Musical Transitions

One skill that I like to work on is creating musical transitions from one section of a song to the next. This may a song with vocals or an instrumental tune. There are times when a very simple drum fill seems like the right thing and then other times when I want to make a larger statement to introduce the next part. Quite often when the next part is new material, then I tend to want to make that more of an event. I want the musicians and even the listeners to hear that there’s new material coming right around the corner!

One thing that I want to be aware of during these transitions, is the time – specifically the feel and the pulse. I want to be careful not to change the tempo during transitions. One fun thing for me to practice is to play a groove for 16 bars and play a transition drum fill at the end of that going into a different groove. The second groove could be a variation on the first one, or it could be something entirely different. One thing that some jazz tunes have is where the ‘A’ section swings and then the ‘B’ section is a Latin feel. This can be tricky, but also lots of fun. I like to try to “set up” the section that’s about to happen. When switching from a swing feel to a Latin feel, I want my transition (drum fill) to be even 8th notes and not the swing 8th notes that I had been playing. The opposite is true when I switch from the Latin feel back to a swing feel – I want that transition to start to swing and imply the upcoming groove.

I love how different transitions seem to make the music come alive. Have fun with this and see what happens!