A piece called Sleeping Through A Revolution, by Jonathan Taplin, who is a professor at USC, and the producer of a bunch of great movies— Mean Streets, To Die For, The Last Waltz. He’s not […]
Year: 2015
Daily best music in the world: Leo
Rashied Ali’s band playing my favorite piece from Interstellar Space. With Carlos Ward.
Daily best music in the world: more Parliament
From the 1979 Parliament album Gloryhallastupid, Theme From The Black Hole. Dennis Chambers is one of several drummers on this record; I don’t know if this is him.
Basic jazz method with varying cymbal pattern
Please forgive the lack of posting here— it’s been in the high 90s/low 100s in Portland for over a week, and it’s putting a serious damper on my productivity. The climate in the Pacific Northwest […]
Dom Irrera talks
If you don’t know who Dom Irrera, he’s sort of the Godfather of road comedians— stand up is a punishing trade, and comedians try to get away from it when they can. It’s also a […]
Studio triplet feel
Here’s a set of basic patterns for making a 70s-style triplet groove, or a moderate, triplety, shuffle,, as you hear on songs like Isn’t She Lovely, How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You, […]
Quarter note Reed method: Maiden Voyage
People, I am all about the quarter notes these days. This is an easy method using the rhythm of the vamp from the Herbie Hancock tune Maiden Voyage— we’ll combine that rhythm, played on the […]
How to really play jazz drums
I received this question by email: I wondered if I might trouble you with a small query about a video I recently watched: It’s called ‘How To (Really) Play Jazz Drums’ and it’s presented by a […]
Jazz language?
Great blog post by Bill Plake: “The Problem With Studying ‘The Jazz Language’”: The other morning I was giving a first lesson to a jazz guitarist ( a university student) and was struck by something […]
Daily best music in the world: not Bop Gun
Hey, there are other songs than Bop Gun on Parliament’s Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome. Here are a couple of nice, light little numbers that maybe get overshadowed by that funk classic. The drummer is […]
Phil Austin 1941-2015
Very sorry to hear we lost another comedy legend last week: Phil Austin, from the Firesign Theater— an incredible surrealist satire troupe, if you don’t know them; they’re really the American Monty Python. Austin was […]
Figure and fills — Cantaloupe Island
Here’s another practice loop, with a page of things to play with it. What I’ve done here is sample two measures from Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island, and write out a page of fills to fit […]