Prince was great. This would be a good time to watch Purple Rain if you haven’t seen it, or if you have.
Year: 2016
Transcription: Joe Chambers – Granted
Here’s a transcription of some jazz comping with a 3/4-within-4/4 feel, by Joe Chambers. This is from Granted, on Joe Henderson’s album Mode For Joe. It’s sort of a companion to the Elvin Jones Groove […]
Orchestrations of a figure: Groove Elation
Today we’ll do a little survey of ways of orchestrating on the drums a rhythmic figure— the bass line from the tune Groove Elation, by John Scofield. It’s a bright New Orleans-influenced thing, with a […]
Daily best music in the world: Spirit of ’86
Funny how dramatically the zeitgeist can change in a few years. Did you know that fusion was actually a serious thing, for many years? Until Wynton Marsalis hit us with his thing in the mid […]
Jeff Watts on Billy Higgins
This is from Ted Panken’s memorial drummers’ roundtable on Billy Higgins, broadcast on WKCR after Billy Higgins’s death in 2001. Here Jeff Watts talks about what Higgins meant to him: I first began to collect […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Max Roach – how you build a solo
Max Roach by Jean-Michel Basquiat “What makes a piece an art piece is design. Design. If you play any instrument, if you don’t create design…. If the artist doesn’t know how to utilize space and […]
Best books: Odd Meter Calisthenics by Mitchell Peters
Odd Meter Calisthenics for the Snare Drummer by Mitchell Peters – 79 pages I own several books by Mitchell Peters, and though they’re mostly excellent, I approached this one with caution. I was not wild […]
Chaffee linear phrases in 3/4 – 16th notes – 01
I’ve been trying to figure out why I never did that much with Gary Chaffee’s linear system; I find I’m a lot more interested when I vary the rhythm, and when I’m not always starting […]
Do you like to suffer?
Chad Smith interviews Ginger Baker. Most surprising occurrence: Smith never screams “WHY ARE YOU EVEN ALIVE?” Seriously. You don’t need to watch— well, any of it, actually— but definitely not past 14:40, where Smith’s look […]
EZ cut time funk method
Here’s an easy cut time funk technical study, sort of a flanker for my basic method, serving really no purpose except to set up a situation where unexpected things can happen. It’s easy to get […]
Very occasional quote of the day: nice guys
“Nice guys finish first. If you don’t know that, then you don’t know where the finish line is.” — Garry Shandling, 1949-2016 [h/t to @TheBlakeMorgan] There’s also a great exchange in Shandling’s Comedians In Cars […]
1986 Jeff Porcaro clinic
I haven’t had time to watch this yet, but it’s guaranteed to be good: [h/t to Bo Eder at Drummerworld]