Another rub-a-dub lesson— getting as much of this in as I can before the end of the year, so there’s a robust section on it in the upcoming 2018 Book of the Blog. This page […]
Month: December 2018
Groove o’ the day: Andy Newmark – Babies Makin’ Babies
Here’s a cool 70s funk groove in a James Brown mode, played by Andy Newmark, on the alternative version of Babies Makin’ Babies, from the Sly Stone album Fresh. I’ve included the main groove and […]
3+2 rub-a-dub phrases
Continuing in eking out a way of learning this rub-a-dub concept, here are a couple of pages of combinations of three-beat and two-beat patterns: Practice these in the written meters, then try putting them into […]
Transcription: Dannie Richmond solo
More Dannie Richmond— his solo from The Clooker, from the George Adams/Dannie Richmond album Hand To Hand. Transcription begins at 6:49. Execution of the technical parts is rather rough; and there’s an actual mistake surrounding […]
Open ratamacues for drumset
More jazz solo vocabulary: my previous page of open ratamacues, adapted for the drumset. It’s pretty simple: we’ve just moved the doubles to the bass drum. I eliminated the triple ratamacues because I don’t like […]
Practice loop: Lopsy Lu – complete form
This replaces my earlier practice loop sampled from Stanley Clarke’s Lopsy Lu— this one has the whole form of the tune. Nice to actually know how to play it, just in case you ever play […]
6/8 rhythmic literacy – 01
This has been a lurking annoyance for me for a long time: students don’t know how to read basic rhythms in 6/8… any of the */8 meters. It looks weird and is often explained poorly, […]
Dannie Richmond comping
Dannie Richmond is one of my favorite drummers, who we don’t talk about much mainly because he’s often hard to transcribe, and a lot of what he plays is so context dependent that it can […]
Year end Cymbal & Gong sale BASH BLOWOUT
Hey, let’s see if I can blow out some of my remaining stock of cymbals before the end of the year. Remember, you can deduct December purchases on your looming 2018 taxes. It would be […]
How to play Autumn Leaves
Playing Autumn Leaves should be a no brainer for a drummer: it’s an easy standard, and one of the first tunes everyone learns. No problem, except some players always do a certain zombie jam session […]
A balanced attitude about cymbals
There’s a quote from Elvin Jones where he described his process of selecting cymbals: he would go to the Gretsch warehouse in Brooklyn where the imported K. Zildjians were kept, and he would grab a […]
Back from tour
school hang in Dresden I’m back from Germany and am deep in the throes of jet lag and a bad cold, and will resume normal posting soon. I had a really great time meeting, hanging […]