Category: Using Syncopation Page 1 of 2

More with rock beats using Syncopation

Going a little further with my earlier piece on making rock beats using— say it with me— Ted Reed’s Syncopation. In doing this, there will be many duplicate…

Alan Dawson’s “Ruff Bossa”

We’re laying it on pretty thick with the Reed interpretations right now, but I just went over this with a student, so I need to put up one…

Rudimental Reed: ruffs

Today’s Rudimental Reed entry is pretty straightforward— just make a ruff out of any note that doesn’t have an (untied) 8th note before it.  That’s an awkward way…

Rudimental Reed: paradiddles

Another entry in our “Rudimental Reed” series, in which we outline some methods for apply rudiments to the long exercises in Ted Reed’s Syncopation, this time using paradiddles….

Half-time feel rock using Syncopation

Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed’s Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we…

Rudimental Reed: five stroke rolls

I’ve been fooling around with applying some rudiments to the long exercises in Syncopation, by Ted Reed. We’ll start humbly with it, converting the written quarter notes (and…

Big band figure builder

Here’s another installment of a thing I’ve been doing with several students, using Syncopation lesson 4 to get familiar with the basic moves and reading associated with setting…

Simple variations on Syncopation, Lesson 4

That’s pages 10-11 for those of you with the old edition– as you can see I’ve given up completely and started referring to the parts by their new…

Page 37

From my torn-up original 1982 copy of Syncopation, still in use:  

Todd's methods: bongo beat

Here’s an easy system I developed for playing a generic Latin feel very bright tempos: A few notes there weren’t room for on the pdf:– Can be played…