# Progressive/jazz drum theory



## devwil (Jan 24, 2015)

Hey everyone,

I'm primarily a guitarist, but I love programming the drums for my music and think it's such a vital part of bringing guitar-based music to life.

As such, I'd like to get better at it. More precisely, I'd like to get better at _thinking about it_. Right now, beyond a basic understanding of general rhythmic concepts, I do it almost entirely based on feel (or, frankly, basically copying Meshuggah).

Are there any books or articles you can recommend that talk about the thought process behind writing interesting, effective drum parts? Surely someone like Sean Reinert doesn't just sit down at a kit and go by his gut (or, if he does, he's working from some really sophisticated, internalized ideas about approaching the kit within a broader composition).

I get the impression that there's mountains upon mountains of information about melodic and harmonic considerations, but far less about rhythmic and specifically percussive ideas within progressive music and jazz. Maybe it's just because I know how to look for the former, though, so I'm happy to be surprised.

Thanks!


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## AugmentedFourth (Jan 24, 2015)

I don't have terribly much to contribute here, because the way I write a lot of my drum parts is by listening to some guys like this, and then playing songs in my head and seeing how creative of lines I can put over them.

That said, I kind of touched on drum ideas in this post I made.


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## tom_8s (Jan 25, 2015)

When it comes to writing parts, a lot of it stems from the interaction between the drummer and bassist (or at least it does in my band!) and implying some melodic ideas drawn from the lead instrument.

When I first started playing jazz properly I listened to guys like Jimmy Cobb (Check out Miles Davis' Kind Of Blue as the 'seminal album'!) and, more recently, Peter Erskine. Both players know how to craft a fitting drum part that maintains plenty of interest for the listener. Definitely dig into some older Blue Note stuff and listen to a bit of the interplay between the drums and the rest of the band; it's not flashy or complex most of the time, but it IS interesting and fitting.

If you want to get your head around some rhythmic studies (this is good for guitar, too) check out Ted Reed's Syncopation... book. It's all single-line rhythmic studies that you can apply to any instrument (if you wish).

Hope this helps a bit,


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## Aion (Jan 25, 2015)

The internet seems to have swallowed up a post I tried to make earlier, but here's the short version.

Neil Peart and Mike Portnoy have some instructional DVDs about how they write for drums, those might be useful. I've seen bits from them and like them, but I have not watched any of them in full and have no concrete suggestions.

Listen to how drums and different parts of the kit interact with other instruments (including vocals). Listen to how different parts of the kit interact with each other. Basically you only need to think in a few categories.

Kick
Snare
Toms
HH Foot/Closed Hit
HH Open Hit
Crash Cymbals
Splash Cymbals
Ride Cymbals
China Cynmbals

Also listen for how multiple of the same type of piece get used together. For example, toms can be used to add some unpitched but still melodic elements to a drum part. Different crash cymbals add different textures.

Also work on your rhythm, developing your rhythm is the best way to be able to understand drums better. This thread http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/mu...iques/286784-timing-counting-rhythm-help.html talks about different strategies from a few posters (myself included) all of which could potentially be helpfu.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 26, 2015)

I'm not a drummer, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

With drums, you want to think of groove first. It's more important to do something simple that works than to try to invent something new with each measure. Find a rhythm that you can repeat ad infinitum, then take it from there. As guitarists, we think more linearly and more about "what comes next," because we have to take harmonic considerations into account, but percussion music is cyclical. More than that, percussion music is responsorial. It depends on repetition (both within a single part and involving multiple parts), interlocking parts, and strategically placed unisons.

A simple, groove-based piece.

Edgard Varèse - Ionisation


A more complex groove-based piece.

Gérard Grisey - Tempus ex machina




Note how much of the music is composed of a gesture that spins its way around the entire ensemble, picking up momentum with each response. There are also sections that rely heavily on groove. This is music for a percussion ensemble, mind you, and not "drums in a band" music. However, it allows us to isolate some concepts that are central to percussive writing.

Here's a group that I like. The drummer is the principle composer, so it's interesting to hear how everything is written around the drums.

