"Syncopation" by Ted Reed -Anyone have suggestions on ways to practice?

Lot's of good ideas for the "Syncopation" section already. Some smart mofo's on here :p

With the left hand on the melody, try to incorporate buzz strokes - buzz the long notes, tap the short ones.

Playing different ostinato's with the feet like samba feet. Or Calypso feet (3 side of the clave, 3+3+2, Biayo, etc) 1 +a's, 1e+'s, 1e a's, or solid 16th's for the ride pattern. Same thing w/the buzzs for the these.

With the 3+3+2 bass pattern, you can play both hands on snare 16th's and accent the melody line, either alternating or all with the right hand.


YES! That's wha I'm talkin' 'bout.
 
Good suggestions by Jeffwj...if you want to make your life miserable ;)

Something I've come up with is playing the full-page exercises (starting on pg. 38) with the melody part broken up between two limbs alternating.

For example, you could play:

RH--Jazz ride
LF--2 & 4
LH & RF--Melody

or

RH--Jazz ride
RF--4 on the floor
LH & LF--Melody

It's a great way to get your limbs talking to each other, you can create little dialogues between two voices. And you can break the melody up in different ways. You could just do straight alternation with two limbs or, say, play all the eighth notes in the melody on your snare and play everything on the bass drum


I like this idea!

202020
 
hmm... Lately I've been using it for independence in Latin type grooves. I do quarters with the hi-hat, clave with left hand, bass drum is on the and of 2 and on 4 than I would play the exercises on the ride cymbal/cowbell with my right hand. You can then switch up what kind of clave you play and do it again i.e. 2/3 3/2 rhumba, son etc. Take turns doing the exercises on each limb, while keeping the other limbs in Latin patterns.


*Steal*


2020202020202020
 
Another method is to take the "Syncopation" exercises near the back and play them as accent patterns within a given subdivision.

1. Choose a subdivision (8ths, 16ths, 8th-note triplets) and play the exercise using two distinct levels of sound one for accents (the exercise) and one for all notes filling in between.

2. First with single strokes

3. Expand using compound stickings - for instance: In triplets, all downbeat accents are followed by a double stroke to complete the triplet while all upbeats are preceded by a double. Beats with an accent on the downbeat and upbeat are played with alternating strokes.

This can also be done using the paradiddle series. Downbeats are played with paradiddles, while upbeats are played with inverted paradiddles. A downbeat immediately followed by an upbeat accent is played with single strokes.
 
Take a "thicker" rhythm from the 16ths section, say, 1 e n a 2 n a 3 e n a 4 n a,

and put that on your right hand on a tight hi-hat. Proceed to practice funk by playing the more spaced rhythms (The "Syncopation" part of the book,) on ghosted snare, bass drum, and in cut time along with the 16ths of the right hand. Try playing rhythms alternating between snare and bass, doubling between snare and bass, or placing the beats closer to 2 and 4 on the snare and accented.

Then move onto the second hi-hat rhythm.

Quite a chore.
 
I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but I'm doing some of the dawson-style exercises to get more out of the book with my teacher in efforts to deepen my understanding and facility with jazz drumming, and I'm getting completely destroyed.

On something really easy even - playing the exercises on pages 34-45 (or 33-44 on older versions apparently) with swung eighths. I could do this all day with straight eighths, but for some reason, I'm completely locking up with swung eighths. I thought I had kind of gotten the feel but when I try and read through it becomes a mess or seems like I'm leaning more towards texas shuffle or sixteenth note interpretations (eg, swung eighth coming out more like the last sixteenth). I've tried singing some of these but I can't seem to make it happen when in time, and when there are patterns with kick on the beat and snare on the offbeat, I fall apart when trying to sing it.

Saddest of all, it's not like I'm coming at this as someone who's never listened to jazz or is uninterested -- it's practically all I listen to these days, which is why this is more embarrassing and painful to admit. I feel like I'm way, way overthinking this and giving myself a mental block... but was just curious if anyone had any suggestions? When I try and think of this as first or last notes of a triplet, I seem to lock up completely.

Thanks for any advice... I've got a couple weeks till my next lesson, thankfully, but I'm struggling with this really badly on day #2 with some heavy practice time, so I'm worried I'm not going to make much headway.
 
... it would appear the answer to the question was, as usual, using a metronome and counting, as well as taking some time without the metronome to sing it slowly and then bring it up to speed. Looks like it's just something that will take time.
 
... it would appear the answer to the question was, as usual, using a metronome and counting, as well as taking some time without the metronome to sing it slowly and then bring it up to speed. Looks like it's just something that will take time.

Yeah, just count the triplets, do it slow enough and you'll get the swing feel down.
 
