Simple mambo pattern = tying me in knots
I've spent the last few weeks trying to get my head round this devious mambo pattern, taken from The Drummer's Bible via my drum teacher. Closehat-5 is actually a pedal hat, and the Ratty Rimclick is a rimshot.
No bass drum on the one is a tricky devil, and means fighting the natural inclination of my right foot to stamp down at the start of each bar. It's me trying to do something different to the usual funk patterns I've memorised and play over and over, and dammit it hurts, but that's what (my) learning is all about, constantly shouting at myself - "stop doing that thing you can do in your sleep, do this stuff that makes you feel like you're a beginner again".
So I've been practising at my usual slow tempo, here's a rendering of the beat from Ableton Live using a motley collection of drum samples at 115bpm, or thereabouts:
...which sounds alright, I guess. I don't watch Strictly Come Dancing, but I'd like to think that the Reithian edict is still in order and you've all become experts on dance steps and tempos through Bruce Forsyth's tutelage; so you'll all no doubt be smacking your foreheads at this point and be going - duh, mambo tempo is 192-204bpm - hello:
...which makes much more sense. Obviously I've a way to go before I can get up to 200bpm with this pattern, but I'll get there. Possibly in 2015.
The great thing about this pattern is I can break it apart and use the constituent elements to torture myself in other ways, the "no bass drum on the one" thing, the pedal hat on the one and three, the ride pattern and strange accenting, the toms... weeks and weeks of twiddling out of a couple of bars. I might need to come back in another life to get this drumming thing down.
