My apologies for the lack of posts lately— I’ve been very busy with gigs, and with work on my house. Mainly installing a patio in my back yard, which involves digging up and moving out […]
Year: 2016
Page o’ coordination: shuffle bass drum variations
It’s a busy, busy, busy, busy time here— lots of gigs, lots of teaching, lots of work to be done on my house as we convert our little back house into an Air b’n’b. Nevertheless, […]
Ballard Jazz Festival happening NOW
If you’re in Seattle, get your butt to Ballard. My group will be playing tonight at Egan’s on Market from 7:40-10:00, with Rich Cole, Jasnam Daya Singh, and Chris Higgins.
Dahlgren & Fine practice order
The “harmonic” coordination exercises from Dahlgren & Fine’s 4-Way Coordination is one of the more daunting collections of junk in the drumming literature. For many years I resisted using the book at all, but I finally got […]
@Bose
Have I mentioned what a great idea it is to follow @Bose on Twitter? I follow a comedian (and former Superchunk drummer) Todd Barry, and saw this tweet of his, and had this exchange: I […]
EZ Tony Williams-like method
EZ-ish. The concept is extremely simple, anyway. Scarcely worth writing up, but here it is. And when I say Tony Williams-like, I mean “it reminds me of one thing he kind of did on a […]
Getting your practice pad time in
Just copy every detail of this photograph and you’ll be fine— KIDDING!!! I see this question on line pretty often: “How do I get my snare drum chops together? Which system do I use?” I have a […]
Dahlgren & Fine linear funk method
4-Way Coordination by Marvin Dahlgren and Elliot Fine is one the more punishing books in the literature of drumming. I’ve written about my past issues with the book— mainly, its foundational exercises are organized based […]
Page o’ coordination: Ventimiglia
This is something I wrote for working on one of my own tunes: Ventimiglia, from my 2014 album, Travelogue. It’s a bright 6/8 with a strong pull towards 3/4. The bass line is borrowed from […]
Daily best music in the world: India
I’ve listened to this so many times it’s like classical music; just realized I haven’t listened to it in several years:
Handedness is dubious
Granted, we may have gone overboard in the past… There’s a long blog post called Teaching Lefty Drummers, written by Illinois percussionist, drummer, and teacher Don Skoog, about the importance of handedness in drumming. I’ve […]
Why Syncopation is so great
Here’s a question that comes up often, and which I always I feel I have to address every time I have a new student buy Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps To Syncopation: “Whuh— this is just […]