OK, then: starting in March, I’ll be offering private lessons via Skype. And as I get my act together teaching this way, I think I’ll give away a few free lessons. Let’s do it like […]
Year: 2014
VOQOTD: Elvin’s epitaph
“You got to remember, music is all about love.” —Elvin Jones From Drum Therapy: Elvin Jones 9/9/27-5/18/04, by Adam Mansbach, a very moving Jazz Times piece about Elvin’s last days. [h/t to AA]
Book review!
Hey, there’s a nice little review— my first book review ever, actually— of the 2013 Book of the Blog at Joe The Drummer’s place: “There is a theme of the 3:2 polyrhythm running through the […]
Groove(s) o’ the day: On the streets of Aba, Nigeria
I loved this video so much I wanted to lay on you a transcription of the whole thing, but we’re going to have to settle for just getting the basic groove. I hit a wall […]
Transcription: Ringo Starr — Isolation
I hate to keep beating up on our man Kollias— well, I’m not beating up on him, I’m making serious points about music… OK, I wasn’t making a serious point about music with the last […]
This/not this: death metal
By popular request (well, one guy), here’s another one of these— we’ll take this in reverse order: Not this: This: [h/t to Bo] Bonus Melvins after the break: Hog Leg, from Eggnog, still my favorite […]
Another page of Brazilian rhythms
Here is another page of Brazilian rhythms, written in 4/4. The last set was written as 8th and 16th notes in 2/4, the native meter of much of Brazilian music, but when playing lead sheets […]
C.K. Ladzekpo’s basic polyrhythms
From the This portion of the recent This/not this: polyrhythm post, I’ve written out C.K. Ladzekpo’s list of basic polyrhythms every Ewe learns while growing up, along with our now familiar 6/8 bell pattern: You […]
“When in doubt, groove.”
Branford Marsalis’s drummer Justin Faulkner gives a drum clinic at the Seattle, and says lots of great stuff: Part 2 is after the break: [h/t to S_Funk at Drummerworld]
Sid Caesar 1922-2014
Very sorry to lose the great Sid Caesar today— even if it seems incredible we had him around as long as we did. I was a kid in the 70’s, and knew him best from […]
Page o’ coordination: 2 over 3 metric modulation
We’ve done some jazz waltz POCs, and some metric modulation POCs, but some people will still have problems moving between the two in actual playing, so here’s something that may help with that. The modulation […]
This/not this: polyrhythm
This post was going to be a survey of YouTube videos on polyrhythm, but most of them were so bad, it was shaping up to be a real bloodbath. So let’s just summarize by reviving […]