An uptempo approach to Jazz Drumming

The JX Method is a comprehensive jazz drumming system with an emphasis on uptempo jazz ride cymbal patterns. Learn how to play jazz drums and begin to transform your ride cymbal technique using the JX Method. The JX Method offers many invaluable drum lessons, practice routines, and play-along tracks all with one thing in mind: provide an approach to jazz drumming that will get you gigs! The JX Method is available as an eBook.

The JX Method uses exercises and principles to improve a drummer’s speed, but most importantly how to make it feel and sound professional.

Anyone can learn to play 400bpm, how do you make it sound good?

Tony Williams made fast tempos sound good. Max Roach made even faster tempos sound good. There’s no overnight solution for playing fast. There are, however, certain exercises and shortcuts you can practice that allow you to progress faster, and with ease. The JX Method will teach you how to play at tempos as fast as 400bpm, but at the same time there is a strong emphasis on the development of feeling in your playing. Its safe to say that drummers like Tony Williams practiced a lot, but its also safe to say that they listened and played even more. The best way to learn how to play jazz is to jump right in and PLAY!

The purpose of this book is to get you thinking and feeling like a great jazz drummer right now. Listening to great drummers and studying how they play rather than what they play is a highly efficient and fun way to learn music. You will find many listening examples in the JX Method along with your own play-along tracks and the ability to chose whether to play with a click, or no drummer at all.

The JX Method shows you how to hear and internalize the beat rather than just telling you what to play.

The Book

The JX Method is made up of three parts: Before You Get Started, How to Play Burning Tempos, and Practice Routines. Listed below are some of what you get in the JX Method book:

How to Play Burning Tempos:

Before jumping into the different practice routines and exercises, its important to understand a couple of key principles that directly apply to uptempo swing patterns. This refers to how you count and feel the beat and is a very important preface to the rest of the JX Method.

Practice Routines:

For the purpose of developing your uptempo abilities, the JX Method includes two different practice routines that are played through much of the tempo spectrum. The “Speed Builder Routine” uses two alternating exercises to develop a clear, clean, and confident ride cymbal technique at all fast tempos including 400bpm. The “Creativity Routines” focuses on developing and expanding your ideas over a gradually increasing tempo by soloing, trading, and creating your own uptempo ride patterns. For the purpose of your rapid development, these practice routines are organized into three tempo groups of which are complimented by comping rhythms, alternate ride patterns, and recommended listening. In other words, for each of the three tempo groups (medium-fast, fast, and burning) you have comping rhythms, alternate ride patterns, and recommended listening that are directly related to the tempo at hand.

Alternate Ride Pattern Notation:

To understand how to create and execute your own uptempo ride cymbal patterns in a split second, the JX Method has developed a one-of-a-kind ride pattern notation. The purpose of creating this ride cymbal notation is because learning to visualize ride patterns in this simple, and open-ended way, teaches you an extremely valuable approach to jazz drumming. Since jazz drummers generally focus on how they play the ride cymbal, creating your own ride patterns that swing at fast tempos on the spot is a very sought after skill.

Recommended Listening:

Throughout the JX Method book there are 24 carefully selected musical examples of uptempo jazz drumming. The songs included in the recommended listening range in tempos from 165bpm to 425bpm and range in styles from beebop, performed by Dizzy Gillespie, to more modern sounds such as Wayne Shorter, and Chick Corea. Although most of this book is centered around how and what to practice for developing serious uptempo jazz drumming skills, a tremendous amount of what you will learn comes from hearing other influential and legendary drummers playing fast tempos.

What else you get in the JX Method Book:

• Comping and independence exercises
• How to hold the stick
• How to use the bounce at fast tempos
• Stretches and relaxation
• How to internalize and subdivide the beat
• The importance of feeling
• Endurance and Double-time exercises
• How to stagger tempos, and how to increase a routines’ effectiveness
• The Shuffle Technique – how to trick yourself into playing twice as fast
• Over 50 alternate ride patterns
• How to use the metronome

The CD

The CD included with the JX Method has 25 tracks of examples, and play along songs. The audio examples on the CD correspond to examples in the book and are marked with a track listing symbol.

Play along songs:

Click below to hear each play-along song (drums included).

• Four Hundred – 400bpm
• Cherokee – 350bpm
• Eternal Triangle – 300bpm
• Blues for Dinah – 250bpm

For an ideal play-along setting, there are two more versions of each song, each with no drums. Not only can you play as the drummer, but you can chose to play with or without a metronome

Own the JX Method instantly!

Download the JX Method through the secure  server and  have it in a matter of minutes. When you buy the JX Method you will download a PDF file and 25 MP3’s in one compressed folder.

E-Book Price: $19.95

Or if you prefer the hard copy…

To learn more about the JX Method Click Here