Magma - Theusz Hamtaahk


At 4:33, they kick into a groove that has a lot of little shared rhythmic nexi. The keyboard and the female vocal are doing one rhythm the entire time, and the drums occasionally hit the same rhythm. The male vocal, bass, and guitar are on another rhythm, and the drums occasionally hits their rhythm as well.

At 5:43, they're just groovin', adding tiny things and small variations as they continue, but maintaining the groove the entire time. It's very cyclical. I particularly like the flam at 8:07; it changes the feel of the texture, but the groove itself is still there. The groove, as a band-wide thing, continues straight to 9:12, but then they start developing on top of that same single groove up to 17:25. (My favorite addition is 10:35-11:58; "doop, doop, doop, doop...") Check out how everyone locks in with the hi-hat at 19:35. And 35:37 is just insanity.  Throughout this entire thing, the drums aren't doing anything flashy, just holding down the rhythm and putting things on interesting places in the measure. So much of the music is repeated patterns with more repeated patterns layered on top, even in the vocal, keyboard, and guitar parts.

A lot of this stuff is pattern-based, so you should look into learning the patterns. I think you could get a lot of mileage out of the following:

http://www.pas.org/pdf/rudiment.pdf

Vic Firth Education

Afro-Latin Rhythm Dictionary: A Complete Dictionary for All Musicians: Thomas A. Brown, Thomas, Ph.D. Brown: 0038081011158: Amazon.com: Books


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## AugmentedFourth (Jan 26, 2015)

Mr. Big Noodles said:


> More than that, percussion music is responsorial.



I'm curious what you mean by this.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jan 26, 2015)

Truthfully, I don't quite know what I meant; I wrote that post extremely late at night/very early in the morning. I think it had something to do with the hocketing that is discussed in the Norm Bergeron article in the Vic Firth link. I was also thinking of the way that the instruments in the Grisey piece trade off in an imitative manner, but that probably doesn't apply to what most people think of drum kit writing. I suppose that you could do a rhythmic tradeoff between guitar and kit, get a sort of rhythmic counterpoint going. Once again, I am not a drummer, so this might be terrible advice.


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## TimothyLeary (Jan 28, 2015)

In addition to the great jazz drummers you may check this as well: Amazon.com: Gavin Harrison Rhythmic Visions & Horizons DVD: Gavin Harrison: Movies & TV

Not for beginners, but he plays very clean and has some great ideas to be applied in progressive music.


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## vansinn (Jan 28, 2015)

I don't know of drumming/percussion books, except an excellent one Steve McLaughlin wrote about an Indian system for percussion notation. Check Amazon.


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## TimothyLeary (Jan 28, 2015)

vansinn said:


> I don't know of drumming/percussion books, except an excellent one Steve McLaughlin wrote about an Indian system for percussion notation. Check Amazon.



You mean John Mclaughlin? He has a dvd about konokol. Amazon.com: John McLaughlin: The Gateway to Rhythm: John McLaughlin, S. Ganesh Vinayakram: Movies & TV


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## vansinn (Feb 2, 2015)

Yep, that's the one (though I thought he also wrote a book)..

Hehe.. and I have no clue as to who Steve McLaughling would be..


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## toothbrush (Feb 5, 2015)

TimothyLeary said:


> In addition to the great jazz drummers you may check this as well: Amazon.com: Gavin Harrison Rhythmic Visions & Horizons DVD: Gavin Harrison: Movies & TV
> 
> Not for beginners, but he plays very clean and has some great ideas to be applied in progressive music.



Absolutely, agreed 100%. Thanks for suggesting this. Gavin's instructional work is some of the best out there regarding ideas and creativity. He's amazing


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## devwil (Feb 5, 2015)

(Thanks, everyone! I've been busy and not really able to dig into what everyone so kindly offered, but I appreciate the responses and will get to these things ASAP.)


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## ipguitar (Feb 13, 2015)

I'm not a professional drummer, definitely an amatuer because my primary is guitar, but i play drums decently. anyways while you are right in sayinh that most drummer approach their set with a repertoire of rudiments, licks and styles, I personally compose off of feel while either programming or playing. I say to build your repertoire continually seek out rhythms think of them in an abstract way and apply it across the entire set.


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