if I just said Ruben I want you to create something beautiful do whatever you want what's the first thing your brain does when I say just do whatever you want the way that we can get better and becoming a better soloist is a way that you can think about it is how do i deepen my story-telling capacity invite more people in to maybe go to different places and also be more available to if I'm going down this road I want to go down this road instead you know have the ability to choose which kind of narrative [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] what an intense track that is awesome and thank you so much for sharing that with us that was a track called pulsar by an artist named chase bird I'm sorry that's fine he's an incredible sax player oh yeah and man before we get into this lesson Steve Lyman ladies and gentlemen where can people reach you if they want to check out more of your stuff you know you can find me on instagram at Steve Lyman drums it looks like Steve's lead man drums I hate that but yet Steve linemen drums I'll have a Facebook page that I check every once in awhile you can also find me my website steel and drums calm but my Instagram is probably the quickest way to get a hold of me thank you so much man cool so we have a killer lesson for you guys today this is called the jazz drumming solo formula and but before we get into that I'd love to hear you play us a solo min and just give us a little bit of taste of some soloing first and then give us the formula okay cool [Music] [Music] thank you ah man very nice thank you phone thank you so diving into the jazz drumming formula how do you approach this thing what is this formula what do people get out of it like can you use this in all different styles of music man share your approach you know it's a thank-you for first off it's just a huge honor to be here on drum yo so thanks to you thanks to Jared Dave and everyone here behind the scenes it's it's real privilege so I think you know it's really good to parse things out if I just if I just said Reuben I want you to create something beautiful do whatever you want what's the first thing your brain does when I say just do whatever you want if I'm behind a drum kit it can be I don't know it could be anything that's true you know maybe not there are the drumsticks right at yeah yeah that would be fine I guess no but what what it's really coming at the idea that limitation actually helps us expand compositionally and and and as players and also as thinkers so the way that we can get better at becoming a better soloist is a way that you can think about it is how do i deepen my story-telling capacity right so the more the more tools that I have to build more meaningful story I'm gonna have a capacity to invite more people in to maybe go to different places and also be more available to if I'm going down this road I want to go down this road instead you know have the ability to choose which kind of narrative so a way that I'm trying to talk about this is the rudiments are really great we all need to have the skills we need to have our hands together we need to have technique but ultimately rudiments are just like there just their tools we need to understand maybe how do we have a deeper backdrop so that the tools that we have can create a more meaningful story so what I have or basically four mechanisms the first one is let's really deepen our melodic plank so melodic moving forward really playing a melody will go deeper into that room the second will be rhythmic okay we're gonna really only focus on building deep and meaningful rhythmic connections that challenge us and and move us forward and hopefully draw people in the third will be textural so creating soundscapes that create a visualization that we're trying to go for and then the fourth is what I call harmonic or vertical so harmonic is you know although all the previous realms are something like this but the drums we can also do this at the same or three notes or four notes play it at the same time vertically and so that can be in the independence realm or like if I was a pianist that would be like a like a chord right so I can use that to help framework my playing as well so I can pick one of those four topics and I can intertwine them as I want and hopefully that's gonna make me a better story tale a teller yeah absolutely let's get started on the melody okay cool so I got this concept it's called the the no BS game that I got from my teacher re Hoenig who's really the master of playing melodies on the drums so for those who don't know that don't know re or this kind of way of playing it's you actually have a melodic instrument in front of you and you can get really deep with that so these are four drums but I actually if I want to go a step further I actually have a whole octave of whole piano so [Music] right so I can actually have really selective notes and I can be very mindful of what notes that I want to choose to play melody so I'm going to play a blues melody a jazz blues melody called straight no chaser and maybe before I play it I'll sing it so you can get a sense of it so it goes like this a 1 2 3 boo boo boo boo boo boo 3 4 but uh but dooba dooba dooba so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna mimic that melody as best as I can and the bass drum too is also part of that mulatto component and I'll keep two and four on the high hat [Music] so the melody that I'm playing is I'm trying to nail that melody in terms of the pitch of the melody not just the rhythms but also the pitch of of the drums to match that melody and what's tricky about that is this kind of goes counter to