I’ve been playing the drums for a while, but most (well OK, pretty much all) my playing has been straight 4/4 rock stuff with the occasional 6/8 song thrown in. So occasionally I like to twist my brain up in knots playing some jazz stuff. Dave Brubeck is particuarly good for frying my synapses, I find.
So, I was playing along to “Take Five” the other day (I have an electric kit so I can use headphones). The main beat is fine, once you get the pattern: one two-and-three FOUR-and-five…" but I really can’t figure out what’s going on around the start of the solo, i.e. at about time 2:22 on the CD. The ride cymbal seems to start playing a totally different rhythm for a few bars - it almost sounds like Morello has lost the plot but it all still hangs together and sounds neat. It feels like it switches to triplet time but that still doesn’t sound quite right to me.
Any ace polyrythmic drummers know what he’s doing here?
It appears you can find out here Looking it over, it appears that he simply does something very complicated, that is, he plays the ride cymbal at the same time as snare drum at the exact same time as the bass. Before attmpting it, I would recomend you disconect your smoke alarms, so that the smoke coming out your ears does not set them off. I have a DVD of an old tv appearence, but you are in Jolly Old England, so I can’t just pop next door and loan it to you, much as I would like to. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006RJCR/qid=1113309754/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl74/103-9899427-2606223?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846
If you can get a copy of “Brubeck at Carnegie Hall”, they do a less vamped version of “Take Five” that may cause your synapses to fire mo’ betta. If you want to have smoke coming from your ears and feel totally inadequate on the drums, listen to Morello on “Castilian Drums”, which I insist is the most phenomenal drum solo of all time, much to the annoyance of many.
Just bought that CD in a second hand store on Friday, it’s been way too long since I’d heard those tunes.