The Art of Comping for Jazz Drums

Ready to Discover Comping for Jazz Drums? 

Comping is the art of improvising in response to the music going on around you in the moment - whether that's accentuating the rhythmic hits of the band, or supporting the lines of a soloist.

In fact, you have to be prepared for anything! And that means a different approach to learning.

The Art of Comping for Jazz Drums breaks down the process into clear steps via a comprehensive series of exercises that improve your skills and confidence to explore your own musical expression. 

You'll not only discover a clear, practical practice method, you'll also learn how to apply your skills musically, while developing the kind of fluency that will enable you to improvise your own ideas, as you would on a jazz gig.

The Art of Jazz Comping for Drums:

• Master the rhythmic ingredients of comping
• Learn to spontaneously create musical phrases
• Discover the structure of artistic comping
• Play polyrhythms and advanced phrasing
• Apply your skills musically with professional live backing tracks

A Masterful Study in Four Parts: 

Part One focuses on developing your coordination skills with a logical, thorough series of musical exercises that work systematically through the fundamental rhythmic ingredients of comping.

Part Two uses your new skills to create melodic phrases with snare and bass drum combinations. This is where your language of jazz comping is developed, via exciting examples you can use as a template for your own ideas. In addition, other clear strategies such as question and answer phrasing, are demonstrated to help you turn the exercises into music on the drums.

Part Three teaches you polyrhythmic phrasing and shows how simple ingredients can be used to produce the complex ideas played by Elvin Jones and Tony Williams. You'll also learn to interact with the soloist to bring the drums to the forefront and confidently become an equal partner in the music. You are not there just to keep time! As the great Duke Ellington said, "Jazz is democracy!"

Part Four puts you into a live musical situation with play-along tracks recorded by professional jazz musicians, so you can practice your own comping by listening and responding to the pianist in real time.

"It is a unique skill of the jazz drummer to accompany sensitively in such a way as to inspire and not impede the soloist. Buster has done a superb job in making it both attainable and attractive for anyone eager to learn."

Spike Wells (Tubby Hayes, Bobby Wellins, Stan Getz, Roland Kirk, Art Farmer, Johnny Griffin, James Moody)