The Mastery of Eric Harland
by Alex Snydman
with transcriptions by Snydman, Stone Cornelius, Raphael Pannier, and Terry Branam
2025, 92 pages
I just received this book in the mail, and it’s quite good, a very worthwhile portrait of one of the foremost drummers active today, Eric Harland. Everyone I listen to is either dead or very old, so I haven’t spent a lot of time with Harland’s playing. This book will be a great crash course in that; I’ll be using it as a listening guide.
It’s spiral bound, so it’s very friendly to the music stand. A dedicated student will mark it up, use the hell out of it. The notation is very readable, faithfully representing what was played, while not over doing it with the markings (as I often do). The style of notation is similar to what I do, with everything on one set of stems. No stickings have been suggested— they may be apparent on listening to the recordings, or from the accents or the movement around the drums. You can also watch some video and see what kind of stickings Harland favors.
The written text is a short forward by John Riley, an introduction and some personal stories by Snydman, advice on learning the transcriptions, accolades and comments from other performers, and a fascinating interview, getting into some personal stuff about Harland’s life. He has lived some stuff.
This is a good level of information you would want as a starting place for any player for whom you want to claim any meaningful level of knowledge. After the recordings, of course… that is one additional thing I would have liked to have seen here, a recommended discography. Absent that, as always, the recommended discography is “everything you can find that he plays on.”
Any time I talk about “hard media” now I need to make a case to buy the thing. That is our job; somebody makes something beautiful, and we, as members of the small audience for whom it was made, support that endeavor by paying for it. You look at all the things you are paying for, and make these things that are ostensibly the most important part of your life part of them.
Order The Mastery of Eric Harland through Snydman’s site.
Thank you for reviewing the book my friend! Just received a very positive review from Modern Drummer as well and trying to get this book in the hands of every fan of Eric’s! He’s the GOAT:)
Thank you for the review. I haven’t checked out enough of Eric Harland, so this book will be helpful. Most of what I’ve heard from him is on Walter Smith III’s album TWIO—highly recommended.”.