the new beats of d&b

7/21/2019 The New Beats of D&B

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Drum n Bass Notation

Drum notation has become much more consistent over the past few years,largely because of computer programs. But it is still far from being standardized.

In some areas of this book, a particular notation scheme (developed specificallyfor DnB beats) appears. For the basics of music notation, or to learn about thestandardized world of music notation (a full explanation of stems, rests, repeats,etc), check out any basics of music book.Music notation is merely a means to an end. In most places, I have notated therhythms in a manner that I feel will convey the message to the reader mosteasily. As a professor of mine once said, as he held up a jazz band chart, “This isnot music. What is music is whatever comes out of your instrument.”Here is the legend:

And here are examples of new notations you will find in various places in thisbook:



What is Drum n Bass Drumming?

An acoustic style that mimics an electronic style.A live style that mimics a pre-recorded style. Ahuman style that mimics a machine-driven style.

Most electronica (electronic music, DnB, techno, jungle, etc.) is created bypeople who have little to no knowledge of the principles of music theory, and donot play an instrument. For these people, the programmers, the computer is theinstrument by which they make music. So, for the most part, drummers do notcreate the drumbeats found in electronica.The exciting thing about this is that if you analyse electronica beats, you will find

a whole new vocabulary of beats never played before; they just didn’t exist. Andthis is the biggest reason that I can find for why this style is not based onconventional drumset rudiments – the programmers that created the beats didn’tknow about them.One advantage that programmers have over many drummers is that they havethe opportunity to really analyse the beats they create. They have both a strongvisual and auditory connection with the beats they create; they can hear and seethem. This gives programmers a higher level of understanding of what makes acertain beat tick. It also gives programmers a particular advantage compared todrummers who do not read music. That is, if you have a graphic conception of a

beat, you have an opportunity to really be objective in answering questions like,“Why does this beat feel unbalanced?” or “How can I make this beat moresymmetrical?”.

A source of new sounds for the acoustic drum-set.

A programmer can create infinitely more sounds on a computer than he or shecan on a drum-set. So, in order to bring the conventional drumset up to speedwith electronica, a lot of new products have been introduced lately: small snares,special effects cymbals, and a lot of toys. By all means, go nuts! But think aboutthese two issues before you buy:

1 How many different sounds can I pull from this single piece of equipment?2 Can I use it for other styles of music I play?



A balance between independence andinterdependence.

Drum n’ bass beats display independence in that the musical ideas played by

each limb are not necessarily related. When you hear a DnB song, your ear mayoften latch on to just one (of many) repeating lines. In this way, much of what theaudience hears in DnB is horizontal. Programmers are able to create electronicain a similar horizontal fashion – they will continually stack layer upon layer ofbeats as the song progresses. The music is continually flowing, and the groove isnever interrupted. And incidentally, these layers can appear at very differenttempos – synthesized strings at 40 bpm, a bass line at 80 bpm, a melody line at160 bpm, a barely audible click at 320 bpm.Likewise, there are four different layers in a DnB drumbeat. These layers will bereferred to throughout the book.

Drum n’ bass beats display interdependence in that, in order to handle the fast

tempos of electronica music, your body must be comfortable with new verticalcombinations of limbs. Another way that programmers create electronica songs isto take vertical (cross-sectional) chunks of a different song and paste them backtogether in different ways. For example, if you label each vertical chunk of a beat,a programmer could easily take this beat".

"and change it around to this beat"



"or this beat:

Some of the more advanced beats in this book have different limbs playingdifferent tempos at the same time. In order to pull this off, your limbs need todepend on each other like never before. Plus, your body must be comfortablewith not playing certain limbs for extended periods of time.

A review: In musical terms, when this book talks about looking at a beat vertically,it means to look at the beat by each quarter note’s worth of time. When it talksabout horizontal, it means to look at each of the four different layers (bass drum,snare drum, ride, and ghost notes) separately.

