BOOKs
The Melodic Jazz Drummer
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1796759678
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Peaks:
#16 in Percussion Books
#22 in Jazz Books
#71 in Music Theory Books
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The aim of The Melodic Jazz Drummer is to use the drums to bridge the gap between the rhythm section and the melodic instruments in a seamless fashion.
A lot of teachers and books just give you a bunch of "beats" and "fills" so you end up repeating a static beat and occasionally throwing in a fill. The music kind of just trudges along while you play the beat. When you play a fill, it spikes up in intensity for a brief second before settling back down to where it was. The music never really feels like it goes anywhere on a macro level even though it seems like you're playing everything correctly.
Learning the melody on drums gives you a stronger connection with the melody instruments. It helps you identify which parts ought to be emphasized and which parts ought to be played through. It also gives you content to work with and adds to your bank of melodic phrases.
Not all rhythms carry the same weight and have the same function. Ambient rhythms are relatively unimportant and only serve to push the music along whereas melodic rhythms are actual musical statements that resolve a phrase, fill a gap, or play on top of the melody serving as a counter-melody.
A gear is a distinct level of intensity that's dictated by the density of the music. Shifting up and down in gears gives a song constant movement so it has definitive peaks and valleys.
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This book is more of a way to organize your thoughts when learning a piece as opposed to a bunch of exercises to be played explicitly. After you're done, every note you play will feel like it has a renewed sense of purpose.
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Jazz Drum Solos Vol 1​​
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Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DVF2QDZ6
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Peaks:
#21 in Percussion Songbooks
#23 in Jazz Songbooks
#32 in Percussion Books
​Jazz Drum Solos Vol 1 is a collection of 16 carefully crafted and idiomatic solos over popular jazz standards. It is a valuable study for the aspiring jazz drummer and a delightful read for the working professional. The pieces cover a wide range of styles including swing, bossa nova, afro cuban, second line, post bop, uptempo swing, and brushwork so that you don’t have any missing gaps in your game. They serve to help develop your vocabulary and technique while incorporating the rudiments in realistic situations.
Every solo is distinct and gradually develops over various themes and motifs. The content ranges from concrete statements that directly acknowledge the melody to abstract colors and patterns that add character to your solo.
Before beginning any piece, listen to the atleast the original recording and possibly a few other versions so that you have a reference for how the song goes.
Learn each piece bar by bar, which means to play one bar (and the downbeat of the next bar if there is a note there) and rest for one bar. Really learn that one bar. Repeat it until you can play that 3 times perfectly. Then, move on to the next bar until you’ve completed the entire piece. After that, stitch two bars together (measures 1 and 2, 2 and 3, 3 and 4, etc.) until you’ve completed the entire piece. New problems will arise when you’re trying to connect two measures together and it’s important to sort them out as you go along. Then, stitch together 4 bars, 8 bars, and 16 bars until you can run the entire piece. That way, no stone goes unturned and you can play everything seamlessly and fluidly.
As etudes, they are not intended to be played note for note during your solo in a performance setting. They are more for developing language and ideas as opposed to being played explicitly. With every line or phrase that you play, zoom out and ask yourself, “What is this really?”
It could be accents on the toms while the snare drum fills in the spaces, cymbal colors, a groove where the left hand moves around, phrasing the melody around the drums, or something else. The exact notes become less important when you can see the larger picture.
Then, you can create exercises for yourself that are 4, 8, 16, or 32 measures long. Give yourself parameters like playing time while improvising on the snare drum, playing time while improvising between the snare drum and bass drum, playing time while improvising around the toms with also the snare drum and bass drum, only using cymbals, crashing while filling in the spaces, abstract patterns, etc. That way, you can create your own solos that have similar shapes, but are entirely your own.
They can be played in any order and I hope that you will enjoy this wonderful book of etudes.
Song list: A Night In Tunisia, Blue Bossa, Cherokee, Con Alma, Days Of Wine And Roses, Equinox, Footprints, Four, I'll Remember April, Lazy Bird, Maiden Voyage, Mr. PC, Poinciana, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, There Will Never Be Another You, and When The Saints Go Marching In
