(funky music)
- Hello everybody, my name is Aaron Walker-Loud
with Big World Breaks,
and I'm here on behalf of the Creative Advantage,
working on elements of percussion, rhythm,
cultural innovation, improvisation,
and studying different techniques.
Ultimately, there are a lot of things
about feel that we're gonna get into.
When I say "feel," some people say "groove" or "the pocket"
or "style", but when I talk about feel, to let you know,
usually we're looking at two different major feels,
and then a variety in between.
So, we have straight and we have swing.
So, I'm going to use some rudiments with the desk
to help us get warmed up,
and then we're going to start talking more about that
for the rest of this video.
So, rudiments,
that's a fancy way of talking about a pattern.
A pattern of certain rhythms
to connect our brain to our hands, right?
If you're playing drum set, you'll also be using your feet.
The idea is if a singer and a trombone player,
if they have to use scales and arpeggios
to train how to improve their muscle memory
and their knowledge and their dexterity,
we as percussionists may not have as many notes,
but we have infinite rhythms we can be working on.
I'm gonna show you a few and you can find
hundreds or thousands or more online
and you can make up your own rudiment patterns, I'm sure.
So, starting with singles versus doubles, we have a low,
medium, and a high sound on most any surface
of a drum or a table.
So, using your fist to get the lowest sound,
using your slap for the medium sound,
using your knock to get the highest pitch, right?
So, starting with singles versus doubles,
I'm gonna go between all three pitches, here we go.
Play along with me please.
One, two, three, four, one and two and three and four and,
one, two, three, four, one and two and.
Let's switch to slap.
One, two, three, four, one and two and three and four and
one, two, three, four, one and two and three and four and.
Nice. Let's increase the speed.
What's the word for speed? Tempo.
Here we go, same thing, singles versus doubles.
One, two, ready, and.
One, two, three, four, one and two and three and four and,
one, two.
(palm slapping)
Let's switch to the knock.
(palms slapping)
(knuckles knocking)
Okay, now let's look at triplets.
We're gonna do doubles and triplets so we can kind of
keep reviewing and moving forward at the same time.
So, that's two at a time and then three at a time.
With me, one, two ready and.
One, two, one and a two and a
one and two and three and a four and a
one and two and
three and a four and a double double triple it triple it.
(palm slapping)
Triple it triple it, double, double,
triple it triple it.
Okay, now, paradiddles,
that is another term for
the next rudiment I want to show you,
which is essentially two singles and then a double,
and then we switch to our other lead.
Trying to get balance of left and right.
Most people are not ambidextrous.
The paradiddle helps us to get
more balanced between our right and our left.
So, let's try that together.
I'm gonna say it first, you say it with me twice,
and then we're gonna use our hands.
Right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left,
right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left.
(palms slapping)
(fists pounding)
Now, a term we use, double time,
that just means twice as fast as what we did before.
So, now we're gonna do paradiddles at single time,
like we just did, and then double time.
Here we go, one, two, ready with me.
(fists pounding)
Okay, now, if you want more of a challenge,
let's try to go single time, double time, triple time.
Here we go, I'm going to do two cycles of that.
One, two. (snapping fingers)
Paradiddle starting at single time.
(hands slapping)
Okay, nice, nice.
If you're finding yourself a little bit challenged
or you can't keep up on certain tempos, please do not worry.
My goal is to give you things that work with you,
and always push with a little challenge.
You may hear some teachers talk about growth,
mindset, or perseverance.
These are terms that really help us to think about
that we're human, we have to embrace our mistakes,
we have to embrace the fact that our effort
and our patience with ourself on a daily basis
is how we meet our goals.
We cannot snap our fingers and be
as good as we want at anything.
So be patient with yourself, laugh at your mistakes,
take your own pace, take what I'm giving you,
slow it down if you need to,
and also find ways to challenge yourself.
So, the last thing we're gonna do
using the table for now is what I call the echo game,
where I'm going to play something
and you try and repeat it back to me.
I'm gonna be using fist, slap, knock; low, mid, high.
I'm gonna be changing tempos,
I'm gonna be mixing it up a little bit.
And keep that growth mindset in mind.
Don't worry about being perfect, do your best.
We're gonna trade one measure at a time,
we'll do a few a row.
Here we go, starting with me.
One, two, one, two, ready and.
(fist pounding)
(hand slapping)
One, two, three, four.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, and.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, and.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, four.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, four.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, four.
(hands slapping)
One, two, last one.