I just found this buried in my first snare drum case. I paid $2.50 for it back in 1976. My teacher at the time had me doing a swing feel on top and his writing is still there. He has passed away but he was a great man and teacher. His name was Frank Shooshan. I can't believe I actually got through this book! I just tried the first page using only bass, snare, hi-hat and ride and I am stumbling all over again :)
 
I used to do a 6-stroke roll exercise using various parts of *Syncopation*. It's immediately clear which exercises will and will not work. I might say that the way I learned a six-stroke roll was with each strike getting the same amount of time, two triplets up against eachother, unlike some rudiment drummers who treat it more like a 5-stroke roll (at least from the way I hear them)

Take the entire sequence (RLLRRL) to be one beat, then
  • an eighth note gets RLL
  • a quarter note gets RLLRRL
  • a dotted quarter note gets RLLRRLRRL
  • a half note gets RLLRRLRRLRLL
On all of these the next strike is R and I leave it out.

Get out your Ted Reed and go to town!
 
An exercise I enjoy with this book along with Stick Control and Mondern Reading Text in 4/4 is to take 2 lines next to each other, and play the top line with my hands in unison, and the second line in unison with my feet. While doing this I am only playing the snare line and I ignore the bass drum line. Then switch so the top line is with my right side in unison, and the bottom line with my left side in unison. And then again with right hand\ left foot with the top line and left hand\right foot with the bottom line. Then the same again switching everything around. When you get this down, play the top line and bottom lines against each other.
 
i think it's fun to make grooves out of the rhythms.
take two bars, think about it as one bar with swung sixteenth notes und play it like a halftime shuffle and smoe fills or solo ideas. it's really fun to play and it is a good exercise for playing forms and it's improving creativity.
 
Recently I have been using it alongside stick control. Take an exercise from stick control and play it with your hands, whilst playing beats 2 & 4 with left foot on the hats, and playing rhythms from syncopation on the bass drum. So far I am just working through the first page of stick control using this idea, whilst with the bass drum I am playing rhythms from syncopation set 1. It's a really good independence exercise and the results often sound very musical too. There is also lots of room to expand this idea - playing different rhythms on the hats, different accenting possibilities, etc.
 
Syncopation Exercises phrasing the melodies

Melody = Syncopation exercises

Jazz
1. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LF – 2, 4
LH – Melody

2. RH – Jazz Ride
LH – Cross-stick on beat 4
LF – 2, 4
RF – Melody

3. RH – Jazz Ride
LF - 2, 4
LH – Short notes (8th notes)
RF – Long notes (quarter notes or longer)

4. RH – Jazz Ride
LF – 2, 4
RF – Melody
LH – Triplet partials not used in melody

5. RH – Jazz Ride
LF - 2, 4
LH – Melody
RF – Triplet partials not used in melody

6. RH – Jazz Ride
RF, LF – Alternate Melody
LH – Triplet partials not used in melody

7. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LH – Short Notes
LF – Long Notes

8. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LH – Cross-stick on 2, 4
LF – Melody

9. RH, RF – Melody
LF – 2, 4
LH – Triplet partials not used in Melody

10. RH - Jazz Ride
LH - Quarter Note Triplets
LF - 2,4
RF - Melody

11. RH - Jazz Ride
LH - Melody
LF - 2,4
RF - Quarter Note Triplets

From about #4 down should keep me busy for a while.
 
A local Maine drum legend named Dick Demers created a few hundred different variations based on Syncopation, mostly original, but some not. He compiled them into a book called "No End to Control." You can contact him through email:

[email protected]

One of my favorites is using a 5/4 bass drum/hihat pattern with a 4/4 jazz ride pattern, two and four backbeats and sing the syncopated line.
 
A local Maine drum legend named Dick Demers created a few hundred different variations based on Syncopation, mostly original, but some not. He compiled them into a book called "No End to Control." You can contact him through email:

[email protected]

One of my favorites is using a 5/4 bass drum/hihat pattern with a 4/4 jazz ride pattern, two and four backbeats and sing the syncopated line.

I have something very similar. Did this guy you're referring to go to North Texas? My teacher, Randy Drake, went to UNT, and gave me a copy called, "Melodic Line Coordination" or something like that. And yeah, it's like really really really intense, long and challenging.

I've gone through some of it, but after a few pages I sorta of got the big picture, and ever since I started to customize my own exercises to fit the musical situations I was encountering.

For the Syncopation solos in the middle of the book. (I think there are 8.) Here are a few core concepts:

-Straight or Swung 8ths

-Hand ostinatos (8ths, 16ths, jazz ride, triplets, any combination)

-Adding feet ositnatos (jazz feet, samba feet, tumbao feet, baiyao, etc)

-Melodic line assigning (any limb)

-Stylizing (buzz's, accents, rimshots, orchestrations, etc)

-a more advanced concept is filling in notes between the melodic line. So if you play the melodic line in swung 8ths on your kick drum, you fill in every triplet snare between.

The amount of variation is staggering! The more you practice this stuff, the easier it gets though, and the more coordinated you become.
 
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