Adding to our already-voluminous background for playing an Afro feel, or any 6/8 or 12/8 feel. Here we’re phrasing in 3/2 and 12/8 at the same time, using a common cymbal pattern. It’s easier to […]
Category: 12/8
Groove o’ the day: Lex Humphries afro 6
Hm, Lex Humphries has been coming up a lot lately. I heard this tune played on KMHD, Portland’s jazz radio station: Taboo, played by Duke Pearson on his Blue Note album Profile. I should think about […]
Transcription: Tony Williams – Time of the Barracudas
From the Miles Davis album Quiet Nights, with conducted and arranged by Gil Evans. The tune is a Miles/Gil classic, and appears as a bonus track on the 1997 reissue of this album. The version […]
Afro 12/8 – funk – updated
This page is an update of something I wrote in the wilds of 2013— a page of bass drum variations for a funk-feel Afro-Cuban 12/8, with a backbeat on 3. I had a student play […]
Todd’s methods: Gospel 6
Get me. Here’s a practice method for people who have bought my new print book Syncopation in 3/4. It’s closely related to my standard Reed 2/2 funk method, except here we’ll be doing a slow […]
Practice loop: Lopsy Lu – complete form
This replaces my earlier practice loop sampled from Stanley Clarke’s Lopsy Lu— this one has the whole form of the tune. Nice to actually know how to play it, just in case you ever play […]
6/8 rhythmic literacy – 01
This has been a lurking annoyance for me for a long time: students don’t know how to read basic rhythms in 6/8… any of the */8 meters. It looks weird and is often explained poorly, […]
Triplets vs. not-triplets
This is a pretty fine point of theory, but it comes up a lot on this site, so I want to state my thinking about it, so I can link to it every time it […]
Page o’ coordination: Midnight Special shuffle
Page o’ coordination based on the Midnight Special shuffle groove as played by Grady Tate and Donald Bailey with Jimmy Smith. We’re using two different cymbal rhythms, and the snare drum part varies, but the […]
Page o’ coordination: Jabo shuffle
If you watched that video of Jabo Starks playing with John Scofield et al, you’ll notice that he does some hip stuff on the bell of the cymbal behind the trombone during the bridge between […]