(hands slapping)
(fists pounding)
One, two, three, and.
Okay, nice, nice.
So, now that we've warmed up a little bit,
I'm gonna move us over to the djembe,
and we're going to start looking at a little bit of idea.
We talked about straight and swing,
and I'll tell you more over there.
So, straight and swing, they're feels in music,
and there's a lot in between.
When we're using a hand drum like this,
congas, djembes, bongos,
the concept of bass, tone, and slap
as low, mid, high are universal, right?
So, bass with the middle of the drum with your open hand,
and then using your palm to lightly ricochet
and letting your fingers stay loose
so they can pop on and off, that's tone.
Bass, tone.
Slap with your fingertips towards the edge, high pitch.
Low, mid, high.
Just to review.
Now, moving forward, thinking about straight and swing.
Let's play eighth notes straight,
and then I'll show you how I start switching to swing,
and we'll go back and forth.
Here we go, with me.
One, two, one, two, (snapping fingers)
ready and,
one and two and three and four and
one and two and three and four, two more times.
One and two and three and four and,
one and two and three and four and,
one and two and, keep playing with me.
(djembe slapping)
Now remember, if you don't have a hand drum,
or you don't have a snare drum,
and all you have is your own creation at home
or a table, that's totally fine.
Keep using that as long as the adults
in your home are cool with that.
Now, let's use 16th notes.
So, playing them straight,
I'm gonna use slap now, the highest pitch.
One-y and a two-y and a three-y and a four-y and a.
(djembe slapping)
Now switch to swing.
(djembe slapping)
Straight.
(djembe slapping)
To swing.
(djembe slapping)
Nice. Now, the people who were creating the swing feel,
and I'll tell you more about that in a little bit,
they might not have looked at it like this,
but sometimes for me, I'm a visual learner
and I think about what's the math in the count.
So, I was thinking about how the triplet,
which we've done before.
Right, right, right, left, left, left,
right, right, right, left, left, left.
Where you could play with singles, doing triplet.
One and a two and a three and a four and a.
Whichever way you like, the idea is there's three notes.
What if we made this one invisible?
one and a two and a three and a four and a
one and two and three and four and
one and a two and a three and a four and a
one and two and.
You see what I'm saying?
So let's try triplets and then
eliminate the middle triplet to see what happens.
(djembe slapping)
Three and a four and a one and two and three and four
and one and a two and a three and a four and a
one and two and three and four and.
Let's try and increase the tempo.
One, two, ready, and. (fingers snapping)
(djembe slapping)
Okay, now, that's a little bit of a clue
on how to be thinking about it,
but it's really more about the feel over time.
And there's, like I said,
an infinite difference between swing and straight
and everything in between.
Now, I'm gonna move back to the table
and we're gonna start listening
to a song that I have developed
that'll help us in getting more free playing swing.
All right?
So, in creating this draft here with Big World Breaks,
I was thinking about influences that impacted me over time.
Artists like Chuck Brown with Go-go Music,
Teddy Riley with R&B, New Jack Swing.
Artists who use their mouth with beatboxing percussion,
like Doug E. Fresh and Ready Rock C.
These are just some of the influences.
Now, this has a swing feel in it.
So, right now we're gonna do an echo game
where you're gonna repeat after me
anything I try and play to you.
Just imitate me the best you can.
Here we go, repeat after me.
Ready, and.
(hands slapping)
One, two, three, four.
(hands slapping)
One, two, all right?
(hands slapping)
So, if you noticed I did some swing and some straight.
So it's nice to think about what's possible
when you can go in between
and play one thing on top of the other, right?
So, in me, thinking about swing,
I couldn't have done any of this, this feel,
without great teachers and mentors in my life.
So once again, find those people
who can help you achieve your goals.
Mr. Knatt at Washington Middle School
in the central district where I grew up,
Mr. Acox at Garfield High School,
jazz band drumline at both schools in that neighborhood.
Then with Mr. Brian Kirk, over at Seattle Central.
These great mentors helped me
cultivate my style and understanding,
and they also taught me about
how the roots of this music is before jazz.
We're talking about from Congo Square in New Orleans
where gospel music and blues music,
innovations of Black Americans,
led to the birth of jazz in a very unique place.
And so in New Orleans, on every Sunday,
for whatever reason, they decided let's let everybody play.
When there was a lot of people confined by slavery
and confined by Jim Crow and all these horrible things,
on Sundays they were allowed to be in the park
and they were making music and singing and dancing
and sharing cultural ideas.
