Here’s a loop that be real useful to a lot of people, sampled from Soulful Brothers, from Kenny Burrell’s record Blues – The Common Ground. The drummer is Grady Tate, and he’s playing a shuffle […]
Year: 2023
Cheap jazz cymbals
During that Washington residency one of the students asked me for a recommendation on an inexpensive jazz cymbal. It’s not really a budget category of cymbals, and I didn’t have a great answer for him. […]
Reed tweak: RH lead with LH drags
Reedtweakapalooza continues! I really need to round these up in a book. This is yet another thing to do with the straight 8th right hand lead Reed system. Refreshing your memory on that: reading from […]
Teaching in Washington
The drive home— the wilds of central Washington. I was out for a couple of days teaching some kids in the tri-cities area in central Washington state. The people who run the Portland Youth Jazz […]
Art Blakey: Jazz Messenger
Just came across this, quite an amazing documentary about Art Blakey, where they talk to Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller, many others. I haven’t gotten all the way through it yet. […]
Reed tweak: RH lead triplets – five stroke rolls
This is where my thinking is going lately, towards breaking up some Reed practice systems so they’re not pure formula. Which I have always done anyway, just not very systematically. We want to make our […]
EZ tom ruff phrases
Here are some more practice phrase ideas for the tom ruffs. This is an underrated item, it should be a lot of fun. Rock out. As the stickings on patterns 1 and 2 indicate, when […]
Transcription: Billy Hart – Don Is – 01
I’ve been listening to this record a lot in the last several months— Enjoy The View, by Bobby Hutcherson, with Billy Hart on drums, plus Joey de Francesco and David Sanborn. The tune is Don […]
Very occasional quote of the day: electronics
“A kid who doesn’t have to whack the drums to me is kind of missing something. He is going to buy a bunch of pads and not even know what it is like to lay […]
Songo brushup
I have some dates coming up where I need to use a Songo-type groove (the chart says “samba”, but it’s really not)— which I don’t have to play that often, so I’m brushing up on […]
How not to hit a drum
Hey, it’s been awhile since I’ve watched a drumming video, and rendered the tidal wave of complaints and irritations that come with it, so here are some comments I wrote when someone made me watch […]
Rhythm cycles
Here’s a page to print out and staplegun to the wall by your drums: a summary of some major practice rhythms, and their inversions. Sometimes you don’t need a readable page, you just need a […]