Ornette Coleman playing in Berlin, 1971, with Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, and Ed Blackwell. It occurs to me that I don’t think I’ve seen any decent video of Blackwell playing before— there have long been […]
Beginning open drags and rolls
Basic page of open drags and rolls. A million exercises out there like this, this is a form a couple of my students could use it in, right now. Alternating sticking except for the double […]
Reed interpretation: paradiddle inversion in triplet 16ths
I’m hitting the practice pad a good amount lately, so we’ll be seeing more of these. Here we’re filling in triplet 16ths, in our favored paradiddle sticking, RLLR-LRRL. Or use whatever inferior sticking substitute you […]
Transcription: Ben Dixon fours
Please forgive this clickbait, the kids do love a good Ben Dixon transcription. Here he is trading fours on Come Sunrise, from Grant Green’s album Sunday Mornin’. The record came to me through YouTube, I […]
Stone supplement – flam beats
Adding some things I want to the flam pages from Stick Control, 90 years after the fact: Like an obedient little fool I once tried counting 20 repetitions while working from Stone— while standing at […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Shelly on Buddy
Manne: What I resent is the drummer who falls into the trap of becoming obsessed with the technical aspects of the drums —you know, playing all these figures that come from rudiments. It becomes a […]
Sartre time
(H)ate is a faith; at the outset he has chosen to devaluate words and reasons. How entirely at ease he feels as a result. One of the moral defects of the online drumming community is […]
Playing Mozambique
Sorry for that graphic. I promise, no more AI slop. Not much more. Here is more video— I’m recording lots of my practicing right now, as I get my video act together. Here I’m playing […]
Very occasional quote of the day: rehearsal with Charlie Parker
“I’d say, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do?’ He’d say. ‘Oh, you know what to do.’” – Max Roach, Down Beat Magazine, November, 1978, interview with Bret Primack
Another aside: interesting clave item
A little piece of rhythm analysis— an interesting item that came up, of all places, through a J.J. Cale song, that accidentally reveals something about the structure of the Son clave rhythm, similar to what […]
More EZ bossa subtractive systems
Some patterns that might be helpful along side the original EZ bossa system— itself really good for not just developing a simple, functional bossa vocabulary, but also for developing rock beats in a hip way. […]