Most contemporary fusion grooves are built on a 16th-note hi-hat carpet. The right hand plays a steady stream of 16ths — sometimes with the right hand alone, sometimes alternating with the left, sometimes on the ride or a closed hat — providing a continuous texture that the kick and snare punch through.
The hand on the hi-hat sets the personality. Even and quiet 16ths produce the soft fusion of Steve Gadd's "Aja" or Chad Smith's lighter tracks. Slightly accented (downbeats louder, "e"s and "a"s softer) produces the hip-hop-leaning fusion of Larnell Lewis or Mark Guiliana. Heavy and aggressive 16ths produce the Vinnie Colaiuta studio sound.
This lesson lays in the basic shape, then adds the kick figure (the songo / fusion bombo on the &-of-3), then the backbeat with full ghost-note carpet, then the complete groove.
The Right-Hand Problem
16th-note hi-hat on the right hand is more tiring than people expect. After 30 seconds the hand starts to tense up, the wrist locks, and the dynamics get loud. The fix is fingers and wrist, not arm: let the stick rebound off the hat under its own weight, and use only the wrist + fingers for the next stroke. If your shoulder is moving, you'll fail at ♩=100.
Exercises
Right hand only on the hi-hat — 16 evenly-spaced 16ths per bar. Goal: every stroke the same volume. Use wrist and fingers only; the forearm should be stationary. If your shoulder is rising, you're tensing. Slow down to ♩=80, get the dynamics flat, then push back up. The whole rest of this lesson is built on this carpet.
Hat stays even — kick adds beat 1 and the &-of-3. The &-of-3 is the fusion bombo: it pulls the bar forward into beat 4. Don't let the kick on the & make the hat lurch. The hat is the metronome of the body; the kick is the song. They coexist, they don't compete.
Hat plus ghost snare on every e and a, with loud accented snare on beats 2 and 4. Volume hierarchy: backbeat is loudest; hat is medium-soft; ghost snares are at most one-quarter the backbeat volume. The bar should sound like a continuous shimmer with two cracks. If the ghost snare is loud enough to count as a third voice, it's too loud.
The whole package: 16th hat, ghost-snare carpet, accented backbeats on 2 and 4, syncopated kick on 1, &-of-3, &-of-4. This is the working contemporary fusion bar. Loop it for two minutes; if you can keep the hat dead-even and the dynamic hierarchy intact for the full two minutes, you have it. Listening assignment: Larnell Lewis with Snarky Puppy, especially the album We Like It Here.