Got any jazz drumming tips?

M

MoreCowbell!!

Junior Member
So, i have just begun playing jazz and i'm just loving it! Anyways i was just wondering, Do you guys have any tips or tricks regarding jazz drumming?
 
Hey, good for you.. I think step one is to accept that you're in for a challenge, but definitely a good one! Start working on your swing feel on the ride at all different tempos -and play just the simple ride swing pattern with the hi hat on 2 and 4 along to as many jazz tunes as possible. Try out exercises for getting your snare and bass drum involved with "comping" (if you dunno what that means look it up on different forums to check it out from different angles) - there are great exercises in Jim Chapin's book (Advanced Techniques for the Modern Drummer), John Riley's book (Art of the Bop Drummer), John Ramsay's book (The Drummer's Vocabulary - teaching's of Alan Dawson) and there are lots of exercises which can be applied to the book Syncopation which you can find in thread on this forum. Get a "Real Book" and start learning tunes on piano (if you can't play any piano, get a teacher or book or some help online).. it's really really important to understand the melody and form of the tunes you'll play and makes you so much more involved in the music and sympathetic to the rest of the band - it's much more fun and musical when you begin to really understand what's going on with the harmony around you. Once you've got the melody together, try some of the advice for soloing given in John Ramsay's book! If you can, get a good teacher!

Ask anyone and everyone for advice..... start checking out local jazz jam sessions if you have any nearby.

Probably most importantly... just listen to loads and loads of jazz and immerce yourself in the genre, if you're into it already then you'll probably find you get more and more into it until the point you live and breathe it!

I'm personally still in the stage of asking anyone and everyone for advice - the people on this forum are really really helpful so over to them for any further info. All the best :)
 
MoreCowbell!! said:
So, i have just begun playing jazz and i'm just loving it! Anyways i was just wondering, Do you guys have any tips or tricks regarding jazz drumming?
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There are so many things that are called jazz these days that it's hard to know what jazz means anymore. Do you mean bebop? Fusion? Smooth jazz? What kind of jazz are you refering to?
 
I would find a jazz specific instructor, one that leans that way.
 
One thing to work on is keeping your ride, hihat, and snare at the same volume and tapping the bass drum at a much softer volume level, of course playing the bass only on 1,2,3,4.
 
As with learning any genre, listen to several tons of jazz, for a long time.

For something specific, check out Ian Froman's video lessons on youtube. There are 5 short vids. They are simple but enlightening lessons.
 
as i hard rock drummer i've always found jazz to be challenging. i've been really working on it lately and making some solid progress. here are some things i've learned.

in jazz, the emphasis is on the ride cymbal and hats. the snare is mostly for light "comping" (accompanyment). and the bass drum is played lightly except for accents. the toms are played very differently than with rock music. don't hit them hard at all and don't be afraid to play cool sounding rudimental things on them. rudiments are a big part of jazz playing.

you need to be able to play with brushes, which is an art unto itself. i'd offer some advice but frankly i suck with brushes.

play lightly and think about feel and touch. those are the most important things.

when someone else is playing a solo, play lightly and compliment what they're playing but don't draw attention to what you're doing. you'll get your chance to solo later.

think about the structure of the tune while playing. most jazz tunes start out with a basic melody called the "head". as the song progresses everyone usually takes turns soloing, but while they're soloing they're essentially playing variations on the head melody. you need to think about the melody too while accompanying and soloing. (my drum teacher taught me that!)
 
I like Antonio Sanchez's idea of musical "accents" - try have an authentic accent when speaking a foreign language; try to have a rock accent when playing rock, a jazz accent when playing jazz...... etc.

This may sound either slightly bizarre at first, or blindingly obvious - but for instance, try not to really punctuate the 1 and 3 on the ride as you might do in rock... you know,
spang, spangalang, spangalang etc., rather than SPANG, spangaLANG, spangaLANG.
Or playing an accented snare stroke on 2 and 4 every single bar when playing bop... you get the idea.

