Ted Reed's Syncopation Book Questions

Ironjim55 said:
I disagree that the trio provides the core skills even for just the snare drum. They are great books, but the core skills are the 26 essential rudiments that were expanded to 40 essential rudiments. Alfred's Drum Method (Snare drum) provides a comprehensive way to learn basic syncopation, read music, play different time signatures and learn the 40 rudiments.
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That's the missing thing here as a "core" item-- any snare drum method book. There are several well known ones. For me Mitchell Peters's books-- Elementary Snare Drum Studies, and Intermediate SDS, plus his rudiments book, form a pretty good base for snare drum technique, vocabulary, and reading.

Ironjim55 said:
In addition, none of the books mentioned provide a foundation for learning essential techniques like Finger Control, Push Pull, Moeller or other techniques for speed
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It's funny, those were always specialty techniques. To me core technique is to take the stick and hit the drum-- a simple technique. Moeller was a cool novelty in the 80s, with Chapin and then Dom Famularo traveling around doing their clinics. I think most other players I know have messed with them, but ultimately use them minimally, or for a few special purposes.
 
Ironjim55 said:
The three books :Syncopation, Stick Control and Accents and Rebounds are great books but not the three core books. The are great teaching tools to have in the tool bag. Three of many.
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I'm not sure that any three books could be reduced to a core trio. So much depends on what the person wants to achieve, where they are in the journey and the setting in which it's applied.

I tap into resources that I never used years ago. Each of them in some way helps me to maintain, improve and challenge my current skills and compliments what is needed to play my weekly Sunday gigs.
 
Ironjim55 said:
They are great books, but the core skills are the 26 essential rudiments that were expanded to 40 essential rudiments. Alfred's Drum Method (Snare drum) provides a comprehensive way to learn basic syncopation, read music, play different time signatures and learn the 40 rudiments.
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I am also an advocate of learning the essential 26/40 rudiments. For me, that gateway continues to develop my hands and ability to play in general. Through Drumeo just this year, I've worked on 12 different rudiments; six of which were altogether new to me, due to the 40 vs 26 addition back in 1984. And like @toddbishop said, a good ole snare drum book should be considered essential.
 
toddbishop said:
It's funny, those were always specialty techniques. To me core technique is to take the stick and hit the drum-- a simple technique.
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I agree that Finger Technique, Push Pull, Moeller etc are not core techniques. However, I see them as foundational techniques for students wanting to play faster styles of music. I have had several students struggle with songs above 170 BPM, sometimes even at 160 BPM. Loose hands and push pull make a big difference. I currently have a student working on Metal songs with burst of 16th notes at 250 BPM. Finger technique is very handy at this speed.

Correct me if I am wrong but when I slow videos down of Neil Peart playing Tom Sawyer he is using the push pull or a variation of that technique. Buddy Rich used the push pull (finger variation) for his fast left hand.
 
Ironjim55 said:
I agree that Finger Technique, Push Pull, Moeller etc are not core techniques. However, I see them as foundational techniques for students wanting to play faster styles of music. I have had several students struggle with songs above 170 BPM, sometimes even at 160 BPM. Loose hands and push pull make a big difference. I currently have a student working on Metal songs with burst of 16th notes at 250 BPM. Finger technique is very handy at this speed.
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Sure, it's probably necessary for that music.

Ironjim55 said:
Correct me if I am wrong but when I slow videos down of Neil Peart playing Tom Sawyer he is using the push pull or a variation of that technique. Buddy Rich used the push pull (finger variation) for his fast left hand.
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Probably some form of it-- that's the kind of thing it's for. I wouldn't look to Neil Peart for technique usually-- he does have pretty basic technique, just pretty stiff.
 
