“Through the years I had always practiced from slow to fast, but then I found out that that’s the worst possible thing any drummer can do for his time. If you practice like that, you […]
Month: March 2022
Groove o’ the day: Jack Dejohnette – Polar AC
Jack Dejohnette playing a straight 8th groove on Freddie Hubbard’s Polar AC. This gets called an ECM feel today, but maybe we should start calling it a CTI feel. Change it up, direct people to […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Blackwell and Ornette
“When we were awake, we were always playing. If we were not playing, Ornette would be sitting down writing a tune, or we’d be discussing music, or listening to music—different tunes. But that was it. […]
Singles speed builder
This is a page for developing fast singles, for my students— maybe you can use it too. Like anything else, your results may vary teaching it to yourself. You can contact me for lessons on […]
More on that Latin system
Breaking down part of that short Latin method from the other day. I like it. It’s easy, and gets us into some pretty fundamental things about rhythm, drumming, using the drum set. This is a […]
Cymbal sounds: Special Janavars
Talking about the Special Janavar cymbals I mentioned in my last cymbal post— it’s a new series I’m selling through my Cymbalistic site, and I’m really excited about them. I want one of these for […]
Ordinary
“Oh! How ordinawy.” A little bit of an business/economics side track here: In the USA the word ordinary is rarely a compliment. It’s usually taken to mean unexceptional, uninteresting, not that good. It’s not a […]
A concise straight 8th / pseudo latin system
It’s remarkable how long you can work with a book like Syncopation, and still come up with new things to do with it. Newish. This isn’t actually new, it’s a specific variation on existing things. […]
Touch and grace
Combining two different posts I was working on, because they overlap, and are fairly inextricable: developing good touch on the drums, and developing some physical grace in playing. Sounding and looking like a musician and […]
Todd’s jazz drill
A summary of something I’ve been doing lately. I hadn’t practiced for about a week, so to get my act together, I drilled some standard jazz methods using that recent page of practice rhythms. I […]
Philly Joe’s early career
“When I got to New York I joined a rhythm-and-blues band right away, with Joe Morris, Johnny Griffin, Elmo Hope, and Percy Heath. It was an 8-piece group. We barnstormed all over the country, from […]
CYMBALISTIC: heads up
UPDATE: All the videos are up! CYMBALISTIC: Just letting everyone know, the latest shipment from Turkey has been delayed YET AGAIN— so we won’t be seeing a big new batch of cymbals until later in […]