Here’s an incredibly beautiful solo set by my friend, and friend of the site, Michael Griener. News of Roy Haynes’s death broke during the set, and it feels like we’re sending him off… At Richten 25, […]
Author: Todd Bishop
RIP Roy Haynes
The last old master drummer has died, Roy Haynes, at age 99. He was the last of the “magnificent seven” (coined by Lenny White): Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, […]
Fills in a 4/8 framework – 01
Continuing the concept of that last thing, Fills in a 3/8 framework. Here we’ve got four 8ths of space to deal with, a cymbal accent, and three 8ths of fill. I’m very pleased with how […]
Very occasional quote of the day: epic
From Hal Galper on Facebook: “I’d heard a recording of an interview with Coleman Hawkins that stuck in my brain. He said you had to go to the city twice. The first time to learn […]
Abstract art
Helen Frankenthaler Talking about abstract painting, and attitudes towards it in general, countering some things I’ve heard said many times over the years, sometimes about my own work. Modern painting is easy to relate to […]
Triumph of the worst
UPDATE: Toning this down a bit— mainly removing a very unkind assessment of the American electorate— and moving on. My current state of mind is that I’m not going to worry about all the horrible […]
RIP Quincy Jones
Quincy Jones passed away early this morning. I’m not equipped to write anything meaningful about him, so here are some links: notices from the Associated Press, and from Variety. “I’ve never been bored or lonely in […]
Fills in a 3/8 framework – 01
UPDATE: I added a couple of 2/4 options for running the fills by themselves, and also changed the practice phrases— the jazz phrases need a dedicated treatment beyond the scope of this post, so I took […]
History of cymbal manufacturing
An interesting article by Fritz Steger, author of A History Of Drums Made In Germany, written in German: Welches Becken passt zu meiner Musik und Spielweise? In English that’s “Which cymbal suits my music and playing style?”— […]
Latest practice loop archive
Here we are, the latest archive of all my sampled practice loops, mostly categorized by style, mostly with tempos. I also have folders with all the loops I use the most, and with the ones […]
Two measure Reed phrases – 01
Another cut and paste item— a specialty of mine— extracting some two measure phrases from the full page exercises in the book Syncopation. In lessons I have to hunt around for phrases I want, and […]
Bill Stewart
I’ve been listening to a lot of John Scofield this week, and realized I basically never talk about Bill Stewart here. It’s weird, he’s on anyone’s short list of top living jazz drummers, particularly of those […]