Gary Chaffee’s Patterns series of books was a thrilling discovery to me as a student— a new, very modern system of stuff, that fit my ideas of what I wanted to be doing at the […]
Category: best books
Best books: Beginning Drum Chart Reading
Here’s an excellent book, that is quite obscure— or was, to me: Beginning Drum Chart Reading by Gil Graham. It was written in 1983, and is only available from Graham’s site, as far as I […]
Straight’s Modern Syncopated Rhythms
We must get away from the old military method of drumming and play the Drum part the same lead as the Violin, Saxophone or Xylophone parts. Let’s take a close look at a very old […]
Best books: Oceans Of Time – The Musical Autobiography of Billy Hart
Oceans Of Time is an oral autobiography of the drummer Billy Hart, from interviews by the pianist Ethan Iverson, assembled and edited by Iverson. You’re going to want to get it, and have it in […]
Billy Hart on the bass drum
I’m reading the Billy Hart autobiography Oceans Of Time right now— I’ll have a overview of it coming soon— but there are some parts where he talks about feathering the bass drum, and usage of […]
Best books: The Mastery of Eric Harland
The Mastery of Eric Harlandby Alex Snydmanwith transcriptions by Snydman, Stone Cornelius, Raphael Pannier, and Terry Branam2025, 92 pages I just received this book in the mail, and it’s quite good, a very worthwhile portrait […]
Best books: Joe Porcaro’s Drum Set Method
Looking at an interesting book, that I’ve been using a bit recently: Joe Porcaro’s Drum Set Method. It’s uniquely practical, covering some things widely done, but rarely taught— at least they’re not detailed so exactly. […]
NEW BOOK: Rants – vol. 1
All right, here we go, my new book is DONE: Rants – vol. 1. Drummers, drum media, and the internetby Todd Bishop. 290 pages. Get it: on CYMBALISTIC | on LULU All right, here we […]
Best books: The Drummer’s/Musician’s Lifeline
Looking at two little books co-authored by Peter Erskine and Dave Black— The Drummer’s Lifeline, and The Musician’s Lifeline, subtitled, respectively, as Quick Fixes, Hacks, And Tips Of The Trade, and Advice For All Musicians, […]
Best books: Working Space
Here’s an old favorite, by the painter Frank Stella, who died this week: Working Space— you can read it online at that link. It’s pretty dense, but there’s a lot to learn about art in it. […]
On Effortless Mastery
Service announcement: the next couple of months will continue to be very busy for me, so I’ll be posting irregularly for awhile longer. Quality of language will be unpolished, wisdom coarsely hewn, logic poorly articulated, […]
Practical comping lesson with Rothman
Joel Rothman’s books don’t get a ton of attention in the jazz drums-learning world, but they’re good. I like the comping materials in his book Basic Drumming (duplicated in his book Drumming And All That […]