Understanding the Three Camps Transcription

Hello all,

I'm having trouble getting my head around Charley Wilcoxon's Three Camps transcription. I've been playing this for a while, and thought I had it down, but I recently sat down to work through it slowly with a metronome to work on my doubles technique, and had trouble squaring it with how I thought it was supposed to sound.

I thought it had a triplet feel: DAH dugga dugga DAH dugga dugga DAH dugga dugga dugga dugga dugga DAH dugga DAG dugga dugga DAH etc.

However, on page 44 of CW's Modern Rudimental Swing Solos for the Advanced Drummer, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Unfortunately, I can't find an online transcription to show people, but it is written as follows:

EDIT: Transcription found, see link at end.

Beat 1 is a crotchet, two and three are 32nds accenting on a 16th, and beat for is 32nds as an 11-tuplet, with the accent on eleven over the barline. Assuming everyone understands me so far, this doesn't seem to produce the triplet feel. Do you know what I mean? Anyone that has the book, please take a look on page 44. Set the metronome to 60, and the feel is different.

What am I missing?


Furthermore, can anyone help me square the eleven stroke roll as written with the timing? How do you count it? It takes up almost the entire of beat 4 (bar 1), but not quite. With a metronome at 60, I can't seem to start on beat 4 and end with the accent on beat 1 as written. Also, bar 2 seems to not contain enough beats.

As you can see, I'm struggling to get my head around the transcription of this piece. Please note that these aren't performance or technique questions about the double stroke roll.

I look forward to hearing some input, thanks.

EDIT: Here we go: http://www.scribd.com/doc/48160282/...n-rudimental-swing-solos-for-advanced-drummer Navigate to p.44

I thought I should explain a little more what the problem was. Under the triplet feel, the rolls are broken down as the accent one beat 1 of a triplet, with the "trip-let" beats played as doubles:

ONE - trip - let - TWO - trip - let - THREE - trip - let

However, the way it's written in Wilcoxon, the first beat is an entire beat, a crotchet (quater note for the yanks), with the 5-stroke starting on beat two, two 32nds on each hand (rrll), with an 8th note accent starting on the "and" of each beat:

Crotchet - rrll R - llrr L -

Counted as: "ONE-e-and-a-", "two-e-AND", "three-e-AND" where "two-e" and "three-e" are doubled and played as 32nds. This is not the triplet feel shown above. In the triplet feel, the roll starts before the beat. As written, the roll starts on the beat.

I see what you mean. Bar one and bar two are not the same though. Bar one starts with a crotchet and bar two starts with a semi quaver yet the rest of bar two is the same as bar one so the amount of beats written do not add up if they are played as straight semi quavers and demisemiquavers. I'm not sure it should be played as triplets though.

The first bar however works if beat four is played as 5 semi quavers (but each stroke doubled)

But the second bar does not work if the first stroke is only the length of a semi quaver. I'm guessing both bars should look the same.

It will be interesting to see what others make of it.

It's good to see I'm not just unable to read it. I'm sure bar two doesn't add up.

I don't know if that is just part of the old-fashioned notation system kind of sucking, or if it's one of the many typos/mistakes in the new Wilcoxon editions. It has a triplet foundation all the way through. The accents should fall on: 1-2-3--|1-2-3--|1-2-3-4|1-2-3-- on the first and second camps. The additional accent on the second c. lands on the last note of the triplet. The accents at the beginning of the third camp land on 1 and 3, plus the LET of 2 and 4.

I wrote a post on it a while back that may be helpful- at least there's a link to a pdf of the piece written out in modern notation.

Hi The 3 camps is a series of plain triplets with accents. The non accented beats are doubled. So then it consists of 3 types of rolls from the 26 standard American drum rudiments which are the 5 stroke roll (R llrrL rrll etc) the 11 stroke roll (llrrllrrllR etc) and the ten stroke roll (llrrllrrL R) it should be noted that all even rolls end with 2 single strokes.

To then break it down it triplets the 1st camp would be:

4/4 R l r L r l R l r l r l - R l r L r l R l r l r l - R l r L r l R l r L r l - R l r L r l R l r l r l =

Then look at the bars and a pattern emerges in that there are only 2 different bars used 1 has accents on counts 1,2 and 3 but not 4 and the other has accents on all counts that is 1,2,3,and 4.

The 1st camp pattern is then 2 X 3 accent bars a 4 accent bar then a 3 accent bar.

If this makes sense I will elaborate on the other 2 camps.


Cheers