I've had several insightful conversations lately with Peter Retzlaff and Jacob Wutzke about the art of playing breakneck fast tempos.
It's a specific thing that's not quite in vogue as it used to be back in the day but still worth considering imo. However, it also requires a specific approach to technique, a concept and a vocabulary that's distinct from playing slower tempos. It's not just a matter of mastering your medium tempo coordination, vocabulary and ideas and then speeding them up! It's also the kind of thing that you need to practice, make a study of and, most importantly, play with other people on a regular basis. That's how Max, Art, Tony, etc. all did it.
Anyways, here's a few videos that I've found to be very helpful in developing an approach to playing fast tempos on the drums:
John Riley
In my musical environment, I am often forced to play at very fast tempos, both with brushes and sticks. Add to that the difficulty of having to do this in a completely acoustic setting, with an unamplified double bass and piano. This means that the volume also has to be controlled. In the Dante Agostini drum books, which he co-wrote with Kenny Clarke, there are a couple of pages in Volume 4 (which deals with independence) that demonstrate the typical up-tempo coming phrases very well.
ReplyDeleteI've put together a playlist of a few tracks to keep me in shape. My benchmark for brush playing is Surrey with the Fringe on Top by the Ahmad Jamal Trio. If I can keep up with Vernel Fournier for those 3 minutes of brush playing, I'm doing okay.
I wish I could do it as effortlessly as Joe Morello on Art Pepper's Straight Life, but that's asking too much. He also feathers the bass drum at 340 bpm and plays brushes elegantly on top of it.
With sticks it's Ezzthetics by the George Russell Sextet with Joe Hunt (from the album of the same name) or Shine (from the album Westcoast Jazz) by Stan Getz with Shelly Manne on drums, both about 9 minutes.
Playing 340 bpm for that long should be doable, but sometimes it just needs to be faster.
Then I try to play along with Bebop from The Arrival of Victor Feldman as a test of courage, but that's bordering on insane.
Miles Davis - “Four and More” 🥁⚡️
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