Ahhh good times here in the Pacific Northwest, with the forests burning, and the entire city blanketed in smoke so it looks like we’re in Blade Runner, or the Mexico sequences from Breaking Bad, with […]
Category: Afro 6
Afro 6 warm up patterns
This is how I operate, after about ten years of writing the really hard stuff, I get around to giving people the easy way in. These are some preparatory exercises for playing an Afro 6 […]
Page o’ coordination: Freddie Waits Afro
UPDATE: A student brought it to my attention that according to Wikipedia, Idris Muhammad is the drummer on this track. Which surprises me, but there you go. A combination groove o’ the day and page […]
Double paradiddle inversions for drumset
Following up on my big rudimental tantrum post, here’s a little exploration of double paradiddles— I mentioned that a good friend, and one of the most creative drummers I know, Steve Pancerev, is a fan […]
3:2: varying the 3-side
Here we’re essentially doing straight 8th notes against a broken triplet-feel cymbal rhythm, in a triplet-feel context. For me this is mainly for playing straight 8ths in an Afro 6/8— which I already covered back […]
Page o’ coordination: Tekufah rhythm
Page o’ coordination using the rhythm from the bass line on Tekufah, a John Zorn tune from which I recently made a practice loop. The cymbal rhythm is actually an inversion or mode of the […]
Page o’ coordination: basic 6/4
The first of three pages of fundamentals to go with that John Zorn loop from the other day. These POCs are a major part of my output right now, which is a little bit misleading— […]
Practice loop in 6: Tekufah
A fun practice loop in 6/4 with a strong suggestion of 12/8. It’s really a compound pulse where it’s both things at the same time. Hit the time signature labels at the bottom of the […]
Page o’ coordination: another basic 3:2
UPDATE: pdf download now works Back in Portland after a road trip to northern California… recording drums for a quasi-punk record by my wife and one of her 90s East Village cronies, in a Lions […]
Groove o’ the day: Philly Joe Afro 6
From the Sonny Rollins album Newk’s Time, another individualistic version of an Afro 6/8 groove, played by Philly Joe Jones on Asiatic Raes, a Kenny Dorham tune. On the snare line, the x is a […]
Page o’ coordination: Simple 3:2
Coming at that 3:2 hemiola polyrhythm from the triplet side— all of our recent hemiola funk stuff has been using it in a duple subdivision. Here we’ll use the 2 side as the primary pulse, […]