Tamboreter said:
I am also an advocate of learning the essential 26/40 rudiments. For me, that gateway continues to develop my hands and ability to play in general. Through Drumeo just this year, I've worked on 12 different rudiments; six of which were altogether new to me, due to the 40 vs 26 addition back in 1984. And like @toddbishop said, a good ole snare drum book should be considered essential.
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Learning the rudiments definitely develops hand coordination. It also develops hearing (i.e. picking out what another drummer is playing).
My teacher quoted to me what Ed Soph told him. "You're only as good of a kit player, as you are a snare player."
 
Tamboreter said:
I am also an advocate of learning the essential 26/40 rudiments. For me, that gateway continues to develop my hands and ability to play in general. Through Drumeo just this year, I've worked on 12 different rudiments; six of which were altogether new to me, due to the 40 vs 26 addition back in 1984. And like @toddbishop said, a good ole snare drum book should be considered essential.
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Agreed, Lesson 25 is a must learn for any beginner.
 
striker said:
In these lessons for Rudiments on Drumeo, do they teach the rudiments only or do they also explain the application of each rudiment to the drum set for rhythms and fills?
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Interesting question. I have not used Drumeo. However, the application of the rudiments to the drum set is essentially one of exploration. If you know the rudiments and can play them with your hands (and if playing double pedal using some of them with your feet), then the exploration of using them in fills, drum beats and between different drums begins.

I remember seeing a video with Steve Gadd explaining how he came up with the beat for "50 Ways to Leave your Lover". He stated (paraphrasing) that when he was in the studio just waiting to be called on to play he would experiment with paradiddles and other rudiments around the set. The Producer heard him and asked if he could do something similar for the song. The paradiddle variation on the hi-hat and snare with open 5 stroke roll and drag was born.

I teach my students to experiment as well as learning from watching and listening other drummers, reading drum transcripts and working from a variety of books. In my opinion, application of the rudiments to the drum set is a natural progression through experimentation after you have learned how to play them with your hands.
 
striker said:
In these lessons for Rudiments on Drumeo, do they teach the rudiments only or do they also explain the application of each rudiment to the drum set for rhythms and fills?
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Drumeo does both. The rudiment lessons on Drumeo are taught by Dr. John Wooton, one of the foremost rudimental experts in the world. The first part is explaining how to execute the rudiment along with practice exercises. The second part is application of the rudiment to drumset, where there will be various exercises to practice using the rudiment on the kit.

BTW, there's a summer sale currently... $100/off annual membership on Drumeo.
 
striker said:
In these lessons for Rudiments on Drumeo, do they teach the rudiments only or do they also explain the application of each rudiment to the drum set for rhythms and fills?
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I mean... here, I wrote this in about half an hour. This could be Drumeo's bible for paradiddle content for the next five years, and probably is-- something like it. You can do the same stuff with any other rudiment.

pattern-barf_what-to-do-with-a-paradiddle.png
 
toddbishop said:
something like it. You can do the same stuff with any other rudiment.
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Yes, the exercises are of the sort you wrote out. Drumeo also includes instructional videos playing the exercise patterns -so that the average Jo knows what to do with them, lol.

Either way, there's no magic. The individual still has to put in the practice time to build proficiency.
 
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toddbishop said:
The videos may be helpful, at a certain point they're just entertainment.
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The rudimental applications by John Wooton, I've not found to be entertaining. TBH, I can't stand watching someone play just to chop out in a manner that begs for a "wow" response. Too many videos out there like that and IMO, they serve no real purpose.
toddbishop said:
Proficiency, and just figuring out "do I have any use for this item?", "is there a way of playing this that I like?"
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Yes. I'm always running it through that grid... not just doing mind-numbing exercises for no reason. For example, if there are six practice exercises for rudiment application, I play through them all and then focus on one or two that work well for my playing situations and my overall ability.
 
I bought some books maybe 15 total and not long ago, gave away most of them in a store for almost nothing (Including the blue syncopation book) my book journey is over, at least for drums. Books are expensive and difficult to resell. I kept only the fun books with a comfortable learning curve.

