A couple of interesting art books available “free” on Scribd, for anyone interested in art, or in getting into art, and trying some non-music related creativity. … which I highly recommend. I gave myself permission […]
Category: best books
Best books: Rudimental Primer by Mitchell Peters
Mitchell Peters is becoming the guy for snare drum literature, for me— his books form a thorough and complete vocabulary for the snare drum as it is played in the real world. They’re adequately challenging for […]
Delecluse patterns on the drum set
A rare-ish book outside of conservatory percussion circles, that is worth having in your permanent library, is Methode de Caisse-Claire by Jacques Delecluse. It’s an odd-sized book, so to print pages for my students I […]
Louis Bellson reading text in 4/4
Here are CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! we spend a lot of time with the book Syncopation, and not so much with its more expansive, more serious-seeming companion, Louis Bellson’s Modern Reading Text in 4/4. I use […]
New Joel Rothman book – Ambidexterity
So new I have to use thiscrappy scan I did myself. I just received a new book in the mail: AmbidexterityThe Holy Grail for Total Independence At The Drum Set by Joel Rothman41 pages. Joel Rothman […]
Best books: Jim Payne’s Complete Funk Drumming Book
I’ve long felt there isn’t a truly good basic funk drumming book. There are many bad ones, and a few decent/acceptable ones. I most often use A Funky Primer out of habit, or Joel Rothman’s […]
Three little-known books
For a long time Steve Weiss Music has been my go-to site for unusual and hard to find drum books. Their warehouse must be full of stuff that never quite caught on, that has been […]
Best books: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles
This book has been out for a couple of years, but fellow Portland drummer Ed Pierce just brought it to my attention: 143 Binary Algorhythms Applied to Paradiddles. …possibly the worst book title ever, but who […]
Book reviews: Two new Stone books
Two new works by and about George Lawrence Stone have just been released: Technique of Percussion is a compilation of articles Stone wrote for International Musician Magazine in the 1940s-60s. It’s over 400 pages long, […]
Progressive Steps to Syncopation – an itemized critique
I spend so much time talking about how great Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation (commonly known as “Syncopation”) is, and how you can do everything with it— and should— and how it’s the only book you […]
NOW AVAILABLE: 2019 Book of the Blog
OK, the 2019 CRUISE SHIP DRUMMER! Book of the Blog is now available for purchase. This handsome 131 page volume includes all of the downloadable materials, transcriptions, and practice methods posted on the site in 2019. […]
Making sense of the Chaffee jazz materials
Patterns, vol. 3 by Gary Chaffee Let’s talk about a big scary hard thing: the jazz section of volume 3 of Gary Chaffee’s Patterns series— the Time Functioning book. It’s in a similar category with […]