A style that is closely related to Latin drumsetdrumming.

The method behind recreating the feel of electronica is much like playing Latin or Afro-Cuban drumbeats. In these specific musical forms, 99% of the time there isan underlying, predetermined pulse that the drummer can mimic. Or, by notmimicking the pulse, the drummer can create a natural counterpoint. Forexample, a bossa nova.The bossa nova pulse is set in stone. When a band plays a bossa nova,everyone “hears” the beat, whether the drummer is specifically playing it or not:where the cross-stick falls, the bass drum pulse, etc. A drummer can stray fromthe basic bossa to open his part up, and then return to it during someone else’s

solo. The switching back and forth between complex vs. simple, extra-bossa vs.regular bossa, creates the feeling of tension and release that is essential in allforms of music. A bossa, or any other type of beat, would be pretty boring forboth the player and the listener if it was strictly adhered to, especially in its mosttraditional form. Mix it up, for everybody’s sake, but be able to confidently returnto the original beat when you need to.



The same tension/release approach should be taken with DnB. In order toeffectively communicate with the band and the listener, a predetermined “pulse”should be chosen. Then, on top of that, the drummer can stray from it, and returnto it. Back and forth. Tension and release.The following is an example of a pulse. It’s just a simple riff, but play it until it’s

burned into your head. It’s a very common DnB beat.

The pulse can also be played in the ride pattern.

When playing drum-set in a Latin style, the drummer is mimicking the soundsand patterns of Latin songs that are usually played on other instruments.Patterns of bells, timbales, congas, and bongos are all imitated andapproximated by bells of cymbals, toms/tom rims, and bass drums, allsimultaneously by a single player. Drum n’ bass drumming does the same type ofthing. A drummer’s ride cymbal can replace anything that is heard in a DnB song:a burst of static, or the sound of a tin can.

So if you know anything about Latin drum-set beats, you are already ahead ofthe game. To review: Latin and drum n’ bass drumming both"

1 Give the conventional drum-set new sounds to play around with: soundsyou can buy, and new ways to play your existing drums.

2 Are identified with fast, consistent beats that rarely disrupt the clave.(Check out any book on Latin beats if you don’t know this term.)

3 Are never played behind the beat. The pulse is always driving forward, notpulling back.

A balance between analysis and practice. As stated earlier, most programmers are not drummers, and do not spend timepracticing the beats that they create. They do, however, spend time analysing thebeats that they create. This is so, in part, because programmers can see the beatdisplayed on the computer screen as well as hear the beat. To a programmer, thevisual aspect of the beat is often as important as the auditory aspect of a beat.



That is, a beat that looks appealing (like a beat that is symmetrical, or one thatsounds the same played forward or backward) can be just as cool as one thatsounds appealing.Programmers understand their beats inside and out, vertically and horizontally.They know what each layer sounds like when it is played just by itself. So, in this

respect, programmers have an advantage over drummers – they have a greatconceptual and analytical understanding of their beats. The time spent analyzingtheir beats gives programmers a great ability to choose the perfectcomplementary beat for a given song.How do these changes in the music world apply to you, the reader of this book?First, it puts more pressure on you to be able to read music. Graphicrepresentations of music, whether they are on a standardized notated staff orsound waves on a computer screen, are increasingly becoming a more commonway for musicians to communicate with each other. Being able to read music is anecessary step to being able to communicate with other musicians.

Second, in today’s music world, just practicing a beat is not enough to gain a fullworking knowledge of it. I’ve found that if you analyze a beat on paper, you willmore easily be able to make subtle changes in it, versus if you just practiced itand burned the combinations and hits into your “muscle memory” . The ability toanalyze beats will help you be able to specifically mold a beat to any givensituation or style of music.

Drum n’ Bass drumming is not!

