Playing a Jazz Ride Cymbal in 6/8: Part 1

Series Summary

The drum is perhaps the oldest known musical instrument and its basic design has not changed in thousands of years. Far from today’s uses as a percussive foundation for pop music or for fueling marching band excitement, drumming has a more profound history as a method of communication, and as an implement of religious symbolism.

In this free video series our expert, David Pakman will show you how to play a basic jazz beat on the drums. He will teach you how to hold the drumsticks in the traditional way and using a match grip. He will teach you how to play the hi hat, the bass drum or kick, the snare, and toms. He will also teach you how to swing those different drums, crating a different feel perfect for jazz. David will also teach you how to play a traditional jazz drum beat called four on the floor.

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is David Pakman on behalf of Expert Village, and this video series I'll be talking about the fundamentals of jazz drumming. Today we'll be talking about the fundamentals of jazz drumming. And jazz drumming is really based around having the Swing pattern on the ride cymbal, which is over here. I'm an open handed drummer, meaning I'm left handed and I play on a right handed set up, but I still have my ride cymbal on my left. It's also based on the high hat and today we'll be looking at some snare exercises. So the first thing to get involved with Jazz is we need to get that Jazz ride pattern going. The spang, spang, alang, spang alang that you hear a lot. And the best way to think about this at first is in a group of six. And we're going to count to six and we're going to play on one, four and six. So it's one, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six, one. So let me do that on my ride cymbal and we'll count in groups of six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six."