Most of the regular drumming literature is poorly adapted to the special conditions of very fast tempos in jazz; the practice materials are either too dense, or are triplet-based, which obviously isn’t going to work. […]
Year: 2014
Partido Alto variations
The partido alto rhythm, in this case; it’s also a Brazilian song style, a type of funk groove, and a tune (see below). It’s one of the major rhythms in Brazilian music— several of the batucada […]
Very occasional quote of the day: new music
“And I said, ‘How about you? Who’s your favorite drummer?’ He said, ‘Tony Williams.’ And I didn’t know who Tony Williams was, so the next day I went to a record store, and on the […]
DBMITW: Tom Zé
Busy week here, moving my girlfriend Casey Scott to Ashland, Oregon for the summer, where she will be acting and playing bass in Family Album, the new play by Stew Stewart, part of the Oregon Shakespearean […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat splash in 5/4
Here’s the disconcerting third dropped shoe in this recent spate of hihat splash pages o’…, now in 5/4, and I… Wow, I think that may be the ugliest, most incomprehensible sentence I’ve ever written. I’m […]
Gladstone (et al) method for Stick Control
I stumbled across this piece of drumming lore, posted in 2006 on the Drummerworld discussion forum: Billy Gladstone’s way of practicing Stick Control. According to a guy posting anonymously on the Internet. It does sound […]
Groove o’ the day: more DC Go Go
Last year we looked at the quintessential Go-Go groove, in my mind, played by Ricky Wellman, with Chuck Brown. Trouble Funk is another major act in that style, and their drummer Emmett Nixon did things […]
Syncopation exercises in 3/4 — 01
This is a straight library piece: some syncopation exercises in 3/4, similar to the one-measure exercises in the middle section of Ted Reed’s Syncopation, for doing all of the usual things you do with that […]
Al Feldstein 1925-2014
A bigger cultural milestone than most people know has been passed today: Al Feldstein, the editor of Mad Magazine for many years, has passed away. From Huffington Post: Before “The Daily Show,” ”The Simpsons” or […]
Groove o’ the day, plus fills: Mandrill — Tee Vee
There was a period in the 70s when funky music had a kind of unbridled quality you don’t much hear any more— there was a lot of screaming, and everyone seemed to be fully embracing […]
Locking with clave — 01
This is derived from an idea discussed by David Peñalosa in his book Rumba Quinto. In rumba, an Afro-Cuban genre, the quinto is the highest-pitched conga drum; the quinto player is the lead player, improvising […]
Page o’ coordination: hihat splash in 3/4 — 02
Hey, I kind of like these things— we’ll see several more pages o’… with hihat splashes, in the near future. This format has become one of the major things we do here, as I’ve had […]