Steve Fitch

Advanced Swing Systems Steve Fitch

Advanced Swing Systems for Drum Set is part of the six book Fantastic Hands and Feet series by Steve Fitch. It is the most complete method out there designed to help drummers equalize the abilities of their hands and feet-to help them with any style they choose to play. It has been endorsed by many of today's top drummers and percussionists, among them, Peter Erskine, Colin Bailey and John Tafoya. Although, the drum set books in this series were written using a double pedal, they can just as easily be studied using the bass drum and hihat. In fact, I highly recommend this approach for folks that do not perform using a double pedal. Advanced Swing Systems was written to help drummers develop their skills at comping behind a soloist in the jazz idiom. It does so through the use of rhythmic melodies which are played in many different ways thanks to a list of systems that tell the student what to do with each limb when playing the melody. Each system is different and will tax your coordinative abilities in a different way! Great comping takes a lot of "headroom" and this is what this book is designed to give you. There are melodies and systems for both medium and up-tempo swing. Working out of this book will help give you the facility to listen to the soloist with BIG EARS and react in the most musical way possible. Caution! These etudes aren't for the faint hearted! They are also not intended to sound like actual comping, since they are etudes for the development of the skills necessary to comp well. But they work. Also included is an Appendix containing all of the melodies without dynamics, if you want to first practice these without the inherent difficulty that the dynamics provide. Or you can pencil in your own dynamics to give the melodies a whole different "feel." When you're tired of those dynamics, simply erase them and pencil in new ones! Comping at the drums is one of the most difficult things to do well--it's spontaneous and "in the moment." You are conversing with the soloist, supporting him/her, reacting to them, perhaps even influencing them to change direction. There is an art to doing this well and it is a big part of your voice as a jazz drummer. Advanced Swing Systems will help you with this.