Instructional transcriptions for "Gospel Chops" playing?

feldiefeld

Senior Member
Hi -- so i have a new student who is really into the whole gospel chops way of playing. I am wondering if anyone has thoughts on the best teaching materials that have been published on the topic. My favorite way of approaching something this specific is to dig into a transcription, so if anyone knows of transcriptions that are available (and accurate) that I can purchase to help work with him, I would appreciate your input….

Thanks,
MF
 
Not exactly transcriptions, but Gary Chaffee's Time Functional Patterns include all the linear stuff that can easily be adapted to fills or so.
 
It all seems very Chaffee-- the normal stuff, not the ?-tuplety stuff. I would also look at the stickings volume of Patterns, and his book Odd Time Stickings-- translating stuff in that book into partial measures of 16ths/32nds/triplets in 4/4.
 
Gospel Chops is just a made up phrase to signify a style from a certain area or cultural upbringing. It's like saying a certain banjo player has celtic chops and another has deep south chops and the two should never combine. It's nonsense really, just shorthand. People try to 'own' styles all the time.

If it was like champagne they'd have you in court for playing it!
 
OK, can anybody pin down a good definition for "gospel chops?" To what, exactly, are we referring?

GeeDeeEmm
 
OK, can anybody pin down a good definition for "gospel chops?" To what, exactly, are we referring?

I believe "Gospel Chops" refers to the intense linear fills used in R&B rooted church drumming. The music will often shoot upward in dynamics to the point where it's a maelstrom of overplaying (which roughly equates to the intensity of the religious fervor the audience is experiencing).

To people not in the church audience, it sounds extremely uncanny. Artistically, I equate it to a fireworks finale. It's an attempt to see how far the intensity of a piece can be pushed without succumbing to chaos.
 
http://youtu.be/lbYop7YL6EU

This one is one of my favorites. It works really well and has a clave pattern (right hand is a mambo clave ). It also has a strong backbeat (9th note of pattern is accented left hand : played in 32nd, that makes a nice backbeat).

Lije he explains it, moving the pattern around the kit and adding dynsmics (crescendo and decrescendo here and there) adds a bunch to it.


It fits very well in a lot of types of music because of the clave , linear and backbeat all mixed into one :)
 
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