If you don’t know who Dom Irrera, he’s sort of the Godfather of road comedians— stand up is a punishing trade, and comedians try to get away from it when they can. It’s also a […]
Month: June 2015
Studio triplet feel
Here’s a set of basic patterns for making a 70s-style triplet groove, or a moderate, triplety, shuffle,, as you hear on songs like Isn’t She Lovely, How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You, […]
Quarter note Reed method: Maiden Voyage
People, I am all about the quarter notes these days. This is an easy method using the rhythm of the vamp from the Herbie Hancock tune Maiden Voyage— we’ll combine that rhythm, played on the […]
How to really play jazz drums
I received this question by email: I wondered if I might trouble you with a small query about a video I recently watched: It’s called ‘How To (Really) Play Jazz Drums’ and it’s presented by a […]
Jazz language?
Great blog post by Bill Plake: “The Problem With Studying ‘The Jazz Language’”: The other morning I was giving a first lesson to a jazz guitarist ( a university student) and was struck by something […]
Daily best music in the world: not Bop Gun
Hey, there are other songs than Bop Gun on Parliament’s Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. Here are a couple of nice, light little numbers that maybe get overshadowed by that funk classic. The drummer is […]
Phil Austin 1941-2015
Very sorry to hear we lost another comedy legend last week: Phil Austin, from the Firesign Theater— an incredible surrealist satire troupe, if you don’t know them; they’re really the American Monty Python. Austin was […]
Figure and fills — Cantaloupe Island
Here’s another practice loop, with a page of things to play with it. What I’ve done here is sample two measures from Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island, and write out a page of fills to fit […]
Ginger Baker
October 2019 update: Mr. Baker has died, and I’ve updated and expanded this post a bit, and put it in past tense. I’m rather critical of him. If that’s not what you want to read about […]
Daily best music in the world: Splash
Slow week. Of course we can’t just have a continuous onslaught of new stuff— I don’t write just to hear myself bloviate, and I’ve already put on the blog far more information than I was […]
Vindication, thy name is Buzzfeed
SHUT UP, Einstein, there’s a drummer present. We are so smrt: [R]esearchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet found that drummers who kept a tighter rhythm also scored better on a 60-question intelligence test. This is a […]
Daily best music in the world: Weather Report
Lots of other action right now, so light posting is going to continue this week, so enjoy 8:30, by Weather Report. Peter Erskine is on drums. I used to set my turntable to repeat, and […]