Hey Folks, we often see a lot of transcribed drum solos, trades, and grooves online. By transcribed, I mean the performances are written down in musical notation. While transcribing can sometimes help us analyze material and help to remember it or show it to others, it's not without it's drawbacks. I have always had the most success with "lifting" drum material, meaning I learn it by ear, then put it on the drum set. There are many reasons I think this is superior. If we leave the written page out of the process, we tend to learn it in a deeper way, and it tends to stay in out memory a long time. Also, the more we develop the ability to hear something on a recording and transfer it to the drums with no intermediary steps, we start to be able to move from our ears to our hands and feet much quicker.
Here's a great example of something I recently lifted. It's Philly Joe Jones trading 2 bar phrases on the tune "Gnid" from Tadd Dameron's Mating Call. It's cool in so many ways. Philly starts the trading. It's short because they are short phrases and they only trade on the first 2 As of the tune. Best of all, none of what Philly plays is super fast or difficult, just wonderful examples of the great swinging vocabulary he had. :)
So, it's actually only 8 bars of material. Learn it by ear, and then put it on the drums, I guarantee you'll get a lot of good out of it.
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