CYMBALISTIC: OK, I’ve been remiss, letting the new cymbals pile up without making new videos, so here are eight of them all at once. Turkish-style Holy Grails, and Extra Special Janavars, mostly 20s, a 21, […]
Author: Todd Bishop
I'm a drummer, drum teacher, Origin recording artist, and visual artist living in Portland, Oregon.
Six stroke roll exploiter
Another very dense page of stuff based on the Ultimate Paradiddle Builder page, and companion to my paradiddle-diddle exploiter page. I’m getting very grandiose in how I name crap. It’s fun, try it sometime. Between […]
Transcription: Charli Persip hihat/comping
A little bit of Charli Persip here, playing On Green Dolphin St. with Red Garland, on Garland’s 1961 album Bright And Breezy. This is on Sam Jones’s bass solo, so we’re getting a good look […]
Very occasional quote of the day: don’t talk about the gig
No matter what, you never talked about the music on the bandstand or the gig for that matter. It can ruin a gig. You’re crazy when you’re on the bandstand, vulnerable, without defenses. Tempers can […]
CYMBALISTIC: Seattle follow-up
CYMBALISTIC: Had a great small— very small— meeting in Seattle with my brother John Bishop, a great drummer and president of Seattle’s Origin record label, and Evan Woodle, one of his employees , and also […]
Solo transcription: Peter Erskine – A Summer Place
From a funny arrangement by Peter Erskine and Danny Grissett, from Erskine’s new record Vienna To Hollywood, out now on Origin Records (hey, as is a new record I play on) which features the music […]
Paradiddle-diddle exploiter
Heavy paradiddle unit happening here lately. Here are some ways of playing the paradiddle-diddle section of my Ultimate Paradiddle Builder on the drum set. The formula is pretty simple, you can easily apply this to […]
Burnout variations
Look, I didn’t call it burnout for nothing. Here are some other practice possibilities for the recent Paradiddle-diddle burnout and six stroke roll burnout pages, that came up in my own practicing. The point is […]
CYMBALISTIC: Seattle meet this week!
CYMBALISTIC: Hey, I’ll be in Seattle this Tuesday and Wednesday, showing a collection of great Cymbal & Gong cymbals to anyone interested. It will be mainly by appointement— I’ll update this if it looks like […]
RIP Al Foster
By now anyone who would read this site has heard that Al Foster passed away. Here are some notices: Ethan Iverson | Downbeat | NPR | WBGO – Foster @ The Village Vanguard in 2012 […]
Six stroke roll burnout
Companion to the Paradiddle-diddle burnout page, with the same method and purpose, using the six stroke roll sticking: RLLRRL. These two pages, played this way, amount to a pretty complete vocabulary for this kind of […]
Filling in funk beats – 01
This is in development, it’s not necessarily a finished “lesson.” We’ve done a lot making simple rock beats into fill phrases, here we’re doing that with a more complex beat— looking at some possible ways […]