– Most drummers, including
myself, have worked so hard at building their limb independence. And while that is extremely important and absolutely necessary, it's also important for us to
work on our limb dependence. And that can often mean the
difference between you sounding more modern or you
sounding more traditional. In this lesson I'm gonna
break down the difference between the two, traditional
versus modern comping for drums. (jazz drum set playing in 4/4 swing time ) So in this lesson where I'm
gonna break down traditional versus modern comping for drums, I'm gonna compare and contrast the two. And first I wanna start with traditional, the traditional approach to
comping in a jazz context. (Demonstration of
traditional jazz comping) So as you can hear my ride
cymbal isn't really changing. Right? At least that's the goal. Maybe it is changing, I just
don't know it. (chuckles) But the idea is that no matter
what I play in my left hand and my right foot, for my comping, it doesn't affect or
take away from the groove that I'm hopefully
establishing in my ride cymbal.
This is traditional. More of a traditional
approach to comping in jazz. Kind of cemented by the
wonderful and important drummer, Kenny Klook. Clarke. So if you can't do this, you have no business trying anything else. This is where you have to start. At different tempos. You gotta be able to make it
feel good at different tempos without changing the ride cymbal. Because this skill of
being able to not have your ride cymbal effected by your comping, it's a skill, it's a independent
skill that is kind of, it crosses styles, it's
not just usable in jazz. It's any style, anything
you play on the drum set involves some kind of independence. So you wanna spend a
lot, a lot, a lot of time working on that. I've made some videos, I
think my most recent one was "Independence," I
talk about, you know, building and working on your independence using the syncopation book by Ted Reed.
So I spent a lot of time
working out of that book and it just kinda frees
you up so that you're not, you know, you don't have to
worry about what you're playing in the ride cymbal and it being changed by what you're comping. So again, I'm just gonna
play a little bit more in that style, and it doesn't, you know, it also doesn't mean that you
can't change your ride cymbal. So now I'll do it two times. I'll do it one way where I'm
not changing my ride cymbal, then I'll do it another way where I am changing my ride cymbal.
Two, a-one, two, three, four. Now I'm changing it. See, I'm changing it a little bit more? So this kind of will lead us
into more of a modern approach. And I say modern, we'll get into exactly what I'm talking about when I say that. Hey, by the way, thank you
so much for stopping by and checking out this lesson. If you're enjoying it,
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and leave some comments. I love hearing from you, and
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subscribed to my channel, why not? A lot of drummers have found
my lessons really helpful and I'm confident you will too. So please consider subscribing. All right, back to the lesson. Okay, so I'm just gonna quickly talk about some of the things that I associate with more of a traditional approach to comping that will differ from the
modern approach to comping that we'll get into later.
So one is something I've
already talked about, limb independence, which is
something you have to work on. You gotta spend time working
on your limb independence in different ways. Check out a video, a lesson I
did, I'll put the link there, on independence. I think it was my last
lesson on independence, where I break down, how I
work on and apply independence to the Ted Reed syncopation book. It's a great way to work
on your independence. Another thing I associate
with traditional, with more of a traditional
approach to comping is, you know, when you're
playing the ride cymbal beat, when you're just, you're playing time and
you're not changing it, it creates a groove. It creates more of a clear
and super easy to follow and hear and notice
groove on the ride cymbal that's consistent. So I think of it as more
of a groovy approach.
Not saying that you can't groove
when you're playing modern, but this is a very direct
way of establishing a groove. Another thing that I associate
with more of a traditional approach to comping is, you
are moderately interactive. You can moderately
interact with musicians. What I mean by that is you
are free to some degree in your left hand and
your right foot, right? And even your high hat, you know? You can hear Blakey playing
things with his high hat, that's, you know, more
interactive than just keeping two and four.
So, what I mean is, even if I'm
playing the ride cymbal here and I'm not changing it, if I hear rhythm in the band… (vocalizing) You know I can… And I'm not changing the ride cymbal. You know, so, I'm interacting
with the musicians and with the music freely, but
I'm still keeping that beat and keeping that groove
in the ride cymbals. So that's another thing I associate with more of a traditional
approach to comping. Another thing I associate
with more of a traditional approach to comping, is the language. The notes and the rhythms are not random. And I think that is often a
misconception about comping, is that it's just chatter,
it's just random chatter, just random rhythms. It's not, it's a language. You'll hear the same language,
some of the same phrases and some of the same rhythms
with all the master drummers. You know, Art Blakey or
Art Taylor or Mel Lewis or Kenny Clarke, you'll hear a lot of the
same rhythms and phrases.
So that's how you know,
"Oh, this is a language." It's not just random chatter
as some people call it, or random rhythms, you gotta
study the comping language. Not all rhythm swing, remember that. Not all rhythm swing. So I can go… I hope you didn't like that. I hope you didn't like it too much. Because I was purposely
trying not to play rhythms that felt good, that were idiomatically kind of related to jazz
and associated to jazz. I was purposely playing
things that just didn't really propel the time or the feel. Now I'm gonna do, I'm gonna try to… I'm gonna try to play rhythms
that are more idiomatic to the style and feel good, make the time kind of
move forward so to speak.
