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3 weeks ago, I finally fell into the Jesus Molina vortex. I’d managed to resist the gravitational pull of Night in Tunisia in 11 for the better part of a year, but this past month, it got me. It’s not the “drum part” - most anybody with decent coordination and time could learn that in a few minutes, even if they’d have to play it slowly.
It’s Roni Kaspi. (To whom, in case you’re wondering, I’ve made invitations to come on the podcast, and I’m hoping we make it happen.)
Like Marcus Gilmore, Steve Lyman, Yogev, Nate Wood, Guiliana, Ofri Nehemaya, Arthur Hnatek and many good drummers of this generation, Roni plays over the 11 with total freedom. Unmoored by barlines. (Yogev, in his recent podcast interview, characterizes it perfectly as being like driving down an avenue where all the traffic lights are green, and registering going through the intersections but not needing to stop.)
Then I tried it, and I could not do it, without “boxed-in”, restrictive phrases that would keep coming back to the 1. And cue rage montage. Cue “whiplash”/hands bleeding practice montage. Gawd it pissed me off. And as many of you well know, “f@#$ it makes me mad that I can’t do that” ego rage is the font of many a day of motivated practice, and many a video.
So I decided to “donate my body to science” - to use my process learning Night in 11 as a generator for insights about anything that could short-cut learning odd meters. And, miracle-of-miracles, some non-obvious insights did drop out.
Four of them, to be exact.
And these insights don’t just apply to 11. You can use them to shorten the learning curve for any odd meter. In this video, we get into them, with a little context, and (hopefully) some fun.
Hope you enjoy.