Admission Requirements, Jazz Drum

Sight reading: all the notes of the Béla Bartók Secondary School of Music, performed on side drum; playing a difficult rhythm piece written for full drum set – solo and accompaniment. Knowledge of the 1st and 2nd volumes of Kőszegi: Drum works and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd volumes Nesztor: Rhythm Playing and Jazz Drumming, reading any material of the same difficulty.

 

Short solo drum improvisation - 2-3 minutes.

 

Drumming the following materials in the general styles and rhythms of jazz with piano and piano-double bass accompaniment:

Swing accompaniment and solo interlude (in 4 or 8 beats) with triplet and eighth note rhythm, in 4/4, 3/4 and 6/8 beats, with stick and wire brush. Solo performance in 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32 beats.

Accompaniment of a jazz ballade with stick and wire brush.

Accompaniment of Latin and Afro-American pieces - bossa-nova, samba, rumba, Afro-Cuban etc. - of different tempo (slow, middle and fast) with solo interludes.

Accompaniment of jazz-rock pieces with solo interludes.

Ad hoc accompaniment of a rubato piano piece.

 

Special theoretical admission requirement for jazz drummers: rhythm notation – notation of  drum accompaniment and drum solo performed on full drum set by ear.

 

  
Bartók presented an austere, forbidding front to the world and even in those years, when he was still in his mid-forties, his reputation was daunting. Although he had received little official recognition and was widely regarded as a raving radical, we music students knew exactly how important he was, and we revered him. We were fully aware that there was an authentic genious teaching at our Academy. (Sir Georg Solti)