July 29th, 2011
Here’s A Way To Practice Rhythm!â¨Â  Â
One exercise that I do with my students is to practice “The Table Of Time” as a trading fours exercise. You don’t have to do this in just four measure phrases. You can also use 8, 16 or 32 bar phrases. Or use 2 or even 1 measure phrases. You can and should adjust it to whatever you want to practice. We’ll talk about four bar phrases here.â¨Your next question might be “what’s the table of time?” drumming
The “Table Of Time” is a list of all your notes (or rhythms) arranged from “slower” sounding rhythms to “faster” sounding rhythms. I first heard of this rhythm chart described as the “Table Of Time” by legendary teacher Joe Morello in his book “Master Studies.”⨠fast drumming Anyway, if you are familiar with each of these rhythms, try using each one individually as a solo in your trading fours exercise. Limit yourself to just that rhythm. In other words, if you are practicing quarter notes, you are not allowed to use any notes faster than quarter notes during your 4 measure solo.⨠If you’ve never done this before you may find it difficult and downright boring. But here’s the thing, the “practice” becomes how to make the quarter notes sound interesting… like music! If you are just dropping quarter notes around the set arbitrarily then you’re not creating music. What you are doing is taking “speed” out of the equation. You have to rely on all of the other musical devices to make those quarter notes sound like music and not just a bunch of slow, banging sounds around the drums.moeller method