Pete Riley - Technical Difficulties - Adding interesting phrasings to your swing solo - Issue 298

Jazz drummers are often afforded the opportunity to solo, perhaps trading 4s (four-bar phrases) with the band or sometimes soloing over the form of the piece. Either situation can expose a drummer who’s less experienced at soloing or is less comfortable soloing in a ‘swung’ eighth or eighth-note triplet subdivision.
Here, we’ll continue this Beats Working’s jazz drumming theme by addressing this with some swing solo vocabulary.
When we first begin playing fills or attempting to solo, it’s often based around the use of single strokes, usually 16th notes, perhaps starting on the snare and then moving down the toms. On a jazz drummer’s four-piece kit, this immediately presents an issue as the one-up, one-down tom configuration doesn’t really lend itself to this – but also the way that single strokes move hand to hand in triplets can make moving around the kit a challenge.
Jazz drummers avoid this issue in several different ways: by using stickings, perhaps allowing only the right hand to move around the kit, incorporating the bass drum into phrases or by adding rests to break up the time and the constant flow of notes.... [continues in the magazine]


To read the rest of the details of this lesson check out Issue 298 (available from January 2021) of Rhythm Magazine.
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