Merrry Christmas and whatnot everyone, here’s a playlist with all 5 1/2 hours of Scott K. Fish’s 1984 interview with one of my favorite drummers, Frankie Dunlop. Put this on while your turkey cooks, or […]
Month: December 2019
Syncopation exercise in 3/4: quarter / dotted-quarter spacing
Another Ted Reed-style syncopation exercise, designed for a special purpose. This one is in 3/4, with all notes spaced two or three 8th notes apart— quarter notes or dotted quarter notes, or their equivalents with […]
Very occasional quote of the day: technique
There are a few technique-related posts coming up, and after last week’s teaching rant, this quote from Bill Evans is particularly timely. Italics are mine: “Technique we always think of as being a thing having to […]
CYMBALISTIC: New cymbals— Holy Grails and flats!
In Istanbul, manufacturing Cymbal & Gong cymbals. I’ve just posted videos for a new batch of cymbals, handmade in Turkey by Cymbal & Gong, personally selected by me for awesomeness in the purpose of playing […]
Three Camps – 16th notes, combination stickings
The traditional rudimental piece Three Camps is a good framework for drilling speed and endurance, and to that end I’ve written several paradiddle combination stickings to use with it. I’ve been playing it as 16th […]
1985 Mel Lewis clinic
Surprised I haven’t already shared this Mel Lewis clinic, given in the Netherlands in 1985. He talks about his familiar opinionated subjects: playing the bass drum, drum sounds, fighting with recording engineers. Somewhere in there […]
Transcription: Ignacio Berroa fills
Another thing I caught on Portland’s great jazz radio station, KMHD: Cleopatra’s Needle, by Steve Turre, with some cool featured drum fills played by Ignacio Berroa. The tune is simply a repeating 8-bar fusion riff […]
Very occasional quote of the day: What “a gig” was
“You didn’t get a gig for a weekend, like two days at The Gate. It wasn’t like that. We’d stay at a place a week to three weeks, sometimes seven nights a week and five […]
Practice loop in 6/4: Journey In Satchidananda
Another groovy practice loop, sampled from Journey In Satchidananda by Alice Coltrane. It’s a slow, 97 bpm swing feel in 6/4— good for getting into both of my ways of doing Chaffee’s jazz thing, as […]
Syncopation rhythms: two notes
UPDATE: Download link is working now! I’ve been posting a series of syncopation pages written/organized around a single idea for ease of practicing certain things. It’s partly for my students, so I can give assignments […]
Leave them kids alone
Dumbest, wrongest quasi-educational thing I could find to illustrate this post. This little rant has been kicking around my drafts folder for awhile. I wasn’t even going to post it, but then I had another frustrating […]
Transcription: Philly Joe brush feature
I heard this on the radio yesterday— Soft Winds, from Chet Baker’s album In New York. Philly Joe Jones also had a cool drum solo on it, played with brushes. Drumming right now is in a […]