Of monumental importance here is to identify that the following beat is not thetype of beat that this book is trying to produce:

In this beat, the left hand remains at the snare playing offbeat 16th notes, while

the right hand goes back and forth between accented hi hat hits and accentedsnare hits. This type of beat is too cluttered with 16th notes and does not give thedrummer any more independence or interdependence between the limbs. Youalso can’t play the hi hat and the snare at the same time. It’s not that this beatisn’t cool, or that it can’t sound great in a certain song, it’s just that this type ofbeat was created by a drummer, and this book is attempting to bridge the gapbetween drummers and programmers.



You may find beats where it does sound great to drop your ride limb down to thesnare drum. Great! Do it! Just don’t sacrifice the world of possibilities offered bythis new style.

DnB Rudiments – IntroThis section uses a ground-up approach to help the DnB drummer get a handleon the beats. I recommend that you practice both the rudiments and the beats ofthis book at the same time; don’t get too obsessed with the technique found inthis section, but don’t forget about it, either. Working on both the rudiments andthe beats at the same time will also prevent burnout, and make the challenge ofplaying the beats even more exciting.

DnB Rudiments – Dropping the RideThe first step to getting fast is to play slowly. You have to be able to play nothingbefore you are able to play something, right? Actually, it’s not as philosophical asthat. But being able to totally drop out your ride limb, the limb that is usuallyplaying the greatest number and most constant notes of the average drum beat,is a great way to prepare your body for how awkward it will feel later on – to playrests in places where you are used to playing notes.Try to play this simple rock beat without playing anything in the right hand.

Remember, START SLOWLY AND USE A METRONOME.

1a.

Now, we’ll add a sparse ride pattern. The goal here is to be able to keep yourplace within the beat (that is, keep counting 1, 2, 3, 4) and still place the ride

notes in the correct place, according to the music. Try to play your way throughthe entire exercise. These are basically permutation exercises. Check out anyDavid Garibaldi book for a full explanation of this concept.Start out by taking 8 passes at each phrase, and work your way down the page.Then go play some of the beats that appear later on in the book. Next time youopen the book, take 4 passes. Then the next time (or whenever) do 2. The finalgoal is to be able to play the whole thing through, no repeats, at a fast tempo,maybe 180 BPM. Record yourself playing these exercises. When you play it



back, imagine different sounds that your ride could be replaced with. How manydifferent sounds could you come up with from your acoustic drum set? Whatwould it sound like if the snare and bass layers were each replaced with notes?The tempos for this rudiments section (tracks 1 through 27) are 120 BPM forslow, 180 BPM for fast.

2a.

2b.

2c.

Now, here is the same type of exercise, but the ride patterns appear in groups of4 measures. Musically, each measure builds upon the last one, creatingmomentum. Follow the same 8 times through each measure – 4 times througheach one – 2, and then one time through each pattern (as described above). Goslowly at first, and USE A METRONOME.



When you get to the point where you are playing these groups of 4 measures at180 BPM, it really sounds like you are building up to something exciting at theend of the forth measure.3a.

3b.

3c.

3d.

Now, for extra credit, go back and repeat exercises 2a through 3d – same ridepatterns, but a different snare/bass pattern, one that is found quite often in DnB.

4.5a.



5b.

5c.

6a.

6b.

6c.

6d.



The 16 DnB Rudiments

These rudiments don’t really fit into the traditional class of the standard PAS 26rudiments. DnB rudiments:

1 Do not contain double strokes.2 Use the snare, bass drum, and hi hat/ride.

I highly recommend that any drummer practice the standard PAS 26 – play themslowly and in control, and pay particular attention to the difference in volumebetween accented and unaccented notes. These DnB rudiments, however, donot try to build just technique. They are the building blocks to vertical DnBplaying, as described earlier (go back and read “What is Drum n’ BassDrumming?” if you haven’t done so yet). Mastering these rudiments, andovercoming the awkwardness of newfound interdependence between the limbs,will have you playing DnB beats in no time.

