Author: Practicing Drummer

Alternatives to Ted Reed’s Syncopation

I wanted to write a quick recommendation for a couple of drum books I use as an alternative to Ted Reed’s Syncopation.

If you’re a jazz drummer, then you probably know why this book is so popular and how it can be used. If you don’t, Alan Dawson will do a much better job of explaining than I do, so I recommend getting his book, The Complete Drummer’s Vocabulary. His exercises that use pages from Syncopation as a foundation are legendary and I spent a lot of time practicing them when I studied with John Ramsay at Berklee.

Having been through Syncopation so many times, my teacher recently recommended two books by Louis Bellson that are excellent. I’m surprised I had never owned either of them until now. One is in 4/4 and the other handles odd time signatures.

Modern Reading Text in 4/4 & Odd Time Reading Text

I highly recommend both of these books and that you don’t ignore practicing playing/reading in odd time signatures.

While we’re on the topic, make sure you check out Jazz in 3/4 Time by Max Roach if you haven’t heard it.

Clave Metronome App

I recently started practicing Latin patterns and working out of the book New Ways of Brazilian Drumming by Sergio Gomes. I’ve also been working on Latin independence exercises while reading from the Ted Reed Syncopation book and playing those patterns with my left or right hand.

I quickly got tired of listening to a straight click while practicing and instead of programming the various clave patterns into my drum machine or computer, I searched for an app and found one that’s perfect!

The Clave is highly recommended. It’s also free.

The interface is brilliantly simple and gives me everything I need. Tempo adjustment, several different patterns, the ability to invert the clave from 3:2 to 2:3 and an option for low or high pitched claves.

Here are some screenshots:

 

Clave metronome

Click here to get the Clave app

Here’s the book I mentioned above. It came highly recommended to me by one of the faculty of the Jazz Studies department at the University of Minnesota.