Solo by Ben Riley on Blues Five Spot, from the Thelonious Monk record Live At The It Club. Great record, and core literature. I think of Ben Riley’s playing as maybe the cleanest shot we […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Very occasional quote of the day: loud and meaningless
“A drummer can be very, very loud and that can be just totally meaningless. Sometimes it can be very, very loud and it can be extremely exciting. So, it’s really not a question of how […]
Cymbalistic: videos are up – event dates
CYMBALISTIC: Videos and descriptions of the new cymbals are up, check them out at Cymbalistic. I’m putting a lot of ears on them ahead of upcoming events in Seattle and Germany (see below), so many/most/all […]
Sidebar: it’s things you do with rhythm
It is funny, I find myself typing the words SYNCOPATION and REED an awful lot, but this entire category of thing is not owned by that one book and that one author. We really talking […]
Reed tweak of a tweak: ending a solo phrase
Here’s a very small but useful tweak of a tweak: remember the Reed system with alternating triplets, hitting the accents on cymbals + bass drum… except we’d leave out the LH cymbal hits? It’s a good […]
RH lead triplets – useful excerpts from . 38
This is a little bit of a half baked item, illustrating something we did in a lesson. Should be useful for teachers, may not make a ton of sense if you’re not familiar with this […]
Listening to Somethin’ Else
Somethin’ Else is a very famous record by Cannonball Adderley, that really belongs in that “the one jazz record I know” list, along with Kind of Blue and Moanin’. When I was in school nobody […]
CYMBALISTIC: SUNDAY – SW Washington drum gear swap meet
CYMBALISTIC: OK, if you’re located anywhere in the Olympia/Kelso/Aberdeen triangle you’ll want to make it to Chehalis tomorrow for a drum gear swap meet at Alexander Park. Hosted by members of Drumforum.org. Last year about a […]
Groove o’ the day: Mickey Roker funk
Here’s a lot of ink for you, for eight measures. Mickey Roker playing a funk groove with a lot of detail to it, on Goin’ Down South, a Joe Sample tune from Bobby Hutcherson’s record […]
CYMBALISTIC: cymbal day
CYMBALISTIC: I went to Cymbal & Gong HQ yesterday and played a lot of great cymbals. Picking out the “best” ones to sell on my Cymbalistic site is really a game of inches. Someone else […]
Daily best music in the world: Billy Hart
This is an interesting record from 2014, by Bobby Hutcherson, with David Sanborn, Joey DeFrancesco, and Billy Hart on drums. The whole thing is real loose, and basically the opposite of everything happening in music […]
Reed tweak: RH lead with a backbeat
Another real simple tweak to a basic right hand lead method used with Syncopation: adding a half time feel backbeat. We’ve been doing a lot with this lately, and it’s turning into a very robust […]