Great Lesson on Keeping Time

victor wooten is my hero!

that stuff he was doing with displacing the metronome click a 16th note at a time and treating it as a polyrhythm is really challenging! that's something i've never thought of or tried.
 
Nice find! I'm really working hard on my timekeeping right now so this is perfect.

I saw Victor play some months ago at William Paterson University. He was amazing!
 
Very useful vid. Vic Wooten has a cool name.
 
Oops, I fell into the technique section! Anyhow, whist I'm here, gotta say, that's a cool video right there. I used to play exactly that evolving time game with my classical percussion teacher, many (ahem) years ago. Never thought of it since then, but what a cool self discipline piece of fun. Even better we used to do that without a metronome. We'd play a straight 4/4 pattern, then revolve the accent on the 1, 2, 3, then 4. Once that was in the bag, we'd move to the more simple odd sig's (3/4, 5/4, 7/8). I never got beyond that before I left school & she passed away. God bless you Jean!
 
I don't think I totally understand the video and how to apply to drums.
 
nocTurnal said:
I don't think I totally understand the video and how to apply to drums.
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Watch each exercise and imagine that the bass line he plays to demonstrate can be replaced with a drum pattern. Keep it simple at first, 16th note single strokes, and don't think of starting on exercise 3!
Transcribing can help - seeing on paper where the notes should land in relation to the click helps understanding.
 
Great clip, I like it when he says: If your like me, you will rush the fills.

How many times have I heard that? Well never but I get his point.

I didnt realize he was with Bela Fleck now. I think his brother is the drummer.
 
aaajn said:
Great clip, I like it when he says: If your like me, you will rush the fills.

How many times have I heard that? Well never but I get his point.

I didnt realize he was with Bela Fleck now. I think his brother is the drummer.
Click to expand...

he has been with the Flecktones since 1990

and yes Futureman is his brother
 
i showed this stuff to my drum teacher last week and he was moderately interested. he said victor wooten actually plays shifted accents like that in his music so it makes sense for him to practice it.

he suggested i try setting my metronome so it plays 4 bars of quarter note clicks and then 4 bars of silence. this week i've been working on playing various grooves to that setting. as you might imagine, it's tricky to hold a groove in perfect time and land exactly on the "one" when he metronome kicks in again. i'm getting better at it though!
 
dairyairman said:
i showed this stuff to my drum teacher last week and he was moderately interested. he said victor wooten actually plays shifted accents like that in his music so it makes sense for him to practice it.

he suggested i try setting my metronome so it plays 4 bars of quarter note clicks and then 4 bars of silence. this week i've been working on playing various grooves to that setting. as you might imagine, it's tricky to hold a groove in perfect time and land exactly on the "one" when he metronome kicks in again. i'm getting better at it though!
Click to expand...


Only moderately interested? Learning to play patterns to an off-beat click extremely effective in developing the inner clock. It should always be highly recommended.
 
jonescrusher said:
Only moderately interested? Learning to play patterns to an off-beat click extremely effective in developing the inner clock. It should always be highly recommended.
Click to expand...

he thought it was interesting, but he wasn't as excited about it as i was. he thought i should be spending my time with that other exercise i was talking about. i guess he thinks i need a more "back to basics" approach to developing timing.
 
Maybe he thought it was a bit advanced. But even the first few exercises are great.

I'm a bassist first, drummer second so I'm very familiar with Wooten. But I haven't seen this vid before.

Very cool.

Davo
 
Great vid. We did a variation of that technique in marching where we would "dut" the subdivisions vocally. Absolutely critical to ensure precise attacks across the line. It's good to be reminded of these things and apply them in different ways.
 
My Roland metronome (TD12) goes down to 20 bpm. So i've tried the Wooton exercise but dropped the tempo down to 20 bpm. Boy it's tough but a great exercise.

Davo
 
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