That concept has really helped me sound more authentic when branching into different genres.
 
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The incorrect ride cymbal accent you describe is accenting 1 and 3, which I agree is a bad idea. Pushing the quarter note (i.e. 1, 2, 3 and 4) and keeping the skip beat quieter is a VERY common approach to the ride cymbal. More contemporary players - like Ian Froman mentioned above, Bill Stewart, etc. - use a lot of strong quarters in their ride cymbal patterns. It anchors the band and reflects what the bass player is usually doing, which is its primary purpose, afterall.

My advice to the OP - listen, listen, listen and listen to some more jazz. Go see as much live jazz as you can get yourself to. Find yourself a jazz-centric instructor to introduce you to fundamental techniques and concepts. And try to hear the music from the bottom up - the bass line is your new personal God.
 
aydee said:
Stare at your ride cymbal for a couple of years.
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ROFL....but in any joke there is a grain of truth...I could play technique, but I had no idea of why jazzdrummers are combing that way...when I played jazz, as a beginner, I was bored of myself having no ideas....and so I practised like this, and I still do once a while: I popped in a CD (those days a wax), sat on my set with headphones on, place my hands to where they belong, but I do not play anything. I just close my eyes and listen, imagining I was the drummer playing, ..this helped me a lot.
 
Get a MBA from a big university or marry a woman with a fantastic career.
 
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Stay the course and don't get discouraged..I won't tell you the long list of technical stuff to do to get better and improve as plenty of other fine folks on here will surely tell you...I'll just say to stick with it as I have and to work and hard study but try to go to the best guys you can..I am still taking lessons at 43 and this last year, my playing has changed dramatically..If I hadn't hung in there I would never have gotten this far and I see some great days/yrs of improvement ahead..I started as a Rock drummer, I pretty bad one at that..Now, I play for a living different types of gigs including Jazz gigs and I sound like and a Jazz Drummer when I play Jazz...It took a long time and a lot of hard work and I ain't done yet...Shit! I feel like I'm just getting started...Enjoy...
 
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I've also had a rock background and just starting out with playing jazz in a band rather than just play along with jazz records or occasionally touch on the fringe of the genre as I did in the past. The biggest difference I see so far, apart from volume, is that jazz asks for more nimbleness with accents than rock does.

Lucky for me, the other musos come from a folk and/or blues background - no serious jazzers - and we're playing simple music with lots of Nina Simone numbers. It's still a learning curve but a fun one. Brushes are great. I love being able to practice at home without annoying neighbours. I use a stomp box instead of a bass drum, both at home and otherwise, so I don't have to worry about volume. It's not suited to fancy playing but great to lug. I keep it at a very low volume so it's often more of a presence at the bottom end than overtly in the mix.

What I'm finding hardest is controlling the left hand brush sweep while adding right hand accents. I've looked at quite a few videos and have improved since I started a couple of months ago, so I guess the problem will get sorted out with more practice. At present I feel most comfortable just aiming to keep clean time and to use space to advantage, just with the occasional kick.
 
Great for you, jazz playing is not only challengin, but also smooth and very, very fun. A good tip is getting the Ted Reed's Syncopation, and start to play the melodies in the snare. In John Ramsay's book, there are 40 ways of applying that set of exercises to jazz drumming.

For brushes playing, I find very hard to read the brush notation, so I got the Clayton Cameron DVD, which is great.
 
Wow, if you're just beginning I would suggest picking a genre or drummer to emulate. There's just too much to try and learn it all at once. Roach's loose phrasing, to Weckl's fusion, to Williams technique and ability to come into and out of polyrhythms that don't neatly go full circle and resolve themselves on 1. There's just too much, but you can't go wrong with starting with the be-bop era drummers. Some I'm sure disagree, but if you can play the basics of be-bop, you should be able to play something for almost everything because of the strong "jazz" feel.. Listen, Listen, Listen and the Listen some more.
 
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