the way that we practice rudiments so most of the time we practice rudiments and it's it's a good way to do it but we practiced this you know like root paradiddle we get really good at playing rudiments so that when I have to play on the drums I don't have to think about it and if I don't know what to play I can go like at this point that's not like super hard for me right and so I'm my hands I'm sorry my brain is following my hands right there but when we practice playing melodically my hands have to follow my brain or my ears and so what happens to play melodically I'm gonna come up with different stick patterns and orientations that I'm not not really used to so I have to be really on my best guard so what then is gonna happen is if I can play the melody you should by then maybe hear the form of the song and if you can hear the form of the song what I'm gonna do is that I'm gonna take a solo where I'm only gonna play what my ears tell me to play and if I do my job right you'll hear the form even though I'm not playing the millet anymore does that make sense yeah so I'm gonna play the melody one maybe just once more and then I'm gonna play a solo for a couple of choruses and hopefully you'll be able to hear it three along [Music] so the idea is whenever I find myself playing a rudimental idea to not do it so whenever I move through any of these four quadrants so milk melodic rhythmic textural or or harmonic I'm gonna really honor that so I'm gonna try and do that again and watch how is that I don't really try to navigate the route of rudimental realm kind of hard because you're you you're playing stuff that you're not used to but could you sort of hear the melody when I was playing that absolutely cool so this is a little bit more of like the coming from the bebop era developing jazz music so if you're gonna do this kind of concept thinking of the melodies how would you approach that in more of the modern setting like the Jack you played in the opening like a modern jazz setting so like melodic in the modern jazz setting because of the same concept basically yeah I think so I mean so in the modern jazz setting so like I'm in a band with Chase and we're playing some pretty intense music sometimes what can be helpful is to so maybe another so we have these four categories so maybe another sort of subcategory we could maybe have density versus sparseness and when I'm really sparse I'm really meaningful so on that one clip I was playing in like 13 and so I'm gonna be really dense and then to get a different sense I'm going to be really sparse and maybe a melodic means back to my usual I know two rudiments that's one of them no the sixth overall so what I was doing is I was playing maybe over a complex form but I was really trying to be mindful of one note at a time what am i hearing versus like I don't know what else to play some make sense absolutely yeah so for someone to practice this they should check out some jazz tracks learn the melodies they can do that same exercise with any any melody basically absolutely so a couple masters of the melodic way of playing jazz or Frankie Dunlop of felonious monk he was kind of a master of that oh man there's so there's so many modern-day masters of melodic interpretation already also Matt Wilson Carl Allen the list goes on so well send me a message and I'll give you all the completed list but to also check out the course that we just filmed some listening recommendations as well if you have any questions I'd love to move on to it the rhythmic brush so we just covered melodies yeah and you also use rhythms as another totally block or formula piece yeah and it's not you know and this is this is not something new you know like from classical music you know Mozart was the the incredible melodic writer and Beethoven was really struggling at that and was more of the rhythmic ground Beethoven's not really known for his melodies he's really known for his driving rhythms but I mean if you say you know you can't really say one's better than the other they're both incredibly meaningful so the rhythmic realm is when I really honor one specific rhythm over a form and treat it as an idea in the same way that I treat them a lot of melodic idea with focus and and seriousness I'm gonna treat a melody in a in a in a in a really clear way as kind of a creative gesture that I really want to explore and if I do it right I can find new ways of interpreting it and also draw people in so one thing that we could just do is this idea of groupings of five it's this sticking it's like a paradiddle diddle so a paradiddle diddle take that sticking through a few different subdivisions over a basic tempo in orchestrated and around the drums and see what I come up with [Music] different subdivisions that gives completely different emotive qualities how I place them in different subdivisions and how I also play them and orchestrate them around the drums how I mix how I go from different subdivisions with that one basic idea and learned that be fluid with them is a really cool process in developing your own fluidity with those rhythms so using fives right there so with rhythms one of my one of my teachers in New York a guy named Jim black a master avant-garde jazz drummer basically says that everything can be broken into twos and threes so fives I have two groupings of I have two or three or three two I have three groupings of seven I have five groupings of nine etc etc so one way that you can get better at understanding five sevens and nines or with the 2:3 concept is so I'm gonna have my hi-hat and snare that's gonna be two this is gonna be three two three and five it