An Invitation

I haven't worked out of my Gary Chaffee books in a long, long time (stickings, polyrhythms, etc). Does anyone in Los Angeles want to rent a rehearsal space with me once a month and work through some of this stuff together? The rehearsal studio I like to use is in North Hollywood.

We would each bring our own drums and share the costs for the room (3 hours is around $30, so $15 each) and work through some exercises together - either playing stuff in unison or helping each other tackle the harder stuff, etc.

Is anyone up for it? It may be fun, or it may suck big time, but it's worth a shot.

Have you considered just taking lessons with a good teacher/player. The cost might be more, but you wouldn't have to haul your gear around.

If I may suggest something; with another drummer you could work on Gary Chaffee's drumset duet:
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0769234887/qid=1092186536/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/103-6979523-9332667?v=glance&s=books"]Seventh Heaven[/ame]

It has many of Gary's concepts used in a musical context. At once a month, you're in for a good year of fun.

This piece was dedicated to Steve Smith and Vinnie. In the introduction it says that Steve made the suggestion while him and Gary were watching Vinnie play with Ayden Esen in a Boston jazzclub in 1987. I remember to have read that Vinnie and Steve were supposed to record the piece together but that Vinnie couldn't make it to the session at the last minute, so Gary and Steve play on the tape that accompanies the charts.

While in college, me and a another drum student bought the piece with the intention to play it as our year end recital. This was advanced stuff for us (and still is!!), with lots of polyrhytms phrased between two kits (3:2, 4:3, 5:3, 5:4, 7:4, 7:6, 10:8 ...). We were not able to go through it. I'm confident I could do better now and I'd like to give it another shot.

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Originally posted by Vdrummer:
Have you considered just taking lessons with a good teacher/player. The cost might be more, but you wouldn't have to haul your gear around.

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Um, no... I don't need lessons, thank you. I understand and can play this stuff (I first went through it about 20 years ago), but I thought it might make it more interesting and fun to play it with another drummer.

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Originally posted by Tombo 7/4:
If I may suggest something; with another drummer you could work on Gary Chaffee's drumset duet:
Seventh Heaven

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<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, there are a number of duets in Chaffee's books. That was what got me thinking of doing this with another drummer. Apparently no one else here is interested though.

I would be, but I don't live in California. [img]frown.gif[/img]