Broken Triplets - a Musical Perspective.

In the '80s, a phenomenon hit the drumming community that would create a lasting impact - Dave Weckl was invented. Developed in Sweden since the mid-'60s, and after 15 years of extensive development, this Uberdrumming Teknorobot was a worldwide success. The Dave Weckl MK. 1 with its characteristic mullet influenced many an impressionable drummer to copy and emulate his playing and to develop their technique. Love him or hate him, he was a huge impact upon drummers everywhere.

One thing that Weckl popularized was the use of broken triplets between the hands and bass drum. Very simply, a 'broken triplet' is one where two notes are played with the hands and one note is played with the bass drum. For example, RLb RLb, or LRb LRb. Just about any drummer worth his or her salt is able to 'boogada boogada' around the kit when given the opportunity. It sounds cool, and also seems a lot harder than it really is. In this lesson, I will hopefully help you to realize that there is more to this simple little group of notes than 'boogada boogada'. We're going to apply a few judicious accents to these triplets and create a few new ideas.

First, let's go through how to play these exercises properly. There are two rules to remember.

Rule 1: Two Layers of Sound. If you play an accent, bring the stick up to near vertical and drop it onto the drum. If you play a tap (ie normal stroke) play it from 5cm above the drum. If you follow this, the taps will sound soft and the accents will be LOUD.

Rule 2: Accuracy is Better than Speed. Go slow, you eediot! Aim to get the notes spot on before you speed it up! You want to sound like an intelligent drummer, not a garage hacker. Fine tune at slow tempos so that your quicker fills sound great, not like mush.

The first set of exercises outline the 4 building blocks that we're going to use:

Ex.1 uses no accents, so keep those sticks low.

Ex.2 has an accent on the first note of every triplet.

Ex.3 has the accent on the second note of every triplet.

Ex.4 accents every note played with the hands.

Play every triplet as RLb.

You'll hopefully notice that each exercise has its own unique character and feel. After you have mastered these on the snare drum, try orchestrating them on the drum kit. The trick is to keep all of the ‘taps’ on the snare drum, and move the accents around the toms. The easiest variation of this is to place all of the right hand accents on the floor tom and the left hand accents on the high tom.

Once you’ve had a play around with this, we’re going to change the time feel and play the above exercises as a 4:3 polyrhythm. Suffice to say, the number of triplet notes in 4/4 is the same as the number of 16th notes in ¾ (12). In 4/4, you play the triplets as 4 groups of 3, while in ¾ you play the 16th notes as 3 groups of 4. Confused yet? Essentially what we are going to do is play the 16th notes (which naturally fall into 3 groups of 4) as 4 groups of 3 instead. This creates a ‘stretching’ feel as the groups of notes fall across the beat, instead of directly on it.
Have a look and you’ll see what I mean:

The hands and bass drum play groups of 3 while the hi-hat (left foot) plays on the groups of 4. Spend a bit of time on these exercises, and remember to count out loud (“1-e-&-a-2-e-&-a-3-e-&-a”) as you play. Accuracy is most important here, not speed! Also, make sure you play the left foot hi-hat. Not only will it be good for your independence, it will also help you to cement the beat while you're playing these tricky-dicky groups of 3 over the top of it.

The next few examples are what happens when you take the 4 basic building blocks above and turn them into extended phrases:

Orchestrate these around the kit and you’ll start to hear some very funky phrases.

Lastly, here’s one bar from the exercises above which I have orchestrated and turned into a drum fill. It is the first bar of exercise 12. I have moved the accents onto the toms, and also added “4-e-&-a” on the snare drum to round it off to a nice neat 4/4 bar. Enjoy.

If you have a serious go at some of these ideas, you'll hopefully start to see a whole new world of fills opening up before you. Jump in and enjoy the ride!