Rudiment Group 1

This rudiment group develops the ever-present offbeat unaccented 16th note, animportant part DnB drumming. There are four of these. Each rudiment includesfour sixteenth notes, a quarter note’s worth of time. The rudiments are numberedabove the staff.

7a.

Since the DnB rudiments should really be memorized and internalized, there areno specific exercises written out. The best way to practice them is to lay the pageout in front of your drum-set, turn on the metronome to a slow tempo, and playdifferent combinations of the rudiments in various orders. Come up with differentpatterns. Below are some examples for Group 1 rudiments. The tempos for thisrudiments section (tracks 28 through 39) are 120 BPM for slow, 160 BPM for fast.

7b.



7c.

7d.

Make sure that the unaccented snare hits are quiet and fluid. Once you can playany combination of the rudiments smoothly, speed up the tempo. Slowly work

your way up to 160 BPM. The idea here is control and stamina, not speed.Concentrate on achieving a smooth flow of rock-solid 16th notes.

Rudiment Group 2

Group 2 rudiments were designed by taking a stream of four 16th notes, andsubstituting one of the 16th notes (the first, second, third or fourth one) with arest. Rudiments in 8a have a rest substituted for the first 16th note, rudiments in8b have a rest substituted for the second 16th note, rudiments in 8c have a rest

substituted for the third 16th note, and rudiments in 8d have a rest substituted forthe fourth 16th note. So, each subset, 8a-8d, has its own signature surfacerhythm. This concept is then combined with the limitation that bass drum,accented snare drum, and ride hits usually do not occur on the 2nd or fourth 16thnote.In this rudiment group, it is important for the drummer to “think like a machine”.Each note on the page must be given its full value and must be placed exactlywhere it is supposed to be. To do this, again, it is imperative that you BEGINSLOWLY AND USE A METRONOME.

8a.



8b.

8c.

8d.

Again, when you first begin practising these, make sure that your flow isn’tinterrupted. Play them SLOWLY AND WITH A METRONOME. Play Group 2rudiments like the Group 1 rudiments – in different patterns and combinations,but consistently. Below are some examples.

8e.

8f.8g.



The Beats of Drum n’ Bass

Let’s get right to some examples. Keep in mind that there are not 5 beats below.There are hundreds.

From here on out, tracks 40 through 63, the tempos are 120 BPM for slow, 180BPM for fast.

9a.

9b.

9c.

9d.

9e.



Making Music

Before we go into the analysis of each specific beat, take note of these technicalpoints.

For all the previous beats,

1 They don’t have more than 3 consecutive eighth notes on the ride,bass drum, nor the accented snare drum.

2 The 16 DnB rudiments we have already seen are interspersed betweenaccented notes on the snare, bass drum, and ride.

3 There is hardly any poliphony; most of the time, there is only onesurface being struck, not two surfaces at once.

4 If you take away the ghost notes within each of the beats, you will notice

that each beat is made up of only eighth and quarter notes. There areno accented snare drum, bass drum, or ride layer hits on the second orfourth 16th note– the “e”s and “ah”s if you are counting “1, e, and, a”.

5 There are no hand instructions written out; each limb stays on a particularsurface for the duration of the beat. There is no switching of a single limbfrom the ride to the snare drum at all in these beats.

So how can you cop the feel of these beats? What musical guidelines should youkeep in mind when playing this type of music?

1 DnB is a dance-oriented music. So, it is important to not disrupt thegroove. The next section will help you develop the techniques to build upor take away tension within the music. These techniques are also essentialin maintaining the groove, while giving your limbs a rest. Just because yourarms are tired, it doesn’t mean that you have to play half-speed.

2 The best way to approach grasping the feel of this type of music is to havecomplete control over a beat. Memorize the beat in its most complexform. Be able to drop particular parts of the beat out for variation (or if youget tired), but at the same time be able to maintain the main rhythms andmain accents that the beat dictates. In other words, it is better to have

completely mastered a single beat than to only halfway know two differentbeats. Also, keep in mind that a great way to create new beats is to makevariations of beats you already know. We’ll get into this in the next section.

