Thank you Billy Martin for the Clave Notation!

I was working in the great book by Billy Martin, "Riddim, Claves of African Origin", and in the book he presents a really great notation system used for conveying clave rhythms on the drum set. The system was so useful that I immediately found myself using it right away with little practice. I would recommend buying this book by the way. Billy has been a huge inspiration to me, and his book is very insightful. It shows clearly the depth of his personal approach and method to acclimate these styles into his tasteful repertoire.

This clave concept sparked a revelation for me: Everything can be considered a clave. Each groove, no matter how it's painted has a predominant pulse, which can be thought of as a call and response. Personalizing this into my own playing has a tendency to make my playing more conversational at its core. This frees up my embellishments to maintain the conversation with the other musicians I'm playing with. Even some thing as simple as "boom chick boom boom chick" becomes:

QUESTION: "Boom Chick?"
ANSWER: "Boom boom chick!"

This may sound strange, but it's apparent as you start to think about the dialog between instruments, and extend that to the drum set. You can hear this between musicians in some choral music where a group of singers may repeat a phrase as an ostinato pattern as a ‘call and response' and other groups of singers singing related patterns over top.

Related to this, I'll mention the tune "Boozer" from the John Scofield album "A Go Go". Medeski, Martin, and Wood back up John Scofield on this album, and on this track they work together to create this kind of simulated drunken banter. As you listen to the track imagine the music is a drunkard talking, boasting, belching, and spitting a bit. I think you'll get what I mean here.

Back to my main thread here, I started using a variation of Billy's clave notation to quickly document groves I play on set, so I can remember them later. I also used this to map out difficult patterns that I can understand, but have trouble lining up between my limbs. It works well on paper, but also in a mono-spaced font in the computer world. Here is a description of how I have been using it.

Legend - Beat Notation

Count 1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a

R Hand | | | | | | | |
L Hand | | | | | | | |
R Foot | | | | | | | |
L Foot | | | | | | | |

x closed HH
o open HH
x foot HH

@ Snare Drum
- Cross Stick

^ Rack Tom
v Floor Tom

* Kick Drum

There is basically a vertical line for each part of the pulse. In this case a measure of 4/4 is represented by each 8th note. 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. The spaces in between represent the e's and ah's in 1e&a. The horizontal positions aren't instruments, but instead limbs, so you can easily see how the rhythms relate to each other as a whole.

Then along each horizontal limb, you map out the orchestration that is played by each limb, which may change. Here is an example groove in the clave notation:

Count 1e&a2e&a3e&a4e&a

R Hand x x x x x x x x
L Hand | | | @ | | @ |
R Foot * | | | | **| |
L Foot | o | | o | | o

And here is what it sounds like: clave-notation-example.mp3

The situation has come up a half dozen or so times in my life where I had to sub for a group and get up to speed on a nights worth of songs in just a few days. On 3 occasions I had to do over 40 unfamiliar songs in less than 48 hours. This isn't bad if you are somewhat familiar with the songs, but if they are completely foreign then it can be quite a challenge to do without some excellent notes. I usually will use a kind of Nashville number system hybrid wherever possible which is similar to the one Billy Ward describes in his great book, "Inside Out: Exploring the Mental Aspects of Drumming".

It's pretty easy to document a groove or feel in the clave notation and include it with the Nashville style chart to make a more complete reminder of how the groove is constructed.

I was recently asked to fill in playing a nights worth of mostly Grateful Dead tunes. I had never had the opportunity to listen to the Dead and had no idea what I might be in for. I got the list of songs and started listening and making notes. Most of the grooves are pretty standard kind of feels, so notes like: "2 beat country swing" and "Slow blues shuffle" were enough to suffice for many of them, but for the trickier tunes this system worked really well. I was able to do the one and only rehearsal with the band without any actual wood-shedding. The band was very happy and surprised that I was able to hop right in so quickly. They Bass player, who I play with regularly, told them "Oh yeah, he does his homework all right!". Can't beat an introduction like that to other musicians .