Another little item inspired by the ongoing Chasin’ the Trane transcription— in which Elvin Jones does this a lot. Here we’ve got both feet in unison, played on the &s of 1 and 3, in […]
Month: December 2020
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Chasin’ the Trane – 03
Third minute of Elvin Jones playing Chasin’ the Trane, from John Coltrane Live at The Village Vanguard. The 13th-18th 12-bar choruses. I just noticed that the tempo— around quarter note = 235— is about the […]
Bass drum rhythms for feathering
I wrote this up after listening to Mel Lewis’s history of jazz drumming tapes, where he was raving about the importance of playing time on the bass drum (he really gets into it after 43:30). He […]
From the zone: two-note coordination patterns
From Manuel in Augsburg, Germany. We’ve met a couple of times in my travels— in Berlin and in Augsburg, and I got to help him put together a really nice set of Cymbal & Gong cymbals— a […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Chasin’ the Trane – 02
Happy Saturnalia everyone— although it seems a shame to call it that, with everyone celebrating in isolation. Nevertheless, here is the second minute of Elvin Jones playing Chasin’ the Trane— 1:13 to 2:13— from John […]
Three Camps for drum set – inverted quarter note triplet fill – 07
I’m telling you this is a good system. It gives you the thing, some basic variations on it, starting on 1 or 2, straight and syncopated, and it makes you do it for as long […]
Page o’ coordination: jazz / RLRR
Working on this Elvin project the last couple of days, I noticed that, similar to Max Roach on another recording, he plays the snare drum in the gap in the cymbal rhythm a lot, for […]
Transcription: Elvin Jones – Chasin’ the Trane – 01
Ending a truly bleak, shameful year— and four years— in United States history, with an ambitious transcribing project. A little act of penance, devotion, purging, re-centering. I’m hoping to clean myself a little with this. […]
Another Reed tweak
Another minor tweak on a normal Reed method, in a jazz feel. It’s good to have some easy options to relieve the tedium, and to bring more of the texture of real playing into it. […]
Three Camps for drum set – quarter note triplet fill – 06
I started doing these because I wanted a composed drill, like Alan Dawson’s Rudimental Ritual, that I would actually play. It has worked out really well. This entry is the same as the first one, […]
Practice loop: Night & Day – Bill Evans
Here’s a brighter-medium tempo jazz practice loop, sampled from Night & Day, played by Bill Evans on his album Everybody Digs Bill Evans— one of my favorite records, period. The loop is one chorus of […]
Very occasional quote of the day: kindness
“When I was a young drummer, I never got that many compliments and I never got that much criticism. The men I played with liked me enough not to repudiate my shortcomings. They wouldn’t do […]