Here’s something challenging for you. I’ve been working with left hand variations within the Afro-Cuban 6/8 (or Bembe, Naningo, whatever term you use) in a variety of formats for about the last year– mostly applying […]
Category: exercises
More fun with waltzes
I’ve been using these Elvin’s Afro-Waltz things almost daily in my practicing since I started writing them, and they’re working really great for me, so here’s a new one. This uses the same concept as […]
Cracking 5/4: rock variations
I wasn’t planning on making this part of this series, but it happened to come up. I was prepping for a recording session today which will involve a couple of tunes in 7/4, and I […]
Hemiola applications: funk
Here are some very straightforward funk applications derived from the 3:2 polyrhythm in 4/4 in the hemiola basics post. By isolating each measure, revoicing the parts slightly, and adding obvious things like a downbeat on […]
More Stick Control in 5/4
Another nice addition to your 5/4 practice library: Andrew Hare @ The Melodic Drummer has taken my Stick Control in 5/4 thing a step further, applying an Alan Dawson interpretation to it, filling in the […]
Three Camps: all inversions in one
I was trying to work this up on the fly at the drum set, and it wasn’t happening, and I needed to write it out– so here we are. This is a slightly more practical […]
Hemiola basics
UPDATE: I have since written an updated version of this page. The hemiola— also called the 3:2 polyrhythm– is a basic polyrhythm using layered even two and three note rhythms. What I’ve done here is […]
Inversions of Three Camps
So I have basically a one-track mind. Maybe a two-track mind. Three closely-related tracks. Right now it’s all the Elvin waltz and Three Camps. What we have here is a little thing I improvised while […]
5s around the drums
I’ve enjoying practicing my previous around-the-drums things so much, I thought I’d run it through a few iterations- similar to my multi-page paradiddle exercise– and see what we get. Today it’s 16th note 5s, using […]
Tom moves
This Elvin thing is turning into a real epic– well, a very small epic, maybe, if you think about it- and I still have to complete the transcription. Here are the tom moves I would […]