move the caixa accent pattern to our left foot, again splashing the hihat for the roll.

In any of these examples you could play the bass drum just on beat two, or on every beat.  Similarly, you can play the hi-hat on all the downbeats, all the upbeats, or not at all.  Here's the full sheet.  Get creative and see what other arrangements you can come up with.  Drop me a line if you'd like a PDF.

Jason Brown's 5/4 Gear Shift Thing

Jason Brown posted this on Instagram the other day, and I enjoyed it, so I thought I'd jot it out for all of you.  Jason is based in New York, but when we're not all quarantined he makes his way to London fairly often.  He's quite active on Instagram with short snippets of exercises, tips, lessons, etc.  It's worth a follow.  Anyway, the idea is to keep your hands alternating with accents on each beat, but after every two bars of 5/4 change gears.  The odd numbered tuplets will work themselves out naturally, but the even numbered ones need a double stroke on each beat to turn around.  So, the sextuplets are double paradiddles, the 16th notes paradiddles, and the 8th notes double strokes.  In the video Jason goes from septuplets down to quarter notes and stops, but I like to go down and then back up without stopping.

Rubinho Barsotti (1932-2020)

Unfortunately, we've lost another one of the greats.

Rubinho Barsotti was one of the master Brazilian drummers in the period when samba was first being played on the drum set.  As a founding member of Zimbo Trio, Rubinho was at the forefront of the samba-jazz sound.  The trio had a long and successful career on their own, but also backed big-name singers like Elis Regina.  Check out O Fino Do Fino.  Outside of Zimbo Trio Barsotti also played with American jazz masters such as Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Kenny Dorham, and more.

For some reason, his name doesn't seem to be thrown around as much as those of Edison Machado, Milton Banana, and Paulo Braga.  Perhaps (and hopefully) this is only true outside of Brazil.  I'm even a bit guilty of over-looking him myself.  Despite checking out a lot of Zimbo Trio records over the years, I've never transcribed any of Rubinho's playing or played along to his records.  As is often the case, these sad moments inspire us to get to work, so hopefully I'll have something for you soon.

In the meantime, check out any of the many great Zimbo Trio records.  Their self-titled 1964 debut is one of my personal faves.

Transcription - Marcelo Costa, tamborim on "A Vizinha do Lado"

Continuing on with our look at telecoteco and other Brasilian comping rhythms here is a tamborim transcription from "A Vizinha do Lado" on Roberta Sá's record Braseiro.

Just as with jazz or any other style of music, one of the best ways to learn how to execute these rhythms in a stylistically appropriate fashion is to go straight to the source and listen and transcribe.  In this case we hear percussionist Marcelo Costa on tamborim starting about halfway through the tune.  This one will require some serious listening as there is a lot of shape and articulation that is not notated.  I intentionally did not write any articulation A) so as to make it clearer to read, and B) so anyone following along and/or trying to play this wouldn't get bogged down by notation, but rather, would simply listen.  That said, there are a couple of things worth drawing your attention to.

What I've notated in the transcription are just the notes played by the stick on the head of the tamborim.  Quite often, with the hand holding the drum, the underside of the head is tapped with the a finger in between the notes played with the stick.  So, a stock telecoteco pattern would look like this:

Almost 100% of the time when you find two 16th notes side by side, the first is a pick-up note played far more quietly than the second note, which is then accented.

Note that Marcelo is improvising here, but he is always on the correct side of the rhythm.  If you play any stock telecoteco pattern (see the "up" side of the sheet linked here) through the whole tune you will notice that it never crosses the melody or anything that Marcelo is playing.  This is extremely important when improvising in this style, and we'll chat more about how to do this next time.

Finally, remember that these rhythms are completely transferrable.  You don't have to be a tamborim player and/or percussionist for this transcription to be useful to you.  Try orchestrating it a number of different ways while playing along to the recording.  Here are a few ideas to get you started:

*Read the transcription on rim click with any of the right hand and feet ideas from the samba starter
*Play 16ths notes with brushes and accent the notes of the transcription, again with feet patterns from the samba starter
*Play the transcription on the ride cymbal, and fill in the gaps with ghost notes on the snare.  Feet, samba starter.  You get the idea.

How to practice flam rudiments

Just about every high school drumline has an exercise that looks something like this.

But I think it's often unclear to students, and poorly explained by instructors, as to what the purpose of this exercise is.  So I thought it would be good to pull this apart a little bit as, when done properly, it can be a very beneficial exercise, and can apply to any flam rudiment.

The basic gist of the exercise above is that the first two bars are what your hands are playing individually when playing flam accents.  But what has always bugged me is that the right and left hands are notated the same.  A better representation would be to play what the right hand actually plays, then what the left hand actually plays before putting it together.  From there you could play the whole exercise off the left if you wished.  Here's what that would look like.

To separate the hands and see what each one is doing is all well and good, but we can get more out of this.  In a flam passage such as this it can be easy to get lazy with the notes in-between the accents and/or flams.  These notes are often referred to as the "inner-beats". Which leads us to another drumline buzz-phrase: "watch the inner beats".  I heard/hear this time and time again, but again, it is rarely explained.  To "watch the inner beats" is to NOT be lazy with the notes in-between the accents and/or flams.  And better yet, we can break them down and practice them in a focused manner.  Let's try it with Flam Paradiddles this time.

Below are flam paradiddles followed by the rhythm played by each hand.

This time around, rather than just playing those rhythms as written, let's "clean up the inner beats" by breaking down the mechanics of each hand before putting them together.  To do this we'll look at the Strokings™ ala Accents and Rebounds.

On the right hand we begin with a downstroke so that our hand remains low for the next three tap strokes, which are followed by an upstroke in preparation for the next downstroke.

The left hand plays the same thing, but as it is displaced by a beat we begin with a tap stroke, followed by an upstroke again in preparation for the accent, which will be a downstroke so we're ready to play the next three tap strokes.

This may all seem a bit pedantic, but if you find that your flam passages are a bit "mushy", this will certainly clean them up, and by breaking down the mechanics of our motion we can build speed and efficiency.

Remember that this can be applied to any flam rudiment.  Note what each hand plays alone, figure out the strokings, and play them slowly before putting them back together.

Groove Transcription - Roni Size, "New Forms"

Drum 'n' Bass, as far as I can remember, never got really big in the States.  In high school, I remember some kids listening to techno and going to raves.  Some of these kids were my friends, and I also recall being ridiculed when I told them the only electronic music I could really get into was drum 'n' bass. More than 20 years later, I now teach a class in the history of EDM for West Virginia University, so a couple years ago I spent an entire summer reading about and listening to just about every style of EDM there is.  And while I can appreciate a lot of it more now, I'd still have to say that drum 'n' bass is some of the hippest and most listenable of those styles.  It certainly has the coolest drumming.

One of the most recognizable names in drum 'n' bass is Roni Size.  His album New Forms is a seminal work of the d'n'b canon.  In 1997 it won the Mercury Prize here in the UK, beating out Radiohead's OK Computer.  Below is the title track to the album.  In some ways it's very easy.  It's similar to that rock groove that every non-drummer can somehow kind of play.  But on the other hand, it's very fast, very intricate, and requires a lot of control.

I've written out the main groove that repeats throughout the song, but the devil is in the detail.  If you listen closely to the whole thing, you notice that each time around there are a few notes added here and there, giving it just a little bit more lift and energy each time.  In a weird way it reminds me of how some of the best jazz drummers build the density of their playing so gradually you almost don't notice it happening.  Anyway, here it is.  Drop me a line if you'd like a PDF.