[UPDATE: pdf download link works now!] I don’t get how herds work: suddenly everyone, everywhere is talking about four stroke ruffs. They happen to be all over this piece, played in 16th note triplet form […]
Year: 2012
Half-time feel rock using Syncopation
Extending my previous series on making rock/pop beats using Ted Reed’s Syncopation, here is a way of making a half time feel using the same concept, except we play quarter notes on the hihat, and […]
Seven stroke rolls in Wilcoxon
Fielding a question from the Drummerworld forum here this morning, regarding the underlying rhythm for the rolls in this piece, from Wilcoxon’s All-American Drummer: A seven stroke roll consists of three doubles or multiple-bounce strokes, […]
Europe tour coming up
Hey, I’ve got a European tour coming right up at the end of October, and I’d like to invite anyone in the vicinity to come hear me play, and say hello. I’ll be doing music […]
DBMITW: more George Duke
This is a little bit of a listening test from George Duke’s Brazilian Love Affair, again, with Ricky Lawson on drums. It would be easy for a lot of people to give this a cursory […]
Houghton’s triplets
From Steve Houghton’s book Studio and Big Band Drumming, here’s an alternate sticking method for making triplets out of Syncopation. For most people the most familiar method is to play the melody notes— the written […]
Basic paradiddle funk
Man, there’s just a whole lot of stuff besides blogging on my mind lately— like a Europe tour and recording project— so we may not see a lot of hugely substantive posts in the coming […]
Groove o’ the day: Elvin Jones — Tumblin’ Tumbleweed
Just back in town from a short quasi-vacation at the Oregon coast, and nothing on deck except, groan, another hip, generic “Latin jazz” groove, played by Elvin Jones on the tune Tumblin’ Tumbleweed on J.J. […]
Todd’s waltz — two measure phrase
Well, we should all have developed a pretty crushing medium-tempo waltz by the time we’re done here. Elaborating on my earlier “Todd’s waltz” piece— so-called (by me alone) because I don’t very often hear this […]
Groove o’ the day: a Blue Note waltz
Let’s do an easy one. Here’s Billy Gene English sketching out a simple, Blue Note-y, quasi-Latin waltz on the tune Wavy Gravy, from Kenny Burrell’s Midnight Blue: Swing the 8th notes. You can think of […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Monk on rehearsing
“What do you want to do, learn how to cheat?”— Thelonious Monk That’s from Russ Musto’s 2006 interview with Ben Riley on Allaboutjazz.com— highly worth reading. Riley had just been asked to join the band […]
Groove o’ the day: Idris Muhammad on Grant Green’s Carryin’ On
There’s some nice late-60’s funk drumming by Idris Muhammad (named Leo Morris at the time) on Grant Green’s Carryin’ On album. This is from the James Brown tune I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me […]