Question: A truly ambidextrous person can do anything equally well with either hand. They have no preference at all. It’s not a learned thing, it’s just a natural thing. How many here are truly ambidextrous? […]
Author: Todd Bishop
I'm a drummer, drum teacher, Origin recording artist, and visual artist living in Portland, Oregon.
More grooves with inverted paradiddles
Popular item recently, a bunch of students at various levels are digging this. With the previous thing we were adding the paradiddles to some basic rock beats, here we’re stripping it down further, fitting them […]
Syncopation in 5/8
For the more enterprising, a handy key to interpret Ted Reed’s Syncopation in 5/8 time. It’s a little obscure for the quasi-initiated, but then… what are you doing playing in 5/8? You’ve got bigger fish […]
Mozambique moves
A big part of my job teaching is getting people to handle their materials as loosely as I do. You’re supposed to be trying things, developing them beyond just the ink. On this page are […]
Embellishing a groove – paradiddle inversion
Something we were doing in a lesson, putting this very useful paradiddle inversion pattern— RLLR-LRRL— into some ordinary rock grooves, as embellishments. I didn’t compose these to be awesome grooves, these are the types of […]
Tresillo extended
Sketch page for working with a particular rhythm idea— a tresillo rhythm extended by two beats, repeating the syncopated middle note. Some interesting things are happening there, there is some similarity to a partido alto […]
5/8 burnout – 01
A pattern I was working with, with a Jack Dejohnette loop in 5. See my 5/8 control pages especially for more of this kind of thing. These won’t have the options as the other burnout […]
Arabic Rhythm Cycles
Just putting a site of interest in front of you, and bookmarking it for myself: Maqam World, which talks about traditional Arabic music, including a page detailing a long list of rhythm cycles, in conventional […]
Samba with Funky Primer
I finally discovered a use for one part of Funky Primer— the hands-only section on pp. 17-21. I never found much practical use for them as playing vocabulary, except they work really well for making […]
First jam session – question and case study
A couple of items related to jam sessions were asked on Reddit (r/jazzdrums) recently, I can comment more freely here than would be appropriate in that forum, and why should I give my stuff away […]
Paradiddle inversion control – 03
More than ever convinced that this is basic language— you got singles in 16ths, singles in triplets, and the RLLR-LRRL paradiddle inversion in 16ths. Certainly any time you get into Latin playing, funk or fusion […]