Or the cyber-equivalent. Mark Feldman at the Bang! the drum school blog features a Facebook post by jazz drummer and scholar Kenny Washington, in response to a question about how to take one’s drumming “to […]
Month: September 2011
Talent and practice
I guess the “Gen Y Entrepreneur and Investor” author of this piece Why natural talent is overrated knows this stuff from reading a book, but there are some good things in here about practice. Maybe […]
Not so very occasional quote of the day
“Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.” —Daisetsu Suzuki (1870-1966)
Know your tempos: Rolling Stones
I’ve been keeping a little tempos database, containing information on as many very familiar tracks as I can manage- mainly tempo, meter, and style. These are a handy mnemonic device for picking tempos out of […]
Umdaga, part 1
This is a very simple pattern I use a lot- I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the basic DNA instructions of my playing: right/left/bass. I didn’t exactly make it up, but […]
Basic Mambo
I guess I had to eventually post something directly drumming-related on my drumming blog, so here is an older piece I’ll be sharing with a couple of students today- some variations on a generic, very […]
Bill Evans speaks
Here’s a nice, timely (given the last post) find from Ted at Trap’d: pianist Bill Evans talking at length about music:
You must hack
That imperative comes from Running Linux, a classic manual on the use of the Linux computer operating system. What it meant in context is that to take advantage of the full power of the OS, […]
Tugboatism!
The Tugboat Brewery is a small venue in Portland which has for years been one of the primary places hosting consistently adventuresome music locally. The reason for this is strictly financial- basically, they didn’t want […]
Branford Marsalis on the problem with jazz
In the Seattle Weekly, Branford talks about what’s going on with jazz- here are a few excerpts: You put on old records and they always sound better. Why are they better? I started listening […]
Very occasional quote of the day
The problem of being an artist… is that it takes a lot of time learning the technique. And when you’ve learnt it… probably you’ve forgotten what you want it for. – Older artist to a […]
Marty Hurley 1946-2011
I’ve just learned that drum corps hall of famer Marty Hurley has passed away– he was best known as the percussion caption head for the Phantom Regiment drum and bugle corps from 1976 to 1992. […]