 Hello everybody, my name is Aaron Walker-Loud with Big World Breaks, and I'm here on behalf of the creative advantage working on elements of percussion, rhythm, cultural innovation, improvisation, and studying different techniques. Ultimately, there are a lot of things about feel that we're going to get into it. When I say feel, some people say groove or the pocket or style, but when I talk about feel, to let you know, usually we're looking at two different major feels and then a variety in between. So we have straight and we have swing. So I'm going to use some rudiments with the desk to help us get warmed up, and then we're going to start talking more about that through the rest of this video. So rudiments, that's a fancy way of talking about a pattern, a pattern of certain rhythms to connect our brain to our hands, right? If you're playing drum set, you'll also be using your feet. The idea is if a singer and a trombone player, if they have to use scales and arpeggios to train how to improve their muscle memory and their knowledge and their dexterity, we as percussionists may not have as many notes, but we have infinite rhythms we can be working on. I'm going to show you a few and you can find hundreds or thousands of more online and you can make up your own rudiment patterns, I'm sure. So starting with singles versus doubles, we have a low, medium, and a high sound on most any surface of a drum or a table. So using your fist to get the lowest sound, using your slap for the medium sound, using your knock to get the highest pitch, right? So starting with singles versus doubles, I'm going to go between all three pitches. Here we go. Play along with me, please. One, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and let's switch to slap. One, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and nice. Let's increase the speed. What's the word for speed? Tempo. Here we go. Same thing. Singles versus doubles. One, two, ready, and one, two, three, four, one, and two, and three, and four, and one, two. Let's switch to the knock. Okay. Now let's look at triplets. We're going to do doubles and triplets so we can kind of keep reviewing and moving forward at the same time. So that's two at a time and then three at a time with me. One, two, ready, and one, two, one, and two, and one, and two, and three, and a, four, and a one, and two, and three, and a four, and a double, double, triplet, triplet. Triple it, triple it, double it, double it, triple it, triple it. Okay. Now, paradiddles, that is another term for the next rudiment I want to show you, which is essentially two singles and then a double, and then we switch to our other lead, trying to get balance of left and right. Most people are not ambidextrous. The paradiddle helps us to get more balance between our right and our left. So let's try that together. I'm going to say it first, you say it with me twice, and then we're going to use our hands. Right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, right, left, right, left, left. Now a term we use double time, that just means twice as fast as what we did before. So now we're going to do paradiddles at single time like we just did, and then double time. Here we go. One, two, ready with me. Okay. Now, if you want more of a challenge, let's try to go single time, double time, triple time. Here we go. I'm going to do two cycles of that. One, two, paradiddle starting at single time. Okay, nice, nice. If you're finding yourself a little bit challenged or you can't keep up on certain tempos, please do not worry. My goal is to give you things that work with you and always push with a little challenge. You may hear some teachers talk about growth mindset or perseverance. These are terms that really help us to think about that we're human. We have to embrace our mistakes. We have to embrace the fact that our effort and our patience with ourselves on a daily basis is how we meet our goals. We cannot snap our fingers and be as good as we want at anything. So be patient with yourself, laugh at your mistakes, take your own pace, take what I'm giving you, slow it down if you need to, and also find ways to challenge yourself. So the last thing we're going to do using the table for now is what I call the echo game, where I'm going to play something and you try and repeat it back to me. I'm going to be using fist, slap, knock, low, mid, high. I'm going to be changing tempos. I'm going to be mixing it up a little bit and keep that growth mindset in mind. Don't worry about being perfect. Do your best. We're going to trade one measure at a time. We'll do a few in a row. Here we go. Starting with me. One, two, one, two, ready, and last one. Okay. Nice. Nice. So now that we've warmed up a little bit, I'm going to move us over to the gym bay and we're going to start looking at a little bit of idea. We talked about straight and swing, and I'll tell you more over there. So straight and swing, there feels in music and there's a lot in between. When we're using a hand drum like this, congas, gym bass, bongos, the concept of bass tone and slap as low, mid, high are universal, right? So bass with the middle of the drum with your open hand and then using your palm to lightly ricochet and letting your fingers stay loose so they can pop on and off. That's tone, bass, tone, slap with your fingertips towards the edge. High pitch, low, mid, high, just to review. Now moving forward, thinking about straight and swing. Let's play eighth notes straight and then I'll show you how I start switching to swing and we'll go back and forth. Here we go with me. One, two, one, two, ready and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and two and three and four. Two more times. One and two and three and four, one and two and three. Keep playing with me. Now remember, if you don't have a hand drum or you don't have a snare drum and All you have is your own creation at home or a table. That's totally fine. Keep using that as long as the adults are in your home are cool with that. Now, let's use 16th notes. So playing them straight, I'm gonna use slap. Now, the highest pitch. One E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a. And I'll switch to swing. Straight. Nice. Now, the people who were creating the swing feel, and I'll tell you more about that in a little bit, they might not have looked at it like this, but sometimes for me I'm a visual learner and I think about what's the math in the count. So I was thinking about how the triplet, which we've done before. Right, right, right, left, left, left, right, right, right, left, left, left. Or you could play with singles doing triplet. One and a two and a three and a four and a. Whichever way you like. The idea is there's three notes. What if we made this one invisible? One and a two