Tag: tempo

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Thomas Pridgen!

The Mars Volta’s Bedlam in Goliath has some excellent drumming.  Thomas Pridgen lays it down on this album.  Every track has some really great licks and grooves, but  I was especially blown away by the drum fills from the beginning of “Wax Simulacra.”

I searched the internet for a long time to see if anyone had transcribed the fills and I couldn’t find one.  Either there were drum covers on YouTube that were adding their own fills on top of the original or they were only close to playing the actual fills but it wasn’t entirely accurate.

So after all of my searching I decided I needed to figure it out, so I slowed it down and transcribed it!  I think I’m pretty accurate on the rhythms and the orchestration of the fills.

This transcription is definitely a good exercise for moving around the kit, playing linear patterns, playing at a fast tempo, and inverted paradiddles/alternating between inverts and singles.  Plus there is some pretty awesome stuff in here to keep in your arsenal.

(Sorry about that big gap, I couldn’t export the image without the rest of the page.)

Here is a link to the PDF

Enjoy!  Feel free to drop a line if you have any questions.

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More Art Blakey!

Here is another transcription from the Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album.  It has some more Blakey licks that are very similar to the last one, but are still great.

Click here for a recording of the song.

Click here for a PDF of the transcription.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the comment box or send me an e-mail at apfranceschi@gmail.net.

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Ali Jackson with Wynton Marsallis

I have gotten a majority of the jazz I have from the library at school.  They have a pretty large section with tons of CDs to choose from.  I picked up a Wynton Marsalis album in a huge stack of CDs and this was another great find.

Not only is the whole album a good listen but the drummer Ali Jackson is excellent.  Here a transcription of the intro to the track “Skipping” which has some awesome syncopated licks and some cool hi-hat work. Enjoy!


Click Here for a PDF of the transcription

Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the comment box or send me an e-mail at apfranceschi@gmail.net.

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Art Blakey with the Jazz Messengers

Art Blakey was a hard bop drummer who was most famous for his work in the Jazz Messengers.  Blakey played with several big names in the jazz scene, most notably Horace Silver who was a co-leader in the Jazz Messengers for the first year of the group.

I was looking around the SJSU Library when I came across some Horace Silver albums in the jazz section of CD’s. I picked up Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers because of the awesome cover and gave it a listen.

This is where I first discovered Art Blakey.  Right off the bat I enjoyed how interactive Blakey was with the rest of the band and I really liked his solos.

Here is a solo from the song Room 608.  It is a 32 bar solo which has a bunch of standard jazz drumming licks which can be a good addition to anyone’s vocabulary.  It may not be a complicated solo, but the tempo that it is played at makes it pretty challenging to sound good.  Blakey definitley takes something which is simple on paper and makes it complex with his phrasing and tempo.

Here is a link to a recording on the song

Keep in mind that the stickings are just suggestions there is no right or wrong way to play this transcription.

Click here for a PDF of the solo

Feel free to leave any comments or questions you have in the comment box or send me an e-mail at apfranceschi@gmail.net.