3 DnB beats are special in that the phrases can be very long. In a lot ofmusic, drum beats are only a measure long and are repeated over andover through the course of a song. But DnB beats can be 4, 6 or 8measures, or even more. The longer the phrase, the more haphazard andrandom the beat feels. And this is a good thing.



4 DnB drum beats do not necessarily have to emulate the sound ofdrums in a DnB song. The beats within this book more generallyduplicate the rhythms that appear within a song, not the particular sounds.

As stated earlier, there are infinitely more sounds available to aprogrammer than there are to a drummer. Keep in mind that any of the

three layers of the DnB beats within this book, particularly the ride layer,could be replaced by the sound of short bursts of static, a cow mooing, orwhatever.

5 The offbeat 16th notes, while they are essential to creating the DnB sound,should not be the major point of concentration, and should always be in thebackground. The ghost notes are always just “filler”. Work to keep themquiet.

Analysis and Application – Intro

It should be a drummer’s goal, or any musician’s goal, to make music every timeyou pick up your instrument. If you practice musically, you will sound moremusical and interact on a more musical level when you play with other people. Ifyour practice time is sloppy, and devoted only to developing speed or any singleaspect, it will be a lot harder to convey musical ideas to other musicians, and toan audience. All of the practice beats in the rudiments section are designed to bemusical. Use them in your own DnB beats!So, how can you use the DnB beats and rudiments to really make music? Whatis it exactly that DnB drummers can do to “make music” when they don’t even

have “notes” to play? The answer is a two-step process, a combination oftechniques found in the computing world and the drumming world: analysis andapplication.The analysis part comes from the computer world. Here, I will discuss certainvertical and horizontal aspects of each beat that contribute to the beat’s overallcharacter. Each one of the beats that we will analyse has certain concepts ortraits that make the beat unique. Knowing where within the beat (like on the “andof beat 2, second measure”) special things happen, is crucial to being able tomake music with these beats.These concepts will be exploited in the application part, the part that comes

from the drumming world. Here, I will give you ways to make each example moremusical and more versatile in one continuous beat. In other words, you will beable to play a DnB type beat for an entire song – you will be able to mix it up,keep it under control, keep the tempo up, and keep the flow going. This, insteadof just throwing a few licks together. I will also apply a few fundamentals ofmusic, ones that are often overlooked, to the beats.1. Dynamics- This means changing the volume of a particular layer, while tryingto keep the other layers at a constant volume. Applying dynamics in this way can



really show the listener that different layers (of a single beat) can have verydifferent concepts or feels. But, when all the layers are played together, thoseopposing feels can melt together into one cohesive beat.2. Voice Substitution/Reorchestration- This means keeping the rhythms thesame on the page, but substituting the voice of one layer for the voice of another.

Programmers have an advantage in that they can take a notated beat, andsubstitute any sound they want for a particular rhythm. That is, at the change of abutton, the snare drum will play the pattern the bass drum was playing, and thebass drum will play the pattern the snare drum was playing. With a live drummer,this would involve learning an entirely new set of combinations andindependence between limbs. But, hey, that’s half the fun, right?3. Ornamentation- This means being able to add in or take out any single drumor cymbal (snare/bass drum, ride, or ghost notes) at any given time. Forexample, you can start out with the snare, then add the bass, then keep addingcymbal notes until you have the entire layer as it appears on the page, and finally

add the ghost notes. This really builds tension in a song, and drives the musicforward. Plus, you can stretch a single two-measure beat out for 32 measures ormore, and keep it interesting the whole time.

Beat 9A- Analysis and Application

BEAT 9A- Analysis

What vertical traits does this beat have?1 Beats 1 and 3 of each measure contain a snare-bass drum combination

(either A or B).2 Beats 2 and 4 of each measure contain a DnB rudiment (either #16 or #6).3 Overall, this beat has a very “symmetrical” vertical sound.