and a three and a four and a one and two and three and four and one and a two and a three and a four and a one and two. And you see what I'm saying? So let's try triplets and then eliminate the middle triplet to see what happens. Three and a four and a one. Let's try and increase the tempo. One, two, ready and a. Okay, now, that's a little bit of a clue on how to be thinking about it, but it's really more about the feel over time. And there's, like I said, an infinite difference between swing and straight and everything in between. Now I'm gonna move back to the table and we're gonna start listening to a song that I have developed that'll help us in getting more free playing swing, all right? So in creating this draft here with Big World Breaks, I was thinking about influences that impacted me over time. Artists like Chuck Brown with go-go music. Teddy Riley with R&B. New Jack swing. Artists who use their mouth with beatboxing percussion like Dougie Fresh and Ready Rock C. These are just some of the influences. Now this has a swing feel in it. So right now we're gonna do an echo game where you're gonna repeat after me anything I try and play to you, just imitate me the best you can. Here we go, repeat after me. Ready and. If you've noticed, I did some swing and some straight. So it's nice to think about what's possible when you can go in between and play one thing on top of the other, right? So in me thinking about swing, I couldn't have done any of this, this feel, without great teachers and mentors in my life. So once again, find those people who can help you achieve your goals. Mr. Nat at Washington Middle School in the central district where I grew up. Mr. Acox at Garfield High School, a jazz band drumline at both schools in that neighborhood. Then with Mr. Brian Kirk over at Seattle Central, these great mentors helped me cultivate my style and understanding. And they also taught me about how the roots of this music is before jazz. We're talking about from Congo Square in New Orleans where gospel music and blues music, innovations of black Americans led to the birth of jazz in a very unique place. And so in New Orleans on every Sunday, for whatever reason, they decided let's let everybody play. When there was a lot of people confined by slavery and confined by Jim Crow and all these horrible things, on Sundays, they were allowed to be in the park. And they were making music and singing and dancing and sharing cultural ideas. So what I want you to understand is all the stuff we're hearing today that we've talked about like hip hop and funk and EDM and R&B, all these things, they come from a family tree that started way, way long ago. And I encourage you to look up Congo Square. And we're gonna use this song one more time. And now instead of imitating me in an echo game, what I'm gonna ask you to do, I'm gonna move over to the snare. You're gonna play your own phrase. You're gonna make it up however you want. All right, after me. Yep, let's do it more. Now I'm gonna move over to the jimbay and we're gonna utilize a different piece of music that Big World Breaks worked on that helps us navigate between straight and swing and some of the in-betweens, all right? Follow me over here. So when thinking about what influenced this creation working with my peers in Big World Breaks from a wide variety of Pan-African music, which is a way of talking about influences from people who are all around the world who originate culturally and ethnically from African diaspora. And these styles merging together from different lands, from different cultures, from different nationalities, but sharing that common bond. So artists like Shade, The Roots, Erika Badu, Burning Spear, these are just some examples of artists that influenced me creating this with my peers in Big World Breaks. But once again, there's so many people to check out, but check them out too. Now we're gonna start with eighth notes and then sixteenth notes going from straight to swing. Then we're gonna try and find that in-between spot. Let's straight again and then swing. Now I went back and forth, but in this song we're trying to find that a sweet spot in between. So now I'm gonna do straight, then swing and then follow right in the middle somewhere to lock in. Next sixteenth notes, which even articulate a little bit more. Once again, sixteenths, one in with straight, keep it going on the in-between. Back to straight, let's stay in-between after this. Nice, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna let you try to improvise to freestyle your own rhythms. Ideally you're trying to pick one or the other, straight, swing, or in-between. I'll go first, you go after me, here we go. And you can play in-between, right? Nice, thank you for participating in that. And I just wanted to review for us some of the essentials that we've talked about today. So we did some rudiments up front, the patterns, we did singles, doubles, triplets, paradiddles, right? We talked about the importance of feel and things in-between, the two major fields of straight and swing. We talked about finding your own teachers and mentors and thinking about artists that you may like or teachers that you come across or people you find online. For me, the main drummer that has influenced me separate from my teachers is Elvin Jones. So I definitely encourage you to check him out too. But find your own. We also talked about being able to think about how to eliminate the middle triplet, one and two and one and two and right? So that's a little bit of a specific mathematical way to think about the swing feel. And I'd encourage you also to keep looking up some of these styles of music that have influenced everything that brings this feel about. So blues and gospel music and then how that gave birth to jazz and everything that came after that to the modern day. And it's really important to keep in mind as Mr. Natt always said, there's no shortcut in music. So you can't wake up one day and say, I wanna be good at this exactly how I wanna be. You have to spend an hour at a time, a day at a time, be honest with yourself and think about what your weaknesses are, what your strengths are and keep navigating through it. And no matter what equipment you have at home or what you do have at home or what you don't or when you can practice, when you can't or if you do like your teacher, you don't like your teacher, the thing is you're gonna be your own best teacher in your life. So figure out what you need to do to do what you love and hold yourself accountable to get better at it every day. And I guarantee you, you're gonna find more happiness than most people. So thank you again. This is Aaron Walker Loud with Big World Breaks and this has been brought to you by The Creative Advantage. Have a great day.