For my jazz students, here is a list of much loved, mainstream, historically important recordings to listen to in your first few years of learning. I’m also in the process of updating the practice loop […]
Year: 2020
Three Camps for drum set – inverted – 05
Another page working on normal jazz drumset vocabulary using Three Camps— we’re sort of inverting the basic version, except I’ve taken a few liberties with it to make a normal Elvin-like texture out of it. I […]
A great jazz ride cymbal
This question was asked on a drumming forum: “What makes a great ride cymbal?” I answered it for jazz cymbals specifically, because that’s what interests me, and that’s the music where the ride cymbal […]
Beginning of the end
Well, that was the longest week of my life. I’m still recovering, and after I’ve recovered I probably won’t want to write about this. I hope everyone is celebrating the electoral defeat of the most […]
Stick Control patterns for a certain type of funk
A thing we do here is to rewrite/re-organize existing materials to make them better for practicing certain things. I hate hunting around the page while I practice, flipping pages, dodging things that are no good […]
Miscellaneous: cymbal and book
UPDATE: Feedback from the buyer of the cymbal: “I think perhaps I’ve never owned a nice sounding cymbal before b/c all my current cymbals sound like garbage compared to the Hassan.” Please forgive the light […]
Best books: Jim Payne’s Complete Funk Drumming Book
I’ve long felt there isn’t a truly good basic funk drumming book. There are many bad ones, and a few decent/acceptable ones. I most often use A Funky Primer out of habit, or Joel Rothman’s […]
Three Camps for drumset – 16th notes / basic – 04
This is the basic form of Three Camps for drumset, converted into 16th notes. I continue to dig this format for practicing jazz coordination. For me the main attraction of this page is the Elvin-like […]
CYMBALISTIC: You never know
Thinking about this fabulous product I’m selling, Cymbal & Gong cymbals, in this precarious time, it struck me that they could just go away at any time. I think— as do many of the the […]
Very occasional quote of the day: Mickey Roker on practicing
More from Mickey Roker’s Modern Drummer interview by Jeff Potter, October, 1985, on the subject of practicing the drums: It has always been hard for me to practice, because I get bored if I don’t […]
Extended shuffle stickings
This is just a little exploration of a special set of stickings for drum set. I wrote it to practice myself, and see if it’s worth developing as a concept. A lot of what we […]