For such a simple piece, Three Camps sure is a notation headache. There’s next to nothing happening in it, but it takes a whole lot of ink to write it out, and it never looks […]
Month: March 2019
June Germany dates
CYMBALISTIC NEWS: We will be bringing Cymbal & Gong brand cymbals to Germany again in June! Dates are June 4-12, 2019, and we will come to Berlin, Dresden, and Munich. The purpose of the tour is […]
Page o’ coordination: that with interruptions – 02
Another page of basic jazz comping/independence patterns, coming from a slightly different angle. At a recent John Riley clinic, he talked about one pattern he had been practicing, with variations, for about 50 years: SSBB. […]
Product review: Bopworks sticks
Related to my Jazz stick round up from January: I got to try out the product line of Bopworks Drumsticks, a small company in Austin, Texas, making sticks for jazz drummers: Bopworks Drumsticks was formed to […]
Groove o’ the day: a funk samba
This is kind of a throwaway track by Gal Costa, but the drum groove is cool— both the pattern, and the way it’s played. Most people would call it a funk samba, and it has […]
Jazz rhythm book
There’s a good book on rhythm that is kicking around on the internet for you to download and read: How to Read Jazz and Other Syncopated Type Rhythms. It’s by Micheal Longo, who had a long […]
Daily best music in the world: Tamba Trio
Here are a couple of albums by Tamba Trio, a Brazilian group primarily active in the 60s-80s— the pianist I have used on my last couple of records, Jasnam Daya Singh (née Weber Drummond) was […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Higgins – Una Muy Bonita
Some variations on a groove Billy Higgins plays on the Ornette Coleman tune Una Muy Bonita, on Bobby Hutcherson’s album Stick-Up!. It’s a New Orleans type thing, reminiscent of parts of Poinciana, as played by […]
Anything at all, with energy
Why do they always look surprised. Today there is two big pieces in The Atlantic about social media advancing some very dark ideas, and about trolling and fascism, so maybe it’s a good day to […]
Page o’ coordination: Cinquillo
Here’s an easy page o’ coordination based on a basic bell rhythm, known in Latin music circles as “cinquillo”— which basically means quintuplet. It’s not a quintuplet, it’s the indicated 5-note rhythm, but that’s what […]
Tune list for sessions
This is the tune list for a weekly session I play. We go through a lot of material, most of it kind of unusual, and many things that are rather challenging. I shlep this big […]
Rudiments in 5/8
A page of snare drum rudiment practice phrases, written in 5/8, in a 3+2 phrasing. Keep this with your copy of Haskell Harr (book 2) or Rudimental Swing Solos. These can all be played at […]