Ted Reed's Syncopation

Play a 3/4 swing pattern in the right hand and comp with the left hand/bass drum/hi-hat in the following ways:

-all patterns on snare
-all patterns on kick
-all patterns on hi-hat (w/ foot)
-short notes with hi-hat, long with kick
-short notes with snare, long with kick


After you get this down, switch to brushes and play a 3/4 brush pattern while going back through all of the exercises with the feet.

Since the exercises are phrased in 4/4, you'll be playing over the barline so to speak...some really cool phrases come out of reading it this way.

One of my favorite applications is to play the short notes on a tom, long notes on the cymbals w/ kick, and fill in the spaces with a triplet roll. Really applicable in a melodic swing solo.
 
Ted Reed taught Chuck Norris how to play drums.
 
I have learned an incredible amount from studying from "Syncopation", and I wanted to add a new perspective to the conversation here. I have been inspired by the Dawson book to use the melodies of standards as the source of my rhythmic material as opposed to "Syncopation", and I have developed a whole method based on this approach. This method is still very much influenced by "Syncopation", but in my opinion has a number of unique advantages. Here is a link to an example of one of my exercises, check it out.

http://haredrums.blogspot.com/2011/11/papa-jo-2-call-and-response.html
 
I've done tons of independence stuff out of this book like I'm sure many here have also. The downside though is that when swinging the 8ths you'll never play the middle beat of the triplet or any sort of quarter note triplet figure. That's where John Riley's "The Art of Bop Drumming" comes out on top in my opinion.

This may seem sacrilegious, but I'll say it: It's not the book that's great, it's how you manipulate the patterns in it outside of the book's originally intended context that is great, (but as I mentioned falls short in triplet mode for me).

There was a book that came out in 1990 by Brian Alpert and Dave Palamar called "4's: the Complete Guide to Learning Syncopation" that addressed this very issue (that of the middle triplet note)--they included a section in the back which had a supplement of exercises that utilized the middle triplet note, to make up for the lack of such exercises in the original book. Unfortunately, I think this book is out of print--it doesn't even look like Steve Weiss carries it anymore. However, if you can find it, it would be worth picking it up.

Ed Pierce
 
I have ...developed a whole method based on this approach. This method is still very much influenced by "Syncopation", but in my opinion has a number of unique advantages. ...[/URL]

Andrew I'd really like to buy a copy of the book when it is done - is it done?
 
Andrew I'd really like to buy a copy of the book when it is done - is it done?

Thanks Too Many Songs,

I appreciate the support. The book is mostly done, but I still don't have a publisher. Incidentally, if anyone on this forum has any connections in the publishing world any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I will definitely let all of you guys on here know about any developments.
 
One thing that you do is play the basic jazz ride pattern, and play the eighth notes of the snare pattern on the snare, and non eighth notes of the snare patternon the bass drum.
 
Here are some ideas from a previous post of mine on this thread - and this thread.


Jazz
1. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LF – 2, 4
LH – Melody

2. RH – Jazz Ride
LH – Cross-stick on beat 4
LF – 2, 4
RF – Melody

3. RH – Jazz Ride
LF - 2, 4
LH – Short notes (8th notes)
RF – Long notes (quarter notes or longer)

4. RH – Jazz Ride
LF – 2, 4
RF – Melody
LH – Triplet partials not used in melody

5. RH – Jazz Ride
LF - 2, 4
LH – Melody
RF – Triplet partials not used in melody

6. RH – Jazz Ride
RF, LF – Alternate Melody
LH – Triplet partials not used in melody

7. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LH – Short Notes
LF – Long Notes

8. RH – Jazz Ride
RF – Quarter Notes
LH – Cross-stick on 2, 4
LF – Melody

9. RH, RF – Melody
LF – 2, 4
LH – Triplet partials not used in Melody

10. RH - Jazz Ride
LH - Quarter Note Triplets
LF - 2,4
RF - Melody

11. RH - Jazz Ride
LH - Melody
LF - 2,4
RF - Quarter Note Triplets

Jeff
 
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I used two books for every one of my students. I start with Reed's Syncopation and, when they are ready, I bring Funky Primer into the mix.

I go through Syncopation once as it is written. I then introduce cymbal patterns to each exercise.

Another way to utilize the book is to reverse base and snare (in some exercises.)

It's a tremendous basic book that is open to much exploration.

Rock On,

MT
 
One way that I found to use this book that I'm implementing now has to deal with the Moeller stroke. Specifically, the tap-accent idea.

What I do is, with my ride hand, I play time (straight time), and basically play taps in my snare hand, alternating the time made in the ride hand. Then I play accents with the snare hand, in rhythm to Syncopation itself (starting around p38). After the accent, I tend not to play another tap, since that's not what the current exercise is about.

I've found that this helps me a lot when it comes to playing a lot of DnB stuff, and also a lot of the James Brown grooves.

I see doing this in two ways: with the ride hand playing on closed hi-hats, and then the ride hand playing on the ride cymbal, and also keeping time on the hi-hats via the pedal (can do either on the beat or off the beat).
 
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This is still my go-to book for practicing. I use this all the time either as just snare warm-ups, or working on limb independence.

I'll go through an exercise using bass and high hat, then bass and snare, then high hat and snare, then snare and cymbal... and I'll just keep cycling through to use every possible combination of two limbs.

When I was in school, this really helped strengthen my "weaker" limbs, and improved my ability to comp in modern jazz.
 
Something I've learned is that it's also possible to get stuck in a rut just using Syncopation. A lot of other books (Art of Bop, Jazz Drummer's Workshop, etc) define their own Syncopation-like patterns for you to play, and it's worth checking them out for the variety.

Right now I'm using some of the exercises listed in "Baby Steps to Giant Steps", and I was just amazed at how thoroughly they initially threw me off just because my body had memorized large chunks of Syncopation.
 
I remember hearing some years ago that the Exercises 1-8 in Syncopation are based on popular songs of the time of its publication. Now, they are not generally 32 bars long, so I may have this completely wrong but maybe someone else has heard this. I guess, it'd be nice to have those songs playing while working on the exercises. Anybody? :)
 
Not sure about the final word. I do use the syncopated readig pages. Quite often just the first one.

I tend to use other sources for the rest of the stuff.
 
I remember hearing some years ago that the Exercises 1-8 in Syncopation are based on popular songs of the time of its publication. Now, they are not generally 32 bars long, so I may have this completely wrong but maybe someone else has heard this. I guess, it'd be nice to have those songs playing while working on the exercises. Anybody? :)

I've not heard this before, but it is true that many of the exercises in Jim Chapin's 1948 book, Advanced Techniques for the Modern drummer, were based upon popular tunes of the day (Todd Bishop documents them on his excellent blog here: http://www.cruiseshipdrummer.com/2011/07/source-tunes-for-chapin.html).
 
I remember hearing some years ago that the Exercises 1-8 in Syncopation are based on popular songs of the time of its publication. Now, they are not generally 32 bars long, so I may have this completely wrong but maybe someone else has heard this. I guess, it'd be nice to have those songs playing while working on the exercises. Anybody? :)

I can't imagine. If there's any connection to a song, it's so hidden as to be basically meaningless-- and if you play them along with basically any tune they usually fit surprisingly well anyway. Hearing what works and doesn't work when you do that is a better way to learn than just studying one guy's interpretation of a tune.

If anyone's looking for things to do with Syncopation, I've written a couple/few dozen of them at that link-- there are several pages to scroll through there.
 
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