Put on your headphones, here’s a little listening this morning: this is Blues On My Mind from Blue Mitchell’s album Out Of The Blue. A lot of blue there, and blues. Playing on it are […]
Month: September 2022
Reed tweaks: 16ths doubled
This is a small change to a very basic Reed method, that makes it a lot more interesting, to me. I don’t seek these things out, they just happen while I’m practicing. I play with […]
Triplets to paradiddles
A brief set of exercises illustrating the similarity of alternating triplets and paradiddle inversions. We want connections between things that seem different, even when there’s a seeming hard mathematical difference, like between a triplet and […]
Josef Hofmann on piano artistry
Some quotes from the pianist Josef Hofmann from Piano Mastery by Harriette Brower. Published in the 1920s, it’s the type of thing you’d have to go to the library and dig around in the stacks […]
Stickings in Finale
A quick thing for you frustrated Finale users*: Here’s how you write stickings. You probably tried adding them as text, and met with bitter failure, then you tried them as lyrics, met with bitter failure, […]
Subtractive method: an alternative approach
I just saw this from brother writer Jon McCaslin, over at the excellent and much hipper-named Four On The Floor blog: a Syncopated Stick Control method, which he’s using to bring some rhythm interest to practicing Stone. […]
This week’s drill
Some things I’ve been playing through this week— promoting some previous posts, and rounding up some very useful practice systems. Basically I’ll just play down p. 38 (formerly and famously p. 37) from Syncopation the […]
Very occasional quote of the day: rich and famous
R. Crumb and son Jesse, in the movie Crumb: Jesse: You didn’t go to art school and you’re rich and famous. R.: I’m not talking about rich and famous, I’m talking about learning how to […]
Playing Airegin
The title is Nigeria spelled backwards, usually pronounced AIRa-jin. I took a minute in the shower this morning figuring out how to pronounce it actually like Nigeria backwards: ah-ee-REE-jine. JINE rhyming with JIVE. A little […]
Grooving with a feathered bass drum
A couple of weeks ago I made some comments about hearing some younger drummers, and someone asked me to elaborate on this part of it: [I was hearing people] feathering the bass drum in a […]
Groove o’ the day: Linha da Passe
Bright samba groove from one of my favorite Brazilian drummers, Milton Banana, who was most active in the 60s/70s. The tune is Linha da Passe, which you’re most likely find on Banana’s compilation album Sambas […]
The paradiddle inversion method, with triplets
Here’s how to fit that late paradiddle inversion system into a triplet or 12/8 environment. For clarity, we’ll base it off the accented triplets pages from Syncopation— pp. 53-58. Advanced students can then figure out […]