Been having a minor existential crisis in the last week or so— I played my first session in over a year last week, was feeling really unpracticed and generally out of touch with music… and […]
Search Results for: label/EZ methods
EZ ECM feel – 01 – unisons
This is the first part of a little method I used in a lesson recently, for introducing what has become known as an ECM-type feel— a modern, non-repetitive, quasi-linear, straight 8th jazz feel. See Jon […]
John and Nate’s jazz drumming page
I wrote this for a couple of my younger students— it’s a collection of simple jazz patterns that we went over verbally in a lesson. It’s meant to be very loose introduction to a type […]
NOW AVAILABLE: 2019 Book of the Blog
OK, the 2019 CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! Book of the Blog is now available for purchase. This handsome 131 page volume includes all of the downloadable materials, transcriptions, and practice methods posted on the site in 2019. […]
Heavy funk drill
Going from Ndugu-actual to Ndugu-esque. This is a 70s style funk drill that dovetails nicely with some other things we’ve been doing lately— see the other links in that linked post. I think jazz drummers […]
2019 in review
2019 basically = billionaire blood diamond heir rampages around Los Angeles making up new traffic laws to promote downright ugly vanity truck. Let’s take a break from me inching painfully towards completion of the new 2019 Book of […]
EZ 32nd note Reed method
Well— cut time 16th notes, which are 32nd notes functionally, if “common time” is our reference point. Perhaps a subject for another occasion. This is a very simple drill for playing fast singles in context as […]
Practice tips for drummers with limited time
Get it, use it. Here are some suggestions for people learning to play the drums, but who have limited time to do it… 1-2 hours a day to practice. That’s most people, actually. As you’ll […]
Basic short roll studies with continuous motion
UPDATE: Download link is working! I’ve got to stop putting “EZ” on every single normal-difficulty thing I post. This is an easy page of roll studies I wrote to prepare a couple of younger students to […]
EZ Zigaboo method
Should have included this when I first made this up way back when, but… here’s an EZ entry into my quite challenging and extensive Zigaboo Modeliste/Cissy Strut-style practice method. It’s a way of playing funk […]
EZ Reed interpretation: another triplet lick
I like these Reed interpretations using the early part of the book. You can just play through fifteen lines of exercises, plus a 16-20 bar exercise, and be done with it. FINITE ASSIGNMENTS, people. Not […]