Jazz & Blues

Learn to comp rhythms on the upbeats against a basic 1/4 note time feel on the cymbals.

Today we will be playing rhythms that are mixed, meaning there will be notes on the beat AND off the beat. The coordination needed is a little more intense since some of the notes will be played together with the cymbals and others won't. This will give you greater independence between the cymbals and the drums with a basic 1/4 note time feel on the cymbals.

"Shuffle" rhythm and the technique you need to get the right sound and feel.

Swing is the foundation of jazz music. It is the time keeping pattern that jazz drummers play on the Ride Cymbal.

In this lesson you will learn how to play some simple jazz fills. They will be triplets on the Snare Drum, while keeping time with your left foot on the Hi-Hat pedal. This will help you to smoothly jump into a fill and then back to your time-keeping on the cymbals. A must for any beginner learning to play jazz on the drums.

Learn various 1/4 note rhythms to play on the drums while maintaining a swing feel on the cymbals.

In today's lesson, we will be comping off-beat rhythms. Since swing is played in a triplet subdivision, this means the notes will always occur when you count "let". Comping off-beat rhythms is extremely important to master in jazz music.

Learn how to play swing in 3/4 time with some basic comping rhythms.

Learn a series of rhythms that you can practice as solo figures. You will learn how to play them and how to play a short solo with them.

Jazz is one of the few genres where a drummer gets to play a drum solo. To feel confident when soloing, you need a vocabulary of rhythms.

Learn the basics of playing 3-beat figures on the Ride Cymbal. These are repeating rhythmic figures that are 3 beats long. In 4/4 time, this creates a feeling of going "over the bar-line", because the figures don't always resolve on beat 1. The result is that the time you play on the cymbals is a little less obvious but a whole lot more interesting.

The foundation of our time-keeping is the swing pattern on the Ride Cymbal. This is a very repetitive pattern however. Using 3-beat figures you can open up your cymbal phrasing and give it a more melodic quality.