Ratamacues Around the Drums

Time to put those rudiments back to work.  Many of the jazz greats used/use the ratamacue as a fill around the kit, so let's do a bit of it ourselves.

Philly Joe Jones comes to mind in particular when I think of this:

And I've heard Jeff Hamilton turn this around and come up the drums, playing the grace notes on the bass drum, like so:

Philly Joe and Jeff Hamilton generally play both of these in a closed interpretation, meaning they are playing a true ruff which comes just before the primary note, not in any specific time.  But as we've discussed before on the blog, these rudiments can also be played with an open interpretation wherein the grace notes become measured, and are played on the note prior to the primary note.  So this....

....becomes this:

Putting this open interpretation on the kit gives us something similar, but with a different vibe to it.

If we take this one step further we may be pushing the boundaries of what a ratamacue truly is, as it's now closer to being a double paradiddle, but we can get a whole series of new ideas nonetheless by playing the grace notes (which sort of cease to be grace notes) on the two 8th notes prior to the primary note as opposed to the two 16th notes before it.  I recently saw Edu Ribeiro playing an idea like this, and brighter tempos it sounds very cool.

And finally, with everything now being evenly spaced it frees us up to move the idea more freely throughout the bar.

Here is everything above neatly organized into one sheet.  Drop me an e-mail if you'd like a PDF.

Edu Ribeiro Baião Language

For those of you wanting to dig a little bit deeper into Forró rhythms, here is a sheet I've put together of some Baião language.  I transcribed these particular phrases from some Edu Ribeiro recordings, so they were all played on the drum set, but they very closely, if not identically, emulate rhythms that you will hear played on zabumba in a traditional Forró ensemble.

If you aren't familiar with some of the basics of Baião you may want to check out the post I wrote about it awhile back, but a stock interpretation would look something like this:

The sheet below contains variations, and fills.  None of these are really intended to be looped over and over like a groove.  Rather, they should be peppered in with a basic Baião as the music dictates.  This sheet makes a great supplement to the Baião Builder.  To create a nice little exercise out of this work out a pattern using the Baião Builder that feels good to you.  Then, create a four-bar phrase by playing the pattern for three bars, and adding in each of the new ideas below in the fourth bar.  Then work out another Baião pattern and do the whole thing again.  Or, add the new phrases to measure three to create an AABA sort of feel.  Do bear in mind though that these new ideas are not only limited to fills, or phrase endings.  You should play them anywhere in the music that you feel is appropriate.

Only the bass and rim/snare parts are shown here as they will work with any of the cymbal variations on the Baião Builder.

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.

E-mail me for a PDF

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.