I really want to cop a feature from Jon McCaslin and list what records I’m listening to, but I’m afraid it would get as repetitive as a broken example of the medium for which the […]
Year: 2012
Cracking 5/4: more architecture
Beyond the 2/4+3/4 or 3/4+2/4 phrasing we’ve already discussed, there are a few common constructions you should be familiar with. Just learning the things covered in the first part will take a fair amount of […]
DBMITW: Art Ensemble of Chicago
I’ve got several things brewing– including, but not limited to the rest of the series on playing in 5/4— but they’re all taking their sweet time getting finished, so in the mean time, here’s some […]
Groove o’ the day: Al Foster – Rated X
As promised– or hinted at, rather– here is Al Foster’s hip and unusual groove from Miles Davis’s Rated X, from the record Get Up With It: As you can hear, the 1 and the 4 […]
DBMITW: the kind of playing I’d like to hear more of
With hyperactive fast-16th-to-32nd notes kind of dominating drummers’ collective mindspace today, I love hearing some utterly happening 8th note-based playing: Also:
Cracking 5/4: rock variations
I wasn’t planning on making this part of this series, but it happened to come up. I was prepping for a recording session today which will involve a couple of tunes in 7/4, and I […]
“If I think of something beforehand then I should not play it.”
Pianist George Colligan has posted a really great interview with drummer Jeff Ballard on his blog, Jazz Truth. It’s really hard to excerpt anything from this because it’s all so good; I put in a […]
DBMITW: Rated X
From Miles Davis’s Get Up With It: That’s the great Michael Henderson on bass. From Wikipedia: Davis saw the young Henderson performing [with Stevie Wonder] at the Copacabana in New York City in early 1970 […]
Groove o’ the day: Billy Cobham in 7/8
Today we have another odd-meter Billy Cobham groove from the track “b. Spectrum” from his 1973 album Spectrum: He plays the unaccented notes stronger than is customary today, and puts a light accent on the […]
Fast singles played for a long time
Of marginal utility for anything other than moving a single human with no cargo a quarter of a mile in a straight line as fast as possible, while raising serious questions about efficiency due to […]
Cracking 5/4: the basics
It took me a long time to come around to accepting the type of method we’re going to use here; for years the Syncopation-based interpretive method– in which you think more like a horn player, […]
Interview on WHPK 88.5 fm Chicago Tuesday @ 7pm
I’ll be doing a live interview about my new CD LITTLE PLAYED LITTLE BIRD on Lofton Emenari’s show on WHPK 88.5 fm Chicago tomorrow evening– Tuesday, June 11th. Stream it live at 7pm Chicago time […]