There’s a very common interpretation used with Ted Reed’s Syncopation: the right hand plays the melody line, swinging the 8th notes, and the left hand fills out the triplets— hopefully everyone has heard of that […]
Category: Todd’s Methods
Todd’s methods: Tiki’s 32nds
This is a little loosy-goosy method I improvised yesterday afternoon while practicing along with Maggot Brain, by Funkadelic. There are several medium-tempo, 16th note-based grooves on the record, and the drummer, Tiki Fulwood, tends to […]
Half-time feel rock using Syncopation
Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed’s Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we play quarter notes on the hihat, and […]
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 […]
Developing Elvin’s Afro-Waltz, part 2
I’ve been doing a lot of this sort of thing in my own practicing lately- practicing snare drum variations vs. a cymbal/hihat/bass drum ostinato, via Dahlgren & Fine, and my own materials. Ralph Humphrey’s Even […]
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 […]
Todd’s methods: triplet funk with Reed, pt. 2
In case you were playing through part 1 and wondering what the big deal is, here’s the actual thing. It looks complicated because there’s a lot of ink on the page, but each step of […]
Todd’s methods: triplet funk with Reed
I guess it’s going to be nothing but Todd’s-this/Todd’s-that this week. Fine. This is preparation for an old thing of mine I was just working through with a returning student, and I realized I had […]
Todd’s waltz
Or, the presumptuously-named Todd’s waltz, as I call it. I’m not attempting to claim the radical innovation of adding a hihat on the & of 3, it’s just how I often play a waltz, and […]
Basic solo vocabulary with Syncopation
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything downloadable of my own, and you don’t want to hear me prattle on about cymbals and crap, so here’s a basic solo vocabulary builder I’ve been working […]