In honor of what would be Max Roach’s 92nd birthday, here’s a practice loop sampled from As Long As You’re Living, from his album Quiet As It’s Kept. The tune is a blues in 5/4, […]
Month: January 2017
Gadd on time
Another item from Rick Mattingly’s 1983 Modern Drummer interview with Steve Gadd. It’s encouraging that a lot of the very common fuzzy talk about time makes no more sense to the greatest studio drummer in […]
Groove o’ the day: Harvey Mason – Slop Jar Blues
Here are some fairly basic funk grooves, which I’m really only posting as an excuse to get you to listen to this track, and the way the drummer plays it. The tune is Slop Jar […]
Odd meter Harr: flamadiddle study in 5/8
I’ve said before, I practice out of Haskell Harr’s Drum Method a lot. It’s the stodgiest traditional rudimental snare drum book available this side of the Moeller book, but it uses accurate modern notation— many […]
Stick Control in odd meters – 02
Continuing from the previous post on adapting roll exercises in Stick Control to odd meters— see that post for an explanation; I’ll just give examples of a few more possibilities. Like this rather advanced way […]
Ghost notes developer
Ghost notes are currently an extremely hot topic in internet drumming land— it seems funny that there would be so much hoopla about an embellishment, but whatever. I use them all the time in my […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Steve Gadd on reading
“Reading improves just from doing it. It wasn’t easy for me, but thanks to the encouragement of my teacher, John Beck, I stuck with it and it has been very useful. The more you do […]
Stick Control in odd meters – 01
One thing about practicing odd meters: they really force you to know what you’re playing. You have to understand rhythm and you have to know exactly where you are all the time— unless humiliating trainwrecks […]
Very occasional quote of the day: studying Zen
“Do not be too interested in Zen.” —Shunryu Suzuki, Zen scholar, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind