(jazz music) – Hey everybody, this is Robert Mathijs from The Quest for
Groove and in this video, I'm gonna teach you a method to playing jazzy stuff on your pad controller. It involves some preparation, because when I was preparing this lesson, I noticed that it was way
more convenient to swap a few samples around and to
use jazz-specific samples, like for example, hits that
are played with brushes. So let's do some preparations first and then let's go play some jazz. So all the sounds you hear come from my beloved Addictive Drums 2 drum library and to get that nice, mellow jazzy sound, you'll need to get their jazz brushes kit.
You can also use other drum software, but then you'll at least need to find some samples that are played with brushes, 'cause otherwise it won't work for this particular way of playing. Okay, so the quickest way to
get a sound that resembles mine is to get that Addictive
Drums 2 jazz brushes kit and I'll link to it below and then you install it and
you boot up in Addictive Drums and you choose the No
Room with Comp preset and afterwards you go
into the drum setting and you change the brushed ride for a ride that's played with sticks. That's my sound. Okay, so now our kit is 100% ready, but we have to alter our pad layout a little bit to the following layout. Now let me walk you through it. It's still based on the standard Quest for Groove pad layout, so if you don't know what that is, please check out this video or check out the link in
the description below, but if you do, let me walk
you through the changes.
So these two pads (cymbal dings) are both rides now. This is a normal ride (cymbal dings) and this is a ride bell. (cymbal dings) It's good for variety within jazz playing. And the other two hi-hats are the same.
(hi-hat taps) The rest of the pads are also the same, except for this entire row. This entire row has different
samples than I use normally. Okay, so this pad over here (hi-hat taps) that I usually use as a side stick is now a hi-hat foot close sample. (hi-hat taps) So this is the sample that you hear when a drummer uses his foot
pedal to close the hi-hat. And next to this, these
three pads are all snare pads and they're all played with brushes, but they increase in
intensity in this way. So this is the lowest intensity snare hit
(snare taps) and this is the highest intensity snare hit.
(snare bangs) So this one
(snare taps) is a sample called Closed Soft Tap and you only get this sample
when you have a brushes kit.
(snares tapping) When you're playing it, you immediately hear that jazzy sound. (snares tapping) Okay, next to that is a
normal snare open hit, (snare bangs) but it's played with brushes. (snare bangs) And next to that one is a shallow rimshot. (snare banging) That's the most intense sound. (snares drumming) You can do all this jazzy stuff. Okay now, with our kit
and pad layout in place, don't forget to save
this preset, by the way, so you can recall it whenever
you want to play jazz.
With all of that in place,
we can do some jazz drumming. Let's start out with our right hand and play a ride on every beat and a hi-hat foot close
on the two and four. One, two, three, four,
(drumming) one, two, three, four. (drumming) Okay, now let's bring in our
left hand and occasionally give that ride a little
extra swing hit, like this. (drumming) Now for some extra power on the afterbeat, let's also use that soft snare tap pad on the two and the four, together
with the close hi-hat pad. (drumming) And now we can use that left hand again and sometimes tap the ride, but
sometimes tap the snare pad. (drumming) Like that. And now let's ditch the ride and move the ride pattern to the snare. So now we're gonna play
every beat on the snare and we're still gonna do that closed foot hi-hat on the afterbeat.
(drumming) It's another type of jazz
pattern that you can play. Usually when the band goes
all-out, you go to the right and then when you have
to take some energy back, you move to that snare
thing and you just do that. All right, let's switch back and forth between that ride and that
snare pattern for a second. (drumming) Okay, now let's go back
to the first pattern and bring in our left thumb and play some accents on the snare here. (drumming) Right? And if you want, you can also
play the accents on the kick, but personally. (drumming) That's possible, that's a jazzy sound, but usually when I'm playing
jazzy things like this, as soon as I start
dropping bombs with a kick, it's too much, so be a bit modest with the kick drum accents.
Finally, let's do a swing
pattern on the hi-hat, like this. (drumming) All we're doing now is basically we're playing hi-hat on the one and three. One, three, one.
(drumming) And then on the two and four, we're playing this closed hi-hat, which also closes
(hi-hat taps) the open hi-hat.
(hi-hat taps) See? And we also hit that soft snare, just one, two, three, four,
(drumming) one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, four, one. But then we also play
that little swing note in front of every open hi-hat. One, two, three, four,
(drumming) one, two, a-three, four, a-one,
two, a-three, four, a-one. (drumming) And again, if we bring in our thumb, we can play some accents. (drumming) All right, that's a relatively simple way to play jazz-style swing
grooves on your pad controller and obviously, this video
only scratches the surface of what's possible within the jazz genre and I'm already looking forward to some snobby comments below telling me why what I just explained is
not jazz and why I have to listen to Charles Mingus
and stuff like that, but to tell you the truth,
I don't play jazz that often and if I need something that sounds jazzy, in one of my productions, for example, the stuff I just taught
you is all I ever needed to make it work, so it's pretty jazzy.
Two final tips. One, when in doubt, play less. You don't have to play accents
and variations all the time and most songs benefit from you being a humble jazz drummer
that just hits his ride and doesn't try and do
too many fancy things. Usually you're only in the
way of all the other soloists and all the other jazz players. Two, a little trick make
your jazz grooves cook, is that right? Cookin' jazz, like make
the, well, whenever, a little trick to make
your jazz grooves groove is to listen to the bass player, because in jazz, especially
when there's a walking bass, the bass player plays on
every beat of the bar.
♪ Bom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom ♪ So in a way, the bass player is like a very low-pitched metronome and you can use that to your advantage by really locking in with that metronome. Well, that's it for
today, I'm gonna jazz out and see you next week for another video and until then, stay groovy. Bye. (jazz music).
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