And what about the horizontal traits? The ride layer does not state thedownbeats – most of the groupings of notes begin on the “ands” of beats.



But the snare and bass layers do state the down beat.

So (with respect to points #4 and # 5 above) the three major layers of this beat,the ride and snare/bass layers together, convey different horizontal feels.Finally, both the first and last accented snare hits are coordinated with ride layerhits. This could be a point where something different happens.

BEAT 9A – Application

So, based on the analysis we have, the following are a few ways to show off thedifferent characteristics of this beat. Notice that even though the instrumentationor even the overall sound may change, it is still basically the same hand/footcombinations. The original beat is just built up, bit by bit.



9j.

Beat 9B – Analysis and Application

BEAT 9B- Analysis

This beat has lots of space at times. At other points, it’s very dense. So, makesure that you USE A METRONOME and that you give each 16th note its due.



9k.

There aren’t many accented snare and bass notes" "but there is a lot of activity between the unaccented snare and the ride layers.So, it might be a good idea to differentiate the unaccented snare and ride asmuch as possible.There are 4 ride layer notes in each measure. To create some symmetry, let’ssee what happens when we take the middle two (in each measure) and move the

notes down to a tom. Then let’s do the reverse. Take the outside two notes (ofeach measure) down to a tom. Why? Because we’re thinking like programmers,not drummers. Check out the application in 9m. for these nice counter melodies.Overall, there is a lot of vertical variation in this beat. There are only two points inthis beat that share the same rhythmic pattern of four 16th notes in a row. All theother rhythmic patterns (the rhythmic patterns that make up one quarter note’sworth of time) are different.

9l.

BEAT 9B- Application

There is so much vertical variation, that this beat should probably be kept straightahead. That is, we won’t separate the main important layers of the beat, as wedid with beat 9a. If you did, there wouldn’t be enough rhythmic consistency forthe listener to grasp on to. This beat doesn’t have a clear rhythmic statement likein example 9i.



9m.



Beat 9C – Analysis and Application

Beat 9C – Analysis

The most obvious concept of this beat is the pattern played in the hands. It is aversion of a famous Billy Cobham pattern that many drummers use today. This isthat pattern:9n.

Here is how it appears in the beat:

9o.



Beat 9C – Application

For this beat, let’s apply some dynamics. Why? Why not?9p.



Beat 9D – Analysis and Application

Beat 9D – Analysis

This is a beat that I transcribed from Mike Lowry, the drummer for the Baltimore,MD band Lake Trout. If you haven’t had the chance to hear them or see them, doit! They are making some of the newest, most original music out there.1The first thing to notice about this beat is that the first DnB rudiment makes anappearance on beat four of the first measure.The first two beats of both measures have the same rhythmic pattern; the firstbeat of each measure is exactly the same, and the second beat of each measureis made up of an eighth, and then two sixteenth notes.

At the third beat of the second measure, the 16th note rest really stands out; it is

the only rhythmic pattern of its kind in the beat. It creates a skipping sensationthat makes the beat wobble just before you land squarely on beat four.

Beat 9D – Application

One thing that Mike likes to do with this beat is take a strictly vertical approach.He will treat each quarter note’s worth of time as a separate piece, and switcharound the order. Most broadly, he will play the second measure first, and the firstmeasure second.9r.

Another way to vary this beat vertically is to start at a particular place within eachmeasure. Here’s the beat when you start on the second quarter note, firstmeasure, of the original beat (9q).



9s.

Here’s the beat starting on the fourth quarter note of the first measure. It createsa cool half-time feel.9t.

Slow Fast

Here’s the beat starting on the third beat of the second measure.9u.

