It is said that, on the drum set, there are snare drummers and cymbal players— I would also say there are bass drummers and hihat players. I’ve always been a hihat player— meaning, I’ll often […]
Month: September 2023
Rhythm fills – dotted quarter and half note space
Minor little item, that can be done by itself as an elementary thing, or that can be used along with Syncopation. I wrote it to work through some fill alternatives within a right hand lead […]
Book review: Note Groupings and Combinations for Drumset
Giving a shout out to, and a few comments about, a new book by Jeff W. Johnson: Note Groupings And Combinations For Drumset. Johnson wrote another good book, The Level System— pretty much the definitive […]
Warm ups for Alan Dawson’s “Para Bossa” system
Alan Dawson’s Para Bossa system, from John Ramsay’s book, The Drummer’s Complete Vocabulary, is a way of interpreting exercises in Ted Reed’s Syncopation as 16th note paradiddles, and extended paradiddles, with a samba rhythm in […]
Transcription: Peter Erskine – Duo – 04
Here are the next 30 seconds / 32 bars of Duo, played by Peter Erksine and Bob Mintzer, from Mintzer’s record Hymn. The whole track is about three and a half minutes long, so there […]
CYMBALISTIC: Playing some cymbals
CYMBALISTIC: I’ve just been doing a lot of cymbal-related business for people lately, and these are a couple of quick-and-dirty videos I made for that. Playing some different combinations of 20 and 22″ Extra Special Janavars, […]
Transcription: Peter Erskine – Duo – 03
And here’s the next 30 seconds of Duo, played by Peter Erskine and Bob Mintzer, from Mintzer’s record Hymn. This begins at 0:59 in the recordings. The last line is solo drums, next entry they’ll be trading […]
Reed interpretations: tom ruffs
Fun item inspired by watching some Bob Newhart Show reruns— I watched it a lot as a kid, and the drumming on the theme music made an impression well before I started playing. In the […]
On the massive overabundance of things to practice
A nagging question with every single thing I post: Am I putting up too much, am I part of the problem— the problem being: there’s way too much stuff to practice on the drums now, […]
Round up of recent Reed tweaks
In the last few months we’ve done a number of tweaks to the basic right hand lead method used with the book Syncopation, and I thought it would be good to summarize them on one […]
Transcription: Peter Erskine – Duo – 02
Here’s the second 30 seconds of Duo, played by Peter Erkine and Bob Mintzer, on Mintzer’s record Hymn. This track comes in a tight little package, every 30 seconds exactly = two times through the […]
CYMBALISTIC: Seattle meet wrap up!
CYMBALISTIC: We had a fun event at the Seattle Drum School on Monday evening. It was small but mighty, but we’re a small but mighty operation. Response to the cymbals was very enthusiastic, as always. Tim […]