In this article I’d like to take the idea of avoiding crossed hands into the rhythmic field of triplets. Triplet-based grooves have their own special twists and turns. Playing these ideas open-handed can be a serious challenge, one that will greatly improve your skills. The roads less traveled are usually the least comfortable, but they can turn out to lead us to interesting places. Some of these exercises would be hard to play in a regular cross-handed position. When I encounter things like that, I often choose to learn them open-handed right away so that I don’t have to reprogram myself. As a warm-up for the grooves presented here, practice the eight triplet exercises below (Examples 1–8), which feature all of the possible rhythmic positions of ghost notes on the snare beneath a shuffle groove on the hi-hat. You can practice these building blocks in any order. You’ll likely notice […]

April 2012 Issue