Some subtractive systems for voicing your snare drum and bass drum in 16ths and partials thereof, in jazz comping. It’s a very common thing, but not usually featured in the normal materials, or included in […]
Songodiddles
A very small item, adapting a paradiddle inversion (RLLR LRRL) to fit with a songo groove— they fit together quite nicely if you alter one note of the paradiddle. Which doesn’t leave us with a […]
Page o’ coordination – quarter note on 4
The nice thing about writing being so easy is, I can get pretty granular with my stuff. Like, I wrote this for one student, to get him away from being so 1-oriented. It won’t do […]
Partido alto grooves
Partido alto is the name of a genre of samba music, and of a Brazilian rhythm, and also of— as we are doing here— a type of Brazilian fusion drum set groove. It seems to […]
Transcription: Marty Morell – Grandfather’s Waltz
Here is Marty Morell playing Grandfather’s Waltz, from the Bill Evans live album But Beautiful, featuring Stan Getz, recorded in 1974. Tempo is peppy, he’s playing a modern Elvinish type of thing. Bit of trivia: […]
What are we even doing?
Reason as motive, or reason as logic, or reason as a way of life?– George Smiley, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré Listen, this pursuit, playing the drums, getting better at playing the […]
Rock beats in 5 with Reed
Surprised I haven’t written this before. Expanding on a rock beat method I use with all of my students, to make grooves in 5/4— from the book, you simply read one measure of rhythm, plus […]
Very occasional quote of the day: how you learn how
“You have to understand, as a filmmaker, I didn’t really know how to make The Godfather. I learned how to make The Godfather making it.” – Francis Ford Coppola [h/t to Dean Frey]
First jazz albums
It wears me out seeing the same four records listed as the first things to get, when first getting into jazz: Moanin’, Saxophone Colossus, Kind Of Blue, some other bleeding obvious record. They’re great. Of […]
Jack’s RLB lesson
Yesterday I worked with a student on some connecting possibilities based on the highly useful RLB triplet solo/fill pattern. We have some directions to go with that: squeezing more notes in, dropping out a note, […]
Transcription: Shelly Manne – Come, Gone
Here’s a drum solo by Shelly Manne on Come, Gone, from Sonny Rollins’s album Way Out West. I don’t know the album real well, and listening to this at random I was sure it was […]
Very occasional quote of the day: art state
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in the wonderful state that makes art inevitable.” – Robert Henri, The Art Spirit