Many books are heavy to read and to. understand. (I picked many book by the best reputation initially)

I inherited a bass now and I am not rushing into buying books to play the bass, I had my lesson with drums. It came with a 1978 old bass book, looks ok, has the scales in it, i'll stick with that for now + youtube and other digital freebies from the internet.
 
toddbishop said:
1. I suppose, they're very well known books. Just those three books are not enough, so I don't know how useful that classic trio category is. And I do almost everything with Syncopation.

2. Yes, it's mainly used as a drum set book, but also just as a rhythm reading book on the snare drum.

3. Very little. The new version has the different parts named as "lessons", and a new introduction written by Ted Reed. The famous p. 37 exercise is on page 38 in the new edition, which breaks a lot of people's brains.
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I must not be old/hip enough. I've always called it page 38!
 
From a certain point on in one's development as a player, the creativity aspect takes on a larger role. Once you've got the basics down, it comes down to what you're going to do with it...

And that creativity also manifests itself in devising ways to help yourself reach certain goals. Books like Stick Control and Syncopation lend themselves extremely well to this.

I'll give an example...at one point I wanted to develop more of the "Elvin" type, triplet dense but free playing, underneath my spang-a-lang, and I came up with a way to practice it for myself using the Stone book.

I took whichever of the 72 patterns on the first three Stick Control pages and applied it to the patterns I came up with below. (just took a screenshot of the first page of interpretations I made)

1753227408387.png

It's a pretty okay coordination challenge in itself, but there's also quite a few musical phrases to be found in it. Mix and match whatever combination of R and L, switch between them , etc...You get the point, it's self explanatory.

You can also subtract a couple of notes from the patterns, so they turn out to be 3 or 6 note based (or google-fu a bit to get this), so you can get some real fine over the barline comping "ala Elvin" out of it.

The point I'm trying to make, is once you get some stuff going thanks to different books and teachers, you can also get a lot of useful stuff going by coming up with things for yourself. And Stick Control/Syncopation are incredibly useful for that...you just have to have some imagination/creativity.
 
Tamboreter said:
The rudimental applications by John Wooton, I've not found to be entertaining. TBH, I can't stand watching someone play just to chop out in a manner that begs for a "wow" response. Too many videos out there like that and IMO, they serve no real purpose.
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He's great, I've watched a couple of his things.

adamosmianski said:
I must not be old/hip enough. I've always called it page 38!
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Old enough. I would always work on all the full page exercises, I never formed any emotional attachment to [weeps yearningly] p. 37. The present edition has been out for 30 years.

Sebenza said:
I took whichever of the 72 patterns on the first three Stick Control pages and applied it to the patterns I came up with below. (just took a screenshot of the first page of interpretations I made)
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I do some of that, I don't try to teach it to anyone because it's getting kind of remote from the actual materials-- the sticking patterns in 8th notes. You have to put them through a couple levels of interpretation to make the other thing out of them. R = bd / L = sd is about as far as I go with students.

There's that book "143 binary algorhythms applied to paradiddles" that has a lot of systems like that. After awhile it's just like jeez, just write some new stuff. Getting the exercise by interpreting it is good, but I want it to be somewhat realistic to how people actually play music.

Like my rule with my Syncopation stuff, some of which is pretty far out, is that the thing needs to be relatable to the rhythm in the book.
 
toddbishop said:
I do some of that, I don't try to teach it to anyone because it's getting kind of remote from the actual materials-- the sticking patterns in 8th notes. You have to put them through a couple levels of interpretation to make the other thing out of them. R = bd / L = sd is about as far as I go with students.
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I've never taught anyone, but I have seen a couple of beginners being taught over the past few years, so yeah, I understand what you mean.

The point I was trying to make, was that eventually, as a player, you should be able to come up with your own ways to develop certain things you wanna focus on.

If anyone is interested in getting some of that 'inner triplet Elvin thing' going, try out the exercise and let me know.
 
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