Once every dozen years of blogging, I like to write about ballads— slow tunes you play on jazz gigs. They do exist. Possibly I don’t write about them much because I learned to play them […]
Category: ballads
Tootie Heath brush lesson
True old school guys approach things a whole different way from the modern technocratic thing. Here’s Tootie Heath giving a brush lesson: h/t to Larry Appelbaum
Daily best music in the world: Peace Piece
Seems like the perfect time of year for this. I had been away from one of my favorite records in the world, Everybody Digs Bill Evans, for long enough that for a moment I forgot […]
Practice loop: Crazy He Calls Me
This is another sampled practice loop I’ve been using for a long time, good for your triplety jazz materials. It’s four measures long, from the intro of Crazy He Calls Me, played by Ahmad Jamal, […]
Transcription: Al Foster — Pannonica
Oh, what the hey, hot on the heels of our Frankie Dunlop transcription of Pannonica, here’s Al Foster playing the same tune, the way I like to play it, in the original slow 4. It’s […]
Doubling up a ballad feel with Syncopation
Happy new year, everybody. I’m practicing a lot of slow tempos lately, so here are some Reed interpretations that will be familiar to all jazz students, written out to suggest double time during a ballad. […]
How to play the brushes, part two
I had never seen this before: Steve Gadd playing on a 2″ tape box. Along with Ted Warren’s videos, the only instruction you need for brushes: (h/t to Who Is Tony?)
Slow tempos: the compound pulse
Following up on the subdiving post: you may have noticed that I suggested subdividing 8th notes at slow tempos— not triplets, as you might expect with music like jazz, that is often thought to be […]
The slow click
There should really be no such thing as slow to the person playing the drums. Whatever tempo the listener is hearing, the player is going to multiply it as necessary to make a comfortable, easily-maintainable […]