Via African Muzik Magazine and Famoudou Don Moye, music by traditional Ogene musicians, from Nigeria: I’m transcribing some of the cool instrumental breaks they’re playing on the bells, between vocal parts, but until I get […]
Year: 2015
That insane Brazilian cymbal technique
It’s a thing with Brazilian drumset drummers to play really fast, even singles on the cymbal with one hand when playing samba; here Adam Osmianski has posted an excellent roundup of stuff on the technique […]
Paradiddle exercises in 7/8
UPDATE: Man, I am getting sloppy. There were a bunch of typos and duplicate exercises in the original pdf— I’ve updated it, and included some accent variations in the triple paradiddle exercises. Hey, breaking our […]
Best books: The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion & Drum Set by Ed Uribe
Buy the book Leafing through a copy of Ed Uribe’s book The Essence of Afro-Cuban Percussion & Drum Set, you may be inclined to Google Map the location of the nearest bridge, and then drive […]
In which I give naked clickbait much more attention than it deserves
There’s TONS of this stuff out there. UPDATE: Ari Herstand at Digital Music News has also ripped the guy a new one. Here is something which is at best is clickbait— some drone working for […]
Stick tricks
Sonny, pained. Be advised, if you plan on using Sonny Payne as a positive example for a lot of jive stick twirling, I have been informed that on the Basie band he was resented for […]
Two performers
Dave Camp Just had an acquaintance, and fellow Portland musician die this week— Dave Camp, a very talented, charismatic, rock & roll guitarist, singer, and songwriter. I think he was a couple of years younger […]
7/8 rhythms
I got sort of lightly burned at a session recently, when a player pulled up a tune he had written which was in a fast 7/8. I’ve been working on my odd meters quite a […]
“All you need to bring is cymbals” translated
“What? Them’s drums, ain’t they? Whatsamatter?” What this familiar instruction really means: “Bring your cymbals, and these items too: two different sizes of hihat clutches cymbal felts, washers, sleeves, and wingnuts snare drum throne bass […]
Assembling a basic Elvin Jones-style waltz
Here’s a page of elements for putting together a basic Elvin Jones-style jazz waltz— I hate to treat his playing so reductively, but what are we supposed to do? It’s a thing, it’s sometimes asked […]
Rudiments and tempo
The basis of everything, or, like, not. A question posed in an online drumming forum: The problem I have with rudiments is that it seems they’re only useful within a narrow range of tempo. […]
Masabumi Kikuchi 1939-2015
Pianist Masabumi Kikuchi has died. I mainly knew him through two very beautiful records by Tethered Moon, his band with Paul Motian and Gary Peacock— TM Plays Kurt Weill, and First Meeting. But he did […]