Extending this EZ fast rock / rock in 3 series, with quarter notes on the cymbal: here are some beats and ideas in 5, phrased 3+2. I wrote this series to illustrate the difference between […]
Category: downloads
Transcription: Billy Higgins trading
Some uptempo trading 8s and 4s on Moose the Mooche, from an old favorite album, Wish by Joshua Redman, with Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins on drums. I used to play along […]
EZ Rock in 3/4
Working on my EZ Fast Rock page, a younger student asked a question like what’s the difference between playing in 3, 4, or 5? Well, here we go, some similar stuff written in 3/4. I like […]
EZ Fast Rock Lesson
This page functions both as a page of easy stuff for beginners, and as basic vocabulary for fast-tempo rock drumming. There are a lot of patterns, deliberately. This’ll be many students’ first shot at processing […]
3/16 Control – 02
A very dense page today, but it’s not for you, it’s for me. I was practicing the original 3/16 Control pages along with my Watermelon Man loop, and thought some of the permutations would be better […]
Reed Linear Quarters – beat 4 displaced
With a student I’ve been working on a Blue Note type groove a la Cantaloupe Island, and the linear quarter notes lesson (pp. 8-9) in Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps to Syncopation* seemed a good place […]
Groove o’ the day: Grady Tate Afro
Grady Tate playing a heavy Afro-Cuban style groove, or Afro 6, as I’ve been calling it, on Grant Green’s The Final Comedown movie soundtrack. The track is Soul Food African Shop, and the transcription is […]
Transcription: Tony Williams – Cantaloupe Island
A student was asking about Cantaloupe Island, played by Tony Williams on Herbie Hancock’s Empyrean Isles album, so I went ahead and transcribed the whole thing. Why not. The style may get called as a […]
Metric modulation a la Silverman – 01
A student brought in a copy of Chuck Silverman’s Practical Applications: Afro-Caribbean Rhythms for Drum Set, and we worked through a part of it together, dealing with metric modulations— or more accurately superimposed metric modulations […]
Uptempo drill a la Riley
Major rehash alert: an uptempo jazz drill I was playing yesterday, using what John Riley once called “my C major scale”: an SSBB pattern in 8th notes, with notes omitted. The page below is very […]
Transcription: Buddy Rich – Big Mac
Buddy Rich drum solo on Big Mac, a prodigious funk/rock arrangement by Ernie Wilkins, from Rich’s album Ease On Down The Road— it’s actually better known from Roar of ’74, but I have it on […]
EZ simultaneous clave exercises
Awhile back we noted that if you play a simple rhythm in an alternating sticking: And move one hand to a different sound: …you are playing the Son Clave rhythm in the 3-2 and 2-3 […]