Here the cymbal is leading everything, and the other voices are following. This is what we’re going to be working on: learning how to break up our ride cymbal, and then learning how to add the voices to it. Eventually this will all be improvised, but in the beginning, just so you can see how it works, we’re going to work with the four written-out lines we have in this lesson. I’m going to be using the first one for most of this general introduction.

y

ã

y

y

3

y‰y y

y

3

y‰yy

y

y

y

y

y

3
y‰y

3

y‰yy

Now, I’ll play the ride cymbal, and then I’m going to add the snare drum to it. The first few times I’ll add the snare drum on the upbeats. Then I’ll play it a couple more times, and I’ll add the snare drum on both notes of the double (the ta-da figure), and then I’ll play a couple of examples where I’m going to mix the single and the double hits. So let’s see what that would sound like.

Chaffee Ex. 5 - CD Track 18

_c.y y _{ã .}

3
y y‰_oey y

3

yy‰_oeyy yyyy

33
y y‰ _oey y‰ _oey y _..

_.y y _.

3
y _oey ‰_oey y

3

y_oey‰_oeyy yyyy

y

ã

3
_oey ‰ _oey

3

_oey‰ _oey y

^..^..”” ”” ”” ””^..

OK, now let’s try the same thing with the bass drum. I’ll play the cymbal line, then do the single hits, the double hits and then the mixed hits.

Chaffee Ex. 6 - CD Track 19

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y y‰yy oe

3 yy‰yy oeoe oe

_c.y y _{ã .}

3

yy‰yy yyyy oe

33
y y‰yy‰yy _{oe oe ..}

_.y y _.

3
y y‰yy
oeoe

3

yy‰yy yyyy oeoe

y

ã

3 y‰ oe

^..^..”” ”” ”” ””^..

Finally let’s take a look at doing the same thing with the hi-hat. With the hi-hat you have two choices, you can either chick it or you can splash it. So, while I’m doing the routine, I’ll give you some examples of both of those.

Chaffee Ex. 7 - CD Track 20

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y y‰yy yy

3 yy‰yy yy y

_c.y y _{ã .}

3

yy‰yy yyyy yy

33
y y‰yy‰yy _{. y yy y .}

_.y y _.

3
y y‰yy
yy

3

yy‰yy yyyy yy

y

ã

3 y‰ y

^..^..’”’ ’’” ’”’ ’’”^..

Now it’s important to understand why we’re doing this. Jazz time is basically built on the upside of the time. The word that’s synonymous with jazz is syncopation. Syncopation means putting stress off the beat; that’s where most of the action is in jazz time. For example, if you took a Real Book, like a Fake Book and you looked at the first ten or twelve blues heads or rhythm changes heads that you saw, you would notice something very interesting: almost all of the fragments that make up the melodies end on upbeats–90% of them or possibly even more. So why do you think they’re all going to upbeats? The reason is: because they’re jazz tunes and that’s where the rhythmic activity is primarily on jazz tunes. Most of the figures that you play are going to be offbeat figures, or they’re going to

be figures that go to offbeat figures. And most of the cadences that you play are going to be going to offbeat figures. So what you’re going to do for this first lesson is take these four simple lines that you see in the book and run these routines with each of the voices separately, snare drum, bass drum and hi-hat. Play all the single hits, then go back through and play all the double hits and then finally mix the hits up. Obviously when you mix the hits up you’re going to have a lot more ways of doing it. So each time it can come out differently. In the next lesson we’ll be talking about how you can do this and improvise the cymbal line at the same time.