In the July, 1984 MD, in the Ask A Pro column, a reader asked Steve Smith about a fill Steve played on the Journey song “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” The notation looked like this: Now, if you were like many of my students, the notation might have seemed confusing to you. Actually, that same fill could have been written as follows: To get a fix on how this sounds, isolate the snare notes and you get: Once you maintain this key pattern with the right hand, it is relatively simple to fill in the rest of the notes. What Steve was employing in the performance and writing of this fill is a rhythmical device called artificial groupings. As ominous as that sounds, you are probably quite familiar with a very common artificial grouping: the triplet. A triplet is a group of three notes of equal value played in the same […]

September 1985 Issue