Open Handed Jazz Drummers?

Jarobi

Member
Hi! During the last month all my practice time has been left lead improvement.

My schedule includes swing coordination from The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley.

Anyway, I have a bad habbit to loose the interest and it keeps the motivation up to see other drummers execute it. Especially the masters.

So do you got some tips of drummers with videos who play alot of swing based jazz open handed?
 
Don't forget Simon Phillips.
 
Lenny White and Billy Cobham, if you can find video of them playing bebop that way. There's a Portland drummer who plays that way and is good.

It's kind of a pointless exercise in jazz drumming especially. The whole reason for doing it is so you can hit the tom toms while you play the hihat, but jazz drumsets are usually small enough that you can do that anyway, if there's ever a time that it's appropriate (usually it isn't). Good jazz drummers typically spend a lot of time developing their cymbal technique, and don't just randomly move the cymbal rhythm to another limb. There's several decades worth of stuff to work on in jazz I personally would be prioritizing ahead of this.
 
Lenny White and Billy Cobham, if you can find video of them playing bebop that way. There's a Portland drummer who plays that way and is good.

It's kind of a pointless exercise in jazz drumming especially. The whole reason for doing it is so you can hit the tom toms while you play the hihat, but jazz drumsets are usually small enough that you can do that anyway, if there's ever a time that it's appropriate (usually it isn't). Good jazz drummers typically spend a lot of time developing their cymbal technique, and don't just randomly move the cymbal rhythm to another limb. There's several decades worth of stuff to work on in jazz I personally would be prioritizing ahead of this.

I agree to the extent if you want to be a professional open handed jazz drummer. That's not my purpose though.

For example 1 of the greats Aaron Spears got so much ambidexterity that he can lead and land on the one with both hands.

The aspiration is to expand the vocabulary through uncomfortable exercises so I can express the musical ideas I want. And it's feels fresh n fun to play like a child again.
 
I agree to the extent if you want to be a professional open handed jazz drummer. That's not my purpose though.

For example 1 of the greats Aaron Spears got so much ambidexterity that he can lead and land on the one with both hands.

The aspiration is to expand the vocabulary through uncomfortable exercises so I can express the musical ideas I want. And it's feels fresh n fun to play like a child again.

I get that. But now you know why you don't see many videos of masters playing that way.
 
I saw lenny white with mike Stern at Montreux jazz festival last month. Lenny is a lefty playing righty setup. Definitely an open handed player. Since I'm a lefty and setup, was weird watching him play with the ride on his left with the hats. Incredible player...

Hi! During the last month all my practice time has been left lead improvement.

My schedule includes swing coordination from The Art of Bop Drumming by John Riley.

Anyway, I have a bad habbit to loose the interest and it keeps the motivation up to see other drummers execute it. Especially the masters.

So do you got some tips of drummers with videos who play alot of swing based jazz open handed?
 
I get that. But now you know why you don't see many videos of masters playing that way.

Of Course! I don't want to start an debacle with you!

During the last 3 month of practicing all the inversions of all the paradiddles left handed in unison with the kick in unison and HH both in 16th n triplets has improved my vocabulary already. ¨

I get your point obviously but now I got a epiphany of Lenny White for example which keeps me motivated to keep on practicing. That's the point. I'm a lazy MF with a passion for pracicing for musically development, and will never stagnate so why not?
 
Another open handed player I haven't seem mentioned yet is Rayford Griffin. I saw him with Jean Luc Ponty a number of years ago. Great player.
 
Check out Daniel Humair. He plays a left-handed set open-handed. Outstanding player. There's a clip of him playing uptempo bop on this site that is so amazing that they actually show it in slow-mo so you can see what he's doing.
 
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