Steve Smith – Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge – Solo 124

From the Charley Wilcoxon book The All-American Drummer, here are three interpretations of Solo 124. These are recorded for the Facebook page The Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge hosted by Kevin Lehman. My approach is to play with Wilcoxon solos with “swing interpretation,” which is how I learned to play them as a teenager. To truly inhabit a swinging feel, I like to play the solos along with jazz tunes at different tempos. I played the solo with brushes, at a slow tempo, to the Peter Erskine play-along track called “Autumnal Foliage” from his ERSKN JAZZ ESSENTIALS PLAY-ALONG Jazz 1. Then an up-tempo version played to “Four” from the Miles Davis album Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet. And finally, there is a solo snare drum version played to a metronome set at 110BPM. To apply the Wilcoxon material to the drumset it’s good to play 2&4 on the Hi-Hat and catch written accents with the bass drum. The “Buddy Rich” snare drum and music stand in the video will be on display at The Northup Coll