So, one, two, three. Right, and some of the rhythms, a lot of times it's about being simple, keeping your ideas simple. Ah, a little triplet action. Uh, uh uh. Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh, uh, uh,
uh, uh, uh, uh, uh-oh, ow. Right, and sometimes when
you sing you're comping notes or you sing your rhythms, it engages you with what you're playing a lot more. You're more invested in it
and you think about it more rather than just playing
randomly and not really knowing what you're playing. When you sing it, you're
gonna really mean it. Hey, that sounds familiar. That sounds familiar. I don't know, I may have
done a lesson on that before. I don't, I'm just throwing it out there.
Okay, so now I'm gonna talk
about some things I associate to more of a modern approach to comping. And the first thing is, I've
already kind of mentioned it, but limb dependence, as
opposed to limb independence. So what the heck do I mean by that? Well, limb dependence is just
kind of the skill that allows your limbs to kinda talk to each other. And I'll just demonstrate
that really quick. So first I'll start
traditional and then you'll see how my hands are starting to interact more and talk, so to speak, with one another.
Here we go. And my ride is not changing, right? Okay, now I'm gonna start to interact, have my hands interact with each other. See? And this is a really… That's a really, really simple
way and good place to start on working on your dependence,
in your limb dependence between your right hand
and your left hand. Just whenever you play a
note in your left hand, double it in your right hand, okay? So an in-between your playing time. You can either just play quarter notes or you can play your ride cymbal beat. So again, I'll do it slower And you can even, like Elvin, Elvin Jones would actually
accent that note sometimes, often actually.
You see how it's starting
to sound a little more, a little more open-ended? But it still has a good
feeling, hopefully. Okay? So that's a very good
place to start to work on your limb dependence, and you can do the same
thing with the bass drum. If you combine them with that Elvin accent… We haven't even added the Elvin triplets, but that's another lesson for another day. Okay, so that kind of leads
us into more of an implied approach to grooving, which is, again, this is more of a modern
approach to playing time where you're not keeping the same thing, you're not repeating the same thing, you're trying to open
up a little bit more, opening it up, but still
trying to retain the feeling of swing, that traditional
swing feeling, right? So it's similar to what I was just doing, but I wanna show you at a different tempo that I can get the same
feeling, but I can open it up at the same time.
So… More of a traditional approach. Now it's gonna open up. Now I'm adding some accents. Right? Some crashes. Right, so you can hear I'm starting to… Not only am I kind of
opening up the rhythm of what I'm doing in the ride cymbal, I'm also opening up how I play the cymbal. Suddenly I'm starting
to use it as, you know, a large crash, so to speak.
And I'm using what we call
a cymbal shank, right? Where I'm shanking… I'm shanking the cymbal right here, to get those notes to kinda
pop or to sound accented. But it's not a full on crash. If I full on crash the
cymbal, then I lose control and I can't continue with my ride beat. So that's another thing that
kind of adds more dimensions to the modern sound, right? And that coupled with what
I'm playing in my bass drum and snare drum, really
opens up a lot of things.
You can actually take your
hand off of the cymbal. Take your hand off the cymbal. You can get away with doing
that because suddenly now we're being more interactive and if that's what the
music calls for, then great, as long as you don't
lose that sense of pulse. So I'll demonstrate that. So that kinda leads us to this last point that differentiates the more traditional approach to comping, to the more modern approach to comping, which is it's a little bit, or a lot a bit more rhythmically adventurous, right? When you think about some
of the modern drummers, modern, I should define that also, but like Tony Williams, Jack
DeJohnette, Joe Chambers, and, you know, someone like Mel Lewis, even though he's more of a
traditional-sounding drummer, he uses more of a modern
approach to comping sometimes.
And this kinda brings me to another point, that it doesn't have to
be either, or, you know. You don't have to be an
either or kind of drummer. This day and age it would
behoove you to be both, to be able to do both, right? You listen to Roy
Haynes, early Roy Haynes, or you listen to early Elvin Jones, and they were playing solid time, not really breaking up the ride cymbal. Then you hear them evolve
and they started opening up a lot more. But they can do that right? This day and age you'll
just work a lot more if you can do both. A lot of the modern
music that you hear now, it thrives off of that more of
a modern approach to comping, so you definitely wanna
get that under your belt. But then there's other times
when you might play with people who play more traditional, right? And if you approach it
with the same mindset as you approach a more modern
gig, modern-sounding gig, you're gonna sound out a place,
it's not gonna work, okay? So you wanna be able to do both and you gotta recognize
when what is called for, when it's best to use this
approach or that approach, even within one song.
You know, you might start up with more of a traditional approach and then it kinda opens up and morphs into more of a modern thing. So as long as you have those skills, you can kinda go anywhere you want. All right, so that is the lesson, traditional versus
modern comping for drums. And again, I wanna stress the
importance of learning more of the traditional approach first and working on your independence, getting really comfortable with that, before progressing to more
of a modern approach, okay? I hope you enjoyed the lesson
and until the next time, practice hard but practice smart. Take care. Bye bye..