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Many of us get our start playing jazz in school band, at pick-up gigs or jam sessions, or even in community theater. That’s great, because you can experience playing a big range of styles and eras. It’s not-so-great because the specialty techniques necessary to play jazz drums can take a decade or more to develop.
Among other things, I’m speaking about the fast ride cymbal beat.
Which leads to an experience I’m sure is familiar to anyone just cutting their teeth playing jazz drums: you’re a year or two in, and somebody hands you a chart with up-tempo swing.
Or calls Cherokee or My Shining Hour at a jam session.
Easy enough for a horn player - they can pull the horn out of their mouth and take a couple of bars off even now and then.
Or even the bassist. They can play quarters.
But you, behind the drums, are supposed to make your ride cymbal sing like Tony Williams or Philly Joe.
(New rule: if you call anything over 250 bpm you need to explain the mechanics of the ride cymbal?)
In reality, though, what are you supposed to do?
If you’re anything like I was, you default to playing kind of a polka, with quarters on the ride, 2 and 4 on the hats, and not much else.
The eventual way out of this conundrum, of course, is learning to play the ride cymbal on the “spangalang”, and getting your time perception fine enough that you can “comp” without disrupting things.
But in the (many) intervening years, you still need something to do in these situations, right?
That’s why, today, I’m sharing 5 hacks to play better up-tempo jazz beats without the hands of a Tony Williams or an Art Taylor.
(Well, four of them.)
From borrowing “up tempo beats” from the likes of Clarence Penn and Brian Blade, to “counting it in” like Tony or Max, these tips will help you fake it till you make it.
(Then we’ll delve briefly into some things you can practice on the ride cymbal in the interim.)
Enjoy this one!