So, what I want you to understand is all this stuff
we're hearing today that we've talked about,
like hip hop and funk and EDM and R&B, all these things,
they come from a family tree that started way, way long ago.
And I encourage you to look up Congo Square.
And we're gonna use this song one more time.
And now, instead of imitating me in an echo game,
what I'm going to ask you to do,
I'm gonna move over to the snare.
You're gonna play your own phrase.
You're gonna make it up however you want.
All right. After me.
(drum beating)
Yep.
(drum beating)
All right, let's do one more.
(drum beating)
Nice.
(drum beating)
Okay, yeah.
(drum beating)
Okay, nice, nice.
Now I'm gonna move over to the djembe and we're gonna
utilize a different piece of music that Big World Breaks
worked on that helps us navigate between straight and swing
and some of the in-betweens, all right?
Follow me over here.
(rhythm playing)
So, when thinking about what influenced this creation,
working with my peers and Big World Breaks,
from a wide variety of Pan-African music,
which is a way of talking about influences from people who
are all around the world,
who originate culturally and ethnically
from African diaspora.
And these styles merging together from different lands,
from different cultures, from different nationalities,
but sharing that common bond.
So, artists like Sade, the Roots,
Erykah Badu, Burning Spear,
these are just some examples of artists
that influenced me creating this
with my peers in Big World Breaks.
But once again, there's so many people to check out,
but check them out too.
Now, we're gonna start with eighth notes,
and then 16th notes going from straight to swing.
Then we're gonna try and find that in-between spot.
(djembe slapping)
So that's straight again, and then swing.
Now, I went back and forth, but in this song
we're trying to find that, a sweet spot in-between.
So now I'm gonna do straight, then swing,
and then follow right in the middle somewhere to lock in.
(djembe slapping)
And then in between.
(djembe slapping)
Again, straight.
(djembe slapping)
Swing.
(djembe slapping)
In between.
(djembe slapping)
Let's try 16th notes which even articulate it
a little bit more.
Once again, sixteenths.
One-y and a two-y and a three-y and a.
(djembe slapping)
Starting with straight.
(djembe slapping)
Swing.
In between.
(djembe slapping)
Keep it going on the in-between.
Back to straight.
(djembe slapping)
To swing.
(djembe slapping)
Now let's stay in-between after this.
(djembe slapping)
Nice.
Now what we're gonna do is we're gonna
let you try to improvise,
to freestyle your own rhythms.
Ideally, you're trying to pick one or the other,
straight, swing, or in between.
I'll go first, you go after me.
Here we go.
(djembe slapping)
Nice.
(djembe slapping)
All right.
(djembe slapping)
And you can play in-between, right?
(djembe slapping)
Okay, nice, nice.
Thank you for participating in that.
And I just wanted to review for us some of the essentials
that we've talked about today.
So, we did some rudiments up front, the patterns.
We did singles, doubles, triplets, paradiddles, right?
We talked about the importance of feel and things in between
the two major feels of straight and swing.
We talked about finding your own teachers and mentors
and thinking about artists that you may like
or teachers that you come across or people you find online.
For me, the main drummer that has influenced me,
separate from my teachers, is Elvin Jones.
So, I definitely encourage you to check him out too,
but find your own.
We also talked about being able to think about how to
eliminate the middle triplet.
One and a two and a one and two and, right?
So that's a little bit of a specific mathematical way to
think about the swing feel.
And I'd encourage you also to keep looking up
some of these styles of music that have
influenced everything that brings this feel about.
So blues and gospel music,
and then how that gave birth to jazz, and everything that
came after that to the modern day.
And it's really important to keep in mind,
as Mr. Knatt always said, there's no shortcut in music.
So you can't wake up one day and say,
I want to be good at this exactly how I want to be.
You have to spend an hour at a time, a day at a time,
be honest with yourself,
and think about what your weaknesses are,
what your strengths are and keep navigating through it.
And no matter what equipment you have at home
or what you do have at home or what you don't,
or when you can practice or when you can't,
or if you do like your teacher
or you don't like your teacher,
the thing is you're going to be
your own best teacher in your life
so figure out what you need to do to do what you love
and hold yourself accountable to get better at it every day,
and I guarantee you you're going to find
more happiness than most people.
So, thank you again.
This is Aaron Walker-Loud with Big World Breaks,
and this has been brought to you by the Creative Advantage.
Have a great day.
(rhythmic music)
(funky music)