let's say I'm in 4/4 let's say I'm in 4/4 and I have I want to use groupings of five mix-and-match 5s and 7s in 4 and I'm treating these as templates for creative ideas and maybe what I'll do to further illustrate this I'll be in four-bar phrases so you can hear that I'm honoring 4 bars using these odd structures [Music] so what I'm getting from this one it's kind of like the counter to the first exercise the first one you're being disciplined about keeping these melodic ideas and staying away from rudiments but this one you are playing patterns and I think as long as you do have the understanding of melody then you won't sound boring when you are playing your patterns yeah there's nothing exactly there's nothing wrong with patterns you could think of the melody as like as a living breathing thing and then when I'm when I'm practicing this way I'm treating the 5s and 7s in that context as living breathing things I'm treating them not just something to play but I'm wondering how can i how can I see them as clearly in as many different ways as possible so you in one way you have to focus really strictly in that if you want to go deeper but notice I'm really focusing on that alone does that make sense absolutely yeah learn your melodies then you can use your rudiments and patterns to your advantage if you're thinking musically yeah and then as we'll talk about later we can combine the two and when I have melodic ideas with maybe a deeper sense of rhythm then I can come up with some really cool interesting territories cool let's move on to your next point on texture so texture yes so maybe a good example to check too is also Dave Kings lesson when he was here talking about sound but texture is the the quality of creating an atmosphere of the drum so I have these really cool drums and I have these really cool cymbals so I'm not a great masters of this is Marcus Gilmore one of the great jazz drummers alive right now and he's able to create story musical drama to creating different musical textures my friend Gilad hexyl and the great guitarist I asked him what's it like when you play with with Marcus and you know as as amazing as Marcus's rhythmically what it feels like from from Galatz perspective is it just feels like air it feels like this quality of being able to breathe and so the textural realm is really important so I'm just gonna play some time and really focus on the textural realm and hopefully I come across in some way [Music] [Music] filling I'm maybe sewing to some degree but I'm thinking more in terms of shapes as the language of expression but and also the dynamic range and also the spectral range so big open sound really short staccato sounds the difference between those two is gonna give me as a player I'm gonna have more depth to my playing and I'm also going to be able to to draw more people you can take what you worked on before like a pattern or something but it's Jake changing the surface and maybe making use of staccato and long sounds will change up that idea even more even though it's the same sticking it's like yeah you can broaden your solo playing even more you know another way of thinking it too and that's what was really helpful for me so I am kind of an on top player and I play kind of from up here right so my sound of the kid is more from the sticks up so like a high from the high point of the drums or air the air of the cymbals and you know the the fast-moving nature of the top but what I'm not always good at is the low part of the drums the frequency of the low bottom big spectrum so one thing that's really good for me from the textural perspective is when I notice my ideas are up top are really moving quick I can use the bottom end of the spectrum as storytelling devices to to help make my playing a little bit more fuller so [Music] two notes played at the same time are helping this high register texture have a little bit more depth does that make sense yeah cool so you're really like on the topic of storytelling that's what you know basically we're focusing on here and these things kind of like allow you to like playing really quiet or playing loud or something like that's like different parts of your story you want to build up the intensity and bring it down and helps to really keep it interesting totally yeah it helps keep it interesting and it helps to ground me as a player and keep it interesting interesting for me as well awesome yeah your last tip here on harmonic playing so this is kind of a deep one so harmonic what I mean by harmonic is vertical so you know the way you can think about it a pianist has the melodic notes moving forward in time this way but also has the ability to play chords so a chord is two or more notes played at the same time what we have you know like two notes so what we can do like what would my playing so the opposite of a vertical would be linear so linear is when no two notes are played at the same time three Enda [Music] all melodic it's not it's not vertical so what what happened it by playing I'm gonna start ideas where it's either a double stop two two or more notes play the same time triple or quadruple and I'm gonna end a phrase but the same thing watch what happens to my ideas and my playing overall [Music] it's kind of like this like it's I don't want to be linear my hands are trying to reject it really helps for me to have that kind of way of playing because it grounds me and it keeps me focused on the time so if someone was just starting out and they were just like how can I build my solo playing I don't know too much like how could they maybe take these ideas and like condense into something simple like a