A 'salute' to John Riley for supporting this excellent book nearly 20 years after it was first published, and also to Zildjian for helping in this with these great videos!
Developing comping skills on the snare and bd while maintaining ride pattern and hi-hat consistency seems to really be the very essence of good jazz drumming. This is a fabulous lesson! Thank you so much.
Can you explain how one might approach comping within the A chart, where the melody is being played between the various big band sections where & where the melody will change within any 4-8-16 ect bars!
John, I'm of the opinion that the Charleston rhythm was taken from Afro Cuban rhythms, specifically the Baio samba pattern. What are your thoughts on that? Great video and I love teaching\working out of The Art of Bop and Beyond Bop!
Since you haven't gotten a reply, I thought I'd jump in. On a very, very grand scale you aren't far off. Charleston is descended from blues, etc which came about from European and African traditions merging. The Charleston rhythm is found all over the music of the Americas. It's in the 3 side of the son clave, it's found in the tumbao bass rhythms in son, danzon, and other afro Cuban styles, etc. On the detail level, you're starting from a place of confusion though. Baiao and samba have very different lineages and would likely have not made it to North America in a meaningful way until 20 years after the Charleston became popular. Baiao is even arguably more native america than african. The US had a great love affair with Cuban music in the first half of the 20th century, so cross pollination would have happened. But the Charleston is swung. Most afro Cuban music is not. If you want to get into the weeds, you can. But odds are the Charleston rhythm came to be associated with jazz and proto jazz well before afrocuban music became a factor. It's just a common rhythmic motive that nearly every culture has found independently of each other.
While I entirelly respect John, well, no discussion about that, I have moved away from the idea of locking up my ride cymbal pattern. Obviously for starters, it worth learning to keep the standard ride pattern, (ding, ding-a-ding-a-), but I am in love with how the ride is played by Jack de Johnette, and ultimately Elvin Johnes, demonstrated well by Ian Froman. So, I want to have a free hand to play any variation possible on my ride, dropping or adding the off-beats (skip notes), or the quarter note, moving my accents from 2 and 4 to the off-beats. Elvin Jones accents the last note of the triplet a lot. For that I cannot put my right hand on autopilot, I have to think about it while listening to the other instruments, because I wanna make every variation intentional. Of course, it's the next level, so first it's worth learnning the usual pattern, and as John shows integrate perfectly the other parts of the drumset with it. But I don't want to get too automatised with my ride, because I would have to unlearn that a bit later.
