So far in all of our phrased examples each letter has referred to a one bar pattern. Whilst this is the most common way to for the lettering system to work, sometimes they can refer to longer sections of music. In this lesson you will be expanding on the 'A A A B' phrase covered in an earlier lesson by making each letter refer to a two Bar Pattern.
In this case the 'A' section will be a Two Bar Groove. The 'B' section could either be two bars of fill or a bar of groove followed by a bar of fill. Because you have two bars to play with it gives you a few more options for fill construction. If you choose to use a two bar fill, you could perhaps use two different fill concepts for each bar. For example, the first bar could be based on our Adding Crashes To Grooves concept and the second bar could be a straight roll around the kit.
Below are a few examples of an A A A B structure where each letter refers to a two bar pattern. Various ideas for fill construction have been used. When you have learned the given examples have a go at creating your own parts. The structure for the examples will be this:
Example 1
The fill here using the Adding Crashes To Grooves concept followed by a roll making use of 16th Note Groupings.
Example 2
In this example the fill is just one bar long.
Example 3
The fill here starts with a Build Up.
Example 4
This example uses a China Cymbal, if you don't have one of these any other cymbal will work just as well. The second bar of fill is based on our Using Crashes concept.
Example 5
For the fill in this final example you are first adding some extra snares to the Four On The Floor groove followed by a stop. The snare and crash at the end of the pattern is on beat 4, don't let the dotted minim confuse you.
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all phrases up to a tempo of at least 120bpm.
- Create your own versions of these patterns based on the original structure.