You know me: lately, I've been making lessons about pretty practical stuff...
How to take the ho-hum sextuplet and play something more interesting than a six-stroke roll.
Cool ways to take easy-to-play fills and make them sound cooler.
Cool ways to have your hands going a million-miles-an-hour, but your brain at a strolling pace.
So, in my own mind, I've earned some leeway. Just like Stephen Soderberg making the Ocean's Eleven/12/13 movies so he can bankroll The Girlfriend Experience.
Today, we're going to abstract-land. This lick will...
...hands down...
...150%...
Get you fired.
If you play it in the wrong spot that is.
So where did it come from? Marcus Gilmore and Spanky. Where else?
Both Marcus and Spanky take the quarter note triplet to the state-of-the-art. Soon, I'm going to delve more into Spanky.
But this week's lesson lives most comfortably in Marcus-land. He of the using-the-ride-cymbal-instead-of-tom.
Lately I've become fascinated by Marcus' dialogs with Gilad Hekselman, who loves to dish quarter-triplet-based implied metric modulations, and uses the quarter triplet as the basis for many of his phrases. (Check out This Just In to hear what I mean.)
Marcus has a particular way of "commenting", and while this week's lesson isn't directly transcribed from him, it's inspired by years of listening and playing along.
Check it out here.
And, yes - be mindful of pulling this out on gigs. Jazz only, with players who can hang, and make sure you give them a fat "one" if anybody gets confused.
With those cautionary words, go forth!