Slow FastNow, there are two ways to think about this application. First, you can either treat9r-9u, as well as the original beat 9d, as completely separate beats. When you

start at a different place within a beat, the accent pattern can be changedsignificantly. The second way to approach the application here is to play 9r- 9u inorder, one after another. Or mix the order up. Or come up with your own placesto start within the beat. See if you can play them, one after another, withoutlosing your place or forgetting where the downbeat is.

Beat 9E – Analysis and Appliation

Beat 9E – Analysis

This beat, most obviously, doesn’t have any ghost notes. But it still feels like aDnB beat. Why? Because it is symmetrical.Notice first that, with the exception of the last quarter note of the second measure(where the snare drum appears on beat 4 instead of the “and” of four), the



second measure is the same as the first measure. I created this beat purely onpaper; I might not have come up with it if I were at a kit.

As opposed to 9d, where we were taking a strictly vertical approach, let’s take astrictly horizontal approach to this one. Within this beat, there are 2 separatehorizontal melodies. The first one is in the ride layer.

9v.

The second horizontal melody is in the accented snare and bass drum layers.9w.

Also notice that these two horizontal melodies are backwards – the ride layerappears as eighth/eighth/quarter/quarter, and the accented snare/bass drumlayer appears as quarter/quarter/eighth/eighth (or, at least it would if it weren’t forthe small variation on the last quarter note of the beat).

Beat 9E – Application

As this beat contains two different horizontal melodies, let’s try doing some voicesubstitution for one of the melodies, while keeping the other constant. Thefollowing are ways to vary up the ride layer while holding down the accentedsnare/bass drum layer.



9x.



Review

So what are the things that you can take away from the analysis and applicationpart of the book?

1. Each beat has a “concept”. Each beat should have something special,something that clearly differentiates it from other beats. Nurture these concepts,and make sure that you convey the special parts of the beats to the listener.2. Analyse your own beats. Use the methods from the analysis of 9a-9e asguidelines, a set of ideas, to make your own beats more musical. Take the time totranscribe your own beats. Change the beats around on paper, and then practicethe new beats. I can’t stress enough that this process is totally worth your time. Ifyou’ve never done this before, it will be difficult at first. But you will get better at it.3. Maintain the core beat. It is important to note here that the core of the beat,

the accented snare drum, bass drum, and ride patterns, are the most importantparts of the beat, and come first. The offbeat 16th notes, while they are animportant part of the DnB sound, are secondary to the core. Stamina is also animportant issue here – you must be able to maintain the core of the DnB beatwhile consciously dropping the offbeat 16th notes in and out of the beat at will.4. How do the layers relate? Another important concept to keep in mind in theanalysis and application of a beat is how the 3 major layers relate to each other.That is, what do just the ride and bass drum layer sound like? What do theaccented snare and bass layers sound like? How does it feel when you play justthe ride and accented snare layers together? If you are able to drop out one of

the layers at will, you will easily be able to keep the flow going, while giving yourlimbs a rest.5. We’ve explored many of the music fundamentals in the different analyses, andwe’ve been pretty specific with each beat. But remember that any of the musicfundamentals could potentially work on any of the beats. In music, anythinggoes - as long as it grooves.6. JUST DO IT. It’s really just a matter of looking at the beat, deciding how youare going to handle it, and then practicing it. Your own applications of your ownbeats can be as complex as 9a, where we looked at each layer separately, or assimple as beat 9c, where we simply said “Let’s apply some dynamics here.”

Either way, just PLAY YOUR DRUMS!7. Finally, yet another step towards making your drumming more musical is totake a step back and see which other drummers have had this goal, and thencop their style. I don’t mean mimic their licks, but instead mimic their approach tomaking music. Jazz drummers are a great place to start. They get solos on aregular basis, so they must be doing something right. (Check out John Riley’sThe Art of Bop Drumming if you have a chance. It is a great resource for makingmusic on the drums.)

http://www.johnriley.org/publications.xml

the new beats of d&b

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