don’t let this happen to you “My idea of a drum solo is that you play like you sing. It comes from different things you listen to. And the beauty is always in the simple […]
Month: May 2019
Cymbal day TODAY
CYMBALISTIC: FYI, I will be visiting Cymbal & Gong HQ today and picking out cymbals. If you are looking for anything special, feel free to send a text message at (503)380-9259 (USA) until about 2:30pm […]
Stick Control for consistency
Here’s an interesting video by Matt Patella, a drummer and teacher who knows a lot about the whole Stone/Morello world of drum technique. He talks about George L. Stone’s intentions for his book Stick Control, […]
Groove o’ the day: two by Idris Muhammad with Melvin Sparks
Two similar grooves played by Idris Muhammad with the guitarist Melvin Sparks. The tunes are also very similar, following the same basic template. Both grooves have this as the main snare drum rhythm: It’s a […]
CYMBAL DAY on Friday
THIS FRIDAY: I’ll be visiting Cymbal & Gong HQ to select cymbals for sale on my Cymbalistic site. Many will be for my upcoming Germany sales trip (June 4-12, Berlin/Dresden/Munich), but if you need a […]
Page o’ coordination: Rumba clave – hands only
Page of exercises for coordinating the left hand with rumba clave played with the right. It’s not pure independence practice in the abstract— most of the patterns are related to the clave rhythm in a […]
Very occasional quotes of the day: L.H.O.O.Q.
“[…] I had had Genius pushed at me all through school: Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Ibsen, G.B. Shaw, Chekov, all those dullards. And worse, Mark Twain, Hawthorne, the Brontë sisters, Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, it all just laid […]
Groove o’ the day: Al Jackson – Soul Dressing
Hip groove from Al Jackson on the tune Soul Dressing, by Booker T. and the MGs, from their 1965 album of the same title. They recorded so many of these tight little 45s, R&B miniatures— […]
Daily best music in the world: Gene Krupa
Gene Krupa playing with a quartet in the 1950s. This has a nice vibe, and doesn’t get ridiculous about showcasing Krupa. His accompaniment on the tenor solo on Little White Lies (starting at 19:06) is […]
Tresillo inversion combinations
A library item for fairly hardcore individuals: two measure combinations of all of the tresillo inversions from the item at that link. This whole area of rhythm is extremely fertile to me— it’s all familiar […]
Page o’ coordination: Afro 15
Hey, as long as we’re working on weird, non-traditional perversions of the natural world, here is a page of “Afro 6” groove in 5. Or 15/8, which is a triplet feel in 5. This groove […]
Q&A: Cuban for jazz
I got a surprisingly tough question from a reader the other day: What’s a good book for playing Cuban styles in jazz? Part of the difficulty with answering this is, what do we mean by […]