simple starting place what would that be all four of them together either that or one of these you know just the one we just worked on or yeah so melodically be able to sing any song like be able to sing a song and it doesn't have to be a hard song like just if you can sing any song and then find a way to play it on the drums in time that's half the battle right there because you're gonna learn language that you didn't have before rhythm what I would do is I would find a certain pattern that challenges you so pick one pattern whatever it is and maybe find out what does that pattern look like in different subdivisions and we can I can talk and give a deeper example of how to get deeper into rhythm if you want in a second but maybe this that's a little more advanced than this texture just explore concepts explore polarity so polarity is two opposites so what it's the highest high in your drumset and what's the lowest low so for instance this is the what's the highest high it's probably this and the based or this and the bass drum you know find different frequencies that make a different quality for you and then vertical structures I'll give you something that's really simple so like play just to get a sense of it play a paradiddle this is kind of an easier exercise have your have so anytime you're working with an independence exercise I kind of think of it as a science experiment so as any science experiment happens you have a constant and a variable so this is gonna be my constant my hands and let's say my bass drum is playing quarter note that will be a constant so what would it sound like or I'll have this be the quarter note what would happen if my bass drum played all the sixteenth note partials so it's vertical because my bass drum is always playing with my hands does that make sense and I did help you get started down that rabble so did you have any more things to elaborate on or did you want a tile of this points one thing that can really help help you to deepen your rhythmic process is to and to really understand them / form is to sing a rhythm over that form so the people that I that I look up to and I considered having really great sense of time they practice time away from the instrument so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna sing Straight No Chaser and I'm gonna play a few different rhythms and what you're gonna notice is it's actually kind of hard but what happens is this becomes this is where you want your time to be it's not the drums if the drums ultimately is an extension of what we are as timekeepers so I'm gonna play these rhythms straight no chaser dotted quarter half note triplet fives and eighth notes swung eighth notes and then fives and eighth note triplets okay here I go one two one two three but I do [Music] [Music] now nicely because a dotted quarter resolves at the end of that phrase the next one half note triplet I have to insert the the one triplet to the trip of two in between the melody so this is kind of a sneaky thing okay now the next one will be groupings of fives over that melody and it's not going to resolve but what you're gonna find is you're gonna be able to hold the form and the rhythm on a deeper level by singing it one two [Music] [Music] does that make sense yeah and then we're working on the half note triplets really great because the one trip led fives and eighth note triplets this is the last crazy math thing I'll give you but it's the opposite it's the one the let of one triplet two triplet the let of three and then the trip of four so it goes one let trip triplets into fives two three four but dupa dupa dupa but doopa doopa doopa doopa buh doo buh doo buh doo buh doo [Music] buh doo buh doo buh doo buh buh doo doo doo buh doo buh doo doo ba doo does that make sense that's some like brain twisting stuff man it is but you know the thing is though that's what that's what you need because so what happens oftentimes that's actually the most important thing because what happens is you develop all this language solon solo and let's say you then I don't know where I'm at so the thing is time if times here I don't I can start and stop any phrase that I want whenever three [Music] dependent on phrases starting on a downbeat to keep my place and practicing melodies that way in rhythms and melodies that way is critical man that's just so useful for like every like it just gives you so much more Headroom more headspace you want to say when you are playing so like you said if something if you make a mistake or something you know you don't have to be thinking as hard and using like every bit of your energy to try to keep like yeah everything going so and you also feel like it more room to breathe to play ideas you're not limited to these little phrases if I have more room to breathe I can create larger phrases and I couldn't I can start and stop whenever I want awesome so putting all of these things together now okay I'll give it my best [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you so much for everything man for the soloing everything if you guys want to see more of Steve make sure you visit Dromio com if you're an edge remember you'll already get access to a stuff we film some awesome courses and are going to be filming some more awesome courses on beginner jazz playing and independence course also course on must know jazz standards that's all coming out and thanks again man thank you we'll catch you guys later would you like to play us out with another solo sure okay I'm gonna leave the room first and then I'll leave you to tell us another story okay [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music]
