Nica's Dream

[rstange1]

How would you play this one.?
I saw one drummer playing a mambo:
Ride: 1 2 3 4 & | & & 3 4
Left hand alternating between rim click and rack on: 2 4 &
Bass drum and hi hat alternating on quarter notes.

Not sure what the drummer's doing on the H Silver recording.

One thing I love about YouTube is you can click on the little gear icon (settings) and slow the playback speed down to as little as 25%. Usually 50% is slow enough to figure out what's going on. Give it a try!

 

[nchia]

@multijd thanks for your insight! Are you suggesting the 1/16ths are played between both hands?

 

[pgm554]

Lots of ways to skin a cat.
A Steve Gadd samba would fit nice.
Open hand left lead paradiddles between the hi hat and snare paired with bass drum dotted 8th note and 16th note ostinato.

 

[richiegarcia4]

@richiegarcia4 How did you get on with this? I just started working on it. Did you find anything else that was helpful?

The groove I posted works great for a foundation. It's a fairly easy pattern to play and you can add variations to make it more interesting.

 

[JazzAcolyte]

The groove I posted works great for a foundation. It's a fairly easy pattern to play and you can add variations to make it more interesting.

Cool, that’s pretty much how I play the Latin phrases in I’ll Remember April.

 

[RIDDIM]

Wild. I can only speculate but I’ll try it next time I’m at the drums. I think it’s a throw-rebound like the Brazilians. If you can play 1/8th notes at that tempo with one hand, you turn your hand sideways and make a strumming motion with the brush that produces 1/16th notes through the back and forth strokes.

I've heard him do that on other bossa-flavored tunes. He killed it.

 

[multijd]

@multijd thanks for your insight! Are you suggesting the 1/16ths are played between both hands?

No not two hands but rather one hand where you are getting a stroke on each direction of the motion of the stick. Turn your hand so the thumb is up and throw the stick forward and then back. You get a sound on each direction like strumming a guitar.

 

[nchia]

No not two hands but rather one hand where you are getting a stroke on each direction of the motion of the stick. Turn your hand so the thumb is up and throw the stick forward and then back. You get a sound on each direction like strumming a guitar.

I think how you've described here is how I've tried this myself. I'm just at a loss with what to do with my left hand other than play 1/4s swept back and forth. It's a wonderful arrangement. OP absolutely shreds!

 

[hardbat]

That brush pattern is HIP. Does anyone know what Bobby Durham is doing there?

Sounds like the fairly standard side-to-side brush bossa. At start he might be going faster than eighths... triplets or sixteenth, hard to tell, but ultimately settles into the bossa. Sounds wonderful, thanks for posting, I'd never heard that version.

 

[hardbat]

I'm just at a loss with what to do with my left hand other than play 1/4s swept back and forth.

The left hand plays whatever clave pattern you want. Could be with a brush on the head, or with a stick crossed on the rim.

 

[toddbishop]

That's probably because most North Americans at the time were well not acquainted with what we call Latin grooves, nor the music they were part of. As information became more widely available, that changed. Also, an active bass drum is not necessarily part of some of that music; for some Afro Cuban music, sometimes just tumbao - kick on the and of 2 - is all that's needed.

They were acquainted, there were plenty of Latin musicians around-- I think most of the guys you hear on records were too busy working to practice a lot of stuff. They just worked up something that worked on their jobs and that was it. They all have their own personal versions of the different types of grooves.

On Nica's Dream I copy one of our Portland guys, Ron Steen, who plays a Mozambique on it.

 

[RIDDIM]

There might have been plenty of Latin musicians around, but there weren't plenty of guys playing drum set back then who had researched the idioms in depth. There appears to be more of that today.

 

[toddbishop]

There might have been plenty of Latin musicians around, but there weren't plenty of guys playing drum set back then who had researched the idioms in depth. There appears to be more of that today.

Like I said:

most of the guys you hear on records were too busy working to practice a lot of stuff. They just worked up something that worked on their jobs and that was it.