I was playing along with a loop sampled from the track below, and wanted to have this page to work with. We’re doing accented accented singles— with a three note and five note spacing— along […]
Month: March 2020
From the zone: cycling patterns
Since I am completely blocked for writing anything other than profane tweets right now, here are a couple of things from the practice room of our friend in Berlin, Michael Griener. It’s a very elegant […]
Transcription: Philly Joe Jones – Gone
From the Miles Davis album Porgy & Bess, here is Philly Joe Jones playing Gil Evans’s arrangement of Gone. It’s mostly just drums and horns, with a lot of drum breaks, plus a bridge where […]
Daily best music in the world: Elvin plays brushes
You would think with all of this extra quarantine time I would just be writing up a storm, but I’m actually kind of blocked this week. So here’s Tommy Flanagan’s Overseas—a nice record with Elvin […]
Transcription: more Max
More from Max Roach: his solo on the same tune from last post— Flossie Lou from Clifford Brown & Max Roach At Basin Street. It’s 32 bars long, and starts at 2:39. He plays quarter notes […]
Very occasional quote of the day: solitude
“Solitude fuels creativity, whereas brotherly camaraderie tends to dissipate it. Isolation is the one sure way to happiness.” — Glenn Gould (h/t to Dean Frey)
Velocity patterns in 3/4
Here’s something I’ve been working with, similar to the patterns in these alternative versions of Three Camps. They’re easy to play fast, and so are good for blazing, double-timey playing. These can be played on […]
Transcription: Max Roach comping
Part 3 of a little mini series, looking at some comping examples by Tony Williams, Mickey Roker, and now Max Roach. This is Max’s playing during Clifford Brown’s solo on Flossie Lou, from Clifford Brown & […]
Book reviews: Two new Stone books
Two new works by and about George Lawrence Stone have just been released: Technique of Percussion is a compilation of articles Stone wrote for International Musician Magazine in the 1940s-60s. It’s over 400 pages long, […]
Transcription: Mickey Roker comping
Mickey Roker’s accompaniment of Dizzy Gillespie’s solo— the first three choruses anyway— on Birk’s Works, from Gillespie’s album Big 4. Roker has a deep groove I associate with musicians who have played a lot of […]
UPDATE: Seattle cymbal hang CANCELLED
Never can be too many asinine plays on the word cymbal. EVENT UPDATE: COVID response in Seattle has really gotten serious, and we’ve decided it would be wisest to cancel this event. Hopefully outlook will […]
Stick control patterns for jazz
Because some novice jazz students get hung up on the idea of left hand “independence”, here is a little set of exercises for helping coordination between the hands when playing jazz time. We’re using some […]