Currently I am working on the getting the Half Time Shuffle Groove down. I have been working on this for a couple of weeks and am completely obsessed by it.
Basically it is a half time groove because instead of the kick on 1 and 3 and the backbeat on 2 and 4, this groove has the kick on 1 and the backbeat on 3. Thus they are played half as much as regular 4/4 grooves. The tripplet pattern makes it a shuffe groove as the ostanato is not played in its normal eigth or sixtenth note positions. Here is a very basic Half Time Shuffle Groove. I am currently playing this groove as part of my regular practice everyday for 10 min. I am at around 120 bpm right now. I can wait to get faster and then start adding some more advanced sticking.
This groove was made famous by several drummers such as; John Bonham (Fool in the Rain), Joe Porcaro (Rosanna) and Carter Beauford (When the world ends). Here is a good YouTube Video showing how it is played;
Here is a link to the Jeff Porcaro site where he shows how he came up with the Rosanna groove.
So everything is new again. Every once and again in ones life everything changes. Well for me a new year brought in a new job, a new home and a new band. This also marks the end of a very important era; I stopped taking drum lessons.
Now the reason that stopped taking lessons was mostly because of the new job. It started out as just needed to find another time slot but after I started thinking about it, I decided to take a break. I do fully intend on going back... but even the best laid plans are still just plans. However I still feel inclined to say that even if I dont go back, Jeff Robert will always be my official mentor and friend. I dont have a shortage of nice things to say about this guy. Thanks for everything Jeff but this is by no means the end.
Tbe new band's name is JoeBros. Sounds funny at first I know, but starts to roll of the tounge after a while. We play a good mixture of classic rock, blue rock and some oldies. I am very excited about this because these guys are pretty good. I also promise many pictures to be added to the site and even some recordings very soon. We are practicing every week and plan on playing out around summer.
I have been playing for 3 years now and have come to a point where I feel that I need to break things back down to the basics and really start to concentrate on my rudiments again. I know that I was always suppost to tbe playing them (I was told very early on that I should be spending 1/2 of my practice time on them.) but lets be honest, who actually does that? Well I am now. I never quit got to the point where I was doing all of my rolls with the backfingers, so I think its time to really start hitting them hard. I would really love to hear about how much practice time you spend specifically on rudiments. So I started a new poll......
