2024 UPDATE: Oops, apparently Ben Riley plays on this record. I need to look at the sleeve before posting these things. It sure sounded like Frankie Dunlop to me. Thanks to Andrew Wicks for the […]
Month: April 2015
Half-time feel funk: advanced method — open hihat
Here’s the next step for this half-time funk method we’ve been doing, using Syncopation, by Ted Reed. On the intermediate method and on this one we’ll be using the pages with quarter notes, 8th notes, […]
Daily best music in the world: Ornette live — 1973
I’ll be out for a couple of days here— playing at the Jazz Station in Eugene tonight with flugelhornist Dmitri Matheny, attending a memorial service for my partner/wife’s mother, and having my own birthday with […]
What to do with a beat
Don’t know how to make a variation? Any of thesecould be a variation of the first beat. Why not. If you ever get bored looking at some page of rock beats you’re supposed to be […]
Cymbal technique for Brazilian styles
It’s kind of a thing among Brazilian drummers to be able to play really blazing singles on the cymbal with the right hand, when playing a samba. Drummers in the modern American tradition— or maybe […]
Half-time feel funk: intermediate method
Here’s the next phase of our little half-time feel funk method, using Ted Reed’s Syncopation. We’ll use pp. 29-30 out of Reed, with the quarter notes, 8th notes, and 8th rests, along with the page […]
Very occasional quote of the day: resistance
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. — Steve Pressfield, The War […]
Linear phrases in 5/4, mixed rhythm — 02 – inversion
I feel bad posting more practice stuff, when I’ve barely gotten to hit the drums myself this week, what with taxes, dental work, teaching, painting the house, and on and on. But back in the […]
Feelings
Your feelings are like an unaturally-torn piece of paper held by a hand model with weird thumbs. Ideally we would all feel happy and confident always when playing the drums, enjoying every phase of learning, […]
Quick takes: MD’s 25 timeless drum books list
Perhaps not the best superlative for a list of books on drumming, but we get the picture. Here I’ve given some brief opinions on the entries in Modern Drummer’s list of 25 timeless drum books. I’ve […]
Half-time feel funk: basic method
Here’s a basic method for working with the half time feel funk grooves from the other day. We’ll be reading out of Syncopation, by Ted Reed, pp. 10-11 (from the old edition) or Lesson 4 […]
DBMITW: Cherry / Blackwell / Gurtu / Wolcott / Shankar
From the same YouTube user who posted yesterday’s Ed Blackwell videos, here’s a totally amazing concert recording of Don Cherry playing in Neuwied, Germany, with Ed Blackwell, Lakshmi Shankar, Colin Wolcott, and Trilok Gurtu, probably […]