Ways to use ted reed syncopation
#Ways to use ted reed syncopation series#
This meeting yesterday got me thinking about the versatility of the book, so I’m going to start a series of posts over the next couple of months to showcase just how much material you can mine out of Syncopation. Because of this a lot of people write it off thinking it’s for beginners. It’s pretty much just a book of rhythms – the majority of which are 8th notes and quarter notes. The beauty of the book is its simplicity. Alan Dawson famously had different systems for reading the exercises, many of which I learned from various friends and teachers over the years. It’s been used by drummers of all styles and backgrounds for decades. For the sake of simplicity, I was trying to narrow it down to just a few books for all levels, and one book immediately came to mind: Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer. We were trying to decide which books to use for beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. You are very useful and I’m starting to like you.The other day I met with a coworker to discuss percussion curriculum at a new studio where I’m about to begin teaching. I can’t conclude this post without sending my apologies to the rock beat for my earlier slight. I’ve started working through a few songs and will see what I can do with them. It may be a little too soon to try, but I’m sure the trying will be fun and I’m looking forward to it. In other news, an opportunity has come up and I might get a chance to try playing music with others in the near future, but I won’t write too much about that until it has actually happened. So, that’s one of the things I’m working on now. By the time I try it at the kit it doesn’t take long for me to play it evenly and at a good speed. I find it difficult to do, but it’s getting easier and really does work. But once I’ve played them through a number of times I get a good feel for the rhythm.Īs I mentioned at the end of my last post, I’ve been approaching this in a new way, looking at the music first and visualizing the beat to train myself to “hear” it before I play. For example, the ones where there isn’t a beat on ‘1’ (which I didn’t write out, but I’m sure you can picture it) are hard to get into since it’s my habit to play the bass on ‘1’. It’s neat how small changes to the bass pattern can make big change the sound and feeling of the entire groove. When I play them like this the sound is similar to the hiphop grooves I’ve been working on. Line 5 of p.33, as written in the book, and how it fits together with the rock beat. I’m sure I will be revisiting that section in the future to try it out in a different way. It was a good refresher and practice for sight reading.
I’ve got some experience reading music, although a little rusty, so going through the first section in that way went quickly. I played through the first section in a simple way, playing the lower line on bass and the top one on snare, over the course of a week. It uses the 5 line staff, but instead of each line/space being a note, it represents a physical piece of the drum kit – bass, snare, hi hat, toms, etc. Sheet music for drum is different than for other instruments. The first section of the book is note-reading and rhythm exercises. I’ve titled this post as ‘Part 1’ because I’m positive that I’m going to be working with it off and on for a long time. People play with different limbs, change accent placement, add swing, and probably even turn the book upside down. Drummers use the exercises in many creative ways, applying the rhythms to practicing coordination and creating new sounds.
#Ways to use ted reed syncopation how to#
The intention was to teach snare drum players how to read music, but it is used for much more than that. This book is a collection of exercises that Ted Reed wrote for his students and published in the late 1950’s. Here’s an example, using line 1 on page 33 of the book. I’m currently practicing playing a syncopated rhythm on the bass drum, accompanied by the hihat and snare parts of the basic rock beat.