Following up on my big rudimental tantrum post, here’s a little exploration of double paradiddles— I mentioned that a good friend, and one of the most creative drummers I know, Steve Pancerev, is a fan […]
Month: April 2020
40 international drum rudiments— a frank appraisal
Here at last is my opinionated commentary on each of the 40 PAS international drum rudiments— the good are praised, the questionable are denigrated and hounded from the public sphere. The abstruse are eschewed. I’ll […]
Daily best music in the world: Pete La Roca with Coltrane
Busy this week finishing an e-book outlining my “harmonic coordination improved” method. I think I’m going to call it Drumset Control. There are at least two other books with that title, by Mitchell Peters and […]
Transcription: Max Roach – Dexterity
Max Roach’s drum breaks on just about the first jazz recording I ever noticed and liked— Dexterity by Charlie Parker. I dug an old LP compilation of Parker 78s out of my dad’s record collection. […]
Hemiola funk series: Funky Primer – p. 22
Here’s an easy little thing, bringing together two funk items: I’ve taken a familiar page from Charles Dowd’s Funky Primer, and re-written it with the patterns used in my hemiola funk series. You know what […]
EZ jazz solo method: alternative triplet stickings
Let’s begin expanding the quick and easy jazz solo lesson from the other day— here are some alternative triplet stickings you can use with it. You’ll recall that it consisted of a “stock” pattern element and a […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Lee Konitz
From my friend and collaborator saxophonist Tim Willcox on his lesson with Lee Konitz, who died yesterday: When it came down to asking Lee my very specific questions about how he practiced and learned to […]
3:2: varying the 3-side
Here we’re essentially doing straight 8th notes against a broken triplet-feel cymbal rhythm, in a triplet-feel context. For me this is mainly for playing straight 8ths in an Afro 6/8— which I already covered back […]
A quick and easy jazz solo lesson
UPDATE: Download link works now! This is an easy, non-technical method for learning jazz solos/breaks/trading, which I devised in lessons with an older Skype student. It involves a few basic patterns, and several easy practice […]
COVID SPECIAL: Practice loop archive
End of ’20 UPDATE: Get the new updated 3 gb archive, with tempos! Hey, since everyone is confined to home, with nothing to do but practice, I thought I’d share my personal archive of sampled practice […]
From the zone: Al Foster intro
Hey, it looks like everyone but me is getting a lot writing done right now. I have a couple more of these “from the zone” items to share— a series where people send in their […]