This page functions both as a page of easy stuff for beginners, and as basic vocabulary for fast-tempo rock drumming. There are a lot of patterns, deliberately. This’ll be many students’ first shot at processing […]
Author: Todd Bishop
Limitations of loops
There’s a good post about playing along with recordings, that everyone should read, over at Ted Warren’s Trap’d blog. Since he commented about playing with loops vs. whole tunes— and I do a lot with […]
3/16 Control – 02
A very dense page today, but it’s not for you, it’s for me. I was practicing the original 3/16 Control pages along with my Watermelon Man loop, and thought some of the permutations would be better […]
Very occasional quote of the day: the way they got built
“I’ve never really been interested in the books that do things like analyze Sonny Rollins or Coltrane solos because I’ve never seen one that breaks them down in the same way they got built.”– Melvin […]
Counting system overhaul – 02
I was working on this last year, and never posted part 2, because it was an unreadable mass. Still is. But for people who teach and deal with this subject every day, here we go: […]
CYMBALISTIC: New cymbals are in!
I just picked up a small order of cymbals from Cymbal & Gong, videos for which will be coming at the end of the week. There’s some very interesting stuff— here are my first impressions […]
Cymbal size vibe war!
Photo stolen from the cover of The Cymbal Book by Hugo Pinksterboer, which you should own. At last, the definitive guide to the vibes we all get from the various sizes of cymbals. I don’t know why […]
Reed Linear Quarters – beat 4 displaced
With a student I’ve been working on a Blue Note type groove a la Cantaloupe Island, and the linear quarter notes lesson (pp. 8-9) in Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation* seemed a good place […]
Groove o’ the day: Grady Tate Afro
Grady Tate playing a heavy Afro-Cuban style groove, or Afro 6, as I’ve been calling it, on Grant Green’s The Final Comedown movie soundtrack. The track is Soul Food African Shop, and the transcription is […]
Hey, buy stuff
Two pieces of gear-buying news: GET SNARE DRUMSMy friend and student Bill W. owns a bunch of great snare drums, and is letting some of them go on Reverb. He’s got a 60s Gretsch Progressive […]
Transcription: Tony Williams – Cantaloupe Island
A student was asking about Cantaloupe Island, played by Tony Williams on Herbie Hancock’s Empyrean Isles album, so I went ahead and transcribed the whole thing. Why not. The style may get called as a […]
Wayne’s gone
One of my favorite solos of his: